Undergraduates Build Local Ad Network

For many small companies, the prospect of traditional online display advertising is daunting—both logistically difficult and costly. But a group of Harvard and Yale students are working to create an alternate advertising platform for this subset of advertisers.

Founded last summer by Roger R. Lee '08 and Tyler W. Bosmeny '09, PaperG allows companies to advertise for as little as $10 per week on their 'Flyerboard,' versus the upwards of $1,000 charged for banner-ad space currently available on many web sites, Bosmeny said.

"Roger and I had done a lot of work in online advertising, and we realized that online ad was largely dominated by large national companies," said Bosmeny, who is also The Crimson's associate business manager. "We came up with the Flyerboard in response to that...We think it's a pretty great combination for local companies and local organizations that want to go online."

PaperG is targeting local advertisers at present and hopes to launch its platform on all the major Web sites in the area so that local companies might promote themselves there, Bosmeny said.

The group has strong ties to local media. Lee was The Crimson's business manager last year, and the company is building an advertising network on several local Web sites. Currently, PaperG's main product, Flyerboard, is featured on boston.com (the site of The Boston Globe), HarvardSquare.com, and the Web sites of Metro Boston, the Weekly Dig, The Crimson, and the New Haven Independent.

The Flyerboard platform displays several miniature images of event flyers or other advertisements on a digital corkboard. When clicked, the images expand, providing the full advertisement.

In April, the group was awarded $5000 in seed money as winners of the Harvard i3 Innovation Challenge.

PaperG plans to expand from city to city as several members of the now six-person company (which is also taking interns for the summer) graduate from Harvard and Yale and begin full-time work with PaperG.

—Staff writer Aditi Balakrishna can be reached at balakris@fas.harvard.edu.