L90 has sold its ad-serving and ad-tracking technology to New York-based DoubleClick. Financial terms of the deal were not released.
Los Angeles-based L90 said selling its ASP ad technology adMonitor would help the company to save money and “focus on its core competency” — selling inventory for Web site partners and providing advertising solutions for advertisers, said John Bohan, CEO of L90. L90’s core compentency includes an advertising suite of sponsorships, opt-in e-mail, newsletters, micro-sites, content integration and sweepstakes.
Bohan would not confirm that employees were laid off with the adMonitor sale. Message boards online claim that 40 out of 50 tech employees were laid off when their jobs were eliminated.
The ad-serving portion of L90’s business will now be outsourced to DoubleClick. Bohan said he expects a seamless transition. The company has 500 Web site partners and about 1,700 publishers.
Bohan added that the sale is a positive step toward company profitability. L90 posted a loss last quarter of $5 million, and the technology portion of the business was losing $2 million to $3 million a quarter, he said.
“There are few companies that are so close to break even and are so well-funded,” he said. “We have north of $60 million in the bank. We believe that we’ll hit profitability certainly next year.”
The unique part of the adMonitor technology compared with DoubleClick’s DART technology is the ProfitTools rich media component, said Chris Saridakis, senior vice president of technology at DoubleClick. “It allows us to build rich media creatives on the fly.” He added that adMonitor and DART technologies have already been integrated and will be distributed internationally.
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