LaunchBit, an email ad network that launched in 2012, is taking a new direction — in the words of co-founder Elizabeth Yin, “LaunchBit is pivoting to a customer acquisition platform for SaaS companies.”
That may sound a bit arcane. Basically, LaunchBit has built tools to help companies using a software-as-a-service business model find potential customers. For now, it’s still focused on advertising (and indeed, it will continue to work with email publishers), but Yin said it will eventually integrate with “non-ad channels” as well.
The reason for the switch, she said, is that while LaunchBit worked with “awesome, high quality newsletters such as the Hacker Newsletter and StartupDigest,” the quality stuff was outnumbered by “junky publishers.” Meanwhile, SaaS companies were using LaunchBit ads as a way to get sales leads, and they wanted more leads than they could get through the ad network alone.
To that end, LaunchBit has partnered with BuySellAds to run lead generation ads on the excess inventory in BuySellAds networks including Fusion Ads, Ad Packs, Carbon Ads, and Yoggrt Ads. Of course, companies could buy these ads directly from the networks, but Yin said LaunchBit offers a different approach:
You could go directly to BuySellAds.com and buy ad slots at fixed premium prices. This is good for marketers who want to make sure they get into very specific blogs. But, what we sell is different — we enable marketers to get in front of their target demographic on a cost-per-click basis. We run BSA’s extra inventory through an ad auction on the LaunchBit platform. Marketers can select the demographic they want to promote to — such as programmers — and then bid how much they are willing to pay per click to get in front of that audience. Because marketers essentially get to name their price, they are not able to pick specific blogs to promote their products in.
In addition, Yin said LaunchBit allows marketers to upload all of their ad creative in one place and then push it out to multiple channels. And the company will work with larger customers to optimize their ad spending across those channels.
Yin said LaunchBit has been testing this approach out with a few advertisers and is opening to the public today.