Adify: Selling at the apex before the flight to quality

News today that ad platform company Adify will be bought by Cox Enterprises in an all cash deal.

Congrats to the Adify team on the deal. They assembled quite a bit of value in a short period of time.

It also seems that there sales comes at the right moment. Vertical network plays work by allowing a blend of brand and performance-based advertising; having the brand though is the key.

For example, “Sustain Lane is a green community/network/marketer, however you see it. They need to sell a certain amount of green advertisers to have their effective CPM be, well, effective.

If an ad recession hits, and the first tell tale signs are “WebMD’s numbers last week, then smaller and newer networks (with less volume and history) will have a tougher time earning brand dollars and continually justifying a platform.

This is not say there is doom at for Adify’s program. By bundling an Adify solution with TV inventory or at least the verticalized cable advertisers, it creates an integrated campaign where Cox can create more value.

So a nice win both ways.

This brings a solid base hit back on Adify’s $27M in funding. There should be an indirect corroloaries reviewed to the Rubicon Project and Pubmatic and other ad service-type companies.