So it was just recently that Goose Fish Media Ventures (owned by Sidharth Rao - Founder of Webchutney) had announced the launch of two vertical ad networks in GoSinbad and Divanation. But now it seems they realized that having one network which focuses on verticals would be far easier scale.

So they have merged the two vertical network’s into one mother network in NetworkPlay.in and have also roped in Rammohan who was earlier the National Sales Head - Performance Accounts at Yahoo India.

We caught up with RamMohan and questioned him on NetworkPlay. Find his answers below:

1) Why roll two vertical networks divanation and Gosinbad into one?
Whats the advantage?

A) The advantage of having multi-vertical opportunity under one umbrella answers our USP to begin with. We are not blind and the audience segmentation is very distinct which enables advertisers to know exactly where their campaigns are running and mapping of a brand with its audience becomes specific. We are not in the game of selling inventory but audience and going forward with our proprietary ad technology vertical audience have a huge role to play in our behavioural and re targeting capabilities we are building.

In-fact we are launching another 6 verticals outside of travel and women, which are our current offerings by the first quarter of 09.

2) There are already 4 funded adnetworks in tyroo, komli, ozone and admagnet with none of them having any real differentiation. How is NetworkPlay any different?

A) Our biggest differentiation is we are not blind a ad network and we are vertical in nature.

3) Given your Yahoo experience what kind of growth do you expect for networkplay? Could you share some projected revenue numbers for next 3 years?

A) In the 350 Crore Indian internet advertising market, networks contribute 8% and going forward this number will swell to 25-30% by 2010-2011.

4) What are the typical margins in the adnetwork business i.e. what % of media buy is gross profit for ad networks? Or would you be working on a pay for performance (per click, per lead) basis?

A) Because we sell audience and we believe that if the Indian Internet Advertising Market has to be 1000 crores by 2010 - 2011 then this growth will only come when traditional brand advertisers come online and we are catering to these advertisers keeping in mind the future. Though we will have our product built around all available parameters of measurements viz, CPM, CPC and CPA, we will focus on delivering audience than selling vanilla inventory.

WATBlog analysis: The adnetworks space is a crowded one and currently most adnetworks have little or no differentiation as most of them are catering to pay for perfomance advertisers. Over time I expect a shake up in the market with each of them either finding/building their USP and niche or getting sold or acquired by traditional agencies wanting to go digital. Also publishers themselves are launching ad networks with ibibo launching an adnetwork. A trend we blogged about recently.

We asked Sidharth Rao Of Goose Fish And Webchutney if he would advise another entrepreneur to venture into the already crowded ad network space and his reply was “Get quality publishers on board if u think of vertical networks. Brands want to be in environments that they can trust! If you can do that then you should start an adnetwork!”

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