By Ken Parnham

Co-founded by ex-Genesis front man and digital pioneer Peter Gabriel in 2007, we7 has grown its user base by 400% year on year since inception. The service has over four million licensed tracks to stream and download from all four major labels and hundreds of independents. It attracts 3 million unique users per month – 1.5 million to the main site and the rest through a widget network (source: we7, April 2010).

“We’ve just (end of April 2010) achieved our first month of advertising covering the cost of music streams, three years after launching – it is a huge milestone for us and shows that advertising can support legal online music streaming services. Our site is 100 percent funded through advertising so partnering with a company who can support our unique business model – now and moving forwards is absolutely critical to us,” said Gareth Reakes, Chief Technology Officer, we7.

He continued: “We needed an ad server which could integrate with our ‘MediaGraft’ engine - which enables us to ‘graft’ adverts to the beginning of each song visitors listen to. It also creates new, targeted, advertising inventory which links the emotional power of music, creative short audio adverts and digital display ads (such as MPUs) together in such a way that digital effectiveness measurements increase significantly. The result is powerful promotional messages for advertisers, ‘paid-for’ free music and payments for music rights owners.”

“The solution from ADTECH works well with MediaGraft and feeds directly into our music player, telling it what to do in terms of which audio ads to retrieve and which creative type to deliver,” said Gareth Reakes. “It’s certainly not straightforward display ad delivery – there are multiple assets/creative formats to manage such as multiple images, audio, video etc. ADTECH’s solution not only describes what should be shown and heard, but also specifies how it should behave too. Many ad server companies just can’t do this type of templating; they only provide plain texting which isn’t good enough for us.”

"The targeting functionality in ADTECH supports our business model of providing visitors with relevant, personal and local ads. By listening acutely we fully understand what users are listening to which makes it easier to feedback to advertisers. As we grow we’ll start to do more clever things with the ad server and eventually we’ll also enable visitors to choose the type and style of ads that are attached to their music choices so the ads are increasingly relevant.”

About the author

Ken Parnham is Managing Director of ADTECH UK and Ireland.

About ADTECH

ADTECH AG is an international supplier of digital marketing solutions and is AOL Advertising's ad serving platform. The company's flagship product is an integrated ad server solution that enables web publishers, ad networks, agencies and advertisers to manage, serve and evaluate virtually any kind of online advertising campaign including display, video and mobile formats. ADTECH’s solution differentiates itself from the competition through its scalable, enterprise-class infrastructure and user-friendly tools, providing users with increased efficiency, reliability and ROI for their online advertising business. ADTECH customers include major players like BSkyB, Hi-media, Gannett and Fox Networks. ADTECH AG is a wholly-owned subsidiary of AOL Inc.

About AOL

AOL Inc. (NYSE: AOL) is a leading global Web services company with an extensive suite of brands and offerings and a substantial worldwide audience. AOL’s business spans online content, products and services that the company offers to consumers, publishers and advertisers. AOL is focused on attracting and engaging consumers and providing valuable online advertising services on both AOL’s owned and operated properties and third-party websites. In addition, AOL operates one of the largest Internet subscription access services in the United States, which serves as a valuable distribution channel for AOL’s consumer offerings.