The folks in the OpenDNS marketing department probably huddle together each morning in a meeting room, praying to the digital gods for ISP DNS problems -- given that every time an ISP has a DNS disruption, the increasingly popular company sees an influx of new customers. Since being launched in 2006 by David Ulevitch, the service has developed an almost cult following, and now offers users a slew of services ranging from Internet filters and URL auto-correction to network monitoring and anti-phishing protection.

The company has certainly been helped each time the nation's two largest ISPs, Comcast and AT&T, temporarily forget how to run their DNS servers (which has happened a number of times over the last few years). OpenDNS also likely saw a nice influx of customers after Dan Kaminsky's DNS vulnerability was unveiled last summer, and it was publicized that many ISPs were slow to patch their systems.

This week it was Time Warner Cable's turn to deliver some free advertising to OpenDNS, after a DNS outage took thousands (or a million, it depends who you ask) of Time Warner Cable & Roadrunner subscribers offline starting on Monday. By Wednesday, the Los Angeles Times was extolling the virtues of OpenDNS. By Thursday, so was the Orange County Register. OpenDNS was also recommended to impacted users in our forums.

It's not clear how many users switched before Time Warner Cable resolved the problem (their LA network status page seems to indicate the problem is ongoing as of mid-day Friday). While probably not a priority for execs at Time Warner Cable, it does eat away at the revenue generated by DNS redirection advertising, which Time Warner Cable began implementing roughly a year ago. A growing number of ISPs have been implementing DNS redirection ad pages that pop-up when a user mistypes a URL, creating a new profit stream off clumsy typing.

OpenDNS is targeting that same profit stream and so far, and seems to be doing a much better job at it -- by including features that users actually find useful. Earlier this year it was estimated that OpenDNS makes $20,000 per day via their search relationship with Yahoo alone. That's money that could be going into ISP pockets, and you can be sure that eventually, should OpenDNS's popularity continue to grow, carriers will start trying to get wayward DNS users back onto their own servers -- one way or another.