Through a variety of sources we’ve confirmed that Technorati is making plans for a major shift in it’s going forward strategy, and is also considering a number of corporate development transactions.

First, they’ve been pitching venture capitalists on another round of financing. That’s not surprising - their last round, $10.5 million, was in June 2006. The company has raised a total of just over $20 million, and given that they have 25 employees, it’s time for another round. But we’ve also heard that they’ve hired Montgomery & Co. to shop the company to buyers, simultaneous to their funding pitches.

What’s more interesting, though is what we’re hearing on the product front. Technorati, under new CEO Richard Jalichandra, recently changed it site to focus more on its core blogging audience.

That change foreshadows the upcoming shift - which places the Technorati site itself as an anchor in a new blog advertising network.

Advertising networks are popular right now - Glam recently raised $85 million after transitioning, seemingly overnight, from a small web property focused on women to selling advertising for a variety of similarly-focused publishers. And John Battelle’s FM Publishing, an advertising network focused on technology blogs, recently hired investment bank Savvian to help them raise money or sell after turning down a $100 million buyout offer.

Technorati will certainly be competing head to head with FM, although sources say they’ll focus on the long tail of the market as well (FM only takes larger sites). The network will be a self-serve exchange for bloggers (and other publishers) as well as advertisers. Ad units will include both display and text ads, and will allow units to be charged on both a CPM and CPC basis. This self-service model looks a lot more like Adbrite than Glam or FM.

Technorati tags, which are very often used to describe blog posts with keywords selected by the author, would also be a natural way for Technorati to target advertising more effectively.

Technorati has also considered other strategies recently, including a blog rollup. But our understanding is that they’ve gone with the ad network idea, and are currently focusing engineers on finalizing the product.

Will the strategy work? As we’ve argued many times, ad networks suffer from fickle customers. Glam offers partners revenue guarantees based on page views (and lost $3.7 million last year on $21 million in revenue). FM has resisted guarantees to date, but lost high profile partner Digg last year to Microsoft. Others, including us, have simply sold advertising directly while continuing to work with FM. With Technorati entering the market, publishers will have yet more choices. That’s good for everyone except the ad networks competing for their business.

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Spottt, which went into private beta at TechCrunch40, launches to the public today. The product is part of the Adbrite advertising network, but is being run as a separate brand.

It is a reincarnation of sorts of LinkExchange, an advertising network that launched in the mid nineties and was later acquired by Microsoft in 1998 for $265 million. LinkExchange co-founder Tony Hsieh (also the founder of Zappos) is advising Adbrite on Spottt.

The basic idea is that you place the Spottt 125×125 ad unit on your site, above the fold (no adult content). They provide a simple embed code, or you can use your own ad serving software (we use OpenAds). For every two ad impressions that you serve, you’ll get one free ad somewhere on the network (you can see the ad unit here on TechCrunch, we’ve added it into the sponsor’s area to the right to test it), and it is also on CrunchBase.

That leaves Spottt with 50% of the ad inventory for itself. For the first year they’ll just place their own ads on sites. After a year they’ll add the extra inventory to Adbrite and let advertisers purchase it.

This isn’t for everyone, of course. Sites that can sell ads will want to do so to make the money. But Adbrite founder Philip Kaplan notes that there are millions of websites that cannot afford to advertise, and this gives them a way of doing so without paying. And even sites that have advertising units on their site may want to add this to get some inventory on other sites. “I think this is the coolest thing we’ve ever built,” he said.

Spottt is also providing real time statistics for users, including the number of ads you’ve shown, the number you’ve received (half of that) and the number of clicks on both ads you are showing and those you are receiving. Click on the image for a larger view of sample stats.

Spottt is run from Amazon’s EC2 web service, and advertising images are hosted on Akami (Kaplan says he wants to be able to scale quickly in the event it grows anything like LinkExchange did back in the day). They are also working with Gigya to enable the placement of the ad unit on MySpace and other social networks. If ads aren’t accepted on any particular social network, he says, they’ll just run their house ads on that site.

If you’d like to sign up for the service, use the code “techcrunch” and get 1,000 free impressions to start. The first 1,000 registrations qualify.

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AdBrite might have just secured an additional $23 million in funding, but at midnight tonight its business prospects may look decidedly dimmer. Competing ad network Etology is cutting deals with some of AdBrite’s biggest customers to take over their ads.

