I own a number of domains, many of which I have not developed for lack of time and also for lack of formally conceptualizing how I will use the domain, but I recently purchased a domain adhousref.com. As the name would suggest, I want to create a website that provides simple and basic details about the online advertising world, such as which agency is owned by another, what advertisers work with said agencies, etc. Really the idea was born out of the fact that I have found it extremely difficult to find even basic information with regards to agencies and the online advertising world (especially since I am very new to the industry and also don’t have much knowledge about the ins-and-outs of the industry). The idea for the site was inspired by a great website that an adviser pointed me to called sellercrowd.com (and, for those of you who are already in the industry and know the ups-and-downs, ins-and-outs, check out this great Tumblr blog).

Over time I am hoping that the site will evolve and become a trusted source to learn about up-to-date news within the online advertising world. It is definitely conceived of as a resource to help the sell side of the advertising industry, but I definitely see some uses in the future for the buy side as well (for example, since campaign RFPs are still very much so used, perhaps buyers can post their RFPs direct and manage them via the site). While I recognize there are plenty of other sites out there that have this information (and even on some ad agency sites they have very specific information about their offices, their work and specialties), most of those sites are built behind pay or login firewalls that add (in my opinion) an unnecessary layer to an already massively layered process.

More details to come as the concept for the site gets finalized and slowly built. I think between the redesign of Raj Design Group, work being done for American Academic Prep, and the update of the MAUA website, this is going to be a pretty busy summer.