Leadership interviews with Ken Harlan from PrimaryAds

Adrian: So why don’t we start on a personal note. Ken why don’t you tell us a little bit about who you are and where you live?

Ken: Sure. My name is Ken Harlan, President of PrimaryAds. My wife and I currently reside in New Jersey and we have one year-old twins.

Adrian: Are they your first kids?

Ken: They’re our first and second kids.

Adrian: And you got them both at once?

Ken: Yeah. One shot, exactly. It’s been a little crazy having twins, still being an entrepreneur and running a business and actually, also moving down to this location that we’re at.

Adrian: So does your wife work as well or does she take care of the kids?

Ken: No. Fortunately my wife is staying home right now to raise the kids but she’s actually a lawyer and I’m sure she’ll go back to work sometime in the near future.

Adrian: Are there any books that you’re particularly into at the moment?

Ken: I’m reading The World Is Flat. It’s basically about the technology innovations of the ‘80’s & ‘90’s and how the world is starting to come together. It’s not just about outsourcing. It’s more about the collaboration of people all around the world and how it could eventually benefit and hurt our global economy.

Adrian: Before you worked at PrimaryAds what were you doing?

Ken: Well I started my career off as a certified public accountant believe it or not.

Adrian: That’s actually perfect for being in direct response.

Ken: Yeah. From a measuring and analytical standpoint it definitely helps. I also worked at a small venture capital firm in New York. And after that I worked in sales at EMC Corporation and later received my MBA from Cornell University.

Adrian: That’s a switch, going from accounting to sales.

Ken: Yeah. So I actually have quite a diversified background between sales and marketing and the finance and accounting side. And then we ended up starting PrimaryAds. My brother and I were affiliates of a couple of the older networks that were out there back in the late 1990’s, like Commission Junction and Websponsors.

Adrian: And how were you driving traffic?

Ken: We just created a couple of websites, nothing too specific. But what we would do is we would find domain names that got a lot of traffic — like from Yahoo, Google and MSN — the owners of which were not monetizing their traffic. So we’d buy a couple of these domain names for inexpensive prices, and we would add a little content and CPA offers to them.

It was a part-time job, where we were monetizing traffic to different websites using a lot of CPA ads from Websponsors and Commission Junction. And then eventually over time, we thought that not only could we start a network and give significantly higher payouts than what were typical in the industry back then, but we would couple that with the best possible service. So any e-mail, any phone call that we ever received, they were all returned.

Adrian: What were some of the domains you were driving traffic from, some of your original domains?

Ken: For example, our very first one was FreeandFun.com. It was getting a good amount of traffic. It was the sixth ranked free stuff website on MSN. And then we eventually bought a couple of larger ones. One was 1FreeStuff.com, and then Free-Stuff.com.

Adrian: And all you had on these sites were some links to some CPA offers and a bit of content?

Ken: Exactly. Unfortunately, we haven’t been maintaining those websites, but that’s what we did back then. We had no intention of ever going into the CPA world. We had good jobs and we were just doing a little bit of arbitrage, buying existing domains that were getting some traffic and converting that traffic into some type of revenue.

Adrian: So on to another topic.. the software, the platform, that’s been something of a contentious issue with Direct Track, but now resolved, and you’re on your own network. Can you talk about some aspects of what happened there and where it’s…where you’re headed toward?

Ken: Well we can’t talk specifics about how we ended up settling the lawsuit, but what I can tell you is that it’s really refreshing to now have our own software, developed by our sister company, Kowabunga!, that we can customize based on what our affiliate base is requesting. We’re able to implement things a lot more quickly. We’re able to really streamline and make technology a differentiator for us, where historically, our differentiator was our payouts and our service to our affiliates. So for example, if we have a search marketing arbitrager that needs a certain feature so that he can look at his returns, or he needs some specific type of tracking, we can help implement that customization feature on our site, where other companies out there may not be as focused as we are on adding those type of features.

Adrian: How frequently are you adding new features into the software?

Ken: Right now we’re adding new features every week to our software and I would say over the next month, we will add more than any other affiliate network that’s out there right now.

Adrian: So what are some of the features that you’re most proud of that are coming down the line?

Ken: We probably have about fifty different features that we will be releasing, but one of the best is a multi sub id reporting. For example, if you’re a search marketer and you’re bidding on five hundred different words in Google, Yahoo or some other search engine, you’re going to be able to track by key word what your earnings per click is. It’s not only sub ids, but you’re going to be able to go at least three levels down. So you know where you have a search marketing guy that’s spending a hundred thousand dollars a month on buying key words and he’s making say twenty thousand dollars. Well now he’s going to be able to better spend that hundred thousand dollars by some of the features we’re going to be adding very shortly.

