Internet REIT Buys Netster.com

Internet REIT (iREIT) has acquired the Netster.com web portal and major portions of the Netster domain name portfolio. Netster is the latest in a series of deals for iREIT, which has acquired more than 50 portfolios of Internet traffic in the past 15 months, and gives iREIT more than 400,000 domain properties under management and traffic up to 50 million visitors per month.

While most Internet advertising networks "lease" their traffic from third- party Web sites, iREIT owns all of its traffic since this traffic is generated from the company's Web sites. Owning its traffic gives iREIT a tremendous advantage in the space: iREIT has the flexibility to sell its traffic to Google, to Yahoo! or directly to an advertiser.

"iREIT is working in partnership with top domain name portfolio owners to build the world's largest, most profitable and highest-quality portfolio of Internet domain names that have traffic on par with the world's leading media properties," said Bob Martin, chief executive officer of iREIT. "iREIT's acquisition of the Netster.com portal and high-quality components of the Netster portfolio marks a key milestone towards this goal. Netster not only brings significant traffic to our portfolio, but also offers synergistic qualities that will accelerate monetization of other sites in our network. We look forward to further developing the portal to offer more functionality and generate more high-quality traffic."

"Netster was looking for a larger platform to take the portal to the next level in the fast-growing Internet traffic marketplace," said Blake Bookstaff, co-founder, Netster.com. "After looking at the top players in our space, we knew that iREIT was the place where domainers and others who really understand the value of our traffic were converging."

Traffic reaches iREIT's sites primarily through "direct navigation," the practice of locating a Web site by typing directly into the browser's address bar. Direct navigation comprises more than six percent of the US and UK search advertising markets and could exceed $1.2 billion in ad revenue by 2007, according to Susquehanna Financial and RBC Capital Markets.

"While the boom in Internet advertising has shined a spotlight on Google, Yahoo, MSN and ASK.com, direct navigation is now emerging as the next great opportunity in the industry," said Marc Ostrofsky, co-founder of iREIT. "With our fast-growing portfolio of domains, our ability to effectively monetize the portfolio, and our deep understanding of the Internet advertising ecosystem, iREIT is well-positioned to take advantage of the explosive growth in this market."

  Posted by RichM May 22, 2006 | Permalink | Newsletter

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Internet REIT Buys Netster.com - May 22, 2006





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