VivaKi and Flite Announce Partnership

Today we are extremely excited to be announcing our new partnership with VivaKi, the global leader in digital advertising solutions.

This milestone event extends the successful relationship we’ve had with Starcom MediaVest Group out to the entire VivaKi family of agencies.

This also coincides with a round of investment lead by Iris Capital — the investment joint venture of Publicis Groupe and Orange Telecom — which had participation from all of our existing investors.

“Next Generation Storytelling is a key focus for Publicis Groupe, and Flite will allow our clients to publish content and tell stories that leverage social, mobile and API's, and do so in a cost effective and agile way.”

— Rishad Tobaccowala, VivaKi Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer

We look forward to enabling the Publicis Groupe agencies to create and scale new brand experiences in online advertising. It's a true validation of our vision of an internet with more meaningful, more effective advertising.

Read the full press release here.

Flite and Starcom MediaVest Group Form Milestone Partnership

Today we are announcing a strategic partnership with Starcom MediaVest Group (SMG), one of the world’s largest brand communications agencies. Through this milestone agreement, SMG will use Flite to "realize the promise of brands as publishers" across paid media channels.

Read the full press release here.

Facebook Ad Platform Relaunch, Validation of Flite Platform 3

Today, Facebook relaunched their ad platform with three announcements.

1. Reach Generator product, a paid post model guaranteeing reach 
2. New ad formats, in which the stream is the creative, or content = creative
3. Brand pages moving to Timeline pages

Michael Lazerow, BuddyMedia's CEO, wrote a detailed post covering the announcements and their significance today in AdAge.

For Flite and its customers, the news is a positive affirmation of Flite Platform 3.  Platform 3 is predicated on delivering two key capabilities to brands operating in a real-time, app-driven world.

1. Brands ability to update live campaigns in real-time with relevant, topical content
   1. No longer will ad creative be fixed and persist across campaign durations, but rather brands will push content in real-time to paid media in order to ensure that the message is relevant, topical, and impactful.  For example, brands will push both proactive (brand news and updates) and reactive (headline news, celebrity news, etc) to on line ads.
2. Brands ability to integrate marketing applications directly in-unit.
   1. Online consumers will be able to share, chat, redeem, watch, read, register with the brand and its content directly in unit.

Facebook's ad units rely on very similar precepts - ad creative becomes the stream and ad units support rich functionality that Facebook's users have come to expect as given, like, share, comment.

Real-time, app-driven marketing is the future and requires new infrastructure and technology to deliver at scale. Facebook's product launch is a shot across the bow to all players in the display space and it will be fascinating to watch how the market responds.

Flite Named sfBIG’s ‘Next BIG Digital Startup’ of 2011

Flite’s thrilled to announce that we were named winner of the sfBIG’s “Next BIG Digital Startup” award. The 2011 BIG Star Awards ceremony was held last week by The San Francisco Bay Area Interactive Group’s (sfBIG) to recognize leaders in many areas of advertising – from great campaigns and the people who drive them to significant digital and social media advertising innovations.

sfBIG is dedicated to championing innovation in digital marketing in San Francisco and recognizes local companies with the sfBIG Awards for their outstanding achievements. Flite’s mission is to reinvent the way publishers and advertisers think about online display advertising by leveraging the possibilities of cloud computing.

Steve Klopf, Flite’s VP of Business Operations, was present to receive the award. He notes, “We are honored to receive this award from sfBIG, an organization that recognizes the impact that Bay Area companies can have on the advertising industry. Being named the Next BIG Digital Startup is great recognition of the work Flite is doing to continually advance online display advertising through technological innovations.”

Last week’s award ceremony brought together other interactive and digital leaders from some of the most disruptive advertising companies in the Bay Area. Congratulations to all the other nominees and winners!

