Martini Media (based in San Francisco) raised their Series A today.
Over the past several months, there’s been dozens and dozens of new vertical ad networks launching including ones for travel, food and wine, college students, and of course, kids and teens at GoFish Networks.
Vertical ad networks create tremendous value for advertisers and publishers. For advertisers, you get an informed ad buy reaching your target demo and/or affinity. Most vertical ad networks offer full transparency and custom engaging ad products. For publishers, they’re almost getting their own direct sales team without having to take on the cost of having a direct sales team. So everyone benefits.
With so many vertical ad networks launching every other week, it’s hard for me to keep the same level of excitement as I had when I helped GoFish Networks launch back in early 2008. But Martini Media is one vertical ad network that does gets me excited. The affluent audience, in general, is very difficult to reach on a large scale and Martini Media is approaching the challenge in a very elegant way: by building channels (or sub-verticals) where affluent folks hang out at. Some of their channels include sailing, wine, cigars, classic cars, and golf. So in addition to offering the affluent audience to premium advertisers, they’ll be able to market their ad network to industries that are slow to advertise online — such as sailing, cigars, and classic cars — by selling a channel-only buy.
