FliteHub at crux of programmable cloud, advertising
A new marketplace from Flite promises to make ads more relevant and interesting by taking advantage of cloud-oriented technologies.
This week, cloud-based advertising company Flite will be launching FliteHub, an ad component marketplace allowing brands and agencies to include applications directly in advertisements.
According to Flite CEO Will Price, advertisers can use FliteHub to "program" their ads via application programming interfaces (APIs) that enable deeper integration and dynamic updates based on metrics, location, or other criteria. For example, if a movie studio wants to push an ad that includes showtimes, theater information, and ticket purchasing, it can easily adjust it to better target customers in real time.
Display advertising remains one of most profitable Internet businesses, with a market size ranging from roughly $25 billion to $200 billion over the next few years, if Google's vice president of display, Neal Mohan, is correct in his estimates quoted on Business Insider.
Building a developer ecosystem around a platform has become a key strategy in today's software market, and it has driven adoption not just in obvious areas such as open-source software, but also for software-as-a-service products such as Salesforce.com, Facebook, and Twitter.
The bigger picture here is that FliteHub is aiming to make advertising act a lot more dynamic--less about being a mere banner ad. By introducing a technical means to insert highly customizable content and manage ads dynamically, vendors have the potential to make their ads much more interesting than they have been.
And considering how little display ads have changed, despite their near ubiquity, Flite's approach could well be a game changer for a highly profitable industry.
A big part of FliteHub's value proposition is that anyone who knows how to use a browser--from an executive to a junior ad buyer--is already familiar not just with the browser but with social apps and how all of these components can be integrated together.
According to Price, there has been a shift in the way companies are buying ads. Previously, agencies and companies relied on spreadsheets associated with a particular ad spend. Now they can alter content and offers to make ads more relevant and profitable.