A growing part of a growing high-tech sector in Southwest Florida
First in an occasional series
AdRizer enjoys a growth market like other technology companies that are either expanding or locating in Sarasota and Manatee counties. Just weeks ago, the young company — whose software boosts internet traffic to clients' websites — moved into larger digs to accommodate its mushrooming young workforce. The digital-marketing innovator has added four employees since the move and is seeking more.
Sarasota’s expanding technology sector includes home-grown enterprises like AdRizer and Revcontent and relocated companies such as xByte Technologies and FloorForce.
The digital-marketing sector has been growing so quickly here that, last January, the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee launched a class focusing on the technology niche in order to provide qualified employees to some of the two dozen companies operating in that sphere.
Laid-back atmosphere
At AdRizer's expansive new headquarters in the Rosemary District, dogs can be spotted wandering around the customized space in the former Babcock furniture store, which dates to 1957.
Another sign of AdRizer’s laid-back atmosphere can be spotted near the entrance — a professional barber’s chair, bolted to the floor, where complimentary employee haircuts are given every other week. Then there’s the ping-pong table.
Quite a few Boosted premium electric skateboards, at around $1,500 a pop, hang on a wall, all plugged in and charged, available to staff for quick trips around downtown. Plus, there’s a car-detail service, an employee referral rewards program and an Uber for Business account.
The serious side of the business is performed by software engineers working on AdRizer’s ground-breaking creation — an analytics platform that lets digital publishers grasp which parts of their websites are making the most money. The platform monitors advertising spending used to promote content and determines how much revenue is generated. Publishers can then optimize their return on investment.
Better than jet skis
Ken Bond and Steve Flee created the company in Sarasota in 2013 on a kitchen counter, motivated to earn enough money to buy jet skis. Plus, they didn’t like their regular jobs writing software back then.
“After we started pursuing this route,” Bond said, “we found we were really good at it. We decided just to reinvest the money instead of buying jet skis and start a company.”
Bond is AdRizer’s chief executive and Flee its chief technology officer.
Working up to 80 hours a week, they’ve grown the company from three employees working in cramped quarters in a friend’s office to bigger quarters along Second Street and now to their 5,000-square-foot space with room for more growth.
“The growth curve is pretty dramatic in 2017,” Bond said. “We went from three to six. When we left Second Street, we had 20. Now we have 24. We hired a couple of employees based on just getting this office because we couldn’t fit them in our last office.
“And we’re trying to hire more.”
The current staff of six web developers is not enough. “We’re always open to hiring more developers,” Bond said. “I would say that is the biggest pain point for Sarasota is hiring top engineering talent. I feel like we have a strong team on that side of the business that’s been able to help us grow on the software side that’s gotten us to where we are today.”
Making money
Last year’s net revenues came in around $15 million. This year, “I would say we’re up about 20 percent. We’ll see how the month (of December) ends.”
How exactly does AdRizer make money? It’s all about the clicks on the promotional content displayed on websites, tempting internet users to visit other sites that contain ads. In a word, eyeballs.
Some explanation of the classifications of those web users is necessary to understand AdRizer’s business plan. An “organic” visitor gets linked to a website through an unpaid search engine such as Google. A “referral” visitor clicks on paid links sitting on other websites, or even Facebook. A “direct” user types a web address, or URL, into a browser.
Search engine optimization comes into play via the keywords and keyword phrases that capture what someone surfing the web enters in Google, Bing, Yahoo and or search engines. SEO allows scientific targeting of the people searching for what a website offers. But AdRizer focuses on another target.
Bond explained: “We saw there was a huge rise of referral-based traffic and a huge drop in organic/direct-based traffic, so we exploited it with our own websites.”
Attracting traffic
AdRizer thus boosts referral traffic, earning revenue in the process.
“Websites started to advertise their content, which sounds unique to a lot of people — that websites would have to market their content. But that’s what’s happening,” Bond said.
“They pay Google to get higher in a search. They’ll pay to get users to their website.
“This has been so vital to companies, and now AdRizer is changing how publications do so. Traffic sources are charging websites money to get the reach,” he said. “We are a layer on top of the traffic source and the revenue drivers for that website, and we charge a fee to the website to do so.
“We monitor how much spend and revenue is generated from those users purchased. And that’s the powerful piece of our software. We match the two equations. Making sure when our client pays 5 cents to get a user, they made 6 cents off of him.
“That’s a good deal.”
Fortune 500 clients
The company signs confidentiality agreements with clients because they have access to sensitive information and cannot name names. But, Bond said, “They’re big.” Of their 13 clients, five are Fortune 500 companies.
AdRizer earned statewide recognition in July as one of 50 firms selected for the GrowFL “2017 Florida Companies to Watch” list. The Legislature created the GrowFL economic development program in 2009 to assist second-stage-growth companies prosper.
“It’s nice to actually be recognized,” Bond said, noting that the company does little marketing of itself. “Being recognized by Grow Florida was a great step in that direction.”
Bond and Flee know how quickly the industry changes and aren’t waiting for other start-ups or established companies to match or surpass their product.
“We’re constantly trying to innovate and add more features to our products as we onboard new clients,” Bond said. “The sky’s the limit.
“We’ll see where it goes. Every day, every week, it’s different. Everything is changing so fast in the world of online publications.”