Building a successful company is no small
accomplishment, but building a successful, growing and
profitable Internet company was labeled in 2001 by
Time, Newsweek, and many other popular publications as
nearly impossible and a basically a joke. Internet
companies, particularly online media, were the rotten
apple and scorn of Wall Street, mass media, and
average Investors everywhere. In 1998 venture
capitalists flocked, and by 2001 they ran away and hid
under their desks. If you’ve been fortunate enough to
be a part of a winner than you should be proud. The
Cydoor Desktop Media journey has been a winding road
with many successes and failures along the way, I’m
happy to say we survived and have thrived. I was
kindly asked to write about the evolution of Cydoor
Desktop Media and how we’ve survived and have grown to
be successful so that others may appreciate the
experience.
Cydoor Desktop Media was started in 1998 back when
Engage, FlyCast, DoubleClick and many others were
booming online media stars. Back in the day when
having investment from CMGI was worn like a badge of
honor, and tracking click stream data was the rave.
Internet World was more like Mecca, hardwood floors
and warehouse space was in demand and suddenly stock
options became a common currency. These were
intimidating times for all of us because while the
DoubleClicks of the world appeared to be invincible,
Cydoor Desktop Media was just getting started with
some modest investment and a simple vision to rule
desktop advertising. The vision was that the desktop
was the most premium space available, browsers were
hot, but in Cydoor’s opinion the desktop was where the
user spent their time and there was no better time to
reach them. Our inhouse ad technology was very
inexpensive to operate, had modest bells and whistles
and our ads got the job done. This was an exciting
time where we signed tons of software publishers
hoping to make revenue from their ad-enabled free
software. Software publishers had a whole new revenue
model and advertisers gained a new ad real estate.
The great thing about entrepreneurship is that it’s
acceptable to try new things, adjust, try again and
keep going till you get it right. We talked to
everyone possible, the big agencies, networks,
ecommerce companies, software companies, you name it
we talked to them. We also signed many different
business development deals in hopes that this would be
the one software application to create tons of
desktops available to advertise on. We signed Opera
browser, Kazaa, Jet Audio Mp3 player, Imesh and
Morpheus to name a few. This was all before Mp3s and
P2P was flying high. Welcome to the ground floor.
Most of the time no one understood the whole desktop
vision thing. I remember pitching a media buyer at
Ogilvy in 2000 about going ‘beyond the browser’ and
reaching the audience on desktop software. After
several confused grins the buyer commented that no
advertiser will ever go for desktop advertising, ever.
This was a common ordeal for Cydoor. All anyone wanted
to talk about was browsers. Agencies and buyers were
in awe of the big networks and branded sites and spent
big cpms to prove it. So deals, the Nasdaq 5000,
employees with a dream, and funky furniture came, then
left. We pressed on.
While Engage, FlyCast, DoubleClick and many others
were riding high on the VC wave selling atmospheric
cpms/cpcs, and promising razor sharp targeting, the
market was evolving and having second thoughts about
the whole Internet dream. The crash of 2001 was one of
best things that happened to Cydoor because it was an
awakening to reality. Sure we had to downsize and it
was tough. However, the market woke up to the fact
that online ads should be profitable and that it
wasn’t all about the craze. ROI became a common
requirement and CPA took hold as fast as CPM
disappeared.
What helped us survive that period was that our ad
delivery technology and the growth of our network
allowed us to sell ads at rates which were a positive
ROI for advertisers. We moved with the market and the
insane ad serving costs others were locked into, helped
us dramatically undercut our competitors. Frankly it
was the Walmart approach to online advertising. Sure
it doesn’t sound fancy, but at the time everyone was
‘Premium’ and drank their own coolaid. Let’s not
forget Walmart is the largets corporation in the world.
We decided online advertisers wanted mass volume,
performance and affordable rates, nothing more,
nothing less. There was a tremendous resentment by
advertisers towards all the popular sites and networks
for feeling misled, ripped off and scorched. Our sales
people frequently heard from advertisers who felt they
were lied to by others and would never touch the
online media again. Cydoor provided a tremendous value
and advertisers slowly flocked to our volume approach.
To further promote this vision and help dozens of
advertisers understand that online media wasn’t
hopeless I personally began writing a column called
Regular Rantings in a new Newsletter started by one of
the early industry players called Adbumb. The response
was incredible and I was constantly answering
questions for big and small advertisers on how to make
an online campaign successful. It became clear that
with all the millions of dollars spent promoting
online media through street signs for DoubleClick, few
advertisers understood what to do with it. There was a
lot of frustration and the column and newsletter helped
lend a voice to address it. This was a great
experience for Cydoor and me because we learned in
mass what was on the minds of our customers and how to
address it.
As
things evolved, our only frustrating battle has been
the ongoing misunderstanding of adware as spyware.
From the beginning we’ve delivered our ads within
traditional free consumer software applications, no
different than magazine, web site, and newspaper ads
amidst the content. Ads in software has provided
software developers revenue that helped fund incredible free software
that frankly has changed the Internet as we know it.
Free ad supported desktop applications include:
instant messengers, peer-2-peer, VOIP phone
applications, browsers, and much more. Cydoor has
never ever tracked or spied on its users.
Unfortunately many companies sell products that make
money from scaring the public of spyware.
Fear is a great marketing campaign to sell spyware detection products,
gas masks anyone? The whole spyware debate has been a
black eye on our industry and while there are some
companies that do unacceptable things, we’ve never
been one of them. Hopefully one day this will be
clear.
Today we’ve grown and benefited tremendously from the
unprecedented explosion of desktop software and most
mainstream advertisers now believe in desktop
advertising and make it a core part of their media
mix. We’re a profitable company with a healthy and
very talented group of employees that are very focused
on providing an ROI positive experience to our
advertisers.
We’ve learned a lot these last 6 years, all of us
have. Most important is to stay lean and mean and
bring value to your customers. The moment you get big
and slow is when the tide turns. The market is
exploding with desktop, search, networks and even more
newsletters all along with us and this is a very
exciting time to finally deliver the promise of online
media.
Robert Regular is the
President, Americas of Cydoor Desktop Media bob@cydoor.com
