VentureBeat

The Rubicon Project, an LA-based company that is trying to optimize online ads, has launched a new line of online ad inventory, comprised of sites it has certified as “high-quality.” Its software already lets ad networks reach a site’s visitors based on market segments like geography and topic of the site, solving the problem of unsold or nearly worthless inventory. So this certification is an iteration on the earlier offering, that might make the company some more money.

The new certified sites are intended to help networks run ads from high-end advertisers, typically brands that pay to make sure their ads appear next to seemly and relevant content. The company says it carefully screens, rates and classifies partner sites using a combination of software and human verification. Some of Rubicon Projects in the ad-optimization area include AdBrite as well as Pubmatic, along with YieldBuild’s service for site-specific ad optimization.

Rubicon: No softening of the online ad market so far

Rubicon has also released a study today that shows, through its own data, how the online advertising market is become more competitive, and fragmenting (and why Rubicon is presented to take advantage of that — see the video below involving easter eggs, a shooting and a barbecue for more).

One interesting stat: While Google has seen a dip in clickthroughs on ads, rivals have been paying more money to publishers. The report concludes that there is no softening of the online ad market, and gives the following possible reasons for Google’s dip:

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 (Update: Part of the financing was debt; we’ve updated accordingly)

The Rubicon Project, a startup that wants to streamline the process of dealing with multiple ad networks, has taken $6 million in venture and debt funding. It plans to start private testing of the product next week.

The company’s fully-automated software solution will be a platform designed to help publishers sell their unused ad space to the highest bidder.

The company is being quiet about plans, saying only that its service gives any website “the most complete access to the total available advertising market.”

CEO Frank Addante got his start before the dotcom boom with L90/admonitor, a startup later sold to DoubleClick. At the time he started in the internet ad industry, there were only 15 ad networks, he aid. Today there are over 300 to deal with.

As that number continues to grow, publishers find it ever more difficult to choose the best network to use at any given moment. “Websites need to be able to connect to all the funding sources, but that takes some pretty sophisticated technology,” Addante said. “What we’re really doing is giving these websites more access to the advertising markets, and giving them the smart technology to do the work.”

A startup called Pubmatic, which started testing a similar service two weeks ago, with 400 publishers already signed up, helps publishers pick the best ads for their site from a handful of the largest networks. The Rubicon Project seems likely to play to a more sophisticated set of publishers, who want to have access to every ad network possible.

Still, big challenges remain for both companies, because ad networks don’t like to share their data, and so having real time oversight of the ad pricing and other terms across networks may not be possible

Based in West Los Angeles, the Rubicon project will be launching its private beta service in October 8th. Of its $6 million in funding, $4 million was provided by Clearstone Venture Partners, with the remainder coming in debt from Square1Bank.