Wednesday, June 16, 1999

We AllAdvantage.com from a free surfboard

"Hurry Courtney! You're going to miss the sushi!" Jeff Newelt, Communications Director at the Art Directors Club greeted me warmly with this warning on Wednesday, June 16th at AllAdvantage.com's launch party. It seems that for most of June I've been just downstream of catching the sushi at these socials. I did get a nice Tuna Roll, though, and then was able to hear a lengthy and informative overview of this site from Alex Gourevitch, PR Director. Lou Giacalone of Richmond Research, Inc. and Peggy Altenpohl of Billboard magazine and I listened as Alex described how the information bar (similar to Alexa.com's) sits on top of your browser and tracks EVERY thing you do on a web site. This permission-based tool helps both the advertisers and the consumers by serving up ads or information based on clicks and interests. Other ways they get around the "big brother" aspect that seemed blatant to me are that they don't release any information about you (other than your web site surfing when you have the tool running) and you get no e-mail from them or their customers (the advertisers). In fact, Jim Jorgensen, CEO of AllAdvantage, told me their privacy policies are more solid than other popular security and privacy initiatives that they aren't even members. Started just 79 days ago with 1.5 million members, this company is going gang-busters and looks to continue to ride high on the wave of momentum.

Another feature is that advertisers can buy key words with them so as to stay competitive in the search engine ranking battle. For instance, Barnes & Noble, bought all the key words they could get from AllAdvantage after Amazon.com bought all the keywords on Yahoo! Nearby I spied William Lopez of Qwest and chatted with Josh Stylman who informed me that his company Rotomedia was just acquired by AskJeeves.com. Thomas Eaton, a tanned VP, biz dev. guy from 24/7 walked off with the slick white AllAdvantage.com surfboard that was raffled off and Marc Newelt, a recent addition to our cities Finest (a newly minted Policeman) was there as a security guard to make sure none other than the winner walked away with the board. Peter Neumann (3D Designer), David Kassel (OpenShop) and Alayna Tagariello (Connors Communications) were also there enjoying the night's fun festivities.