Traveling Campus to Focus on Interactive Sales

By: Jennifer Saba With Internet advertising soaring over the last few quarters -- the Interactive Advertising Bureau just reported a record-breaking Q3 with online ad revenue up 25.3% to $5.2 billion -- Doug Weaver spotted an opportunity.

For 10 years now Weaver has been running the Upstream Group, a consulting company that trains salespeople how to increase online revenue. He has worked with several major media outfits and newspapers including the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and The Washington Post.

This week, however, Weaver and Scot McLernon, who just joined Upstream as president, are taking their show on the road. The pair raised some capital and found the venture Upstream Habitat, a traveling university that promises to immerse online sales people in a three-day course to help them bring in more revenue.

Habitat will hit different regions of the United States and the first classes will take place in New York City in April. It will be a campus-like setting where attendees board for an immersive curriculum. The cost runs about $5,500 per person for the all-inclusive package. Habitat wants to keep classes to about 100 people.

"What people are going to walk away with is a deep understanding of how it all works and how to use it on behalf of marketers and to solve advertiser's problems," Weaver said about course load that will center on all things digital.

Different experts will teach classes according to their area of know-how in subjects like rich media, video, and targeting. Habitat will break out the class into groups of 20 according to their area of needs.

Weaver and McLernon, both have years of online experience (McLernon most recently led the sales team for CBS Interactive) and have seen digital operations go from corporate cast-off to favored status. They hope that Habitat will snowball into something for all Interactive sales people. "Nobody is out there in the marketplace with a Web site or blog," Weaver said. " We want to create a community. If we do that, we think it's going to end up to be very valuable."