If Brian Silver has his way a very important part of the digital marketing lexicon has seen a better day. The Travel Ad Network CEO would actually be happy if publishers and advertisers struck the phrase “ad network” from their vocabulary. Instead Silver wants his company and other true content and commerce site aggregators to be known as “vertical media companies.”  He includes the partnership necessary in delivering audiences inherent in that definition.

“When you’re able to put together an audience that achieves scale and you’re able to combine that audience with the kind of contextual relevancy that we provide, you’re much more of a vertical partner than anything else,” Silver says. “Add to that the commerce and services we provide and I think that defines our success this year. Advertisers will be willing to pay premium prices for audience and contextual relevancy.”

Silver’s company has reached 19 million unique users in the US and 32 million worldwide. Earlier this week it added Skyscanner.com to its exclusive portfolio of more than 300 travel content and commerce websites. Skyscanner, the UK-based metasearch company, is Europe's leading flight search engine by traffic and has marked 2010 as its year for expanding into North America. Nearly 10 million visits worldwide to the site are recorded each month, generating 50 million flight search queries per month. Skyscanner referrals generate in excess of $75 million in revenue to its airline partners every month and the business has seen a growth of 230% year over year. In June, they attracted nearly 540,000 US user sessions but expect to see well over one million per month by the end of the year. 

Part of his desire to differentiate TAN from horizontal ad networks and ad exchanges comes from the relatively low CPMs associated with those companies. But he also says the addition of Skyscanner is indicative of the kind of company that wants to be part of the TAN portfolio as publishers continue to try to monetize content and commerce in the travel space. Skyscanner, he says, was attracted to TAN’s US reach and continuing momentum in Europe.

“We’re a media partner with a travel focus,” he says. “We can influence the consumer much earlier in the purchase funnel than other media companies and we can track how that consumer moves through the purchase funnel toward conversions. There’s a short window and a different lifecycle associated with the travel business and we understand that clearly.”