Addiply founder Rick Waghorn, Northstar Proof of Concept Fund head Richard Exley, and Addiply technical director Ian Thurbon

WHEN former Norwich sports reporter Rick Waghorn checks the news these days, he’s not just looking at the stories. A lot of the time, he’s got an eagle eye on the adverts.

“If you look at some of the adverts on websites these days, there’s no chance people will click on them,” he said. “I’ve seen sites based in Leeds advertising Eurostar from London to Paris. If you want clicks on an advert and it’s the wrong advert for the spot, it’s not going to work. You’ve got to re-establish the relationship between the advertiser and the publisher.”

Of course, we’re now talking about a crucial issue for news and views publishing online – the riddle of how to make content available online, but still make money out of it.

“Publishers want adverts relevant to their area, and they don’t want them to dry up. Advertisers want to make sure their advert is worth the money, and goes somewhere which reaches as many of their potential customers as possible.”

Currently a lot of web operations use Google AdSense, a free service which places adverts on sites. However, Waghorn believes publishers and advertisers need a more targeted system of getting ads in the right places, and that’s what motivated him to develop a Javascript widget called Addiply.

“We’re trying to create a model,” he said. “No one as yet has made decent journalism pay online. In the current climate, people want to know what they’re getting for every last penny of their advertising spend, perfectly targeting their audience.

“We’re giving people the opportunity to control their ad space, because it’s their ad space after all.”