While the digital elite travel to Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg’s Wall Street Journal All Things D conference in swanky Carlsbad, California today, there will be plenty of time for these road warriors to peel open some old media (the newspaper…) and read Robert Guth and Kevin Delaney’s piece in The Wall Street Journal today “Selling Web Advertising Space Like Pork Bellies: Exchanges That Pair Buyers, Sellers for Available Ad Slots Attract Internet Giants.”

ContextWeb is mentioned as a player in the online advertising exchange business along with Right Media (bought by Yahoo! on April 29th for $800 million), AdECN and Turn.

According to Wikipedia, pork bellies—commonly know as bacon—started trading on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in 1961. Besides thinking of Eddie Murphy in Trading Places, most people associate pork bellies with commodities trading.

Most of the perception around online advertising exchanges is around this commoditization and remnant inventory. While that is true about many company efforts, ContextWeb’s exchange is designed for premium inventory and because of this, brings distinct benefits to buyer and seller, advertiser and publisher.

In the rush to keep in front of this fast moving ball, here are a few ways ContextWeb’s ADSDAQ online advertising exchange distinguishes itself:

1. Pricing Control. Not only do buyers (advertisers) control pricing (by a panoply of pricing choices—CPM, CPC, CPA) but sellers (publishers) also control pricing by setting their AskPrice—the CPM (cost per thousand) rate they require.
2. Premium Inventory. Since sellers (publishers) set their AskPrice, ADSDAQ is the first stop for sellers before their ad network alternatives such as Advertising.com, BURST Media and Tribal Fusion.
3. Open to Everyone. In the wake of the last six weeks and $10 billion plus of transactions (Google – DoubleClick; Yahoo! – RightMedia; Microsoft – aQuantive; WPP – 24/7 RealMedia), few people are talking about where all the customers are these days—the Long Tail. ADSDAQ’s self service business opens to sellers (publishers) this summer. Sellers and buyers can request a beta invitation.

And we’ve been running our exchange for two plus years, just ask our buyers and our sellers and now, with the benefit of scale we can now open the market to everyone.

Related Links: Blogging Stocks, Catherine P. Taylor’s Adverganza, Angela Gunn on USA Today, Clickety Clack, Jason Schaeffer, alarm:clock, Soaring on Ridgelift, Profitable Signals

Tags: adsdaq, contextweb, rightmedia, doubleclick, 247realmedia, microsoft, google, yahoo

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