Carbon Ads is an ad tech company behind a new kind of advertising network. Carbon connects advertisers to highly-relevant users through targeted verticals we call Circles. These circles are made up of influential publishers who lead or are engaged within their industries. To their audiences, Carbon brings well-designed, value-focused ads, displayed one per page above the fold, for quality brands, products and services that readers actually need and want.

Carbon targets these quality brands and services through the curation of relevant audiences. This curated grouping ensures that impressions achieve powerful impact, resulting in clicks and conversions today, while also maximizing long-term brand and customer lifetime value. By giving (shockingly effective) attention to ‘the metrics’ without making them the focus, Carbon fosters lasting and valuable relationships between advertisers and publishers, and through them, consumers.

Carbon focuses on value, not just monetary but also lasting brand messaging, brand integrity and demand creation. In this way Carbon is producing online advertising with a long-term goal, different from the quick consumption, “Click here! Click here!” ethos that has become the norm.

Carbon Ads was founded in 2010 by serial entrepreneurs Joshua Smibert and Adelle Charles and is based in Seattle, Washington.

Q: What are Carbon Circles?

A: Carbon’s Circles are the way in which Carbon curates its demographics, building up readerships with specific interests so that its ads can be targeted with relevance. They are groups of publishers; companies, websites, apps, and creative professionals within the same niche.

Q: What makes your ads special?

A: Every single Carbon ad is as gorgeous as the products they display. Carbon requires all ad spots served across its network to be attractive and well-designed, with no annoying animation and unobtrusive at just 130x100px in size. Through their design quality, as well as the quality of the brands advertised, the ads never compromise the integrity of the sites on which they appear. They are displayed as the only ad per page, and appear above the fold, demanding consumer attention quietly but effectively. Like the mysterious but beautiful girl who sits at the back of the class and doesn’t say anything, you can’t help but look at her.

Q: The web is littered with ‘Ad Technology’ companies. How is Carbon different?

A: Carbon isn’t just an aggregation of sites. We are a network of publishers, each one selected due to their quality content, forward-thinking ethos and engaged, passionate readers. Carbon brings these publishers together to create refined demographics to ensure that the ads served by our advertisers are targeted and relevant. We call this “targeting by curation”; collecting niche audiences together and presenting them in front of our advertisers. Alongside improved short-term ROI, Carbon cultivates long-term value and brand messaging through close relationships across the network and quality brand association with integrity.

Q: How does Carbon’s network benefit Publishers?

A: Carbon is at heart a publisher network, founded on the principle that advertising should be an experience of added value to publishers and their readers, instead of being a necessary evil. The network is an exclusive club of publishers at the forefront of their industries, and serves as a home where they can create awesome content and follow their passions instead of publishing for advertising sake. For our publishers, the network represents an invite-only monetization platform, with ads served that are interesting and relevant to their readers. Publishers receive monthly payouts from ad spots that achieve a premium return-per-mille, and can monitor their revenue stats from a private dashboard to allow them to maximize a return on their work. This in turn enables them to create more quality content and to spend more time engaging with their communities. Thus reputations grow and improve through content and brand association, integrity of publishers is maintained, and the network as a whole represents more and more an ‘industry by industry’ list of the web’s best.

Q: How does Carbon’s network benefit Advertisers?

A: Advertising via the Carbon network positions your ads in front of relevant audiences, filled with early adopters and product evangelists. These audiences are built around publishers who are not simply content outlets, but who are engaged within their communities and influential within their industries. This curated grouping of impressions by the Carbon team, who are active within and familiar with each demographic, ensures that impressions achieve powerful impact, resulting in better than industry standard clicks and conversions today, while also maximizing long-term brand and customer lifetime value.

Q: Why is your network invite-only?

A: In order to make advertising a positive experience for everyone, we believe that the focus must be on value. And in order to focus on value, we must insist on the highest quality. Therefore, if you’re not on the list, we’re afraid you can’t come in.

The best way to become part of Carbon Ads is to innovate, push the boundaries, be active and engaged within your community and industry, and most of all to create the best applications, content, products and services possible. If you do these things, you can get in touch with us through our Website, via Twitter or by emailing us at team (at) carbonads.com.