The round, led by Oak Investment Partners, comes as AdKeeper's "Keep" button is set to roll out on online ads from AT&T, Best Buy, Ford and Gap on January 11, after a beta release in October. AdKeeper believes that consumers, although they profess to dislike ads, will actually save ads for later viewing if they find them entertaining or interesting. The company hopes "keeps" will become an ad metric along with impressions and clicks.
When interviewed by USA Today in November, Kurnit (pictured) said he wasn't sure that consumers will actually save ads, though. "That's the $64 billion question. If they do, then this is one of the top three or four Internet companies ever," he said, noting that research showed that 56% of Internet users want to save ads.
For his part, Ian Schafer, CEO of digital ad agency Deep Focus, says that AdKeeper could succeed if it offers some value to consumers. "If ad keeper equals coupon clipper scaled to the size of the Internet, then I'm bullish," Schafer says. "If it's 'Instapaper for ads,' then the odds of me ever going back to look at my portfolio of things that I (the consumer) generally would rather ignore are very slim."