Triad Digital is the only media company that helps national brands turn browsers into buyers on the world’s largest retail websites. We deliver unique advertising opportunities for brands to reach consumers while they’re in the shopping mindset.

We have two sets of clients. Our primary clients are retailers. Our clients include Walmart, CVS, Sam’s Club, Toys R Us, Barnes & Noble and many more. Retailers want to drive sales, both online and in-store, by integrating brand messages on their websites to reach and engage consumers.

They want to maximize the value of their digital communications — their websites, email, kiosks and social and mobile programs. Our retailer client sites reach more than 100 million shoppers every month. Retailers choose us to create, represent and manage their online media programs because we work in close partnership with them on a custom basis. We create the kind of advertising opportunities brands really want to invest in versus the other options they have, such as just plugging into an ad network where they would just get what everybody else gets.

Retailers that control their own custom ad platform keep control over their site experience and can more effectively integrate brand advertising on their sites. That drives revenue for the retailer and the brands. In fact, a recent Forbes article pointed out that brands that integrate retailer online programs to support their other brand ad activities are experiencing fast sales growth.

An example of a retail media program is CVS’ Savings Central. This is a hub that is promoted on the homepage of their site and in their email campaigns. Consumers visit the area for special savings as well as to read articles, view “how-to” videos, link to brand sites, engage with interactive new-product showcases and so forth. It gives brands an opportunity to advertise their new products to CVS’ best customers — those who visit their website.

Our second group of clients are the brand advertisers. We executed more than 1,200 branded online ad campaigns across our portfolio of major retail sites last year. Our clients include all of the largest CPG companies as well as the leaders in financial services, consumer electronics and travel.

We offer them the ability to advertise online in the best environment they could possibly choose, which is in partnership with their largest retail customers. Brands are able to go far beyond the banner, engaging their consumers with custom microsites, content sponsorships, brand showcases and interactive promotions with coupons, samples and more.

We offer a safe environment, where a brand’s equity is completely protected. Most importantly, the timing is ideal, because they are reaching their consumer targets just before they are going to the store to make a purchase. This is the best time to engage, inform and convert browsers into buyers. Our clients get a custom approach with not only display ads but also unique mobile, social and content components.

This concept developed in 1999 because brands had content that they could syndicate. But they didn’t necessarily know they had this opportunity. I told them that they had an opportunity to syndicate the brand content that was on their websites but that was getting no traffic. They had brand websites but nobody was coming to them.

The idea was if they couldn’t get the customers to come to their site, they should put the content from their site in front of their customers on the sites that they were visiting. At that time, back in the late ’90s and early 2000s, there was much more traffic to retail websites than to brand websites.

So, taking brand content and putting it on retail websites made sense. As that evolved, retailers began to understand that partnering with brands on their websites was working because consumers liked it. They spent time on that content, they hung around. They bought more merchandise.

That concept is alive and well today. E-commerce sites typically do not invest in rich content experiences, video, interactive tools etc., that major brands do. There’s a bigger opportunity than ever to get a higher return on brand assets by sharing them with major retail customers.

As display advertising emerged in the mid 2000s, it was a natural thing to take the next step and begin standardizing these advertising placements by offering IAB-standard ad units on retailer sites because consumers wanted it and the advertisers were getting excellent results.

Our click-through rates were ten times what they were getting with ad networks that weren’t as relevant as our retail sites. For instance, if a shampoo brand placed a banner ad on a typical web publisher’s “style” page, they might get a .1 percent click-through rate. If you put that same shampoo ad on a retailer site, you would get a one percent to three percent click-through rate. If you added a coupon or free sample to banner, the click-through rate would routinely exceed 10 percent. It’s a hugely better option.

As a company, Triad is fast paced, fun, collegial and intense. We’re in the digital advertising business which changes at an extremely fast pace. To continue to be successful, we hire smart people who are passionate about online marketing and are curious and excited about all of the new things that happen in the online space.

When they work here at Triad, they know they’re going to get to work with the biggest brands and the biggest retailers in the world. It’s a great opportunity for them. We give our people all the best available tools to become successful, and then we get out of their way. The biggest measure of our success is customer satisfaction. It’s not about us; it’s all about the customer.

Our headquarters is in beautiful Tampa, Florida, and we have a total of five offices. In addition to Tampa, we operate offices in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco.

We also have a host of best-in-class strategic partnerships that allow us to deliver complete solutions seamlessly for our clients. Our goal is to offer a full set of options to enhance our clients’ advertising campaigns. So, we work with specialized partners to deliver an integrated solution — whether it’s content, ad serving, video, online coupons, sample fulfillment, or something else.

The end result is that our clients get the best service and our partners get to work with the biggest brands and retailers in the world. We believe that if you serve the customer well, the customer will be good to you.

I see Triad Digital Media evolving in a couple of different ways. We will continually add new retail clients. Our sales growth rate in the past three years has been 677 percent, landing us a spot on the latest Inc. 500 list. We just found out we made the list for the second year in-a-row.

We’ll also be doing significantly more business with media agencies, especially in New York, attracting advertising dollars that are migrating to online from television and print. We expect that to double the company within the next few years.

So, the end result is our advertising is extremely effective. It works. We offer an innovative way to invest digital advertising dollars to get the highest return on investment available. That’s the bottom line. People spend on things that work, and what we do works.