The Second Click

Rethinking the online advertising ecosystem: from a publisher’s viewpoint

Walter Knapp, COO of Lijit Networks and SVP of Platform Revenue at Federated Media Publishing, recently wrote an article for ad industry publication Adotas on how changes in the online advertising ecosystem have affected independent publishers. A snippet of the article is included below. To read the rest of the article, please check it out [...]

My Breakfasts with Jerome

A few weeks ago a friend of mine and a friend of Lijit’s lost his battle with cancer. They say success has many fathers, but Jerome can certainly claim an important role in making Lijit a success. Jerome was the first institutional investor in Lijit when he was at High Country Ventures. I got to know [...]

Federated Media Publishing launches Tech Blog

We are excited to announce Federated Media Publishing’s new Tech Blog. With FMP’s recent acquisition of Lijit Networks, technology has come to the forefront of the company’s business strategy and the new blog will share details about current and future technology initiatives. Employees across FMP will lift the curtain and talk about the high level technology [...]

Lijit’s RTB efforts deliver more money to online publishers

Many of you are witness to a shift in the world of online advertising that sees ad networks being replaced by programmatic buying technologies like real-time bidding (RTB) and private exchanges. Technologies like these deliver greater return to both advertisers and publishers by enabling them to connect directly to each other. Advertisers set a price [...]

Publisher Spotlight: DearBlankPleaseBlank

DearBlankPleaseBlank.com was started by Jared Wunsch and Hans Johnson as a hobby while the two were still in undergraduate school. What it has grown into is a collection of websites that also includes IWasteSoMuchTime.com, AttackoftheCute.com, and GrouchyRabbit.com. Collectively they see almost 45 million pageviews per month! Lijit sat down with Jared Wunsch to find out some [...]

Direct Sales vs. Programmatic Sales

Direct sales and programmatic sales are often discussed as competing functions within the publisher business model. However, the two channels are distinct enough that they should not compete with each other. In fact, the most successful publishers we work with from a revenue standpoint have a strong aptitude for managing direct and programmatic sales alongside [...]

Latest version of Flavors.me allows Lijit’s Audience Analytics!

Flavors.me takes social networking a step further. With Flavors.me, users have the ability to display content from all of their social media outlets on one convenient home page. With the ability to integrate Twitter, Tumblr, and 29 other social media sites, Flavors.me is a one stop shop for a publisher’s online presence. From the inexperienced [...]

Lijit offers help to SAY Media publishers

We caught wind of some changes over at SAY Media. Seems they have asked some of their smaller publishers to find an alternate ad network. We could speculate as to why they made this decision, but that really does not matter much. What does matter is the publisher. We would love to extend an invitation to any publishers [...]

Latest Product Updates

We just rolled out our last major software release for 2011 and we’re capping the year off with even more updates to our publisher analytics and our ad platform. This year has been incredible for Lijit, and seen us grow our advertising platform and publisher analytics products to create what we believe to be the [...]

Lijit celebrates the holidays with an all-out bash

Last night Lijit held our annual holiday party at Lucky Pie Pizza in Louisville, CO. With the recent acquisition of Lijit by Federated Media Publishing, it was an honor to have Founder and Executive Chairman John Battelle, as well CEO Deanna Brown in town for the festivities. Thank you to all the members of the Lijit [...]

Team Lijit goes go kart racing

Lijit recently hit 400m average daily ad impressions across our network so to celebrate this major company milestone we took the company go kart racing. It was the perfect activity for the Lijit team – a group of highly competitive, active employees who are in it to win it. While many of us were hoping [...]

Introducing Lijit’s Advertiser Insights for online publishers.

It is a core company philosophy at Lijit that from an analytics perspective we feed as much data as possible back to our publishers, and that we make the data so easily digestible that you can take immediate action on it. It’s what we like to refer to as “actionable analytics.” Today Lijit released a new [...]

Why Publishers Should Embrace Programmatic Buying

Those who “own” inventory are concerned that through exchanges, advertisers and trading desks have access to the same premium placements at lower CPMs, thereby diluting direct sales opportunities. As a premium publisher, you probably invest in a sales team to monetize your inventory. You sell a unique readership, social engagement capabilities, contextual relevance, and other site-specific [...]

ad:tech and The Unofficial User Generated Music Party

Last week a group of us here at Lijit ventured to New York City for the annual ad:tech New York event. ad:tech is always one of the industry’s biggest events of the year and this year proved to be no different. The event brings together industry professionals from all aspects of the digital space – [...]

How to use LinkedIn to build your brand, grow your network, and make more money

So you’ve managed to imbue your articles and posts with wit and creativity. Check. You’ve developed an audience. Check. You’ve embraced the twitterverse and gotten positive response but you’re still not getting paid. Wait, what? Every day I meet new people who are in the various stages of monetizing their website through online advertising. From [...]

New Product Features

Unless you live under a rock, you’ve heard about the recent acquisition of Lijit by Federated Media Publishing. What you may not have known, is that we were still cranking out new software updates and features throughout the acquisition process. We were able to introduce a lot of new functionality that helps our publishers better understand [...]

Lijit celebrates our acquisition by Federated Media

Employees, investors, and friends of Lijit recently celebrated our acquisition by Federated Media with a party at one of Boulder’s newest restaurants, The Kitchen [Next Door]. The restaurant is one of downtown Boulder’s latest additions, serving as a more casual take on the farm-to-table concept that has made its sister restaurant, The Kitchen, a Boulder [...]

Go Big or Stay Home

Today Lijit announced that it has been acquired by Federated Media Publishing, the powerhouse conversational marketing and media business that John Battelle started in 2005. I could not be more excited about the transaction, and more importantly, the future that the combined company has before it. About the same time John was starting FM, I [...]

Using SSPs, RTB, and Private Exchanges to Reach the Independent Web at Scale

On Tuesday, September 20 Lijit’s CEO and Founder Todd Vernon had the privilege of speaking at Federated Media’s Signal Chicago conference. His presentation, titled “Using Supply Side Platforms, Real-Time Bidding, and Private Exchanges to Reach the Independent Web at Scale,” provides a brief overview of the latest technologies in online advertising. In this session, Todd discusses [...]

How to turn your hobby into a business: lessons learned from Lijit publisher Kurt Kohlstedt

Longtime Lijit publisher Kurt Kohlstedt is the Founder and Executive Editor of Webist Publishing and Misnamed Media. His collection of sites include WebUrbanist, WebEcoist, Dornob, and Gajitz – which each have their own theme relating to creative, innovative, and sustainable art, architecture, and design. Kurt is the quintessential mid-size Lijit publisher who has used online advertising [...]