Seed Corn Growing Per Click

Stern Andrew Stern was going to be a professional tennis player until a wrist injury took him out of the game. Fortunately, he’s found a new match. After the dot com bubble burst and the company he worked for went under in 2000, he salvaged a handful of clients. At first, he was just trying to produce advertising copy for them. But over the next few years, Stern realized that the real opportunity was in pay-per- click advertising. Using a $5,000 family loan, he set about creating Seed Corn Advertising in 2002. The pay-per-click agency helps connect website publishers with advertisers who wanted to pay less for ad words than what major search engines charge. To bring them together, he created a search engine, Seed Corn PPC, which competes in a whole other world that functions below Google, Bing and Yahoo. Most consumers don’t even know about them, but these second-tier search engines make it possible for advertisers to get in front of consumers for pennies per click, while the major search engines charge much more. “We provide the space for advertisers to meet on a lower cost per click basis,” said Stern. Second-tier search engines are not without controversy. Some, like Ask.com and Business.com are worthwhile, and companies have had success generating traffic to their web site using them, according to Search Engine Watch. But according to the website, there are many second tier search engines that are not search engines at all. Rather than a human being typing in the search, queries are generated by text ad impressions, according to Search Engine Watch. What’s more, click fraud, which occurs when a computer program imitates a legitimate website user to click an ad for the purpose of generating a charge per click, continues to be a problem for these second tier search engines. The search engines benefit from the charge, but not necessarily the advertiser. Headquarters: Studio City CeO: Andrew Stern three-year growth rate: 55.5 percent REVENUE 2010: $5.1 million revenue 2009: $4.3 million Revenue 2008: $3.28 million Stern remains above these concerns. There are thousands of companies who simply can’t pay what Google charges, he said, and for these companies, he provides a service. “We’re kind of the hidden part of the industry; it’s much more business-to-business,” he said. Seed Corn, according to its website, delivers over 7 billion impressions per month on behalf of more than 1,000 advertisers using more than 300 publishers or affiliates in 30 countries. He explained that some of those publishers are also competitors, such as Sherman Oaks-based Advertise.com. For someone who moved to California to be a Hollywood writer — a much more uncertain profession — Stern has done well. Seed Corn racked up $5.1 million in revenue in 2010 on a three-year growth rate of 56.5 percent. He expects to top $6 million for 2011. “I wasn’t planning to stay in California,” he said, unpacking boxes in his new Calabasas home, “but this opportunity with the Internet came up and now I’m buying a big house, getting married and starting a family. I guess I’m here for the long haul.”