Robert Levitan (born April 22, 1961) is an American businessman best known for his multiple entrepreneurial activities in New York City's
Silicon Alley
Silicon Alley is an area of high tech companies centered around southern Manhattan's Flatiron district in New York City. The term was coined in the 1990s during the dot-com boom, alluding to California's Silicon Valley tech center. The term h ...
, the cluster of web and technology businesses stretching from Manhattan's
Flatiron District
The Flatiron District is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, named after the Flatiron Building at 23rd Street, Broadway and Fifth Avenue. Generally, the Flatiron District is bounded by 14th Street, Union Square and Green ...
through
SoHo
Soho is an area of the City of Westminster, part of the West End of London. Originally a fashionable district for the aristocracy, it has been one of the main entertainment districts in the capital since the 19th century.
The area was develop ...
and
TriBeCa
Tribeca (), originally written as TriBeCa, is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan in New York City. Its name is a syllabic abbreviation of "Triangle Below Canal Street". The "triangle" (more accurately a quadrilateral) is bounded by Canal Stre ...
.
Career
iVillage
In 1995, Levitan co-founded iVillage, one of Silicon Alley's "first settlers" and a
startup that would eventually become the web's largest community for women, with Candice Carpenter, former president of
Time-Life Video, and Nancy Evans, ex-president and -publisher of
Doubleday.
Having never sold ads before, except for his sixth-grade yearbook,
Levitan was charged with building the company's
advertising
Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a product or service. Advertising aims to put a product or service in the spotlight in hopes of drawing it attention from consumers. It is typically used to promote a ...
department, and he conceived of a strategy beyond selling the nascent standard: the
web banner
A web banner or banner ad is a form of advertising on the World Wide Web delivered by an ad server. This form of online advertising entails embedding an advertisement into a web page. It is intended to attract traffic to a website by linkin ...
.
Levitan's model gave sponsors, paying between $75,000 and $150,000 for 6- or 12-month terms, the option to build "bridge sites," which sat between iVillage editorial pages and the sponsors’ own corporate sites. Straight links to sponsors' corporate websites, which often had no relevance to iVillage readers, were discouraged.
Bridge sites, alternatively, could fulfill marketers' objectives and at the same time provide content as engaging as the iVillage websites themselves, much like what advertisers, nearly 20 years later, call
native advertising
Native advertising, also called sponsored content, is a type of advertising that matches the form and function of the platform upon which it appears. In many cases it functions like an advertorial, and manifests as a video, article or editorial. ...
and tout as an effective banner alternative.
Once Levitan made a sale, iVillage's sponsorship department provided the assistance of an
ad agency
An advertising agency, often referred to as a creative agency or an ad agency, is a business dedicated to creating, planning, and handling advertising and sometimes other forms of promotion and marketing for its clients. An ad agency is generally ...
and
web development
Web development is the work involved in developing a website for the Internet (World Wide Web) or an intranet (a private network). Web development can range from developing a simple single static page of plain text to complex web applications ...
shop combined – with one fundamental difference: they had the experience of being a web publisher. Services included site concepts and
wireframes,
content
Content or contents may refer to:
Media
* Content (media), information or experience provided to audience or end-users by publishers or media producers
** Content industry, an umbrella term that encompasses companies owning and providing mas ...
and
design
A design is a plan or specification for the construction of an object or system or for the implementation of an activity or process or the result of that plan or specification in the form of a prototype, product, or process. The verb ''to design'' ...
,
community
A community is a social unit (a group of living things) with commonality such as place, norms, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given geographical area (e.g. a country, village, tow ...
-building techniques, sweepstakes and other promotions, site creation and maintenance – all for an additional fee.
Parents visiting
Polaroid
Polaroid may refer to:
* Polaroid Corporation, an American company known for its instant film and cameras
* Polaroid camera, a brand of instant camera formerly produced by Polaroid Corporation
* Polaroid film, instant film, and photographs
* Polar ...
’s bridge site, for example, learned how to increase their child's
self esteem
Self-esteem is confidence in one's own worth or abilities. Self-esteem encompasses beliefs about oneself (for example, "I am loved", "I am worthy") as well as emotional states, such as triumph, despair, pride, and shame. Smith and Mackie (2007) d ...
using instant photography via weekly confidence-boosting activities, informational articles and live chats with psychologists and other experts. "I love the notion that they're working with us collaboratively," said Carol Phelan, the senior marketing communications manager at Polaroid, which bought a one-year sponsorship. "I don't even think of this as advertising."
