CHICAGO – BrightTag, Inc., today announced the first wave of partners for its BrightTag ONE digital marketing integration platform. BrightTag is the first company to link site owners with the large and expanding ecosystem of digital service providers in real time through a server-to-server direct connection rather than through third-party code delivered through the browser. The BrightTag ONE platform replaces obstructive layers of third-party data collection code – or “tags” – on websites with a single, integrated cloud-based data server.

BrightTag ONE is predicated on the company’s belief that the current method of collecting valuable first-party website data, built on individual pixels and complex JavaScript tags loaded through the browser, has become slow, unstable and unscalable.  BrightTag’s new approach tackles these issues by eliminating legacy browser-based tracking code while ensuring complete data collection.

“BrightTag’s data integration model can address a major problem in digital marketing,” said Bruce Biegel, Managing Director, Winterberry Group. “There’s a large and rapidly increasing landscape of companies bringing innovation to the marketplace, but that innovation has come at a growing price as data needs to move between first and third parties. Server-to-server integration is a solution that promises to make digital marketing faster, cleaner, more transparent and more valuable for all parties.”

The initial members of the BrightTag ONE Partner Program being announced today – all of which have connected to the ONE platform – represent a wide cross-section of third-party digital marketing and analytics companies. The ONE platform gives BrightTag’s outstanding client roster of global brand leaders in retail, travel, consumer packaged goods, financial services and education immediate access to BrightTag Partners and the services they provide, promoting innovation and delivering richer ROI for marketers and advertisers.

“Overburdening pages with pixels has created performance problems for site owners and advertisers,” said Bill Demas, chief executive officer of Turn. “By replacing third-party tags and disseminating the data advertisers need, BrightTag offers an effective approach to addressing this problem. This partnership is perfectly aligned with Turn’s open ecosystem approach, and we are excited to show our joint customers how this technical integration can improve their digital advertising campaigns through data.”

BrightTag site owner and marketer clients can “see” what is happening to their data in real time, putting them in control over what is collected and shared.  BrightTag ONE’s integrated, server-to-server platform allows site owners to eliminate the clutter and overhead of third-party tracking code to serve clean data directly from the cloud.  BrightTag ONE is compatible with the most complex configurations and is fully backwards-compatible with legacy tracking tags when clients need a hybrid approach.

“BrightTag has set out to modernize our industry’s underlying data connectivity infrastructure. The BrightTag ONE platform provides clients with transparency around data collection and tools for controlling how their proprietary and valuable data is shared amongst their many partners,” said Marc Kiven, BrightTag’s founder. “Our clients are not asking us for ways to better ‘manage’ all of the tracking tags that litter their sites; rather, they want help removing these tags from their sites in order to deliver a better user experience and respect the privacy choices of their customers. The partners mentioned here today have joined us in improving how the digital marketing industry works.”

Michael Katz, CEO of interclick commented: “As our industry grows and develops new capabilities, so does the complexity and the problems complexity brings. The BrightTag ONE platform mitigates complexity by allowing marketers to remove tracking tags from the browser and decide what to do with data generated on their sites. Server-to-server data integration is the best approach we’ve seen to improve the customer experience and benefit every entity along the digital marketing value chain.”

“We see a great upside when we activate the Aggregate Knowledge Media Intelligence Platform with BrightTag clients,” said David Jakubowski, CEO of Aggregate Knowledge.  “BrightTag clients can leverage their BrightTag implementation to avoid the time-consuming site tagging process and get immediate access to AK for accurate and actionable audience insights. Everyone wins.”

The BrightTag ONE Partner Program
BrightTag’s ONE Partner Program, whose first members are being announced today, is designed to benefit digital marketing services providers by expediting activation of new clients, enhancing data collection capabilities and providing meaningful performance benefits for members’ clients. ONE Partner companies represent a broad set of capabilities across the entire digital marketing industry including ad networks, data management platforms (DMP), demand side platforms, search, retargeting, attribution, social targeting, and analytics.

