Quigo Signs Forbes.com to AdSonar Network

Quigo has signed a multi-year, exclusive relationship with media giant Forbes.com for content-targeted advertising using its AdSonar Network.

The seven-year-old company, which has struck a chord with big name publishers and advertisers, will give the publisher more control over the placement of sponsored text ads appearing on the various Forbes Web sites including Forbes.com, ForbesAutos.com and ForbesTraveler.com.

Contextual ad buyers largely lose control over where their messages will appear once they buy placement with Google AdSense and Yahoo Search Marketing as well as Microsoft adCenter. Sometimes the technology driving these systems gets the context wrong, serving up ads on sites that would never have been chosen by the buyer if it had the choice.

Quigo’s AdSonar product transparently allows advertisers to “bid up” the prices to get placement on top sites. “AdSonar offers advertisers multiple targeting options for their pay-per-click campaigns including national and local targeting by vertical category, site, individual page, topic and/or keyword,” said the company.

In announcing the deal, Quigo noted Forbes is just one of many “top-tier” publishers that are using AdSonar for auction-based, “bid-to-brand” ad sales. In recent months, the company has struck partnerships with ESPN.com, CareerBuilder.com, the New York Daily News and others.

Google for its part has said it plans to announce a change to its AdSense platform giving advertisers more specific information about the sites and specific URLs where their listings appear.

At this point, prospective buyers who go into Forbes.com with a desire to purchase ads can buy keywords and sections across Forbes’ sites on a “one-by-one” basis.

AdSonar does not place the Quigo name on the ads it serves. This is a hit with publishers who bristle at having the Google brand (the omnipresent “Ads by Google” tag) appear on their sites’ sponsored links. Since publishers like Forbes control the AdSonar system, they have access to advertiser information not shared by Google and Yahoo. They can see what advertisers are bidding on and which types of placement they seek. In turn, the publishers can approach ad buyers with up-sell offers.