High-speed pursuits part of life at Neverblue

It’s perhaps fitting that Neverblue Media Inc.’s Todd Dunlop and Jordan Visco are auto racing enthusiasts: being an adrenaline junkie puts you in good stead for a career in the fast-paced and rapidly shifting world of online marketing. Dunlop and Visco are, respectively, president and VP of affiliate marketing at Neverblue, a Victoria-based advertising lead-generation company. The two are also co-founders and charter employees of the firm, along with VP of finance Dave Arnsdorf and director of technology Greg Bate, and can often be found driving their demolition derby cars emblazoned with the company logo on raceways around Victoria. Clearly, competition runs in their veins, and it’s made them winners in the world of business as well. In less than three years, they’ve grown their employee base by more than 1,800%, won business from some of the largest financial services, auto manufacturing and healthcare firms in the US, and, on October 17, were awarded the Business Development Bank of Canada’s Young Entrepreneur Award for the province of British Columbia for their efforts. From its roots as a search engine marketing (SEM) firm – helping clients place those text ads on the right-hand side of your search engine results – Neverblue has broadened its business line to include virtually every facet of online advertising and marketing. The original SEM operations still exist as Neverblue SEM, which operates on a pay-per-acquisition model, but are now joined by: affiliate marketing network Neverblue Ads, which pairs Web publishers with advertisers looking for exposure; CrossPub Network, which brokers and manages relationships with all the major affiliate networks on behalf of advertisers to provide one-point contact; CoregSolutions, which offers "co-registration" opportunities such as free newsletters when you’re signing up for a webmail account; Neverblue Properties, which are purpose-built lead generation portals operated by Neverblue; and finally PhoneInterviewed.com, which is part lead-verification, part-customer service tool whereby a live operator contacts interested consumers by phone and helps lead them to a transaction. The addition of those new divisions has also led to a need for more staff, hence the five-figure growth rate: from an original employee base of its four founders, the firm now employs 45 across all those divisions except PhoneInterviewed.com, which has its own dedicated workforce of 30. "It’s always growing – it depends on the day," Dunlop says. "So, it’s always exciting – lots of change." Their recent recognition from the Business Development Bank is all the more impressive when you consider the relative youth of both the firm’s founders and the industry it plays in. If, as many suggest, the start of the Web’s commercial era lies somewhere in 1996, Dunlop would have been 17 and Visco 16 when the first online advertising networks began to spring into existence. "Basically when Jordan and I were both in university is when the dot-com boom busted, so we basically entered into online marketing when it was not a very attractive space," Dunlop says, adding that as engaging as he found the industry during the low-margin days following the Internet gold rush, it’s all the more alluring now that it’s become profitable. While most of Neverblue’s work to date has been done on behalf of Fortune 1000 clients south of the border, over the past year it’s been working to put the word out to Canadian advertisers that there’s a one-stop e-marketing and advertising partner in Canada that rivals the best in the US. Visco hopes the Young Entrepreneur Award win will help further that goal. "Companies like ours...are playing with the big guys in the States but are able to keep our Canadian roots and provide unique, dynamic jobs ," Visco says. "We can do work anywhere in the world at all, from right up here in Victoria. I think that…is one of the things that keeps us coming to work every day."

High-speed pursuits part of life at Neverblue

Broadcast | October 31, 2006

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