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After
selling his previous company,
Advertising.com,
for half a billion dollars John
Ferber entered the domain business as
co-founder of DomainHoldings.com.
John has decided now is the time to
make another big splash in
the internet advertising game, prompting
him to launch a new company called Bidtellect
that will focus on the red hot "native
advertising" sector
(native advertising is based primarily on branded
content which can be presented in
articles, videos, photos, music and other
media). Ferber
brought veteran digital media entrepreneur Lon
Otremba on board as CEO to oversee
a new platform they have built that will
allow brands to buy native advertising
placements in bulk automatically.
In an AdWeek
article about the new company
published Wednesday, Otremba told reporter
Mike Shields, "Based on the
history of this business, when a medium
can rapidly scale is only when advertisers
can buy that way. That’s when things
really take off."
Shields noted that
it seems logical that a scalable native advertising
solution could come from the world of domain
selling, particularly given its direct
response heritage and Otremba confirmed that he
envisions both brand dollars and performance
revenue coming to native advertising.
Ferber,
who was profiled
in a March 2011 DN
Journal Cover Story) told AdWeek,
"We are lining up a strong
offering. Even on our domains, the ads fit
the form and function of the way users are
experiencing it." After the
mind boggling success John and his brother
Scott had with Advertising.com, I
doubt if you will find much smart money
betting against his new endeavor. |
Lon
Otremba
Bidtellect CEO
John
Ferber, Co-Founder
DomainHoldings/Bidtellect |
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Divyank
& Bhavin Turakhia |
Two
other wildly successful and
outstanding representatives of the
domain industry, brothers and Directi
co-founders Bhavin Turakhia
and Dviyank Turakhia, are the
subject of a new
profile at IndiaTimes.com
that was released today.
It is well
deserved recognition for the
dynamic duo but the headline
referring to them as "unknown
internet entrepreneurs" will
strike many in our business as a bit
odd. Bhavin & Divyank are two
of |
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the best
known (and most popular) people
in our industry (Divyank was also
profiled in a popular
DN Journal Cover Story
in September 2008).
In any
case, if there are still corners of
the internet where the personable
Turakhia brothers aren't well-known,
those days are numbered. They
made big waves in recent months by
selling Directi's web business to Endurance
International for over $100
million, while retaining many of
their other profitable enterprises,
including internet advertising firm Media.net
(who has an exclusive deal with Yahoo)
and their new gTLD registry
operator, Radix.
With Bhavin and Divyank still in
their early 30s we will be hearing
about many other successes from them
in the future and it couldn't happen
to two nicer guys.
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One
other note, the Domainfest
conference coming up March
31 - April 2, 2014 in Hollywood,
California announced today
that .CLUB
has signed on as the lead
(Platinum) sponsor for the
event.
If
you are planning on attending
Domainfest and haven't
registered yet, you will want
to do
so by the end of the
day tomorrow (Friday,
Feb. 14) when the current
$695 Early Bird rate expires.
Starting Saturday the cost
will be $995. |
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