Zedo (trademark styled as ZEDO) is a US and India-based advertising technology company that provides several online advertising products and services to Internet publishers, advertisers, and agencies. The company was founded in 1999 by

Roy de Souza Roy de Souza (born 1970) is an Indian engineer and writer. He is the co-founder of technology company Zedo and medical technology company BreakBio. In 2022, he was a TEDx speaker. Education He earned a master's degree in engineering from the Uni ...

. The company works with publishers that sell space on their web pages to online advertisers. Zedo's servers send advertisements to users' browsers. Zedo uses an

HTTP cookie HTTP cookies (also called web cookies, Internet cookies, browser cookies, or simply cookies) are small blocks of data created by a web server while a user is browsing a website and placed on the user's computer or other device by the user's w ...

to track users' browsing history resulting in targeted

pop-up ads Pop-up ads or pop-ups are forms of online advertising on the World Wide Web. A pop-up is a graphical user interface (GUI) display area, usually a small window, that suddenly appears ("pops up") in the foreground of the visual interface. The pop-u ...

and pop-under ads. The cookie is often flagged by

spyware Spyware (a portmanteau for spying software) is software with malicious behaviour that aims to gather information about a person or organization and send it to another entity in a way that harms the user—for example, by violating their privac ...

and

adware Adware, often called advertising-supported software by its developers, is software that generates revenue for its developer by automatically generating online advertisements in the user interface of the software or on a screen presented to the ...

removal programs. In a 2013 case study written by Amazon, Amazon described ZEDO as a company that "develops innovative technology solutions to help publishers sell and deliver Internet ads". In December 2021, Zedo was acquired by Discovery, Inc.

History

Zedo was founded in September 1999 by

. The company is headquartered in the North Beach district of

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

, California, and has four research and development centers in Russia and India. In 2001, it expanded by offering the ad-serving technology to large websites. By 2004, the use of filters to limit pop-ups and pop-unders increased, and Zedo began using intromercials—advertisements served before the requested content—as an alternate method. Zedo has also experimented with creating its own social networking sites. In 2006, the company launched Zebo.com, a social networking site, where users get shopping advice from friends who own products. In 2011, Zedo began partnering with newspaper publishers. In October 2011, Zedo spun out its ad exchange platform in India into a separate company called Zinc with headquarters in Mumbai.

Acquisition by Discovery

On December 8, 2021, it was announced that

Discovery Discovery may refer to: * Discovery (observation), observing or finding something unknown * Discovery (fiction), a character's learning something unknown * Discovery (law), a process in courts of law relating to evidence Discovery, The Discovery ...

had acquired Zedo, its real-time bidding and supply-side platforms to sell advertising programmatically. Zedo employees joined Discovery as part of the acquisition deal.

Criticism

Zedo uses HTTP cookies to track users' browsing and advertisement viewing history. A writer for ''

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...

'' called pop-unders from Zedo and other providers "annoying" while also describing the advertisements' windows as a "seemingly endless barrage". Technologist

Danny Sullivan Daniel John Sullivan III (born March 9, 1950), better known as Danny Sullivan, is an American former racing driver. He earned 17 wins in the CART Indy Car World Series, including the 1985 Indianapolis 500. Sullivan won the 1988 CART Champions ...

has stated that Zedo carries misleading "junk" ads linking to fake news sites. Zedo offers an option to

opt out The term opt-out refers to several methods by which individuals can avoid receiving unsolicited product or service information. This option is usually associated with direct marketing campaigns such as e-mail marketing or direct mail. A list of thos ...

of targeted advertisements and says that it has an anti-spyware policy.

References

{{Reflist Companies based in San Francisco Online advertising services and affiliate networks