There’s an article that was posted on TheNextWeb.com this morning about domain industry veteran Divyank Turakhia, and I believe it may be of interest to you. The article is about his company Directi and its Media.net property, which has seen huge growth since its launch at the end of 2010. The company is aiming to take market share away from Google’s contextual advertising business (Adsense).
I thought it was interesting to see that “Directi is now a holding worth $350 million (“or maybe more”) and expects to employ roughly 1,000 people by the end of 2012.” The article continues and mentions that about half of Directi’s employees are working for Media.net, which is remarkable considering its only been in business for a couple of years.
Other businesses in the Directi portfolio that domain investors may be familiar with include Skenzo, Logic Boxes, DomainAdvertising.com, among others. Andrew Allemann, publisher of Domain Name Wire, also works for Directi in its Austin office.
Ironically, I received a couple of emails from Media.net sales staff (including one last week) asking me about opportunities to supplant Adsense on two of my websites. I have not tried them yet, but it is something I would consider using them if I thought the opportunity was right.
The article is well worth reading when you have a chance.
Good job Divyank!
What are some sites that use Media.com?
@ Steve
It’s Media.net (FMA/Thunayan owns Media.com). I am not sure what sites use them though. Maybe Andrew can answer.
There are a number of example sites on the media.net home page.
Without backup the “worth $350 million” is really meaningless.
This is not to take away from anything Bhavin and Divyank have done which is great but the story doesn’t even indicate what is meant by “worth”.
Interesting, good article. Cheers
@Larry Objective journalism was always a fun thing. On the other hand, I can’t agree that Google has 100% market share on contextual advertising. Significant, yes. 100%? No way.
@Steve
On media.net there’s a list of premium publishers, some Yahoo subsidiaries, homefinder.com.
What’s Google’s secret sauce for dominating the contextual ads market? Big checks? People using Adwords? Something else, a mix? Does media.net stand a chance, and who they they really have 350 people working on this project?
The stories I could tell about “Skenzo” and “Directi” from back in 2005 when Bulkregister hired me to investigate them.
I think I’ll save that info for my forthcoming book on the inside details of the domain industry as I’ve experienced it starting in 2002. The “breakout” year of the domain industry as an “open industry” was 2003. Before that, anyone buying domains and talking about it was banned, blacklisted, hated, etc etc. Then, like a curtain opening, everyone started revealing the values of their domains (obviously to start selling them).
Now, those secretive and collusive comments no longer work. Weird, huh?
But I have all the previous info I gathered on Directi and Skenzo from 2004-2005 in my duties as senior domain consultant for Bulkregister (sold to Enom in 2006). It’s not a pretty picture, but the book will be so revealing your eyeballs will actually pop out of your head and bounce around on your desk.
Stay tuned!
I’ve seen what these guys have done w/ Directi since they launched in 1998 and while I can’t guarantee the amount, $300+ million sounds about right.
Media.net has a long way to go, don’t see them making a dent on google’s stranglehold on this market for some time, if ever.
Though its a multi-billion dollar industry responsible for pretty much all of google’s revenues.
And I’m surprised they’ve contacted you Elliot, seems they are cherry picking the sites they want to target, because they don’t seem to respond to signups.
@Stephen Douglas
I hope your ‘expose’ covers a lot more than just Directi and I wouldn’t be surprised by any of it, imho.