By May 1996, Levitan had sold out a year's worth of sponsorships for iVillage's debut site, Parent Soup,
and that September, he was named one of Advertising Age's 20 Digital Media Masters.
In March 1998, Levitan sold the company's highest-ticket sponsorship to date to
Charles Schwab: a $5-million-plus exclusive sponsorship of "Armchair Millionaire," a financial-planning site produced by iVillage,
Intuit
Intuit Inc. is an American business software company that specializes in financial software. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and the CEO is Sasan Goodarzi. Intuit's products include the tax preparation application Tu ...
and Schwab.
By 1998, sponsorship revenue exceeded $12 million, and momentum was building for iVillage's
initial public offering
An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...
of shares. When the company went public in March 1999, iVillage was worth $1.86 billion. (In 2006, the company was acquired for $600 million in cash by
NBC Universal
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...
, which operates the women's network within its Digital News Group.)
Flooz
By early 1999, Levitan had left iVillage and launched Flooz.com, a
digital currency
Digital currency (digital money, electronic money or electronic currency) is any currency, money, or money-like asset that is primarily managed, stored or exchanged on digital computer systems, especially over the internet. Types of digital cu ...
company. A consumer could go to the company website to buy Flooz, which was e-mailed to someone in a
digital greeting card; the recipient could then spend the Flooz at any participating
ecommerce
E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the activity of electronically buying or selling of products on online services or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain managemen ...
site including
J.Crew
J.Crew Group, Inc., is an American multi-brand, multi-channel, specialty retailer. The company offers an assortment of women's, men's, and children's apparel and accessories, including swimwear, outerwear, lounge-wear, bags, sweaters, denim, dr ...
,
Barnes & Noble
Barnes & Noble Booksellers is an American bookseller. It is a Fortune 1000 company and the bookseller with the largest number of retail outlets in the United States. As of July 7, 2020, the company operates 614 retail stores across all 50 U. ...
and
Tower Records
Tower Records is an international retail franchise and online music store that was formerly based in Sacramento, California, United States. From 1960 until 2006, Tower operated retail stores in the United States, which closed when Tower Records ...
.
Levitan hired
Whoopi Goldberg
Caryn Elaine Johnson (born November 13, 1955), known professionally as Whoopi Goldberg (), is an American actor, comedian, author, and television personality.Kuchwara, Michael (AP Drama Writer)"Whoopi Goldberg: A One-Woman Character Parade". ' ...
as company spokesperson and launched a series of television commercials.
The company sold $3 million of Flooz currency in the first year and $25 million in 2000.
The marketing director for TowerRecords.com, Russ Eisenman, said Flooz attracted new shoppers to the online site. On certain days, he said, gift recipients redeeming Flooz made up half the site's business.
In 2001, the
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, ...
notified Levitan that the company had fallen victim to
Internet fraud
Internet fraud is a type of cybercrime fraud or deception which makes use of the Internet and could involve hiding of information or providing incorrect information for the purpose of tricking victims out of money, property, and inheritance. Inte ...
– specifically from
money-laundering
Money laundering is the process of concealing the origin of money, obtained from illicit activities such as drug trafficking, corruption, embezzlement or gambling, by converting it into a legitimate source. It is a crime in many jurisdictions ...
credit-card thieves in Russia and the
Philippines
The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no),
* bik, Republika kan Filipinas
* ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas
* cbk, República de Filipinas
* hil, Republ ...
. Declaring
Chapter 7 bankruptcy
Chapter 7 of Title 11 of the United States Code (Bankruptcy Code) governs the process of liquidation under the bankruptcy laws of the United States, in contrast to Chapters 11 and 13, which govern the process of ''reorganization'' of a debto ...
, Levitan announced the company would cease operations in late August 2001. The Flooz bankruptcy was unprecedented for a few reasons:
* It had the largest number of creditors involved on record.
* It was the first time email was used as a form of legal communication with creditors.
* The security code frequently requested when making a credit card payments has been attributed to the fraud that brought down Flooz.
Pando Networks
In 2004, Levitan built his third
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
-based technology business, as CEO of Pando Networks. The company specializes in hybrid
peer-to-peer
Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the network. They are said to form a peer-to-peer n ...
plus
server
Server may refer to:
Computing
*Server (computing), a computer program or a device that provides functionality for other programs or devices, called clients
Role
* Waiting staff, those who work at a restaurant or a bar attending customers and su ...
