AnchorFree Blog

Hot spots with a catch: Ads
International Herald Tribune (New York Times syndication)

NEW YORK: People who like to use their laptops, iPhones and other devices in public are always so delighted when they stumble on a wireless hot spot in an unexpected place. But will they be pleased enough to look at ads before getting their broadband fix?

AnchorFree, a company in Sunnyvale, California, has introduced a service that lets U.S. merchants of any size - from a large bookstore chain to a mom-and-pop restaurant - offer free, advertising-supported Wi-Fi to customers on the store premises. People who are shopping or eating in an AnchorFree location will see banner ads on their screens or short video spots, or both, before their browsing session.

Among the major companies that have signed up to advertise on the AnchorFree network are American Express, Toyota, Circuit City, McDonald’s, Clorox, Ford, Kaiser Permanente and Major League Baseball.

Mark Smith, executive vice president of strategy and products for AnchorFree, said that advertisers can tailor their ads to reach people at specific locations in the network. For example, an ad for a Lexus might be shown to customers staying at a four-star hotel, but not to guests at an airport motel.

“Advertisers could target airport travelers versus vehicle travelers, for instance,” he said.

With the rise in hand-held devices that offer Web browsing, Smith said that he viewed the Wi-Fi network as an untapped market of virtual billboards. Controlling this valuable bit of real estate, he said, gives companies “the ability for them to have their own branded relationship” with people “while they are their point of consumption.”

Until recently, the two most widespread options people had for using wireless broadband at public hot spots was to pay a subscription fee to their cellphone carrier or to pay a daily or hourly rate to the retailer that hosted the site. AnchorFree is one of a handful of companies offering an alternative model, one in which the advertiser pays but the retailer and the Web-surfer do not.

Businesses that traditionally offer Wi-Fi to customers - hotels for example - can sign up with AnchorFree at no cost and collect a share of up to 50 percent of the advertising revenue. For small businesses, which might not be able to afford Wi-Fi service, AnchorFree will supply the necessary router and other technology at no cost.

Then the retailer can promote its free wireless service, which could prove to be a competitive advantage. Some hotels, for instance, charge guests $10 to $15 a night for Wi-Fi access.

Smith said that AnchorFree’s technology creates a “persistent messaging frame” by pushing down the Web page on a device’s screen and inserting a space for a banner ad. The space is independent of the Web pages being viewed and does not change based on where the user is surfing.

AnchorFree offers its several options to retailers and advertisers. With the open network option, a venue agrees to run any ad from the AnchorFree rotation, and in the closed network option a company with multiple locations - like a bookstore chain or hotel - can run its own advertising or other messages within that network.

Brad Agens, senior vice president of ad sales for Gorilla Nation, which connects online advertisers to more than 400 Web sites, said that AnchorFree was the first network it was representing. He said that companies seeking to buy ad space online were “looking beyond the portals and the large, branded destinations” like ESPN or MTV.

AnchorFree is not the only company to offer an advertising network for mobile broadband. JiWire, a young company based in San Francisco, has a similar system, though with a different technological approach. Analysts in the wireless industry say they expect that this sector will evolve and mature along with the growth of the wireless Internet use.

“The real key is whether advertisers will embrace this model and drive online advertising revenue towards Wi-Fi hot spots,” said Berge Ayvazian, chief strategy officer with Yankee Group, a technology research and consulting group.

He said it was too early to evaluate whether wireless advertising would emerge as a robust market separate from the more established realm of online advertising.

“New economic models around advertising are disruptive,” Ayvazian said. “If companies like AnchorFree can add a new layer of innovation around free broadband access, they can be disruptive again and take market share.”

iChat: Mark Smith, AnchorFree’s Executive Vice President of Strategy and Products
ShootOnline

The Constantly Evolving Advertising Market
Jason Mandel, Launchsquad

One of our newer clients, AnchorFree, had a coming out party this week in conjunction with ad:tech and received quite a bit of attention from folks like GigaOm, ClickZ and MediaPost. The company has for the past couple of years been building out a platform and aggregating thousands of free wireless hotspots, and then allowing advertisers to reach consumers in a very targeted manner. It’s a really smart idea and exciting opportunity.

AnchorFree also builds on LaunchSquad’s experience with many of the pioneers in online marketing that we’ve worked with over the past dozen years or so. From folks like Flycast (ad network) and Digital Impact (email marketing) in the early days of the Web, to some of our more recent clients like Jingle/800-FREE-411, Adify, Pheedo, Unwired Nation and now AnchorFree, it’s been fascinating to watch the advertising world navigate through a period of constant, rapid change.

Internet advertising has gone from essentially zero to $20 billion during this time. Think about that for a moment! eMarketer projects that number to further double by 2011, and comprise a whopping 13% of all advertising spend.

I’m sure it’s been extremely challenging for marketers and agencies to stay on top of all of these new technologies and models, and more important, figure out exactly where the people and returns are. Ten to twenty years ago that was a far easier proposition: everyone knew that people were for the most part watching television, listening to the radio or reading the newspaper. It was much easier to figure out where and when to put your advertising spend.

