Miva Launches ALOT, But Doesn't Shift a Lot of Priorities

Miva has weathered a rocky road for the past several years. Two years ago it settled its patent suit with Yahoo Search Marketing, then lost its CEO last year and had a layoff and restructuring this past Spring. Just this August, Miva cut its own ad spend.

With all these hurdles, it looked as though the Pay Per Click network was striking out in a new direction with the launch of its ALOT platform. Intended for consumers, ALOT combines toolbars and start page to allow users to specify what information they want presented to them on a regular basis. Miva has partnered with Google, Netvibes, eBay and others to link to search and other information online.

So is this a new direction for company? Not exactly, Peter Corrao, CEO of Miva told me. The ALOT platform comes out of the Miva Direct division, while its other advertising efforts stem from the Miva Media division. It’s the Miva Direct side of the business that has been contributing a third of MIVA Inc’s total revenue and growing, but the majority is still created through Miva’s connections with publishers and advertisers, he said.

“Miva Direct is growing faster than other parts of the business so it may look like we are focusing there, but it’s not the case,” he said. Instead of concentrating only on Miva Direct, Corrao said the entire company is refocusing on providing more attention to vertical markets and “shifting the focus from being a broad-base provider to a more narrow-base provider.”

“The thing that is so important now for us, especially in the ALOT branding, is we’re trying to build products that we can monetize because consumers want those products. We’re not trying to build products that happened to monetize what consumers don’t want,” he said.