SEATTLE - A federal lawsuit tangentially involving the Drudge Report includes some interesting information about the Internet ad business.
Gen Ads, an Internet ad sales firm, accuses Andrew Breitbart and Breitbart.com of breach of contract, fraud and copyright infringement. Plaintiff claims Breitbart "is associated with Matt Drudge's news web site the Drudge Report ... which ... generates more than $1 million in advertising revenue annually."
Breitbart allegedly "controls certain content that appears on drudgereport.com" and "has the ability to direct traffic ... from drudgereport.com to other web sites ... by inserting hyperlinks". Breitbart owns and operates his own site, breitbart.com, which derives most of its visits (2.6 million hits in its first month, August-September 2005) from the Drudge site, the complaint states.
Gen Ads was formed to "generate revenue from the significant traffic at the Breitbart Site," and had an exclusive ad agreement with it, but now Breitbart is diverting visitors away from Gen Ads to the Reuters site, costing Gen Ads more than $75,000 in damages, the suit claims.
