I was at the American Association of Advertising Agencies annual media conference this week in Orlando along with a handful of our sales and marketing team.  The show was a tremendous success for us.  We were able to reach a highly targeted audience and spend enough time with them to demonstrate the significant value that Balihoo brings to their businesses. 

Frankly, we were a bit awestruck by the attention that we were given at the show.  Our booth was full nearly all day, both days of the show. While we did attribute some of the traffic to the strategic placement of the booth directly next to the bar, people were most often seeking us out over the booze. 

We were consistently asked a couple of questions which I thought I would answer generically here:

Q.  Are you guys out of beta?

A.  Yes  - we came out of Beta officially December 1^st .  Unlike some products that are perpetually in beta, we believe in beta being a testing phase just prior to production launch.   Our beta was phenomenal and the demand for our solution remains quite high.  On average we have between 10  and 20 agencies and media owners sign up per week.

Q.  Are companies using your software in production. 

A.  Yes – we have had over 700 agencies and 300 media owners register for access to the solution and nearly all are using Balihoo in one way or another as part of their planning, buying or selling process.  Watch for some announcements over the next 60 days as to some particularly interesting relationships that have developed over the past 6 months.

Q.  How are you different from Donovan, MediaBank, MediaVisor, SRDS, Atlas, Quantcast, Comscore, Nielsen and the list goes on and on.

A.  Balihoo is very different from all of these solutions in two significant ways: 

1.       Balihoo supports ALL mediums – no really ALL of them, you name a single place that an advertiser can reach their target audience and we should have it in our index.  If we don’t, let us know and we will get it added tomorrow.

2.       Balihoo is a true data exchange platform.  We have designed our solution for a single overriding purpose – to facilitate the exchange of data that is necessary to complete a transaction between a buyer and seller of media.  We do not measure media, we do not provide accounting / back office software we do not traffic or serve ads.  We deliver information and data to and from buyers and sellers.  We are working with several data providers and will work with any others that are interested.  We are working with several buying tools and will work with any others that are interested.  Same goes for back office tools.  One of the visitors to the booth said it best – “you guys are the pipeline and we provide the oil.”  If it has to do with getting information (rates, demos, ed cals, materials specs, geo coverage etc.) or generating and aggregating RFIs and RFPs - then we are the place.  We firmly beleive that the solution to the issues facing the industry is collaboration, not more proprietary systems.

Hopefully that answers some of the most pressing questions that you may have about Balihoo, it’s just unfortunate that we did not get to meet you down in sunny Florida.  Maybe next year in New Orleans  - by then I am sure the industry will have it all figured out.