PhillyDeals: Online advertising a boon for Philadelphia firms

Philadelphia's online advertising business may lack the cachet of New York's Silicon Alley.

But the region has its own "digital chops": It's home to Conshohocken-based Internet marketing agency PointRoll Inc. (owned by newspaper publisher Gannett Co. Inc.), Center City-based online drug-marketing specialist Razorfish/Digitas, and other creative and specialty software firms with national clients, says Todd Miller, newly promoted boss at Archer Group, the Wilmington firm that builds online ads for JPMorgan Chase, Wawa, Herr's, American Water, and other big Philadelphia-area companies.

Archer has grown to nearly 60 professionals, 10 times its 2005 staff, as online advertising demand has risen. It has expanded to occupy three stories of a renovated brick building in Wilmington's reviving Lower Market Street (LoMa) district, near the newly reopened Queen Theater and the new World Cafe Live. And it has added a Center City Philadelphia satellite office.

Business has been busy enough that cofounders Lee Mikles and Patrick Callahan last week could afford to partly cash out, and step down from day-to-day management to spend more time with their kids, leaving Miller and Mike Derins as comanaging directors. The founders remain cochairmen.

In another boost for the local creative class, New York's Tremor Media, the online ad-buying technology firm that rivals YouTube as a viewer magnet (according to ComScore data), has hired Greg Ricciardi's 20nine agency, based in Conshohocken, to design and place ads announcing its "rebranding" as Tremor Video.

The new name is another sign the Internet is where Americans go for video.

Still in talks

Gov. Corbett's Department of General Services is negotiating a new agreement for the sale of the former state office building at Broad and Spring Garden Streets to Philadelphia developer Bart Blatstein's Tower Investments Inc

.

Blatstein agreed to buy the tower for $25 million way back in 2008 under Gov. Ed Rendell, but the deal lagged when the state faced delays moving its workers to offices owned by Rendell backer Ron Rubin's Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust.

Then Blatstein lost financing for the project as development loans dried up. Both sides had to make financial concessions for the privilege of extending the agreement.