Addiply, a self-service banner ad network for local publishers and advertisers, is taking a “six-figure” investment, believed to be up to £200,000, to build a tool to to automate pay-outs to publishers.
Along with the money, Addiply is adding former Rothschild banker Kevin Joyce and the former Friends Reunited CEO Andy Baker as non-executive directors.
Addiply was started on a shoestring, when founder Rick Waghorn was made redundant from a football writing job on a Norwich newspaper, for publishers who are also on a shoestring – mainly the ranks of doe-eyed “hyperlocal” bloggers who still long to make their past-time self-supporting.
Advertisers can buy ads on these sites on a CPM or PPC basis at prices like £5 per week on a site with 49 views per week. Addiply claims to have attracted 400 advertisers to its 220 member sites, and gives 90 percent of income to publishers, splitting the remainder with PayPal.
One of Addiply’s problems, however, is that, without sales staff or experience, publishers’ Addiply sign-up box can often just languish on their pages…
This funding comes from the Proof Of Concept fund of the regional development agency One North East’s Finance For Business North East programme, and appears part-designed to fund the addition of a member of Addiply staff, its first, in the region to head sales effort there.
Waghorn tells paidContent Addiply will “build a sales ‘tool’… out-source that ‘sales’ function to third parties… (so the) cost of a local sales force is borne not by Addiply, but out of the publishers 90 percent revenue return”.
“We could put Addiply onto Brighton City Council website and let Newsquest Brighton ‘sell’ that ad space for them, etc.”
The fund is financed by the European Investment Fund, the European Regional Development Fund and One North East itself, and is managed by Northstar Ventures. Addiply says it’s now based in County Durham.