An official ICv2 release.  Milton Griepp, owner of ICv2, has announced that the company has kicked off its initial ad sales campaign.  'Our retailer audience is growing every week,' said Griepp, 'and it's time to open the site to outside advertisers that want to reach this group.'   ICv2.com, which launched at the beginning of February, is a news and information site for pop culture retailers in five categories -- anime, games, toys, comics, and movie/TV merchandise.  The focus of the site is narrowly directed at the retailer community--the information on the site is collected, written and presented with retailers in mind, and ICv2 has marketed itself exclusively to the trade, with no consumer advertising or public relations. 

According to Griepp, the site was launched to be an ad-supported site.  'We've always planned to take ads as a way to generate revenues, but wanted to get the site working smoothly and get our audience numbers up first.  Now that we've accomplished those initial goals, we can start developing ad programs for companies that want to reach pop culture retailers.' 

ICv2's launch of ad sales effort is a consultative process with advertisers.  'We're finding our way in terms of how advertisers want ads packaged to be most effective,' said Griepp.  'We have a lot of institutional knowledge on this retailer audience and on online advertising, and by talking to advertisers about their needs, the products they want to promote, their timing goals, and so on, we can put together an advertising program that works for each advertiser.'  An advertising rate card is available by e-mailing Griepp at Mgriepp@icv2.com.

Retailers will see little change in the site due to this new change.  There are three ad slots on most ICv2 pages that are currently occupied by ICv2 'house' ads.  The only change for users of the site will be that those slots will begin to display messages from outside advertisers over the coming months.