As smartphones increasingly take over as the primary means of accessing the web for consumers, developers have been hard at work to ensure that browsing experiences translate across different screen sizes and formats.
Ad campaigns have largely failed to keep up with this evolution. Whether it’s blurry graphics or banners that expand past the screen, display ads often end up looking like afterthoughts slapped on with little regard for the layouts of the sites they live on.
Specless is working to do something about that. Founded three years ago, the company’s web-based tool lets advertisers design a single responsive ad campaign that will display properly on any device.
Founder and CEO Stephen Corby said the idea for Specless arose from his experience at CBS Interactive, where he was responsible for managing and selling mobile ads on the company’s news sites.
“The issue we saw over there was that we were starting to sell all this mobile media, but we weren’t getting creative assets from our clients that could run in all these different situations,” he said. “So we found ourselves selling like crazy, but then when the time came to run those campaigns, we found ourselves jamming all sorts of ads into places where they don’t really belong. And the experience suffered.”
Though a lot of of the initial interest in Specless’ product came from ad agencies, the company soon started getting inbound requests from major publishers like NBC. Over the years, increasingly efficient advertising marketplaces have turned standard display ads into an inexpensive commodity, making brand name outlets look for ways to offer new kinds of ads that stand out from the crowd and sell at a premium.
“You can format our ads to appear in any way you can imagine,” said Corby. “And for [clients], that allowed them the opportunity to sell unique ad formats — not just the standard stuff that everybody sells, but come up with something unique that only they sell.”
According to Corby, these premium ads can perform 10 times better than a standard rich ad and sell for five to eight times as much.
In the summer of 2015, Specless went through the Techstars Chicago program and grew its revenue significantly. Corby attributes the success of his company in part to the dearth of innovation around ways to display ads on websites.
“We’re talking about 15 to 20 years’ worth of advancement in technology in this industry that has all been poured into the targeting side of things: making sure you get the right ad at the right time in front of the right audience,” he said. “What we’re focused on is delivering the right experience.”
Aside from a small amount of angel funding, the Specless team has scaled its business with very little outside investment. The company turned profitable early on and has worked hard to ensure that the business could scale in a lean way. Now the six-person crew is looking to expand its sales team.
“All of our business has been coming from taking it away from huge players like Sizmek and Google,” said Corby. “We’re not beating out smaller competitors, we’re really taking them from the big established players, which really is exciting for a small team.”
Image via Specless.
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