Home Publishers Another Ad Blocking Solutions Vendor, With A New Approach

Another Ad Blocking Solutions Vendor, With A New Approach

SHARE:

admirallaunchimgAdmiral, a performance marketing solution designed to help publishers reacquire and monetize audiences who use ad blockers, launched Monday with a $2.5 million seed round.

Admiral identifies audiences with ad blockers turned on, works to re-establish those users (by opting in to a lightened ad experience, say, or asking to be whitelisted) and then makes a small cut of every ad served to the reacquired audience.

The first of Admiral’s four products is a free tool for measuring an audience’s ad-block rate – the idea being publishers will move down the funnel if they have data on lost ads, said Admiral co-founder and CEO Dan Rua.

Admiral also offers products called Engage and Recover, meant to help publishers establish explicit value propositions with users and then serve ads with minimal tags and tracking.

The two products are based directly on the IAB guidelines established earlier this year. Engage is built on the parameters of the IAB DEAL framework, which sets agreements between ad-block users and publishers on a content-for-revenue exchange. The Recover product is meant to serve ads according to the IAB’s LEAN ads protocol (Light, Encrypted, AdChoices-supported and Noninvasive).

Later this year, Rua said the startup plans to roll out a fourth product, Transact, with tech for processing micropayments.

Admiral is built for a world where ad blockers have won. As Adblock Plus co-founder and CEO Till Faida argued at AdExchanger’s recent Clean Ads conference, ad blockers are a distinct ecosystem and their audiences will require “special attention and strategies in order to monetize.”

For publishers, it’s a familiar trade-off: “You can lose the whole pie, or this slice.”

Rua said one of the differentiating features of his startup is its target of “premier enterprise publishers,” whereas most ad-block solution vendors work with mid-tier or niche category players.

Admiral declined to provide details on any of the publishers which use its product. The IAB declined to comment on the startup or its business model.

“We took a hard look at ad blocking in general, because anything that’s a potential tens-of-billions-of-dollars problem is going to get VC attention,” said Sean Ammirati, a partner at Birchmere Ventures, one of the VC firms leading Admiral’s funding round. “There are other companies that have gotten funding, but the amount of capital in the space relative to the size of the opportunity is modest.”

 

Must Read

Wall Street Turned Against Ad Tech – But May Learn To Love It Again

What can pureplay ad tech companies do to clean up their rep on the Street?

Glenniss Richards, senior director of digital media, Bayer

How Bayer Wrote Its Prescription For Programmatic

Bringing media buying in-house is “chaotic and disruptive” – but totally worth it, according to Glenniss Richards, Bayer’s senior director of digital media.

AppsFlyer and Roku’s New SRN Integration Will Shed Light On CTV Campaign Impact

Roku and AppsFlyer announced the launch of a new self-reporting network (SRN) integration between both companies, which will allow mobile app advertisers to more effectively measure their streaming video campaigns

Privacy! Commerce! Connected TV! Read all about it. Subscribe to AdExchanger Newsletters
Comic: Gamechanger (Google lost the DOJ's search antitrust case)

DOJ v. Google: How Judge Brinkema Seems To Be Thinking After Week One

Where the DOJ v. Google ad tech antitrust trial stands after one week’s worth of remedies arguments.

Swish, A Company That's Bringing Programmatic to Product Sampling, Announces Seed Funding

Swish, a startup that partners with retailers to provide product full-size CPG samples to people doing their grocery shopping online, announces $2.3 million in seed funding.

DOJ v. Google: During Opening Arguments, The DOJ And Google Battle Over An AdX Divestiture

Court is back in session. And the fate of  the open internet is in the balance.