Addiply makes US debut on community news site

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An online advertising system developed for hyperlocal websites by a UK entrepreneur has made its US debut on a student news website. Addiply , the advertising system co-created by MyFootballWriter founder Rick Waghorn , has been deployed on the University of Berkeley's Oakland North website .

The system allows publishers to set low-cost advertising rates for text ads, with an aim to attract local advertisers to sites.

Local Californian community news site Oakland North, which is run by Berkeley's School of Journalism students, previously used Google Ads on the site, Richard Koci Hernandez, Ford Fellow in multimedia at the school , told Journalism.co.uk.

The site was set up in October 2008, as part of the programme's Digital News Initiative , and is required to make money as part of its remit.

"This experiment, funded by the Ford Foundation, is to see if a small community website can sustain itself through advertising revenue to support a staff of about 20 journalists," explained Hernandez.

"It [Google Adsense] hasn't been very effective. We only raised $150 in during our six months of operation. We had little-to-no control over the content."

The system was developed partly in response to Waghorn's own experiences of Google Adsense on his football site , where 400,000 pages impressions, over three months, generated $180.

Addiply has been adopted by a number of niche sites in the UK, including community news sites SE1 and the People's Republic of South Devon, but this is the first time it has been converted for US use.

The system will allow Oakland North to target smaller local businesses who have been excluded from previous advertising networks because of high costs, said Hernandez.

"We needed a system the was very easy to use, for both us and the potential advertiser. We also needed control over what our rates would be. Addiply offers us these services," he said.

"We don't have any kind of advertising staff. We have journalists who are wary, rightly so, of selling advertising. It's not part of the journalism tradition, nor should it be. But using Addiply allows us to print the addiply URL on the journalists business cards and the advertiser can 'serve' themselves."