"After departing the conglomerate in 2022, Hudson went back to his roots, so to speak. Last year, he founded Pie Adblock, another browser extension, but this time for ad-blocking solutions. Last month, the Pie business launched a new spinout, the aforementioned ZeroClick, which Hudson tells me is now the primary focus of the company, rather than iterating on the ad blocker."
"But wait. How was a contextual targeting solution for ad-block users applicable for AI products? The challenges they address are actually quite similar, Hudson says. As an ad blocker that doesn't want to remove all ads, but rather only serve ads that users choose to see, the company realized that the types of ad formats and media channels people wanted were things like shopping ads for products they were interested in."
Ryan Hudson founded ZeroClick as a spinout from Pie Adblock after leaving Honey. Pie provides an ad blocker with user controls to allow certain ads, cash-back credits from merchant partners, and affiliate link earnings, and reports roughly two million users. The Pie team built a contextual ad-targeting solution and pivoted to an AI-based advertising product when the technology proved applicable to AI environments. ZeroClick aims to serve shopping and sponsored listings within AI chatbots and related products. The business secured a $55 million investment from many previous Honey backers and became the company's primary focus.
Read at AdExchanger
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