But today, audiences are fragmenting exponentially and that will only continue for the foreseeable future. And even as these markets progress and shake out, there’s no end in sight to the innovation opportunity that emerging companies like AnchorFree will tackle.

As Online Advertising Grows, The Question Is How Much Is Too Much?
Gigaom

This being the week of ad:tech, news of online advertising has dominated the conversation: from MySpace’s hyper- targeted ads to Facebook’s new ad system to broadband advertising systems introduced by companies such as AnchorFree. The advertising, of course, is becoming social, mobile, and behavioral.

If you take all this into account, and juxtapose it against the recent eMarketer’s forecast — U.S. online advertising nearly doubling from $21.4 billion in 2007 to $42 billion in 2011, representing about 13 percent of the total ad-spend — what you get is a pretty decent context for the ongoing battle amongst Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Yahoo (YHOO), phone & cable companies, wireless carriers, Facebook, MySpace (NWS) and countless other startups.

Of course, it also means that advertising (or marketing messages) are going to be in-your-face, every time you turn around. What is the theoretical limit to our ability to absorb these messages? I just wonder, when, as people-being-marketed-to will we say: Enough! Stop! Or will we?

Ad-Supported Wi-Fi Network Launches
By Matthew G. Nelson, The ClickZ Network, Nov 6, 2007

The next time you pull out your laptop or wireless device in your local coffee shop to log into its Wi-Fi network, you may be presented with an ad that pays for your access, thanks to the recently launched AnchorFree network.

Broadband wireless hotspots have multiplied exponentially over the past several years, as commercial, retail and hospitality businesses provide Internet access as part of their overall service. But, many businesses foot the bill for their users’ access or require customers to purchase time to surf the Internet. With AnchorFree, the company offers businesses the means of providing free ad-supported broadband wireless access, while giving advertisers the opportunity to reach viewers at specific locations.

Consumers on an AnchorFree hotspot are presented with a display ad that remains at the top of the screen with every Web site they visit, and those ads can be contextually matched to the content on each page, according to Mark Smith, EVP strategy and product development for AnchorFree.

“Regardless of what page they go to, we have them for a period of time,” said Smith, “And we screen-scrape the page and feed it into the targeting engine to present them with the most significant ad.”

As each hotspot has a specific location that users must be near to get access to the service, it allows advertisers to precisely geo-target their ad campaigns, more so than relying on ISP location information alone, said Smith. AnchorFree provides ad sales for the network, but has also partnered with ad rep firm Gorilla Nation and allows site owners to sell their own ads.

The company has already signed advertisers to its network, including American Express, AirTran, Circuit City, Clorox, Ford, Harrah’s, Kaiser Permanente, Major League Baseball, McDonald’s, Princess Cruises, Prudential, Qwest and Toyota.

AnchorFree has also signed with seven hotspot operators, including Deep Blue Wireless, ICOA, and WiFi Guys. To woo new hotspot operators to its network, AnchorFree will also provide free wireless hardware to sweeten the deal.

AnchorFree Target Blogs, Wi-Fi Hotspots With New Ad Technology
MediaPost: Online Media Daily

BuzzLogic has embedded ad targeting into its online buzz monitoring service, allowing advertisers to create and serve real-time, contextually relevant ads to the participants of various blogs and forum discussions.

The new feature is Google AdSense-compatible, and will deliver both text and image-based ads, with options to expand to other content networks and ad formats in the future.

Meanwhile, Sunnyvale-based AnchorFree has launched its Hotspot ad targeting service–enabling Wi-Fi access providers like hotel chains, coffee shops and bookstores to either reduce or eliminate Hotspot service fees by serving ads.

For BuzzLogic, ad targeting was always slated to be part of the company’s offering–and according to President and CEO Rob Crumpler, this new “conversation targeting” service contains elements of both contextual and behavioral ads.

“[Advertisers] are applying our search technology to help them get into the relevant conversations, and then traveling across multiple sites to deliver their message–with no need for a cookie,” said Crumpler.

The ad-targeting feature is built into BuzzLogic’s buzz monitoring platform, which aggregates keyword or phrase-specific data from across the Web–finding out which blogs or sites are generating popular, highly relevant conversations and where they link to (and get links from). The service initially just gave advertisers an excellent read on who the purchase and thought-influencers were in their industry–but now it also provides a list of those who are AdSense-compatible, and allows them to craft instant keyword-based ads that will show up on the site.

According to Crumpler, clients in the private beta of BuzzLogic’s ad targeting service saw significant improvements in ad response and conversion rates–including online classified supplier Oodle, which touted an 80% improvement in traffic from the “conversation targeted” ads.

Meanwhile, Wharton Business School saw its MBA course downloads “more than double,” and peer-to-peer lending firm Lending Club noted that BuzzLogic’s ads netted “more than double the conversion rates” as compared to other contextually targeted ads.

