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 Client Examples to learn 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.
David Sidman is the founder and CEO of Linkstorm, an advertising technology company that makes online advertising more useful to the consumer, and therefore better-performing for the advertiser. Linkstorm has achieved 2x-20x improvements in click-through and conversion rates for IBM, Cisco, Wal-Mart, Blackberry, American Express and many others by overlaying its unique, patent-pending navigation menu onto their display ads.
Mr. Sidman originally founded the company as Content Directions in order to commercialize a new linking system for the Internet created by the primary inventor of the Internet itself, Dr. Robert Kahn, with the potential to replace or supplant DNS and URLs as we know them today. In the course of setting the company on its current/successful path in online advertising, he re-invented the company several times over and raised >$13M from 175 Angel investors including Esther Dyson, Jim Rutt, D.E. Shaw, Robert Weissman and others, as well as creating an extensive patent portfolio for what is fundamentally a new/better way to navigate the Web.
Prior to founding Linkstorm, Mr. Sidman 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. As a member of the M&A team, he participated in acquisitions and integrations totaling about $300M.
In addition to his Linkstorm responsibilities, Mr. Sidman is the non-executive chairman of Anian Games, a social media gaming company, and a managing director at POM Partners (“Pulse On Media”), a boutique investment and advisory firm focused solely on digital media.
Prior to Linkstorm and Wiley, Mr. Sidman held senior management positions in the technology, finance and information businesses of 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.
David Rosenbloom has worked in software development for over two decades, in domains as varied as online collaboration, peer-to-peer communication frameworks, games, graphics, music, real estate, advertising and systems. At Linkstorm he leads the development team and contributes as architect and developer. Previously he held similar hands-on CTO roles for Sigma Design, Softwax, Homethinking, and Rare Medium, overseeing the expansion of the latter, through its IPO, from a small design shop to a 13-office international services company. He has also worked for AT&T's Downtown Digital, Eidolon/Electronic Arts, Workman Publishing and Information Builders, and led design and development on two award-winning game titles. David is also active as a composer, guitarist and painter, and is a cum laude graduate of Harvard.
Mr. Healy began his career in the Internet Industry in 1998 where he quickly made a home within the Advertising Operations role. Starting initially in a sales Support role for NJ.com, Mike learned ad operations duties from both a publisher and vendor perspective. In 2000 he joined the Doubleclick media team as their Business Sponsorship Specialist where he was responsible for handling clients such as EdgarOnline, Nasdaq, Time, iWon and Headhunter.net. He then joined an up and coming player in outsourced Ad Operations called Trafficmac (now known as Operative) where he learned all aspects of ad operations and was responsible for training of all new personnel. For the seven years that he remained with Operative, he had the opportunity to learn the inner workings of many different ad servers such as DFP, DFA, OAS, Falk, CheckM8, Accipiter and others. During this time, he was also responsible for working with clients to determine the best ways in which to architect their products for Internet Advertising. These products ranged from simple publisher websites through complex network offerings including such elements as revenue shares, video integration, RSS and email sponsorships. Since landing at Linkstorm in 2008, Mike has been responsible for all ad campaigns delivered through Linkstorm's proprietary technology as well as optimizing internal and external tools and workflows.
Jon Emery was Senior VP, General Counsel of Network Solutions, a technology company, which was sold to VeriSign for $17 Billion in July 2000. Before Network Solutions, he was Corporate Counsel at Tambrands (formerly Tampax), and so brings significant business perspective about advertising and marketing at a major consumer products company. He is now a full-time investor who is actively involved in all his portfolio companies.
As CEO of LionShare Strategies, Susan architects growth strategies with CEOs of major global companies, start-up ventures and investors to drive revenue, EBITDA, market share and scale. Susan has extensive global experience in launching breakthrough technologies and services for companies including: Apple Computer, DirecTV, Viacom, KirchMedia, Virgin Mobile and PepsiCo and facilitating strategic partnerships, key customers and accretive M&A transactions. Susan has particular expertise in commercializing innovative new media, TV, mobile and social media distribution platforms, including Sugar Mama, which was the 1st mobile advertising service. Susan holds a B.A. in Economics from Brandeis University, an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management and attended London School of Economics. She mentors at Princeton University on Innovation and Entrepreneurship and is on the Board of Advisors for the NJ Technology Council for Media and Communications. See her background on LinkedIn and LionShare Strategies).
Robert (Bobby) Brahms was a founder of FindWhat.com (later Miva), an Internet advertising company that reached a market cap of nearly $1 Billion. He has invested in numerous startups, including RadioIo (an Internet radio company), and most recently launched a new venture fund, WPI Ventures LLC (a fund that buys and sells shares of non-public companies such as Facebook).