The following outstanding organizations – listed alphabetically – are among the many BrightTag ONE Partners providing clients with the full benefits of server-to-server integration through the BrightTag ONE platform:
●      Adometry – leads the industry in online ad verification and Ad Analytics™ attribution management, delivering actionable insight to improve the performance of online advertising.
●      Aggregate Knowledge – a leading (Software as a Service) SaaS audience and campaign analytics company
●      Buysight – a leading retargeting and customer acquisition performance marketing company
●      Chango – the leading provider of search retargeting, combining the power of search with the scale of display
●      CPX Interactive – one of the largest global online ad networks serving more than 1 billion daily ad impressions across more than 60 countries
●      DataXu – the leading multi-channel demand side platform (DSP) for digital marketing management
●      HookLogic – powers e-commerce media, a revolutionary way for brands and shoppers to connect in and around the e-commerce environment
●      interclick (NASDAQ: ICLK) –  a leading provider of digital advertising technology and services
●      Legolas Media – an innovative digital advertising marketplace for premium advertisers and publishers to trade audiences in a guaranteed and transparent manner
●      LucidMedia – the most comprehensive and transparent digital advertising management platform for targeting and optimizing display campaigns
●      Marin Software – provider of the leading online advertising management platform for advertisers and agencies
●      mediaFORGE – a leader in digital display advertising that embraces qualitative, not quantitative, performance measurement, instilling unparalleled confidence in ROI
●      MediaMath – the leading provider of digital media trading technology and services
●      Specific Media – a digital media company driving viewership for content owners, engagement for brands and relevance for consumers
●      Turn – the digital advertising industry’s only open, enterprise-level marketing platform that delivers exceptional campaign performance and real-time audience insight for cross-channel engagement
●      XGraph – the first social targeting platform to use multi-graph data analysis to target Connected Audiences™ for optimal ad performance, at scale.
●      [x+1] – helps marketers connect with consumers in more meaningful, actionable ways, delivering content and offers where they’re most relevant

The BrightTag ONE Partner Program is open to providers of digital marketing and analytics services on a global basis. For more information about the program, contact Scott Grossman, BrightTag SVP of Business Development, at partners@brighttag.com or visit www.brighttag.com/partners.

About BrightTag
BrightTag is redefining the way data is collected and shared across the digital marketing ecosystem. With the BrightTag ONE integration platform, marketers have complete ownership and control of data gathered on their websites combined with freedom and flexibility to innovate by working with any third-party digital service provider. ONE, the company’s cloud-based integration platform, provides a connectivity layer between first-party data and the marketing and analytics services supporting the site.  BrightTag’s clients include many of the world’s top brands and hundreds of online marketing and analytics providers continue to integrate their technology with the BrightTag ONE platform. Headquartered in Chicago, BrightTag is funded by New World Ventures, TomorrowVentures, EPIC Ventures and I2A Fund. BrightTag was named by VentureWire and an independent board of review at Dow Jones as one of the 50 most innovative technology companies of 2011 and a member of the FASTech50. For more information, visit www.brighttag.com.

NEW YORK – Epic Marketplace (www.epicmarketplace.com), one of the world’s leading integrated multichannel digital marketing solutions providers leveraging the social media, mobile, display, and video channels, announced the completion of its migration to a comprehensive new cross-channel ad serving Platform. The new Platform provides for a seamless integration between all of Epic Marketplace’s distribution channels, and the ability to acquire inventory on either a real-time bidding (RTB) or direct basis, all with a universal frequency cap. An enhanced attribution analytics engine is a key component of the new Platform.

The new Platform represents a substantial transformation of the Epic Marketplace ad serving paradigm. Among the changes, the company has decommissioned its segment verification program, which was a component of its legacy ad server. The new Platform was architected and built with an enhanced suite of consumer privacy protections, positioning the company to further enhance its world-class status as a leader in digital marketing consumer protection best practices.

The new Epic Marketplace Platform is driven by a proprietary Optimization Engine (OE) that is built around advanced polynomial statistical analysis. The OE, as the “brain” of the new platform, is data-type agnostic and analyzes data input on a non-PII basis from multiple sources – e.g., social media data, cookie data, mobile data – and then renders targeting solutions applicable across all of Epic’s distribution channels. Among the critical targeting solution sets are strong core competencies in audience aggregation, keyword bidding and contextual analytics, the latter via a real time semantic contextual engine.

