Linkstorm is an advertising technology company pioneering a new approach to online advertising with the premise that ads perform better for the advertiser when they are more useful to the customer.
Our next-generation hyperlinking system significantly enhances the performance of online advertising, e-commerce and online publishing by overlaying cascading menus onto any kind of hyperlink or ad unit, thus enabling customers to navigate directly to the information or actions that they want.
By rolling over a Linkstorm-enabled link or ad, the customer unfurls a menu of links, thus previewing additional destinations even before having to click. Then a single click takes the customer deep into a website, right to the answer to their question, the product info they were seeking or the transaction they wanted to perform. In the case of advertising, these links could include multiple products, offer details or marketing messages that specifically address their interests.
See our Client Results for examples of how Linkstorm is turning display advertising into a true high-performance marketing tool.
Linkstorm is headquartered in New York City and is funded by visionary investors including and Jim Rutt.
Linkstorm, founded as Content Directions in August 2000 and renamed in November 2005, was established to commercialize the Handle System®, a next-generation linking system developed by Dr. Robert Kahn, a co-creator of the Internet and co-inventor of its underlying communication protocol, TCP/IP. This innovation improves on the URL concept of linking only to a single web page address, which often requires information seekers to follow a daisy-chain of page links to reach the exact nugget of content they need.
In Dr. Kahn's Handle System platform, a handle is a unique identifier for any kind of digital object. Then, through Linkstorm's unique patent-pending extensions to the Handle System, the object can be associated with any number of related links, other objects, or any other centrally maintained data. The scientific/technical/medical (STM) publishing industry has embraced this technology and uses it today to interlink 99 percent of the world's journal articles.
Linkstorm's management, however, after helping drive this universal adoption in the journal industry, determined that this technology could impact a much larger market segment in ways that would benefit the business world and the hundreds of millions of active Internet users beyond the scientific community. The company spent years building and enhancing that technology in collaboration with major publishers such as McGraw-Hill and Harvard Business School Publishing and has now optimized its patent-pending platform for the new marketplace opportunity represented by online advertising.
Mr. Sidman is a seasoned business executive with wide-ranging experience in the publishing, technology and finance industries. Prior to founding Linkstorm, he served as director of new publishing technologies for John Wiley & Sons, where he helped the U.S.' oldest independent publisher to transition its print business to the web through a combination of strategy development, internal projects enabling organic growth, and external acquisitions/investments. In four years he helped grow electronic product revenues 16-fold, with profitability rising more than 10-fold. He also helped initiate usage of the web as a sales channel for print publications, growing this channel from nonexistence in 1996 to over $30 million by the time he left.
For Wiley's Journal business, he worked closely with Internet pioneer Dr. Robert Kahn and his DARPA-funded Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI) to adapt Dr. Kahn's Handle System for the Scientific/Technical/Medical Publishing industry, including the founding of CrossRef which today interlinks more than 25 million journal articles. He then founded Linkstorm in August 2000 as Content Directions, Inc. (CDI) in order to develop additional applications based on the Handle System for the publishing industry, securing multi-year ongoing commitments that continue today from McGraw-Hill, Harvard Business School Publishing, Cambridge University Press and others.
Prior to Linkstorm and Wiley, Mr. Sidman held senior management positions in the technology, finance and information businesses with Barclay's Bank, Moody's Investors Service, Shearson Lehman Hutton/American Express, Mercantile Stores and the American Society of Civil Engineers. Mr. Sidman is a summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Harvard, where he also taught physics, mathematics and philosophy as an undergraduate.
Mr. Kolber joined Linkstorm in September 2005 and served as Linkstorm's vice president of sales during its crucial market-entry period, signing the company's first wave of Fortune 200 customers. He has a highly successful track record of business development experience in the media and telecommunications industries, including Viacom where he played key roles in the implementation of MTV's global satellite distribution strategy and the development and sale of television programming and feature films.
At Loral Space and Communications, he was responsible for establishing joint ventures and strategic alliances with a variety of U.S. and international partners. Most recently, Mr. Kolber was a co-founder of Canopy Enterprises, a television production and integrated marketing company. Mr. Kolber holds a bachelor's degree in Government and Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia.
Mr. Waxenberg joined Linkstorm in July of 2007 and is responsible for the implementation of the company's global sales strategy. He is focusing the company's sales efforts initially on the financial, automotive, technology, travel, e-commerce and healthcare industries. Mr. Waxenberg has led sales efforts for various nationally recognized companies and online entities. At Tribal Fusion, an online advertising network, he helped boost revenue by more than 70 percent in one year and tripled the size of the sales staff.
Previously, Mr. Waxenberg was managing director, international sales at Claria, where he opened a New York office and launched a European sales division in London. Before that he played a number of key sales roles with Excite@Home, focusing on large strategic deals. Over his career, he has held a variety of sales positions with companies such as Giant Bear, a wireless application service provider, Travel & Leisure and Golf Magazine. Mr. Waxenberg holds a bachelor's degree in Communications from the University of Michigan.
Mr. Binder brings more than 15 of years experience in creating, maintaining, marketing and selling high-technology business products and services at a variety of companies both small and large, including AIG, Scholastic Publishing, TheStreet.com and United Management Technologies. For four years, Lon was president of Clever Oak. Through Clever Oak's primary service, SnapFood.com, New Yorkers ordered food online from local restaurants. Mr. Binder also provided business and technology consulting for various companies including Alexander Interactive, Pepperidge Farm and [x+1].
Mr. Brekke offers a valuable mix of marketing, creative and product development skills cultivated through leading roles with diverse international startups, including his own ventures, as well as Fortune 500 companies. In his capacity as account planner with Ogilvy, he provided strategic direction for clients such as IBM and Lotus and has continued to provide insightful creative direction to countless clients whether working for boutique agencies or during his tenure as vice president of marketing for JPMorgan Chase. At Linkstorm, Mr. Brekke continues to drive the company and its clients forward by staying one step ahead of their competitors with his sharp strategic mind and passion for interactive marketing. He earned his B.A. in Sociology from the University of Bergen, Norway and an M.A. in Communication from SUNY Albany.
Ms. Condon is a respected advertising executive with decades of experience across multiple media (Online, TV, Print), including 24 years spent at McCann-Erickson Worldgroup where she received numerous internal awards and contributed significantly to industry-wide initiatives via the IAB, TVB and MPA.
While at McCann, Ms. Condon was responsible for a variety of roles including media planning, buying, and systems integration. Her most recent contributions included the data migration of all UM local television dollars and electronic invoicing across all Universal McCann clients.
A certified Project Management Professional (PMP), Ms. Condon is responsible for scaling and managing Linkstorm's Ad Operations, enhancing its trafficking and metrics reporting systems, and managing its operational relationships with agency partners, ad servers and publishers.
Marty Kahn has built several highly successful information companies including BRS Information Services, Ovid Technologies (sold in 1998 to Wolters Kluwer), and OneSource Information Services (now a successful public company). He is a Venture Partner with Rho Capital. Before he began building successful companies in the Information Industry, he held senior positions with McGraw-Hill and CBS. Kahn is a graduate of the Harvard Business School.
Lee Greenhouse is special limited partner of Flatiron Partners with decades of experience in building, managing, and consulting on interactive services. Greenhouse developed Wall Street's first electronic brokerage service for E.F. Hutton & Company. He managed the launch of an integrated financial workstation for a joint venture of IBM and Merrill Lynch, as well as running a business unit for Quotron and consulted extensively for Citicorp. Greenhouse holds a B.A. from Harvard University.