Hello everybody. This is Cortland Allen from AndeHackers.com, where I talked to the founders behind profitable internet businesses and I asked them about their stories and about the things that make their businesses successful so that all the rest of us can learn from their examples.

Today I'm talking to

Todd Garland, the founder and CEO of an online advertising company called Buy Sell Ads. How's it

going, Todd? It's going great. How are you, Carlin? I'm doing excellent. So if I believe correctly,

you started Buy Sell Ads in 2008, and today it's one of the most successful online advertising

companies, but I think that term advertising company is somewhat vague because it covers a lot of ground. So can you tell us exactly what buy-sell ads is and how it works? Certainly. So, I mean, first things first, advertising is like a dirty word these days. You know, it's almost like a four-letter word. But, you know, like the basis of the web in terms of how people make money is through advertising.

So it actually isn't the worst thing in the world.

Obviously, we all love to hate ads that are horrible and the ones that follow us around and annoy us.

But there are a few of us who are actually out there trying to not be those people and enable that kind of behavior on the web.

And so that's ultimately how I would actually explain what Bicel ads is. We try to promote authenticity through advertising,

if we can call it that. And all that really means is we work directly with advertisers and

publishers, the people selling the access to their audience to find matches that are actually a good fit for both.

And so the ads come through as less of an obtrusion and more of a recommendation, if you will.

Cool. And how did you get started doing this?

Because I think, I mean, just like a little bit of a backstory.

I once worked with a guy who worked in advertising.

And we were co-founders.

We considered pivoting into like an ad business.

And he spent the better part of a day just going over the entire field of, you know, advertising and bidders and exchanges and networks and publishing and like all sorts of stuff that like was way more complex than I thought it would ever be being an outsider. It just strikes me as interesting that anyone would wake up one day

and say, I want to get into the ad business. So how did you make that decision? Yeah, so I kind of

stumbled into it, to be honest. I, at the time, back in 2007, 2008, I was running a few blogs.

I'm a front-end developer by trade.

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