A big chunk of the ads that AdBrite serves are for porn sites on behalf of the AVN Media Network. These AVN Ads make up 31 percent of AdBrite’s total daily impressions (259 million out of 824 million total, according to the respective Websites). Yes, porn is the lifeblood of many of these online ad networks—don’t act so surprised.

Since December, 2004 AdBrite has been supplying the technology, billing, and payment platform for AVN Ads. Now that deal is going to Etology, who will manage the site from now on and relaunch it with a new look. Before that happens, AdBrite is trying to redirect all of its members to its own new adult advertising sub-brand, BlackLabelAds. If you go to the AVN Ads Website, you will see a big pop-up trying to switch advertisers and publishers with existing accounts over to BlackLabelAds. Yet, according to Etology, it has already secured the loyalty of 1,268 (and counting) of the biggest porn sites on AVN Ads, including YouPorn, PornTube, and RedTube. (Out of 6,614 total). Those 1,268 sites account for 108 million daily impressions (or 42 percent of AVN Ads’ total, and 13 percent of AdBrite’s total). The other 151 million impressions are still up for grabs. Etology is trying to lure them with a 75 percent share of revenues, versus the 70 percent they got from AdBrite.

I caught up with AdBrite co-founder Philip Kaplan on the phone to get his take. He notes that all the current 6,614 sites that run AVN Ads have AdBrite code on them, and that is going to stay there unless they take it off. “If you were an AVN Ads user before, you are automatically a BlackLabelAds user.” But he is really not too worried about losing the porn business because it is not where he sees the future:

Adult is an interesting thing. It is a lot of pageviews, it is not a lot of revenues. Most of the major players support it, but as the Internet advertising business is growing and more mainstream advertising is coming from TV and print, it is becoming less and less significant.

In the meantime, he is happy to fight it out with Etology for the porn advertising business, but it is not where he is planning on spending the bulk of the new money he just raised.

Here is what the new AVN Ads Website will look like:

AdBrite

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Ad networks are still catching money like rain. AdBrite raised $23 million from existing investors Sequoia Capital and Hedge fund Artis Management, reports Dan Primack. This is on top of $12 million, the company has already raised. In October, comScore ranked AdBrite as the 26th largest ad network after MySpace. Its ads reached 71 million people that month, representing a 39 percent reach of U.S. Internet traffic.

AdBrite, which was founded by Philip “Pud” Kaplan of FuckedCompany.com fame, targets ads based on demographics. It also offers an embeddable video player that incorporates ads as clickable watermarks.

AdBrite

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We’re live blogging each session, adding to the summary of each company direct from the floor of TechCrunch 40. Click Refresh to view.

Spottt (Adbrite)

Spottt (Adbrite) helps like-minded sites promote each other for free. Just put a Spottt on your site, blog, or MySpace profile. Every time you show someone else’s ad, they’ll show yours. Spottt was created by AdBrite, with the assistance of Tony Hsieh, co-founder of LinkExchange.

Simple model, 1:1 exchange model. Same as original link exchange program bought by Microsoft.

More useful than original program. Original co-founder of LinkExchange.com on board

Clickable

Clickable provides a service for creating and managing online advertising. Their technology provides campaign management tools and an intuitive interface to view and manage performance and direct spending across all major ad networks. In addition, advertisers are empowered to self-manage their ad buying to yield transformational results.

TC40 anouncements: Ex AOL CEO has join board, adding Adbrite on site, and released in beta.

advertising aggregation tool, slick interface. Manage campaigns on Yahoo, Adwords.

GotStatus

GotStatus is a community-driven systems management and monitoring tool that is aiming to become “Google Analytics for servers.” Users are able to place a snippet of javascript and start managing and monitoring the server side of their web applications in the same way Google Analytics does for their browser side. They will be able to track metrics on items like new accounts per day, database size, and Amazon S3 usage.

Intro is a comparison to Google Analytics, but states that Google only solves half the problem, no coverage of the server.

Another nice interface, provides server stats including email.

Multi-user platfrom, supports customers/ clients. Can customize results with dashboards, widgets.

“User Generated Monitoring”

PubMatic

PubMatic is a meta ad server that sits between online publishers and online ad networks like Google AdSense, Yahoo Publisher Network and Value Click. Their service helps small- and medium-sized publishers manage and maximize their advertising inventory by seamlessly communicating with multiple ad networks to help them find the optimal ad layout and the highest paying ad network. They also provide them with a central dashboard to track all their ad networks and ad configurations.