“This new Platform is a culmination of a vision we set forth several years ago,” said Don Mathis, President and CEO of Epic Marketplace. “With its launch, we are fully positioned for the next five years of growth in our sector – which will be all about the integrated campaign and the opportunity to provide our clients with cross-channel digital marketing solutions, not just a stand-alone display media buy or a social fan campaign, for example. With the new Platform, we can help clients achieve their marketing objectives across the critical digital traffic channels and throughout the marketing funnel.”

Epic Marketplace has strongly leveraged its deep partnership with LucidMedia in the development of certain components of the new Platform’s infrastructure. In particular, the new Platform utilizes key components of LucidMedia’s comprehensive demand-side, real-time bidding (RTB) management platform and its patented semantic contextual targeting engine as integral pieces of the infrastructure of the new Platform.

Through the new Platform, Epic Marketplace is confident that it will provide even greater value for its clients. The company’s enhanced capabilities will allow it to scale campaigns with a universal frequency cap and in a fully integrated approach across social, mobile, display and video, across its own network of premium inventory, and across major exchanges and supply-side platforms such as AdMeld, PubMatic and Rubicon.

“We’re very pleased that after such a long process, this important work for Epic Marketplace has been completed so effectively – and on-time,” said Mathis. “Our new Platform solidifies our market leadership position and allows us to leverage data and enhanced statistical targeting across all critical digital marketing channels. Moreover, the new Platform has been built with an enhanced suite of consumer privacy protections, further ensuring our compliance leadership position as well.”

For more information on Epic Marketplace, please log onto http://www.epicmarketplace.com.

About Epic Marketplace:

Epic Marketplace (www.epicmarketplace.com) is the leading integrated multichannel digital marketing solutions provider leveraging social media, mobile, display, and video. Through Epic Marketplace, the top brands and agencies can engage, persuade, influence and communicate with their best consumers and prospects helping to grow and enhance their brand while boosting sales and creating sustainable relationships.

About LucidMedia

LucidMedia (www.lucidmedia.com) is the most comprehensive and transparent digital advertising management platform for targeting and optimizing display campaigns. The LucidMedia demand-side platform (DSP) with ClickSense® page-level contextual analysis and intelligent real-time bidding (RTB) is available as both self-service and managed service to interactive agencies and brand advertisers. LucidMedia’s platform employs an easy-to-use interface to deliver proprietary optimization, consolidated buying across the Internet’s largest repositories, unique insight into real-time inventory availability, preemptive brand safety, universal frequency capping, and reach into 95% of the online population. Founded in 1999, LucidMedia processes more than one billion impressions daily for hundreds of major brand advertisers.

NEW YORK & RESTON, Va. – Epic Media Group (www.theepicmediagroup.com), the preeminent privately-held global digital marketing solutions company and the operator of Traffic Marketplace, announced that it has finalized a strategic technology partnership with LucidMedia (www.lucidmedia.com), a leading digital advertising management platform, that will allow Epic Media Group to deploy interactive advertising campaigns leveraging the LucidMedia demand-side digital advertising management platform. This announcement comes on the heels of months of collaboration between the two companies.

The new partnership will allow Epic to add LucidMedia’s Real Time Bidding (RTB) technology and advanced semantic contextual targeting to its suite of services and capabilities. Leveraging LucidMedia’s proven platform, Epic will immediately bolster its ability to help agencies and advertisers more intelligently and cost effectively reach consumers across multiple pools of inventory via Real Time Bidding. Epic will also utilize RTB and semantic contextual targeting capabilities both within its own network of premium inventory, as well as across every major exchange and Supply-Side Optimizer such as AdMeld, PubMatic and Rubicon, in a fully integrated approach to campaign delivery. Combining LucidMedia’s capabilities with Epic’s existing ad platform, sophisticated campaign analytics, and integrity assurance capabilities will allow Epic to continue to solidify its position as the market leader in offering the most advanced integrated digital marketing services available today.

