Entrepreneur launches new “female” ad network

The founder of successful parenting site Kidspot, Katie May, is the latest digital entrepreneur to launch an advertising network.

May has launched SheSpot, an advertising network for reaching women in Australia, across key interest categories. May says she spied the opportunity last November after sitting down with her strategy team and thrashing out a problem. She had a niche site (Kidspot) appealing to mums and had built a sales team and infrastructure to sell advertising. Her problem was that she couldn’t grow her inventory at the rate the briefs were coming in, and she didn’t have the money to spend on marketing.

At the same time the recession was making advertising agencies busier than ever, and they lacked the resources to trawl through piles of presentations from niche site owners looking for great opportunities to take to demanding clients.

May says when building the network she looked for websites that were in the top three in their category with a female dominated audience of over 80%, with the majority aged between 25 and 49. The network so far  includes Kidspot, Birth.com.au (acquired by Kidspot in January), Bestrecepies.com.au and US site care2.com. “We would love to add a beauty and health site,” she says.

The portfolio of sites allows SheSpot advertisers to tap into women’s interests ranging from parenting to food, entertainment and the environment and connects advertisers with over one million total unique browsers in Australia with little duplication, May says.

May says her network differs from other advertising networks because she has a deep understanding of the sites she represents. “We are looking for more sites but they need to have a similar philosophy and be uncluttered. We wouldn’t take anyone for example who had seven ads to a page.”

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