OpenX opens kimono to reveal financials – prepwork for an IPO?
It’s the season for getting a peek at private Internet companies’ financial results.
Wall Street is still chewing over Facebook’s recently revealed numbers, and on Monday, OpenX Technologies, a private, venture-backed online ad company, served up some financial gristle of its own.
The company, which provides an online ad exchange as well as ad server technology, said that it is now on track to generate more than $100 million in revenue on an annualized run rate basis and that it became profitable in the fourth quarter of 2011.
And it said it expects to profitable in 2012.
The move comes a few weeks after Facebook, the world’s No.1 Internet social network, pulled the curtain back on its financials for the first time, revealing $3.7 billion in 2011 revenue, with the release of the prospectus for its upcoming IPO.
OpenX CEO Tim Cadogan said the release of some of its financial results was not a sign that it planned to follow Facebook’s footsteps into the public market — at least not immediately.
“It’s premature to commit to it at this point, but it’s definitely something we’ve been thinking about,” he said of an IPO.
Meebo launches new ads with 30-second guarantee
Convincing marketers to try a new type of Internet ad format isn’t easy, especially during a time when ad budgets are getting cut.
But Meebo has come up with a novel way to entice advertisers to take the plunge: the company will guarantee that Web surfers spend at least 30 seconds interacting with ads that run in its new advertising units.
The new ads are integrated within the Meebo real time communications service, which provides instant messaging and link-sharing capabilities on more than 40 Web sites including myYearbook, CafeMom and Current TV.
Meebo said up to 85 Web sites have signed up to go live with the service.
At first glance, Meebo’s new ads don’t look like that big of a deal – the ad is essentially a small icon within the Meebo toolbar that’s parked at the bottom of a partner site’s Web page. But a click on the icon expands into an “overlay” of up to 900×400 pixels, which can feature rich media, such as video and games.
Meebo Chief Operating Officer Martin Green says that user engagement with the new ads is much better than with traditional online display ads, because viewers would need to click on the tab to call up the ad.
“We have done this in testing and in the last couple of months we get on average over a minute of time spent, which is a massive amount of time with advertisers’ content,” said Green. “Part of the reason is you only get people who are interested in checking it out.”
Looks very promising, like a more sophisticated Google ad. If this takes off Meebo could be sitting on gold as big G is always on the look out for interesting concepts.
