Biztree: In-Application Ad – Beta Coming Soon

[ad:tech] Since 2001, Biztree provides small businesses with templates for administrative documents in 4 languages (English, French, Spanish and Chinese) for a $200 one time fee. It has now over a million users, but the company is looking to expand its user-base, so they plan to launch a free ad-based version in the next months, the beta will probably open later this summer. In this tough economic climate, small businesses are looking to cut expenses and corporations seeks new marketing channels with high ROI (highly targeted), and this one fits the bill perfectly.

We know that ad-supported applications is a model that is not viable, read this article by Phil Wainewright, back in 2005; but if Biztree strategy is to expand its user-base with a free version and still has a sufficiently attractive premium offering, it could work. I did not attend the session “Advertising In Applications” at ad:tech but I am curious to know what they said… We will be able to listen to the sessions in a few weeks there: http://www.ad-tech.com/podcasts/index.aspx