51. Powerlinks Media (2012)

Founders: Kevin Flood and Mike Harty
Founded: September 2011
Website: www.powerlinks.com

Flood and Harty founded Shopow, the social shopping network, in 2009. From this, not only did they create an extremely successful business, but they soon realised they’d also sown the seeds for a second. Powerlinks Media, originally part of Shopow, has now been established as its own company and already in its short life counts 22,000 advertisers, including a number of blue-chip brands, among its clients.

Targeting the same market as Vibrant Media, Powerlinks converts key words within a site’s editorial copy into text links – which display relevant pop-up ads when a cursor hovers over them – with the aim of delivering more targeted returns for advertisers. Used by leading web publishers, ad networks and agencies to incrementally grow their online advertising businesses, the co-founders believe their offering will change the shape of affiliate marketing as we know it.