KickApps Extends Partnership with Advertising.com

by Gavin O'Malley, Wednesday, Dec 12, 2007 7:00 AM ET

ON-DEMAND SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM KICKAPPS has extended its partnership with AOL's Advertising.com to include its Lightningcast video ad-serving system. The new integrated platform combines KickApps' community-building services with Advertising.com's Lightningcast video ad-serving system in an effort to help publishers serve ads via editorial and user-generated video content on their KickApps-powered social media sites. "Publishers want to co-mingle their professionally produced content with the user-generated video, because it gives them more inventory to run advertising," said KickApps CEO Alex Baum, a former president of JumpTV, who previously spent eight years in a senior programming role at AOL. "What's changing and driving this trend is--user-generated stuff is driving a CPM that is comparable to premium content as long as it's properly targeted." KickApps provides sites of all sizes with a range of building blocks that include user-generated content, social networking, video players, Webcam applications, widget-building, media/member management and reporting. Corporate users and Web masters can mix and match building blocks from the widget library to crate a more customized or branded solution. Advertising.com's Lightningcast platform was designed to help Web publishers insert, manage and track ads that are incorporated within their videos. The new integrated solution will now enable KickApps affiliates large and small to generate their fair share of advertising revenue from their sites. The New York-based KickApps' tools have powered a successful Procter & Gamble Tag Body Spray community effort. Within six weeks of launch, it drove 772,400 page views and 260,000 unique visitors, according to KickApps. My43.net used the tools to raise monthly site traffic by 30% with no on-air promotion. Other companies using it include AFL Network, Cycling.tv, and National Lampoon, Universal Music/Interscope and others. KickApps is also serving targeted ads to relevant audience clusters, allowing for the monetization of sites. KickApps is backed by Spark Capital and Prism VentureWorks. Its board members include former Liberty Digital and E! Entertainment CEO Jarl Mohn and former MTV and NFL President Sara Levinson. Gavin O'Malley can be reached at gavin@mediapost.com