Recently public FastClick (FSTC) has been best known as a traditional ad network, but yesterday it launched text ads a la Adsense. It’s always good to see competition continue to sprout, even as the leaders consolidate their power. From MediaPost’s coverage:
Fastclick’s entry into contextual search advertising and its initial public offering announced last month are directly related, analysts speculated. “Investors are now going to look to Fastclick to make sure they have a full quiver of arrows,” said Gary Stein, a Jupiter Research analyst. “It’s important that any company can round out all of their capabilities.”
But they aren’t contextually targeted at all, are they? I’m a Fastclick user and the interface for text ads looks just like the one for banners, where I can choose to run a particular ad or not. The advertisers are the same run-of-network players as the other formats. I don’t see anything contextual about it.
It’s a pity. I just thought there were an alternative…
Seems, there is still no alternative to adsense. Still no way to avoid google… 🙁