With AnchorFree, business owners offset the costs of providing free Wi-Fi access by serving either venue-specific, geo- or contextually targeted ads in the browser window. A banner-sized ad module can display third-party ad content, as well as a branded section promoting info about the venue itself. So a coffee shop, for example, can serve ads from the local auto dealership in one end, while featuring their “flavor of the day” in the other end. The service also lets businesses customize the first page users see once they connect.

According to Mark Smith, AnchorFree’s executive vice president of Strategy and Product Development, the company has spent the two years since its launch in 2005 perfecting the targeting technology.

AnchorFree provides businesses with a free router or automatically redirects their traffic to a data center that matches ads with locations and content. The ads are served by Microsoft’s ATLAS, and create an “operator-agnostic blend of OOH and interactive advertising, that can reach a critical mass of consumers,” said Smith.

Network access providers like Deep Blue Wireless (which powers Wi-Fi for hotel franchisees including Quality Inn Express and Comfort Suites) and Wi-Fi Guys (for Doubletree and Courtyard Mariott locations) were part of AnchorFree’s pilot launch in June. Since then, the company has inked contracts with nearly 10,000 locations for use of the service for 2008.

AnchorFree Building Nation’s Largest Network of Free Hotspot Locations; More Than 100 Leading Brands Already Using AnchorFree’s Network for 100% Accurate Location-Based Targeting

Sunnyvale, Calif. - November 5, 2007 - AnchorFree today launched its broadband media platform for hotspot locations, providing advertisers a new means of interacting in a highly targeted way with consumers across thousands of hotspot locations nationwide. This innovative media channel allows advertisers to increase the quantity, quality and relevance of touch points, heighten user engagement and interaction with their brands, and strengthen customer relationships by delivering advertisements and promotions precisely targeted to users’ particular interests, behavior and location.

With the AnchorFree network, for the first time, advertisers are guaranteed 100% accurate location-based targeting, as AnchorFree’s geo-targeting capabilities are based on the access location of the consumer, and not on less reliable ISP data. AnchorFree has already signed multi-year, exclusive advertising agreements with wireless operators that represent thousands of hotspots, which together generate hundreds of millions of page views and several  million user sessions per month.

More than 100 brands in a variety of industries are already using the AnchorFree network to reach and engage with targeted, relevant customers, including American Express, AirTran, Circuit City, Clorox, Ford, Harrahs, Kaiser Permanente, Major League Baseball, McDonalds, Princess Cruises, Prudential, Qwest and Toyota.

The AnchorFree broadband advertising network allows marketers to reach and interact with out-of-home laptop users and wireless device users throughout their entire online experience. With AnchorFree, hotspot locations—from cafes and restaurants, to hotels, airports, shopping centers and other leisure and travel locations—are able to offer patrons free broadband access that is subsidized via relevant, interactive and unobtrusive advertisements.

“While some brand retail chains offer a paid model, we believe that an ad-supported broadband model is poised to become the standard across all types of locations. This model presents a largely untapped opportunity for companies to communicate with more of their own consumers. Similar to network television, the Internet is classically fit for an ad-supported model,” said David Gorodyansky, co-founder and CEO of AnchorFree. “Advertisers and content providers are aggressively looking for innovative, effective ways to reach the most relevant, targeted customer base. Our network’s ability to slice and dice better than any other ad-targeting medium provides a huge leg up to advertisers looking for strategic differentiators.”

Advertisers Capitalize on Emerging Broadband Advertising Medium
Hotspot based advertising is set for rapid growth as the number of broadband enabled devices increases, including laptops, iPods, and now iPhones. According to recent eMarketer research, Internet advertising revenue reached $15.9 billion in 2006, and is projected to reach $25 billion by 2010. At the same time, U.S. and global Wi-Fi users have been growing at annual rates in excess of 35% for the past several years (eMarketer, 2007).

AnchorFree provides a new media opportunity for local, brand and direct marketers to create a captive, persistent, branded experience with consumers. This broadband advertising network offers all of the attributes of successful direct marketing channels including a direct, 1-to-1 connection with consumers, strong targeting and measurability, enabling marketers to reach a captive and attentive consumer in an uncluttered environment. The consumer then has the ability to interact with and respond directly to the advertiser. The AnchorFree network is now available in thousands of hotspot locations nationwide and continues to sign up additional advertisers as it builds a nationwide network.

About AnchorFree
AnchorFree, the largest Hotspot media network, represents more than 10,000 Hotspot locations, generating more than 400 million page views through five million user sessions per month. AnchorFree’s location-based ad network is a new marketing channel for brand and direct response marketers to deliver interactive, timely and targeted advertisements to laptop and mobile device users when they are away from the home or office. The AnchorFree network connects advertisers with millions of consumers in a captive, persistent manner that is highly measurable and geo-targeted to these user’s exact locations. Any business, from coffee shops and restaurants to travel spots and retail locations, can leverage the AnchorFree network to offer their patrons free Internet access while generating new revenues with no financial investments required. AnchorFree is also the first advertising network to offer consumers full control over their privacy and security through the company’s Hotspot Shield, a free advertising supported VPN client available for download at www.anchorfree.com, forbes.com and abcnews.com. AnchorFree is a privately held company based in Sunnyvale, California.