YieldMetrics Shows You What Happens Behind the Scenes in Display Advertising

Micah Cohen Jan 23, 2013 Tweet

Another sign that the L.A. tech scene is diverse and growing, YieldMetrics announced a seed round of $1.7 million, led by GRP Partners. It’s no surprise that this round was coming, given that YieldMetrics is already profitable, with more clients than the two founders, CEO Gabe Gottlieb and CTO Tom Lorimor, can handle. These two former Micrsofties saw a gap in the online advertising world and decided to solve the problem.

YeildMetrics is providing intelligence on display advertising with real-time and historical data. Their main product, AdRoutes, uses cloud-based servers to crawl and analyze the complicated process used by third parties to determine which ad is served on any given publisher. Display advertising has undergone many changes over the past decade. It has moved from one–to-one relationships to complicated ad serving technologies where ad networks, ad exchanges, SSPs, DSPs, yield optimizers, and data providers are making decisions on individual placements by the millisecond. Advertisers and publishers are used to dealing with large data sets and are ready for more transparency in the ad serving process.

As an advertiser, I will usually work with ad networks to test and perform post-launch analysis. YieldMetrics is offering pre-campaign reach analysis, which let’s me know where a given network or exchange is likely to place my ad. Similar to MixRank, YieldMetrics gives information on the types of ads my competitors are using. Unlike MixRank however, I will get insight into exactly how my competitors are advertising. This, matched with pre-campaign analysis, gives me valuable insight into the value of a particular ad network or exchange before spending a dime.

Publishers want to know which advertisers are buying inventory and through which channels. They want to work with networks and exchanges that bring desired advertisers. With this knowledge, publishers can continue to make money while making the on-site user experience better with high-quality and relevant advertising.

Given how valuable this information is to advertisers, publishers, and ad tech providers, it’s clear that YieldMetrics has a profitable future ahead. They plan to hire more developers and to work on providing more insight into online advertising within specific industries.