Brand.net offers blind ad sales

I thought this article was interesting after our discussion last week about advertisers' sensitivity to where their ads are placed and their reluctance to advertise on sites with high levels of user generated content such as YouTube. This article from AdAge descirbes now Brand.net is taking advantage of the weak economy to sell excess online ad inventory to companies - without telling them where their ads will appear: http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=134243

"The idea behind Brand.net, launched by a couple of ex-Yahoo execs, is that a publisher will give an online ad network high-quality inventory only when it's clear the network won't tell advertisers that the publisher is part of the network. That means advertisers don't know for sure but have to trust that they're buying quality, premium sites; even the network's salespeople aren't quite sure what sites are being used in each campaign they sell.
It's the only way to get premium publishers comfortable using networks again, especially as a worsening economy and increase in supply leads more top inventory to go unsold, said Brand.net CEO Elizabeth Blair. "

Although Brand.net doesn't tell advertisers the exact sites where their ads will appear, it does give them some information about the level of user generated content on the site and allows them to choose the level they feel most comfortable with:

"Advertisers, of course, need some information on where their ads are running and that the inventory is safe -- that the ads won't be next to videos of bloody street fights or comments laced with vulgarities. To address that, advertisers get a list of top ComScore sites in genre-based buckets. Brand.net does not say it has buying relationships with any publishers on the list -- only that the buy will include "sites like these." It has also launched a grading system, based on how the site content is organized, where the user-generated content is and whether it's moderated. A site with only professionally created content gets an A ("most safe"), while a site with moderated comments gets a C. A site with highly dynamic or un-moderated forums gets an E ("most potential for some crazy UGC to surface"). "

It will be interesting to see if advertisers' tolerance for risk increases as the economic downturn continues, and whether blind ads become a more popular tactic for mainstream companies who are more concerned about cost than targeting their ads to specific sites.