There’s a new ad network in town called Ad.ly, which is a twitter-based advertising network to connect premium brand advertisers with celebrity Twitter users (essentially a sponsored tweets network). Founder and CEO Sean Rad describes Ad.ly as the Federated Media for Twitter. Although interesting, they do have some comeptitors in the space including
Ad.ly is a self-serve platform for the celebrity Twitterers (publishers) and the advertisers. According to TechCrunch, “Dell could choose which celeb or power-user to pitch their ad too and then submit a bid for a particular user, the celebrity (publisher) then approves or denies the request”. Once approved, Ad.ly then sends the Tweet and each campaign requires the celebrity or power-user to send out four Tweets over a one week time period. Below is a sample Ad.ly:
As you can see in the above example, Ad.ly provides full disclosure that the Tweet sent is an advertisement.
Ad.ly also provides advertisers with a comprehensive dashboard that tracks and displays the performance of the ads such as click-through rates, retweets and the geographic location of users who retweet the ads.
Ad.ly is not very differentiated with competitors such as Magpie and TwittAd already launched, but they have launched with a list of high-profile celebrities including Kim Kardashian, Dr. Drew, Brooke Burke, Nicole Richie, and Samantha Ronson. I like the high-end vertical they’re going after, campaigns at this level can be quite expensive. Perhaps most impressive is their catchy name, and with the 140 character limitation, Ad.ly is short enough to not impede on the premium ads.
If you’re wondering why a celebrity would resort earning money by exploiting their Twitter following, Ad.ly has also given the celebrities the ability to donate their proceeds to a charity of their choice.
Ad.ly received an undisclosed Series A round of funding from GRP Partners.