Joe Speiser and Alex Zhardanovsky first met in the late 1990s while running competitive online coupon companies, each of which had been wildly successful as leading online discount shopping portals. Soon after the two met, they combined forces and began discussing the future of online advertising. The two visionaries saw that the web was quickly evolving and rapidly changing the face of advertising online and offline. They saw the potential of the web to be a viable vehicle for new businesses to be hatched, as well as a mechanism to attract the world's leading brands. Based on this shared belief, Joe and Alex concluded that they needed to build a competitive web presence that would revolutionalize advertising by shifting traditional marketing outlets to online channels.

These two luminaries launched AzoogleAds in the fall of 2000. The goal at the time was to build a marketing company that would deliver quantifiable online advertising results and revenues for their partners, and be able to accommodate a wide variety of marketing channels and delivery methods to achieve their partner's goals. In the ensuing 8 years, they have been widely credited with being pioneers in what we now know as the "Performance-based Advertising Network" industry. In 2004, they received investments from TA Associates and the Stripes Group and brought in a strong management team to help grow the company from the airtight foundation they built. Although the company has always been in a very competitive marketplace, it largely stayed unknown to the general public in its early days. But during this time, they were quietly building out their customer roster to include large advertisers searching for the most cost-effective use of their ad dollars as well as establishing relationships with the most innovative online publishers in the business. Since inception, the company has always been profitable.

Their leadership in the early years of AzoogleAds helped spawn what the business has become and still is today: a widely-respected, industry-leading performance ad network servicing advertisers and publishers alike. The company's advertiser portfolio is impressive and includes hundreds of top tier online advertisers - many of them Fortune 1000 and Fortune 500 companies. The company's publisher base and distribution is equally impressive and includes a vast network of tens of thousands of websites, search partners, e-mail publishers and media buyers. In short, AzoogleAds delivers customers to advertiser clients looking for a measurable way to build their brands AND grow revenues. In this way, Joe & Alex's initial vision is still being carried out.