Gigaomni Media (GOM), the parent company of the popular network of tech sites including Gigaom, is parting ways with its long time ad partner Federated Media, and moving to a more enterprise-focused IDG TechNetwork, IDG's tech ad network, we have learned and confirmed from the two companies. The new deal with IDG is for all CPM-based online advertising across GOM's network of seven sites, and the company will still sell events and online sponsorships directly on its own.
While this is not a significant monetary setback for Federated, it does point to what the John Battelle-founded online-ad company is giving up as it continues to scale: Its focus has been on large-scale national advertisers and creating both general and custom programs with them, as opposed to the more 'intimate" sells required for enterprise-focused vendors that GOM attracts. FM has a big-brand focus, for most part, and beyond its early start with tech sites, it has now moved into all kinds of other verticals like parenting, food, graphic arts, small business and others.
Gigaom founder Om Malik has previously publicly disagreed with some aspects of FM's "conversational marketing" approach with some tech advertisers. And while that did lead to some tension last year, I spoke to both Chas Edwards, Publisher & Chief Revenue Officer of FM, and Paul Walborsky, CEO of GOM, and both reiterated that this parting was amicable, and of course, there are too many friendships at stake here.
For GOM, this new move comes after its biggish $4.5 million third round of funding that it announced last month. In recent months it has also acquired two blogs, jkOntheRun and TheAppleBlog, and appointed a new CEO. For IDG, this is a high-profile blog media company to bring into its fold. Its ad network was launched earlier this year, and had about 100 tech blogs as of March, and would not comment on this story. It said they will have more announcements next month about it.
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