I was really happy to find out that MediaBoost raised $1 Million from Teuza fund last week as part of a larger round that the company is looking to raise. The fund, a Fairchild Technology venture, had already invested $500K in MediaBoost last year, and judging by the prospects for the company, Teuza’s investment is a safe one. Uri Shtrichtman, one of MediaBoost’s co-founders was kind enough to walk me through the company’s products back in January, and I was impressed with the company’s ability to increase ROI by decreasing ad spend and increasing returns simultaneously.
MediaBoost takes an algorithmic approach to ad spend optimization, automatic the process of keyword bidding for the advertiser. Rather than using rules of thumb, or trying to put guesstimates on the bid price for a certain keyboard, MediaBoost’s flagship product, AdBooster, will do it for you. How does it work? Below is a quick explanation, learn more by taking the AdBooster tour.
The bid prices on a certain keyword or phrase are dynamic, so MediaBoost constantly repeats this process to keep optimizing the account is kept optimized to the best available profit. In addition, AdBooster is a “learning system”, so it accumulates additional information and achieves more precise modeling over time. MediaBoost offers a 30 day free trial so you might want to consider trying it.
From what Uri explained to me, being ranked first for a keyword does not necessarily yield the best results for the advertiser. For example, while younger users need immediate satisfaction and therefore click on the first result or ad presented to them, older users rather research and scroll down to the bottom of the page. Therefore, depending on the campaign, the cost of bidding for a keyword could dramatically decrease with a little strategy.
MediaBoost uses a service model, in which advertisers enjoy a short period of hand holding, after which the process becomes almost completely automated. The business model is simple – MediaBoost takes a percentage of the top, from the advertiser’s budget. In my opinion, this model is not ideal since it doesn’t ‘motivate’ MediaBoost to get the best results – Instead, they should consider a revenue share from the incremental revenue created by implementing the AdBooster.
MediaBoost was founded in 2005 by CEO Alon Matas, formerly co-founder of Internet enterprise incubator Compile Ltd. and Hevre (the Israeli version of Classmates.com), and VP business development Uri Shtrichman. The largest client is currently ValueClick.