- Mike Shields, Mediaweek

NEW YORK Turner is pasting together its vast collection of Web properties to form a sizable, brand-friendly ad network, just as the company officially swears off selling its remnant inventory via third-party ad nets.

The cable-centric firm said it plans to begin packaging both display and video ad inventory for advertisers from 19 different Web sites. That encompasses owned-and-operated properties like CNN.com and CartoonNetwork.com as well as partner sites such as NBA.com and PGA.com as part of an overall digital sales restructuring. (Previously, news and entertainment properties were sold by different groups).

In total, the new network -- which also includes TNT.com, TBS.com, PGATour.com, AdultSwim.com and GameTap.com -- will deliver an audience of 48 million monthly unique users (per Nielsen Online), on par with some of the Web's larger media conglomerates.

But unlike some of the major ad networks, Turner says it is now positioned to offer high reach while promising often leery brand advertisers the benefits of well-lit, quality editorial environments. Such placement is not always guaranteed when brands run across thousands of long-tail sites. "I don't know how many companies can do what we're attempting to do," said David Levy, president of both Turner Broadcasting Sales and Turner Sports. "We can deliver high reach with 19 different brands, not hundreds of sites. And these are strong brands too."

In addition, Turner is no longer willing to leave the custody of those brands in others' hands. "We are no longer using third-party ad networks," said Levy. "Nobody sells these brands better than we do." Turner's stance amplifies an ongoing industry debate brought to the forefront in March by ESPN, which made a similar no-networks pledge.

Alan Schanzer, managing partner MEC Interaction North America, sees Turner's move paying off on several levels. On the one hand, it highlights the company's ability to mine inherent synergies among its growing list of Web brands, letting advertisers target groups like sports enthusiasts or young men on several sites at once. "They are creating a lot more 'verticalness' in the ad network world," he said. "This gives them [online] scale to sell underneath their TV business."

Turner is also protecting itself against being undercut in the marketplace by networks offering its inventory at bargain basement prices. "They are saying, 'Why sell at a discount when we can sell our own stuff?'" he pointed out.

Some see the move by Turner and ESPN to dump networks as the beginnings of an industry-wide rethinking of the online ad sales model. "If you talk to sales people [about using ad networks], they will tell you, 'This is stupid, this is crazy,'" said Paul Iaffaldano, evp of media solutions, The Weather Channel, which has never employed networks for the highly trafficked Weather.com

Iaffaldano predicts a mass exodus -- and soon: "By the end of the year, when you look at the list of quality sites, every single one will have pulled out of ad networks."

Yet John Ardis, vp, corporate strategy at ValueClick, one of the largest independent ad networks, doubts such an exodus is coming -- or whether it would have much impact. He acknowledged that for some networks, being able to claim they represent inventory on premium sites does open doors.

But the best ad networks, added Ardis, have "always been about non-marquee sites," which in today's fragmented Web universe is "where people are spending most of their time. A lot of companies are trying to find the best way to capitalize on that shift."