WHAT: Social network advertising platform that pays users to write and display ads on their social accounts. Instead of relying on a celebrity to endorse a product, users are the voice of wisdom for their online communities. Advertisers have final say in approval of content.

LAUNCHERS: Josh Kim, CEO.

WHY: People hate online advertising. Since advertisements are unavoidable, why not crowdsource your content writing and ad publishing to social network users. People will be less reluctant to click an ad on their friend's page if they know they wrote the ad.

WHEN/WHERE: August 2011 / Japan, January 2011 / South Korea.

BUSINESS MODEL: Adby.Me takes a percentage off of the entire ad campaign. Ad publishers earn an 80% share of revenue, copywriters 20%.

COMPETITION: MyLikes, Ad.ly.

CUSTOMERS/GROWTH: Generated more than $300K on more than 400 advertising campaigns during first seven months of beta.

RAISING: Bootstrapped, raising $1M.

NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES: 13

The main AdbyMe dashboard features their current social ads and their rates.

AdbyMe members choose to participate in the ad service as a copywriter or publisher.

For each campaign you can see the user-created slogans, how many times they have been published and how many unique views they have generated. But as you can see, the most published ad does not necessarily mean the most successful.

Josh Kim, CEO, pitches Adby.Me on TWiST #184 Seoul Meetup.

FURTHER READING

1. Seoul, South Korea Meetup on This Week In Startups #184 (This Week In Startups, Aug. 26, 2011).

2. Should You Advertise on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter? (Social Media Examiner, Aug. 26, 2011).

CONTACTS & LINKS

Adby.Me
Website: Adby.me
Blog: http://blog.adby.me/
Twitter: @adbyme
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/AdbyMe

Josh Kim
Email: Joshok at adby dot me
Twitter: @AdbyCEO
LinkedIn: http://kr.linkedin.com/pub/josh-jaehong-kim/26/117/b38

LAUNCH Blog