Best Mobile Campaign
AKQA – Visa Signature iPad Pop-up

Best Multicultural Campaign
OMD Latino/Alma DDB - Clorox Pine Sol

Best Use of Rich Media
EVB – Wrigley/Skittles Rock, Paper, Scissor

Best Use of Social Media
Butler Shine Stern & Partners – MINI vs. Porsche Challenge

Most Innovative Search Campaign
AKQA Media – Entertainment Industry Client, Value of Branded Keywords

Most Creative Online Campaign
AKQA – Xbox Halo Reach – Remember Reach

Next BIG Digital Startup
Flite

Next BIG Salesperson
Adam Berman, YuMe

Best Digital Campaign From A Local Agency
Venables, Bell & Partners – Intel The Chase

Next BIG Media Planner
Diana Ahrens, Communications Strategist, Eleven

Best Digital Media Plan (TIE)
Signal to Noise – eBay Fashion – Derek Lam
Tribal DDB – Intel SmartTV

sfBIG Volunteer Appreciation Award
Stephanie Yang, AKQA

Lynn Ingham Community Service Award
Lindsey Thomas, JiWire

Lifetime Achievement Recipient
Scot McLernon, YuMe

IAB Innovation Days 2011: The Future of Display (is the Cloud)

Flite CEO Will Price recently took the stage at the IAB Innovation Days event in New York City as part of Internet Week 2011. The two-day IAB event focused on “The Future of Display,” and featured panels and discussions from experts across the advertising landscape.

The IAB’s CEO, Randall Rothenberg, opened the conference by demanding the industry work to reinvent the very concept of display.  He argued that, “brand advertisers are hungry for better, more exciting uses for display. They want to bring ALL the capabilities of the Internet to bear on their brand messages—right there, in the ad. They want rich, dynamic, immersive experiences with sight, sound, and motion, with social underpinnings.”  Fortunately, the IAB’s call for action maps exactly to Flite’s platform and value proposition!

Flite CEO Will Price discusses the future of display at IAB Innovation Days

In his panel, Price demonstrated how Flite is allowing brands to deliver ads that function like micro-sites by bringing in video, social content, lead generation forms, polls, and other interactive elements that dramatically increase engagement and user value. During his time on stage, Price took a traditional display ad for the movie Super 8 and transformed into a cloud-ad that included not only the original banner ad, but also the ability to look up movie show times, rewatch the trailer, take a poll, and sign up for a newsletter.  The demo highlighted Flite for Ad Networks, a product designed to transform the 91% of display ads from static images to engaging applications. See the before and after ads in action here.

Price discusses Flite’s platform and the market need in this video interview from the IAB event with Ekapat Chareonlarp, director of client development at IDG:

Steve Hall of Yahoo! Scene also covered Price’s discussion on new technologies in display advertising, with his article, “Ad Banners Becoming Miniature Website Destinations.”

Flite Wraps Up IAB Case Study Road Show

Over the past few weeks here at Flite, we’ve been busy participating in the annual IAB Case Study Road Show. The multi-city conference showcases the best in brand advertising from the previous year and features groundbreaking advertising campaigns that demonstrated exceptional performance metrics. Flite was selected to present a case study on the innovative Nano Site campaign that was done in partnership with Oracle and IDG. Over the past month we had the honor of presenting in the following cities: 

• New York: March 16^th
• Chicago: April 6^th
• Dallas: April 12^th

In addition to presenting at all three locations, we also sponsored a cocktail reception and iPad giveaway during the Chicago show.  

At all three events were a big hit with attendees, with many stopping by after the presentation to learn more about Flite and cloud-based advertising.

Flite CEO Will Price and IDG Marketing Executive Ekapat Chareonlarp Attendees at the Chicago cocktail receptioniPad giveaway winner John Kaiser from Maxus Global

Flite Selected as IAB Digital Media Success Story

Flite was selected as one of a handful of digital media success stories by IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau). Flite received the honor for its innovative Nano Site campaign for Oracle. The campaign—done in partnership with IDG—featured the Nano Site Unit, an innovative new ad format that allows for a micro-site like experience within the unit. Flite and IDG will be presenting a case study of the successful campaign during the IAB’s annual Case Study Road Show. 

Learn more