“Epic’s deep expertise in managing a full spectrum of advertising services, combined with LucidMedia’s transparent and comprehensive demand-side RTB management platform as well as its advanced semantic-based contextual targeting engine, is a powerful combination,” said Don Mathis, President and Co-CEO of Epic Media Group. “This technology partnership will further unlock massive scale, allowing Epic to enhance our suite of services and improve the performance and efficiency of our interactive solutions on behalf of our clients.”

“After extensive testing on both sides, Epic has recognized that the depth and breadth of LucidMedia’s platform capabilities can significantly advance their ability to get maximum value for their clients. Epic has confirmed that our platform will not only complement but also enhance its existing platform,” said Ajay Sravanapudi, President and CEO of LucidMedia Networks, Inc. “We have spent a decade building and fine-tuning our demand-side platform for scalable ad operations and we have been working closely with Epic to integrate our capabilities in a way that will give their clients the flexibility and access they need to succeed online.”

About Epic Media Group

Epic Media Group (www.theepicmediagroup.com) is the preeminent privately-held global digital marketing solutions company, with deep expertise in managing a full spectrum of advertising services, from brand-building and engagement to performance-based customer acquisition solutions. The company relentlessly focuses on delivering the most comprehensive and cost-effective strategic digital marketing campaigns for advertisers of all sizes, across all industries and around the world. Epic Media Group intelligently and cost effectively accesses consumers across multiple traffic distribution channels through integrated campaigns which include display, search, social media, rich media, mobile, video and more.

About LucidMedia

LucidMedia (www.lucidmedia.com) is the most comprehensive and transparent digital advertising management platform for targeting and optimizing display campaigns. The LucidMedia demand-side platform (DSP) with ClickSense® page-level contextual analysis and intelligent real-time bidding (RTB) is available as both self-service and managed service to interactive agencies and brand advertisers. LucidMedia’s platform employs an easy-to-use interface to deliver proprietary optimization, consolidated buying across the Internet’s largest repositories, unique insight into real-time inventory availability, preemptive brand safety, universal frequency capping, and reach into 95% of the online population. Founded in 1999, LucidMedia processes more than one billion impressions daily for hundreds of major brand advertisers.

Under the agreement which takes effect immediately, LucidMedia is deploying Milabra’s visual recognition and targeting capabilities to enable brand advertisers and agencies using the LucidMedia platform to benefit from enhanced targeting, brand safety and compliance when planning and executing campaigns that involve images and other visual media. Milabra’s patent-pending visual intelligence platform can determine image content, image quality, page layout and design elements in real-time. This visual optimization process empowers brand advertisers and agencies to optimize their buys by recognizing contextually relevant display advertising opportunities while protecting themselves from inappropriate or irrelevant content.

“Adding Milabra’s visual intelligence data and brand safety technology to our platform is another important step in LucidMedia’s ongoing mission to provide the online advertising industry’s most comprehensive and transparent targeting capabilities for advertisers and agencies,” said Ajay Sravanapudi, Founder and CEO of LucidMedia Networks, Inc. “This important new offering combines effectively with our recently announced preemptive brand safety capabilities as well as the breadth of targeting data and proprietary technology we offer.”

“We are excited to work with LucidMedia to enable its advertisers to move beyond text and semantic content categorization into visual verification and optimization by understanding the visual context environment of their ads on a page,” said Sam Cox, CEO of Milabra. “Our visual recognition capabilities fit in ideally with LucidMedia’s digital media platform and DSP to provide advertisers and agencies a comprehensive base of visual data and brand-safe media that now extends into images and visual elements.”

About Milabra

Milabra (www.milabra.com) builds the value of online display media by bridging the visual divide between advertiser and publisher content with visual intelligence, thereby increasing editorial control available to online display advertisers. Milabra’s neural network-based visual intelligence engine understands the pages visual content environment before an ad is served, making safer, better controlled media environments for brand advertisers online. Milabra’s suite of advertiser relevant visual classifications deliver media via real time supply source platforms and providing agencies, advertisers and partners with better editorial control of their visual environment. Founded in 2008, Milabra is a privately-held company based in New York City.