Pitch: we’re the first company presenting at TC40 that offers revenue opportunities for publishers.

Pubmatic works as the middle man.

Offers optimization tools as well, color choices, sizes.

In alpha testing until today, now in open beta

Sites using the service have seen 70-110% increase in revenue.

Data is pulled from other ad networks.

Also offers dashboard widgets.

Nice idea, I’ll be keen to try it.

ZocDoc

ZocDoc is an online service that lets consumers find, search and book dentist and doctor appointments. Their service is integrated into dentists’ and doctors’ appointment systems so that last minute cancellations can be filled by other patients. ZocDoc also provides consumers with information on specific dentists’ and doctors’ office including what insurance they take.

Intro: there is a problem with easily finding doctors.

Online way to find and book medical practitioners. Site has just gone live now.

Nifty feature: site shows available time slots.

Play acting on stage, guy trips over, role playing using ZocDoc, something different.

Doctor listing include bio details + user ratings…I can feel a law suit coming on in the next 12-18months…but nice to get reviews of doctors from the user view point.

Experts panel and spotty Wifi. grrrr.

Guy likes Spottt…because it’s the only model he understands.

Esther Dyson likes Clickable, heart is with ZocDoc

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

We’re live blogging each session, adding to the summary of each company direct from the floor of TechCrunch 40. Click Refresh to view.

Spottt (Adbrite)

Spottt (Adbrite) helps like-minded sites promote each other for free. Just put a Spottt on your site, blog, or MySpace profile. Every time you show someone else’s ad, they’ll show yours. Spottt was created by AdBrite, with the assistance of Tony Hsieh, co-founder of LinkExchange.

Simple model, 1:1 exchange model. Same as original link exchange program bought by Microsoft.

More useful than original program. Original co-founder of LinkExchange.com on board

Clickable

Clickable provides a service for creating and managing online advertising. Their technology provides campaign management tools and an intuitive interface to view and manage performance and direct spending across all major ad networks. In addition, advertisers are empowered to self-manage their ad buying to yield transformational results.

TC40 anouncements: Ex AOL CEO has join board, adding Adbrite on site, and released in beta.

advertising aggregation tool, slick interface. Manage campaigns on Yahoo, Adwords.

GotStatus

GotStatus is a community-driven systems management and monitoring tool that is aiming to become “Google Analytics for servers.” Users are able to place a snippet of javascript and start managing and monitoring the server side of their web applications in the same way Google Analytics does for their browser side. They will be able to track metrics on items like new accounts per day, database size, and Amazon S3 usage.

Intro is a comparison to Google Analytics, but states that Google only solves half the problem, no coverage of the server.

Another nice interface, provides server stats including email.

Multi-user platfrom, supports customers/ clients. Can customize results with dashboards, widgets.

“User Generated Monitoring”

PubMatic

PubMatic is a meta ad server that sits between online publishers and online ad networks like Google AdSense, Yahoo Publisher Network and Value Click. Their service helps small- and medium-sized publishers manage and maximize their advertising inventory by seamlessly communicating with multiple ad networks to help them find the optimal ad layout and the highest paying ad network. They also provide them with a central dashboard to track all their ad networks and ad configurations.

Pitch: we’re the first company presenting at TC40 that offers revenue opportunities for publishers.

Pubmatic works as the middle man.

Offers optimization tools as well, color choices, sizes.

In alpha testing until today, now in open beta

Sites using the service have seen 70-110% increase in revenue.

Data is pulled from other ad networks.

Also offers dashboard widgets.

Nice idea, I’ll be keen to try it.

ZocDoc

ZocDoc is an online service that lets consumers find, search and book dentist and doctor appointments. Their service is integrated into dentists’ and doctors’ appointment systems so that last minute cancellations can be filled by other patients. ZocDoc also provides consumers with information on specific dentists’ and doctors’ office including what insurance they take.

Intro: there is a problem with easily finding doctors.

Online way to find and book medical practitioners. Site has just gone live now.

Nifty feature: site shows available time slots.

Play acting on stage, guy trips over, role playing using ZocDoc, something different.

Doctor listing include bio details + user ratings…I can feel a law suit coming on in the next 12-18months…but nice to get reviews of doctors from the user view point.

Experts panel and spotty Wifi. grrrr.

Guy likes Spottt…because it’s the only model he understands.

Esther Dyson likes Clickable, heart is with ZocDoc

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.