Hello From U of I at Champaign Urbana: IL. Ventures

Today I am in Urbana / Champaign IL. at the Univ. of IL. at the offices of Illinois Ventures.
Illinois Ventures is a unique VC focused on R&D Spinouts from the University if Illinois system. They have a great portfolio of companies in biotech and information tech. I met with Sr. Director Rob Schultz and Program Director of One Llama Media, Amit Sudharsan on some new strategies for the ad supported digital music industry.

There are thousands of streaming music sites and music services. Most of the ads on these services are randomly placed with no apparent recognition of context or demographics. This is unlike terrestrial radio in which ads are carefully placed based on zipcode and format and priced via Arbitron ratings. Google has its audio ad service (Audioads!?) which includes an "Ad Creation Marketplace" so that you commission an audio or video ad via a bidding process and place audio ads into 1600 radio stations via an adwords-like systematic process. Google also has the equivalent "video" version of this service emerging. I assume the first platform for this will be YouTube, however they are also aiming at CATV and VOD. As advertisers shift more of their budgets to the Internet, ad serving technologies for targeting and accurate metrics will be increasingly important and present a increasing competitive challenge to traditional methods. Sphere: Related Content