-based
cloud
In meteorology, a cloud is an aerosol consisting of a visible mass of miniature liquid droplets, frozen crystals, or other particles suspended in the atmosphere of a planetary body or similar space. Water or various other chemicals may co ...
distribution of large files.
From the beginning, the company launched a
freemium
Freemium, a portmanteau of the words "free" and "premium," is a pricing strategy by which a basic product or service is provided free of charge, but money (a premium) is charged for additional features, services, or virtual (online) or physical (o ...
consumer business for sending large files over any email account, later adding tools for
media distributors and publishers to distribute
games
A game is a structured form of play, usually undertaken for entertainment or fun, and sometimes used as an educational tool. Many games are also considered to be work (such as professional players of spectator sports or games) or art (such ...
, video and software to consumers. Levitan eventually drove sales and product development in the direction of
game publishers.
Numerous game companies signed on for Pando Networks’ services, and, in 2011 alone, Pando software had delivered 200 million unique video games onto computer desktops.
Because of the massive amounts of data delivered over its networks worldwide, Pando Networks was able to compile and release two studies on
broadband
In telecommunications, broadband is wide bandwidth data transmission which transports multiple signals at a wide range of frequencies and Internet traffic types, that enables messages to be sent simultaneously, used in fast internet connections. ...
delivery speeds, one domestic and one global.
The domestic report prompted observations that the best speeds were recorded in wealthy suburbs like
Andover, Massachusetts
Andover is a town in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. It was settled in 1642 and incorporated in 1646."Andover" in ''The New Encyclopædia Britannica''. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 15th ed., 1992, Vol. 1, p. 387. As of th ...
versus the sluggish performance seen in more rural areas, such as in
Pocatello, Idaho
Pocatello () is the county seat of and largest city in Bannock County, with a small portion on the Fort Hall Indian Reservation in neighboring Power County, in the southeastern part of the U.S. state of Idaho. It is the principal city of the ...
where downloads were at one-tenth the speed of Andover's.
Discussing this with a
Bloomberg Bloomberg may refer to:
People
* Daniel J. Bloomberg (1905–1984), audio engineer
* Georgina Bloomberg (born 1983), professional equestrian
* Michael Bloomberg (born 1942), American businessman and founder of Bloomberg L.P.; politician and ma ...
television reporter, Levitan spoke out about the regional disparity, calling it a business, political and
social issue
A social issue is a problem that affects many people within a society. It is a group of common problems in present-day society and ones that many people strive to solve. It is often the consequence of factors extending beyond an individual's cont ...
. "From a political standpoint, the FCC
.S._Federal_Communications_Commission.html" ;"title="Federal_Communications_Commission.html" ;"title=".S. Federal Communications Commission">.S. Federal Communications Commission">Federal_Communications_Commission.html" ;"title=".S. Federal Communications Commission">.S. Federal Communications Commissionand others are looking at this, but we all know it's hard to find agreement in Washington on what to do. If we all believe that fast Internet speeds are good for the economy and development … and if we believe they are as important as the Internet was in developing commerce, then it's important that this [vast speed discrepancy] is addressed." Pando Networks was acquired by Microsoft in 2013.
Live XYZ
In 2014, Levitan co-founded Live XYZ. The company built a live map of cities showing every business on every block, and what's happening inside each location by time of day. Live XYZ data provided retail storefront vacancy rates for a study by the NYC Department of City Planning released in August 2019, and for a study released in September 2019 by the Office of the New York City Controller.
Prone2Help
Levitan and his two brothers, Richard Levitan and Dan Levitan, founded Prone2Help Inc. in April 2020. Prone2Help donates proning cushions to hospitals to assist in the treatment of patients with COVID-19 Pneumonia.
Other activities
From 2000 to 2009, Levitan served on the board of Mobius Management Systems, an enterprise archiving and record keeping company acquired by
ASG Software Solutions in 2007. From 1992 until 2010, Levitan served on the board of directors of
New York Cares, where he remains an honorary board member.
References
External links
Pando NetworksiVillageNew York Cares
{{DEFAULTSORT:Levitan, Robert
1961 births
American chief executives
American technology company founders
Businesspeople from New York City
American advertising executives
Businesspeople in information technology
Living people
People from Manhattan