The Adzilla Project

It sends ads, blocks ads, kills viruses, and even plans to change the way ads are bought and sold on the internet. But will ISPs take to this ambitious project?

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [April 18, 2005]

Vancouver, Canada-based Adzilla plans to change the way ads are bought and sold on the internet. In order to do so, the company will be working with web publishers (not, as far as we know, Jupitermedia), with ad buyers, and with ISPs.

"I'm in Canada," explains John Wigboldus, vice president of the company's North America Network Group (NANG). "I get ads that are irrelevant to me. I'd rather receive local, relevant ads."

ISPs have a role to play here. "The ISP should be paid for enabling it, the publisher should get higher CPM rates, and the end user should get a better experience with more relevant ads."

Just the ZIP code, nothing more
At present, the company is selling only one piece of information to advertisers—the end user's ZIP code. This avoid the privacy concerns raised by, for example, tracking an end user's favorite websites or identifying them by age, gender, wealth, or ethnicity. Of course, ZIP codes do enable an educated guess about ethnicity and wealth.

Adzilla calls its technology "Caller ID for the internet" and says its selling the concept in Hong Kong as well as across North America.

The ISP's billing system provides the ZIP code to Adzilla hardware called a "Zillacaster" which is basically a proxy server with some extra features. The Zillacaster ensures that publishers and advertisers receive the end user's ZIP code but no additional information.

"No personal information is shared," says Wigboldus. "There are no cookies and no logins. The ISP becomes the broker of the information and receives revenue for it. If you look at cable networks, until the 1970s the national networks sold national ads. Then simulcast technology enabled national shows with local ad content. ISPs have been taken out of the Internet ad equation, but they're an integral part of this business."

Getting the zillas all lined up
While Wigboldus is lining up ISPs to participate in the system, his colleague, Bill Robinson, vice president of the North American Media Group (NAMG) is working on lining up publishers to participate in the program.

Even if the company gets ISPs and publishers to participate, it still won't have any revenue. It will need to find advertisers. Wigboldus says the company has been able to put it all together in Vancouver, the city where Adzilla's co-founder and CEO founded and then sold off an ISP called Internet Direct (now called Look communications).

Wigboldus says the advertisers who participated in the Vancouver rollout included headhunter Fusion Recruitment and the Vancouver Aquarium.

Wigboldus says he's talked to dozens of ISPs across North America, and some want to sell ads themselves while others want Adzilla to sell ads for them.

He says the company's three co-founders considered building a value-added service or similar venture but decided not to do so. "Call centers are pennies per subscriber per month. Value-added services become a zero sum game as you throw in free software, your competitor does that too, and the price per month drops from $4.95 to $3.95 to zero.

The ad market's the place to be. "Online ad revenue for 2005 is projected to be $12 billion," he says.

But can the company get the ISPs, the publishers, and the advertisers all lined up? It's also working with third parties to ad free or cheap anti-virus, anti-spam, and anti-spyware tools to the Zillacaster. None of this will be easy.

Anyone attending ISPCON will have a chance to see the software in action if they contact Adzilla in advance. The company will be showcasing the product to interested attendees in a private meeting room off the show floor.

— End