FindWhat Unveils Answer to AdSense

FindWhat.com today debuted AdRevenue Xpress, an automated distribution partner program targeting small to mid-sized businesses. The distribution method is similar to Google’s AdSense, but it uses category- or keyword-targeting, rather than contextual targeting.

The program allows smaller partners, through a step-by-step set up process, to add a search box which returns ads from the FindWhat.com Network. Alternatively, publishers who want to display ads on their site directly, rather than via a search results page, can choose a FindWhat category and display ads from that category.

In this way, a publisher could avoid displaying ads for a competitor and instead show ads for related products or services in other categories. Google’s AdSense allows its publishers to block competitors’ ads by creating a filter list of sites they do not want to link to from their site.

The visual result of this category directory implementation is similar to AdSense text links, with short text ads listed down the side of a page. The difference is that Google delivers its ads based on the content of the page, rather than on pre-selected categories or keywords. There is nothing to stop a publisher from displaying ads from both Google and FindWhat on the same page, if they choose.

As with all FindWhat.com Network distribution partners, users of AdRevenue Xpress share a percentage of the revenue earned by FindWhat.com when their site visitors click through to an advertiser’s Web site.

“Web publishers don’t currently have this kind of flexibility in their advertising options,” said Rick Szatkowski, senior VP and GM of the FindWhat.com Network. “We’re letting them display it how they want and where they want. We also give them a whole set of reporting tools.”

Initially being offered only to its 25,000 existing advertisers, the program offers a special 10-percent reward bonus to distribution partners who reinvest their share of the earned revenue back into their FindWhat.com advertiser campaigns.

“FindWhat.com advertisers already understand the value of advertising on the FindWhat.com Network in driving highly qualified leads to their Web sites. Now they can reap all the benefits of our network by becoming distribution partners, too,” Szatkowski said.

Szatkowski believes this move will help both advertisers, who will benefit from additional traffic being driven from quality sites in the FindWhat.com Network, and distribution partners, who may not currently have taken advantage of FindWhat.com’s network to advertise their own site.

“With the reinvestment option, publishers who typically may not have participated in paid search to drive traffic to their site could now reinvest back into an advertising campaign and drive more traffic to their site, and not really ever have to have an advertising budget, because it’s self-funded,” Szatkowski said.

Web publishers who are not currently FindWhat.com advertisers can open a new advertising account, then utilize AdRevenue Xpress to place ads on their own site and avail themselves of the 10% reward bonus. A typical small business might earn $100 a month in paid listings revenue, then reinvest $110 into their own advertising efforts, Szatkowski said.

“It will put them right into the game at that level,” he added.