LucidMedia

LucidMedia (www.lucidmedia.com) is the most comprehensive and transparent digital advertising management platform for targeting and optimizing display campaigns. The LucidMedia demand-side platform (DSP) with ClickSense® page-level contextual analysis and intelligent real-time bidding (RTB) is available as both self-service and managed service to interactive agencies and brand advertisers. LucidMedia’s platform employs an easy-to-use interface to deliver proprietary optimization, consolidated buying across the Internet’s largest repositories, unique insight into real-time inventory availability, preemptive brand safety, universal frequency capping, and reach into 95% of the online population. Founded in 1999, LucidMedia processes more than one billion impressions daily for hundreds of major brand advertisers.

The agreement follows a period during which ValueClick integrated, deployed, and tested LucidMedia’s patented ClickSense contextual targeting technology. Through the testing period, ValueClick and LucidMedia concluded that adding LucidMedia’s contextualization technologies to ValueClick’s massive network of display advertising sites would benefit both companies.

“In today’s results-focused online advertising environment, it is important that we provide our advertisers with access to powerful and precise targeting tools and technologies,” said Peter Wolfert, Chief Technology Officer of ValueClick, Inc. “We are pleased to leverage LucidMedia’s proven contextualization technology through our proprietary ad serving platforms. We believe LucidMedia’s contextual technology will help our advertiser clients achieve their specific audience and targeting goals, while helping our publisher partners improve their monetization.”

“ValueClick has built one of the world’s largest bases of online advertising inventory and we are excited to be deploying ClickSense technology across this network,” said Ajay Sravanapudi, LucidMedia CEO and founder. “We are pleased to apply our patented technology to select partners such as ValueClick.”

About ValueClick, Inc.

ValueClick, Inc. (Nasdaq: VCLK) is one of the world’s largest online marketing services companies, offering comprehensive and scalable solutions to deliver cost-effective customer acquisition for advertisers and robust revenue streams for publishers. ValueClick’s performance-based solutions allow customers to reach their potential through multiple online marketing channels, including affiliate and search marketing, display advertising, lead generation, ad serving and e-mail technology, and comparison shopping. ValueClick brands include Commission Junction, ValueClick Media, Mediaplex, Smarter.com, Coupon Mountain and Investopedia. For more information, visit http://www.valueclick.com.

About LucidMedia

LucidMedia (http://www.lucidmedia.com/) is an online demand-side platform (DSP) for display advertising management and targeting that delivers optimized, direct response, and brand advertising campaigns. LucidMediaDSP™ with ClickSense® page-level contextual analysis and intelligent real-time bidding (RTB) is available as both self-service and managed service to interactive agencies and brand advertisers. LucidMediaDSP employ an easy-to-use interface to deliver proprietary optimization, consolidated buying across the Internet’s largest repositories, unique insight into real-time inventory availability, preemptive brand safety, universal frequency capping, and reach into 95% of the online population. Founded in 1999, LucidMedia processes a billion impressions every day for hundreds of major brand advertisers.

LucidMedia’s preemptive brand protection capabilities differ significantly from “traditional” post-campaign brand safety analysis by using the company’s patented technology to pre-screen online advertising inventory. This involves tens of thousands of designated categories for detecting impression content with potentially objectionable concepts. Each advertiser can set criteria, or sensitivity levels, around specific categories ranging from adult entertainment to alcohol, drugs, war, hate, profanity and thousands of others. LucidMedia’s technology uses proprietary content markers to detect inappropriate impressions in advance that an advertiser may want to block partially or across the board based on their sensitivity levels and specific needs. Using LucidMedia DSP, agencies and advertisers can very quickly determine if a potential page is safe based on the advertisers’ criteria and sensitivity levels.

