SMB Display Ads Maker AdReady Grabs $10 Million

AdReady aims to make display advertising simple and accessible for SMBs. I got a demo of the product a few weeks back and I must say it is impressively simple and customizable.

The company needs to discover its advertiser “sweet spot” — that is, the segment of SMBs receptive to brand or quasi-brand advertising and willing to do self-service. Indeed, there’s the familar challenge of the sales channel issues; self provisioning is always a problem for this market. However, with the right segmentation approach there will be those who do come directly to the service.

There’s ad distribution on the back end, through Advertising.com, RightMedia and AdBrite as well.

The service doesn’t exactly compete with the AdMission platform but the models are similar. There’s also a way in which AdReady is an emerging Spot Runner competitor, as Spot Runner moves more onto the Internet. Video in general is a competitor of static display advertising. AdMission currently can accommodate video in its ad units, while AdReady can be expected to incorporate video in the relatively near future.

In all, the market is moving toward what might be called “actionable display advertising,” which combines branding elements with direct response. But getting most SMBs to recognize the value of branding, even when combined with direct response, is a challenge (though not impossible). The exception is video, which has high SMB demand. That’s why AdReady will likely be doing a big push to “white label” their product and go after existing SMB sales channels.

The company today announced funding of $10 million.