Boulder County Business Report

 

Booyah's online marketing business is booming

 

By Ben Frumin

4/14/2006

 

BOULDER - Booyah! That young-at-heart exclamation - brought into the popular lexicon several years ago by ESPN's Stuart Scott - is a perfect name for Boulder-based Booyah Networks, a digital advertising, marketing and broadcasting company that's seen its success skyrocket in recent years.

 

Booyah Networks Inc. opened its doors about five years ago. It primarily has served as an online marketing and advertising firm that positions its clients' Web sites and ads near the top of results lists for certain keyword searches on Google, Yahoo, AOL and other engines.

 

The idea has been to drive traffic to its clients and refine its search placement techniques to make sure that such online ads were paying off, said Michael Shehan, co-founder and chief executive officer.

 

Business is booming. Booyah has about 200 clients, many of whom shell out as much as $60,000 a month for the firm's services.

 

With online innovation moving at top speed, Booyah is in the initial stages of launching its next major line of services: providing and positioning digital video content.

 

Online videos are "the next real hot space" on the Internet, Shehan said, and Booyah wants to get in on the ground floor. The company plans to strike deals with the owners of video content - anything from independent films to sporting events to popular commercials - and get the videos posted on Web sites targeted toward people with a specific interest in those videos, he said.

 

For instance, Booyah already has reached an agreement with the Arena Football League. Game highlights now will be posted on team Web sites alongside online reports from newspapers covering the local team or anywhere else an AFL fan might go online.

 

Shehan envisions his clients' videos available at numerous appropriate Web sites reaching as many interested consumers as possible. "If you had a product, would you only sell it at Target?" he asked.

 

One of the keys to Booyah's new broadcasting service is making money from video content, which often is pirated and posted online illegally, or simply posted for free by those who don't know how to profit from it. To make money from video content, Booyah will either allow users to watch clips for free with a short commercial tacked onto the front, or ask consumers to pay a nominal fee - perhaps $1.99 - to view a commercial-free clip.

 

Booyah won't charge clients anything upfront for its online video placement and distribution service; company officials said Booyah would get an undisclosed cut of revenues from each video viewing. So it will be pretty simple for interested content owners to get their products to viewers.

 

According to Steven Swoboda, Booyah co-founder, chief financial officer and chief operating officer, many content owners know the Internet is a great tool to reach their desired audiences inexpensively, but they don't have the know-how to get their videos posted in the right places. To ease networking with potential clients who might want to sign up for Booyah's advertising or digital broadcasting services, the company opened a small office in Los Angeles in March and plans to open one in New York City later this year.

 

"That's where the (video) content is, and that's where the advertisers are," Swoboda said.

 

Booyah has the cash for that expansion. Booyah's revenues rose from about $2 million in 2003 to $8 million in 2004, before winding up with more than $13 million in revenue last year, Swoboda said. This year he expects $18 million to $20 million in revenues.

 

The growing company has 27 employees and plans to dramatically increase that number to 40 to 45 by year's end. To accommodate that growth, Booyah is looking for a new location. The company is now in a 5,000-square-foot space on the 4700 block of Walnut Street in Boulder. Swoboda said Booyah pays about $5,500 a month for that facility, which it hopes to sublet until the lease runs out in September 2007.

 

Swoboda is looking for a 10,000-square-foot facility somewhere between Boulder and Denver, possibly along the Highway 36 corridor, and hopes to move the company in the third quarter of this year. The new facility would be Booyah's fourth since its inception in spring 2001.

 

Swoboda said he and Shehan got the cash to start Booyah from a dozen investors who collectively put up $665,000. All Booyah employees have stock options that allow them to buy into the growing company.

 

And what of the company name, which seems fitting for an outfit that only has four workers born before 1966? The name was inspired by one employee's enthusiasm in the company's early days. The then-23-year-old salesman would announce a closed deal with a booming "Booyah!" that reverberated throughout the still-unnamed startup company's small office, Shehan said.

 

"We just thought it was perfect because it's a fun name and represents getting stuff done," he said.