Ant Farm, an innovation sandbox founded by former Times Internet Limited* (TIL) CEO Rishi Khiani, has launched its first venture - Fork Media. Founded by former TIL execs Upen Rai and Samar Verma as its co-founders, Fork Media is an advertising venture which has on board publishers like HT Media, The India Today Group, The Hindu, and The Daily Mail, claiming an aggregate of 25 million users on Internet and mobile; the website lists 15 publications in all. Khiani told MediaNama that they will content focused, and create branded content properties, standalone sites, do native advertising, and also integrate Outbrain with publishers for discovery. "We're creating properties with publishers, where there are brands that are sponsoring entire zones. The publisher there powers content, and provides the audience. We create it, package it, and sell it as a complete package to the advertiser. That's the content marketing piece. Additionally, because we are representing publishers, we won't do the usual 300x250 advertising spots. We'll do Interstitials, large formats, microsites, full fledged sites, and we've built a tool where we can deploy any site in a day, as long as the design is done. The content comes from the publisher, or syndication done by our content team. The idea is to create a longer term shelf life for the audience. In video, we'll create a series with a publisher so their brand gets better visibility." But publishers have been doing much of this in-house so far. So why would they sign up with Fork…
