DoubleClick Gets Into Barter Business

With the Monday debut of MediaMatch, a Web-based service for the exchange of house ads, online ad industry giant DoubleClick Inc. has thrown its hat into the ring, offering its solution to the problem of unsold ad inventory.

It’s a problem that’s been attacked from various angles, most recently by online ad exchange players like OneMediaPlace, AdOutlet.com and AdFlight.com. But DoubleClick has a different take on the whole matter.

Rather than offering an online where agencies and advertisers can buy advertising at the last minute, DoubleClick is allowing sites to barter house advertising amongst themselves. The company is pocketing a serving fee — for serving the ads through its DART system, plus an exchange fee of $.95 CPM.

The product will initially be offered to DoubleClick’s existing DART for Publishers and AdServer customer base, which consists of 1270 clients. The MediaMatch solution will be made available to DoubleClick Network and Sonar clients. Current MediaMatch clients include NYDailyNews.com, HotJobs.com and iVillage.com.

MediaMatch lets participating publishers allocate a certain quantity of impressions for the exchange, and the number can be changed on a daily basis. They then have a chance to buy advertisements across specific content categories. In addition, sites have the option to ban any ads from appearing on their site.

According to the AdRelevance division of Media Metrix, which looked at the 500 highest-trafficked ad-supported sites, 179 companies devoted a combined total of more than 17 billion impressions to house advertising between January and April 2000.