Articles by: Roland Smart
February 23, 2010 – 10:00 am
Carnet Williams is CEO and Co-Founder of Sprout, a brand engagement ad platform.
AdExchanger.com: Let’s start with the name – how does “Sprout” mesh with what you’re doing today? And, what problem is Sprout solving and how does this play out with your announcement about Disney?
CW: The display advertising business is still incredibly young. There is so much room for innovation to sprout. We want to make display ads relevant and engaging. We want to enable brands to plant relationships with customers and nurture those relationships with continuous conversations over time.
Today, we announced Sprout Engage Ads. Sprout Engage Ads allow brands to make stronger connections with their audiences by providing a fun, interactive experience, wherever their audiences travel online.
Our first customer to roll out these ads is Disney, who created Engage Ads for Alice in Wonderland. These ads are designed to take display advertising to the next level by bringing personally relevant data right into a standard Flash ad unit. The ads are ‘smart’ in that they know when you have engaged with them so you will never see the same content twice. In addition, the ad and the Facebook application is linked so the ads know if you have engaged with the app and vice versa. For example, if you add yourself to the Mad Hatter’s Army in the ad, when you come to the Facebook app you will be recognized as being in the army.
Thank you to everyone who attended our event yesterday. We were thrilled to have a packed room and so much enthusiasm. Big thanks to our presenters and to 
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