Robert Levitan

Robert Levitan (born April 22, 1961) is an American businessman best known for his multiple entrepreneurial activities in New York City’s Silicon Alley, the cluster of web and technology businesses stretching from Manhattan’s Flatiron District through SoHo and TriBeCa.

In 1995, Levitan co-founded iVillage, one of Silicon Alley’s “first settlers” and a startup that would eventually become the web's largest community for women, with Candice Carpenter, former president of Time-Life Video, and Nancy Evans, ex-president and -publisher of Doubleday. Having never sold ads before, except for his sixth-grade yearbook, Levitan was charged with building the company’s advertising department, and he conceived of a strategy beyond selling the nascent standard: the web banner.

Levitan's model gave sponsors, paying between $75,000 and $150,000 for 6- or 12-month terms, the option to build “bridge sites,” which sat between iVillage editorial pages and the sponsors’ own corporate sites. Straight links to sponsors' corporate websites, which often had no relevance to iVillage readers, were discouraged. Bridge sites, alternatively, could fulfill marketers' objectives and at the same time provide content as engaging as the iVillage websites themselves, much like what advertisers, nearly 20 years later, call native advertising and tout as an effective banner alternative.

Once Levitan made a sale, iVillage’s sponsorship department provided the assistance of an ad agency and web development shop combined - with one fundamental difference: they had the experience of being a web publisher. Services included site concepts and wireframes, content and design, community-building techniques, sweepstakes and other promotions, site creation and maintenance - all for an additional fee.

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