Adrian: So obviously then by this, the search guys are important to you. We spoke last week with Jennine and a lot of her focus is around people driving traffic with e-mail. Where are your major areas of interest in terms of traffic?

Ken: I’d say it’s really in three main areas. It’s e-mail, it’s search and it’s web. We actually have a very good mix of affiliates. We haven’t gravitated to any one area when it comes to distribution of our offers. So I’d say right now our mix is about a third each for website, search and e-mail.

Adrian: When we talked a couple of months ago I was impressed from our conversation by your real focus on outsourcing everything. You didn’t want to do anything technical yourself. Now that has changed somewhat since you’re now working on building a platform. So let me ask you this – are you generating any of your own offers?

Ken: We are not generating any of our own offers whatsoever. We tested that out when we first started and we decided that was not the place we wanted to be. That’s why we only have eight employees at PrimaryAds. We’re one of the larger networks but we also have one of the least amount of employees because we’re focused on what we’re doing.

Adrian: So if I come to you as an advertiser I can feel pretty assured that my offers aren’t going to get knocked off?

Ken: Exactly. You can be 100 percent confident we will never burn our clients.

Adrian: So where do you see the Think Partnership [PrimaryAds parent company] ending up in ten years?

Ken: I think THK will eventually be one of the largest interactive marketing players. We have some extremely talented individuals. If you look at some of the presidents of the divisions that we have and some of the employees within the THK family you can’t really point out too many other organizations that have that type of team.

Adrian: Can you tell us a little about your lead generation division?

Ken: Lindsey Mure is in charge of that division. What we found was a lot of clients that would call in would not only be looking for traffic to be driven to their offers, but they would also take data batched to them or sent to them in real time through a Lead Gen process. Also, we had a lot of affiliates that didn’t want traffic to leave their website, so they would prefer to add a Lead Gen offer or a co-registration offer. So we found this was a natural next division to start for us, because there is a lot of advertiser and affiliate overlap with our CPA Network.

Adrian: So you’re then reselling leads?

Ken: Well we’re only selling them to the clients that put the offer up. So we’re not reselling leads three or four times. We are only giving those leads to the advertiser that set up the offer with us.

Adrian: Okay. In terms of the overall industry, where do you see the industry itself going? What do you think are the important trends?

Ken: I think you’ll find more and more networks are going to start working together. There’s going to be fewer networks over time because it’s going to be tough for the smaller networks that aren’t established, don’t have a loyal affiliate base, don’t have a good client base. It’s going to be harder for them to survive. So I think what you’ll find is there will be still a good number of networks but I think you’ll see fewer networks than there are today.

Adrian: Well anyone with five thousand dollars can go and start a Direct Track Network, so it’s not much of a barrier to entry.

Ken: Right. But you know it depends on how much money you can make by doing that. So it’s not just a matter of paying five thousand dollars. There’s a lot of time and energy that you have to spend trying to develop a network. And it’s like the chicken and the egg scenario. You can have affiliates but you might not have offers for them to run. Or you might be able to put up offers but you don’t have affiliates to run those offers. It takes a lot of time, a lot of dedication. Not that many people have multiple months to try to start a business, unless they’ve been fortunate in prior jobs and have been able to save enough capital to do so.

Adrian: So on to an off beat side, what’s the weirdest story or the most interesting thing that’s happened while you’ve been running your business?

Ken: (laughing) We actually started PrimaryAds out of my old bedroom. We had five guys working out of my old 300-square foot bedroom in my parent’s house. (laughing) During the summertime it would be above a hundred degrees almost every day in there, we’d have the air-conditioner running, but by the time the afternoon came it just was ridiculously hot, and we just worked through it and continued to grow the business and now we’re in an office space. It’s a little bigger than our bedroom.

Adrian: That sounds better. So that’s pretty interesting – you’ve grown from a bedroom to a company you’ve been able to turn around and sell for $10M+. Do you have any suggestions or advice for other people that may be looking to sell/exit from what they’re doing?

Ken: I think the main thing is you want to find a buyer whose interests are aligned with yours. I think that’s the most important thing. I don’t regret a single day being acquired by THK because of the partners that I now have. For example, it is a real benefit to work with a person like Scott Mitchell, who has an unbelievable background and industry expertise. And you have the CEOs of the other THK subsidiaries with a ton of experience and entrepreneurial savvy, and that’s a resource that you can’t get as a stand-alone company

Adrian: So effectively, if you run into a business issue you have all of those other guys that are kind of like Kleiner Perkins with their Kereitsu…you have a lot of other people that you can brainstorm with and get business help from?

Ken: Exactly.

Adrian: Well, thanks a lot for making time, this was a great interview!

Ken: Thanks, I enjoyed it!

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