UPDATE: Shiny Ads won 3rd place in the TiE Quest Toronto 2010 business venture competition. We thank all of the judges and our supporters for their great work since the start of the competition in November 2009.  In addition to winning the 3rd place prize, Shiny Ads also received two “Intention of Interest” certificates from a Venture Capitalist firm and an Angel investor group.

Shiny Ads has been selected as a finalist in the TiE Quest 2010 venture competition and is the only web technology venture left in the competition.

Over 200 contestants received an opportunity to present their ventures to professionals who can actually fund these businesses. Sponsoring firms, from where the judging panel was drawn from, will be offering an “Expression of Interest” for investment of up to $1,000,000 to top teams. The top teams will also receive substantial prizes in cash as well as professional services that will exceed $150,000 in total value.

The winners of the 2010 TiEQuest competition will be awarded on April 15th.

TiEQuest is an annual business venture competition held in Toronto to encourage entrepreneurship, engage emerging entrepreneurial talent and to create an ecosystem of entrepreneurship.

deviantART today launched the next phase of its self-serve advertising strategy with a service entitled adPro. adPro allows professionals and comercial organizations to directly advertise on deviantART and reach the web’s largest creative community.

adPro is powered by the latest version of Shiny Ads self-serve advertising platform. It allows the advertiser to create a display ad using easy-to-use tools including banner templates, target the campaign by country, pay via a wide array of options and then track the performance of their campaign.

Since the entire ordering process is automated, including the ad insertion into deviantART’s OpenX ad server, transaction expenses are significantly reduced. This allows deviantART to lower its price point to attract small and local businesses that would traditionally not be able to afford such a campaign and would spend their small ad budget elsewhere such as ad networks.

“We’re excited by the launch of AdPro, powered by Shiny Ads.” said Ernie Riemer, VP of Advertising, “The platform Shiny Ads provides allows us an efficient and customizable way to offer a great product to the large number of small businesses looking to advertise on deviantART”