Model of Excellence: Bizo

Every year the good people at the InfoCommerce Group — the venerable consulting, research and events company in the specialized information and data publishing industry — set out to answer the question: Who’s doing it right when it comes to cutting-edge uses of data to solve complex business issues?

This year, we’re pleased to announce, Bizo was named as finalist in the process of answering that question. Bizo joined 10 other data-driven businesses to create the 2009 class of Model of Excellence finalists. Read about the winners and all the details from InfoCommerce here.

We are honored to be recognized for our business data targeting technology and go-to-market model. Bizo didn’t invent the concept of targeted advertising, but we’ve taken the concept to a new level in the B2B space by overlaying and supplementing anonymous registration data with IP address information and other third-party data for previously unheard of levels of precision online ad targeting. We pair that data precision with analytics and reporting that helps advertisers track performance and hone their campaigns.

In describing Bizo, InfoCommerce analysts wrote: “Bizo is a data-enhanced B2B ad network that targets advertising based entirely on bizographics: a person's company size, industry, gender, education level, location and more. Bizo's business is using data — massive amounts of anonymous data — to improve the quality and value of advertising impressions.”

Bizo joins the ranks of past finalists of InfoCommerce’s Model of Excellence awards including Pathfinder, Zillow.com, Spoke and Carfax.com. We’re thrilled to be among such lofty company!

Bringing B-to-B Publishers a New Business Model

In June, we hired B2B publishing veteran Bill Furlong as Bizo's Vice President of Business Development (You can read more about Bill and the rest of Bizo's team here). Here's Bill's take on the very important role Bizo plays for B2B publishers in the online world.

As someone who has spent most of his career in business-to-business publishing, I’ve been there to witness what the web has done to these outlets, how it has changed their business and how the best of them have adapted their models to survive and even thrive. Since the dot-com boom and bust, publishers have sought out reasonable pragmatic solutions to growing their online businesses. But since last fall, that urgency has doubled up on finding the right mix of digital initiatives along with keeping the cash cow of print as balanced as possible.

When I joined Bizo earlier this year, I teamed up with a company that has a real value proposition for publishers by providing them a new way to capitalize on the quality of their online audience.

B-to-B has always been about having a narrow but deep audience, for establishing industry must-reads and then capitalizing on them by marketing the audience to industry-specific advertisers. The nature of the business is deep targeting and sustaining a long term engagement with that narrow sliver of the general population. It is becoming increasingly critical to measure that relationship and to move one's prospects down the sales funnel — audience and data must power that equation.

Online, that model hasn’t played out until now. Bizo is bringing these publishers the same premium priced third-party revenue they grew used to in the print or direct mail list arenas. Not only that, but by working with Bizo, B-to-B publishers are able to continue to monetize their audiences wherever they spend their time online. Bizo has moved beyond the run-of-the-mill ad network and turned to generating revenue around one of those most important publisher assets — their qualified targeted audiences. What better way to monetize than to earn more on the audience that that these publications have invested in significantly in over the years? And at no cost of creating additional content or online applications, to boot.

For publishers grappling with the rapidly changing economics of print and online business models, this solution offers an improved source of revenue. One publisher we recently launched lamented that he can't seem to get his registered audience members back to his sites more than a handful of times a month (despite the fact that his newsletters are well engaged). The Bizo solution has allowed him to monetize those online subscribers 10 times over every month on our BTN network.

Another client has the enviable situation of having sold out their inventory and thus was hamstrung on getting access to what were larger than usual online ad budgets from their clients. Bizo implemented our audience extension service so now he is selling more ads to their audience while they are out browsing on our general network of sites. A win-win all around and a great innovation to set them apart from their competitors.

In this changing world of publishing, one must be willing to test and partner with new solutions partners as the landscape continues to move more to a digital "lead" versus to what was an ancillary platform for some just one short year ago. Innovate or die they say!

Introducing Bizo’s Premier Data Reseller Partner Program

Today I am excited to announce the launch of our Premier Data Reseller Partner Program. Even more exciting is that we’re working with the folks at interCLICK as the inaugural member of the program and we’ve agreed to give them exclusive access to the program benefits through the rest of 2009. Like Bizo, interCLICK is making a name for itself as an industry leader in the transparent use of audience targeting data and this partnership gives interCLICK access to our entire store of bizographics to efficiently reach an extensive audience of business professionals across the web.

The Premier Reseller program will be widely available in 2010 and we look forward to adding additional Premier Partners to our roster at that time. Bizo Premier Partners have access to the following benefits:

· Discounted Pricing: Partners receive a discount on the Bizo targeting technology that is well below the market rate.

· Direct-to-Bizo Integration: Premier Partners are able to integrate the Bizo targeting platform and full data access within their own networks.

· Preferred access: Bizo will be releasing products to its Premier Partners first before the general market.

· Certification for Bizo targeting: Partners have full access to Bizo’s bizographic targeting data and will be trained and certified on best practices of reaching specific subsets of the online business audience.

· Named Account Manager: Bizo provides Premier Partners a point person to ensure the most effective use of Bizo data.

· Sales Team Training: Bizo trains Premier Partner sales groups to ensure success in selling the combined offering and to help maximize partnership value.

· Co-Branded Collateral: In addition to sales training, Bizo helps to produce co-branded marketing materials to describe the benefits of the partnership to potential advertisers.

· Joint Sales Calls, Press Releases, and Case Studies: Bizo will provide joint sales call support and media outreach to Premier Partners that will help articulate the joint value proposition of the partnership.

· APIs for Direct Integration: Bizo will be providing Premier Partners with APIs for direct integration with the Bizo platform

Ultimately, we’ve put this program together to deliver maximium value to networks looking to help their advertiser clients reach business audiences. We’re very excited to be working with interCLICK as the first network to be fully certified as a Bizo Premier Partner!