IAR Bits and Bytes

24/7 Real Media Rolls Out Open Advertiser 2.0

Interactive technology company 24/7 Real Media announced on Thursday the availability of a targeting ad server product aimed at marketers, Open Advertiser 2.0, which builds on 24/7 Real Media’s Open AdStream ad server with enhanced targeting and analysis capabilities

The move comes after 24/7 Real Media beta tested Open Advertiser with a number of companies. The software allows marketers to track ad campaigns across a number of sites, as well as serve up contextually relevant ads to users based on cookie data or information obtained from a site registration.

“We see it as an extraordinary market opportunity to establish an entirely new revenue stream for 24/7 Real Media,” said David Moore, the company’s chief executive.

24/7 Real Media’s Real Media side had traditionally courted publishers, rather than advertisers with its ad serving software, but the Open Advertiser product is aimed at nosing into territory occupied by DoubleClick’s DART for Advertisers, Atlas DMT’s Digital Marketing Suite, and BlueStreak’s ION Ad Management platform.

24/7 Real Media earlier this week received a needed financial shot in the arm, as it received a $3.8 million investment. The company was recently warned it might get kicked off the NASDAQ exchange.

Mailblocks Loses Legal Round

Challenge-response email provider Mailblocks lost a round in its patent-infringement case against competitor Spam Arrest on Monday, when a judge declined a Mailblocks request for an order stopping Spam Arrest from enrolling customers in its challenge-response system.

The U.S. District Court in Seattle ruled that Mailblocks’ case is far from cut-and-dried, with “substantial questions” over the validity of its patents, one of which is held by the company and the other by its founder, Phil Goldman. The court also ruled that the case should be delayed while a multi-district litigation panel decides on a Spam Arrest motion to join together similar cases Mailblocks has filed.

The rulings were setbacks for 3-month-old Mailblocks, which boast two patents for its challenge-response system. The company has filed four lawsuits against companies offering similar systems, including Internet service provider EarthLink.

Challenge-response systems send a “challenge” to any sender not in a user’s address book or who has not communicated with the user before. Computer programs used by spammers cannot answer the challenge, because only humans can decipher the challenge’s visual puzzle. Theoretically, only messages sent from real people get through.

DoubleClick Links WebRF with MediaVisor

DoubleClick announced on Wednesday that WebRF, the reach-and-frequency tool developed by IMS and Nielsen//NetRatings, is now linked with DoubleClick’s MediaVisor campaign planning product.

Now, Nielsen//NetRatings clients can move between the two systems, enabling marketers to predict a campaign’s delivery and run it. IMS clients using WebRF can export lists of Internet properties into MediaVisor.

DoubleClick and IMS struck a deal last August to integrate reach-and-frequency measurements into MediaVisor. The data is key to advertisers looking to compare ad campaigns running in different media. A recent report by PricewaterhouseCoopers said the development of such tools would a key factor in drawing traditional advertisers to Web advertising.

“Newly introduced reach-and-frequency measures will help put the Internet on equal footing with other media,” PwC concluded.