Name: Peter Kim
Company: Interpolls (Interpolls.com), a provider of rich media advertising solutions
Location: Pasadena, Calif.
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Who would win in a fight: Ben Hur or Russell Crowe’s Gladiator?
It was an outlandish question, but one that turned Peter Kim’s obscure startup company into an empire.
Once upon a time, back in the ‘90s, online advertisements were flat. They didn’t really do anything besides tell you to book your next vacation or click now for a free credit report. The results were unsurprisingly bleak. Most would get a visitor click rate of .001, hardly enough for companies to want to rush onto the bandwagon.
Kim, who specialized in marketing, knew there was a missing technology.
“To me, these ads were like outdoor billboards on a webpage,” says Kim, 36. “They didn’t take advantage of what the internet was all about. It’s the only media out there that’s interactive. Why wasn’t there interactive advertising?”
So he built a company that specialized in just that. Fast forward to today and Interpolls, launched in 1999, is behind the conception and coding of the world’s most highly visible rich media ads (ads that draw audience participation), which drive everyday web users to watch movies, to register for dating sites, to try a new laundry detergent — ultimately, to spend.
How? Through poll questions. You’ve probably seen them on the sidebars or headers of big-name sites like ESPN.com or MSN, and may have even answered a few. Some are factual, like the ad for Jim Beam: Which bourbon has been around for over 200 years? Others are personal, like the ad for T-Mobile: How would you feel if you were separated from your Sidekick? You click on your choice and the results pop up instantly, oftentimes with special promotions or sweepstakes.
Kim grew up in Mississippi and graduated from Tulane business school. He then headed west to Los Angeles to work in finance, first at a boutique firm and later for Smith Barney. He eventually served as the director of strategic planning for a Silicon Valley startup specializing in satellite technology, until it went under in 1997. He says that’s where he learned how not to run a startup and made the choice to do it better.
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He moved back to L.A. and laid the foundation for Interpolls, gathering funding from angel investors and venture capitalists, and bringing in Hyo Lee, a programmer who built the advertising technology from scratch. It wasn’t until 2002 when Kim used a connection in the entertainment industry to cinch the company’s first client: Warner Bros. Home Video.
At the time, Universal’s megahit Gladiator was storming through theaters and Warner Bros.’ VP of technology and marketing wanted to use its popularity to market the restored Ben Hur DVD, which was being released by his studio.
So he had Interpolls create a poll question that asked people who would win in a fight, Ben Hur or the Gladiator. He placed the ad on the Warner Bros. homepage to see what would happen.
The servers went nuts. Kim reported that the ad was getting a 9 percent click rate, an advertising statistic unheard of at the time.
The company went on to produce rich media ads for other movie studios such as Dreamworks, Paramount and New Line. For the first Harry Potter film, they launched a worldwide scavenger hunt where a million kids went looking for owls on 120 different websites. For Sex and the City: The Movie, they created an ad that could be shared on blogs and social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. The ad was passed on from site to site an average of 10 times. They’ve done ads for video games, pharmaceuticals and cars.
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Even in today’s economy, business hasn’t slowed. “People still watch movies, they still eat cereal, they still use soap,” says Kim, who reported that the company generated an estimated $10 million in revenue last year.
At Interpolls’ headquarters tucked away in Old Town Pasadena (though there are plans to move to downtown L.A.), Kim manages 65 employees. They’re focusing on developing new widget technology and making their way into the mobile market.
“What gets me excited is doing things that have never been done before,” Kim says.
