Company offers Google ad alternative

Fast Search & Transfer unveiled on Monday a platform that will allow media companies, online classifieds and others to serve private-label, contextually relevant ads on their Web sites without having to turn to Google.

Fast AdMomentum allows companies to make money by selling ads to advertisers without involving an ad agency or network.

"Our customers said, 'We have relationships with advertisers but we need to have a plan that will allow us to build search-driven monetization solutions and we want to be able to do it ourselves,'" said Perry Solomon, vice president and general manager of media solutions at Fast, based in Oslo, Norway. "Companies are trying to preserve their business from the threat of new media companies, like Google," Solomon added.

Fast, which competes with Google's Enterprise Search Appliance in the corporate search market, sells AdMomentum as a software license--not for a share of revenue like Google. Customers include U.S.-based online directory Local.com, Norway's Schibsted newspaper group and Australian search site Sensis.

The product will also compete with Yahoo's new paid search ad-serving platform, dubbed Panama, which began rolling out its new search marketing ranking model on Monday. Yahoo has designed a system that ranks ads not only on price but also on relevancy to users, like Google's. Google has had great success with this formula.

[ghold4]

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what about relevancy?

The problem with this is relevancy. Google is a mater at making sure the ads are relevant to the content. Just because advertisers can now place ads on sites without going through google does not mean that the ads will match the readers' needs. Less relevancy, fewer click-throughs. This isn't gonna work.