Hot spot for commercials shuts down

http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20122001-095719-9450r

Adcritic.com, a favorite site of TV-commercial junkies, has ceased operations until it can find a buyer. The site was founded in 1999 by computer administrator Peter Beckman, and it grew to popularity by serving as an archive for popular, weird, risqué and obscure commercials. Beckman told the New York Times that the company is in acquisition talks with several firms. The company’s president, James Riley, said the bandwidth necessary to stream computer files of those commercials had become too costly. Adcritic.com’s problems started with its overall lack of a revenue model, analysts said. Instead of charging for space on its servers, the site simply posted anything it felt was interesting. That amounts to free advertising, said Rob Drasin, vice president for U.S. sales at AdForum.com, another Web site that archives and streams TV commercials. AdForum.com takes a different approach: It works more like a business-to-business research library, charging customers thousands of dollars to put their material on the site.