“LucidMedia has invested a decade of research and technology development to offer preemptive brand safety, as we believe the value to be unlocked is significant, particularly as traditional offline brands become more comfortable with the genuine accountability that preemptive brand safety can provide,” said Ajay Sravanapudi, LucidMedia Founder and CEO. “Preemptive protection for brand advertisers is hard to do, but we believe it’s absolutely critical for advertisers and agencies to have this capability, especially for traditional big brands to more fully trust and embrace online advertising while increasing efficiency.”

LucidMedia DSP evaluates more than one billion impressions a day from the Internet’s largest real-time media sources. This enables advertisers to scan impressions before they buy them, while applying a robust semantic analysis of the content to ensure they capture the real meaning and catch any instance of an inappropriate phrase. Preemptive brand safety enhances efficiency for advertisers by reducing waste.

LucidMedia

LucidMedia Networks, Inc. (www.lucidmedia.com), is a demand-side online display advertising management and targeting platform that delivers optimized, direct response and brand advertising campaigns to interactive agencies. LucidMediaDSP™ with ClickSense® page-level analysis and intelligent real-time bidding (RTB) is available as both a self-service and managed service to interactive agencies and their brand advertisers. The LucidMedia DSP employs an easy-to-use and secure agency interface to deliver proprietary campaign optimization, consolidated buying across the Internet’s largest repositories, unique insight into real-time inventory availability, universal frequency capping, and reach into 95% of the online population. Founded in 1999, LucidMedia processes 25 billion ad impressions every month for hundreds of major brand advertisers.

LucidMedia will add to its DSP’s patented contextual targeting technologies for advertisers and agencies with the following core data and components from all three providers:

AlmondNet’s Keyword and Segment-Based data: Powered by proprietary and patented Post-Search technology, AlmondNet aggregates and categorizes keyword and segment-based data on 100+ million users from thousands of data-providing sites to enable scalable delivery of targeted online advertisements by data-using ad networks, ad exchanges, demand-side platforms and their marketers.

The world’s largest supply of in-market data from BlueKai: LucidMedia advertisers will have access to the BlueKai Exchange, the largest source of high performance intent data on more than 160 million unique in-market travel, retail, finance and auto shoppers across the Internet. With fair market-driven pricing at its core, the BlueKai Exchange offers more than 30,000 data attributes across in-market, demo, geo, psycho and occupational categories, access to numerous “branded” data providers and proprietary analytics reports designed to further increase performance and scale for direct response and branding campaigns.

eXelate’s pool of deep targeting data which spans the entire purchasing funnel from awareness creation to conversion. eXelate data includes registration-based demographic, detailed consumer interest and in-market purchase intent data on over 150M U.S. unique users in lucrative verticals including Business-to-Business, Auto, Travel, Finance and Shopping. Derived from premium data sources, both transparent and aggregated, eXelate data integration into the LucidMedia platform will enable flexible “usage-based” pricing with no “pay-per-pixel” commitment risk.

“LucidMedia’s advertisers will now have access to our high-performing pre-packaged and custom keyword-driven segments of targeting data, allowing them to more accurately target their specific audiences in real-time as well as receive feedback on ad performance,” said Michael Benedek, president of AlmondNet’s Online Data Division.

“BlueKai provides access to the largest source of intent data at unmatched scale,” said Omar Tawakol, BlueKai CEO. “With exclusive access to some of the highest quality data in the industry, we focus on enabling advertisers to achieve superior return-on-investment by targeting consumers in virtually any segment, from broad awareness campaigns to highly granular in-market categories. We look forward to working even more deeply with LucidMedia to bring BlueKai’s industry-leading technology to bear and creating the most streamlined and efficient data buying process in the market.”

“eXelate’s integration into the Lucid Media platform will enable seamless, cost effective access to a broad pool of targeting data that will deliver bottom line ROI enhancement for advertisers,” said Meir Zohar, eXelate CEO. “Whether a demo-focused branding campaign or a conversion driven direct-response effort, eXelate data can support the demands of Lucid Media’s growing client base.”

“These partnerships with three recognized data pioneers support our strategy of providing advertisers with the most effective DSP offerings available,” said Ajay Sravanapudi, LucidMedia Founder and CEO. “As we continue to expand the LucidMedia DSP, we believe that offering our growing base of direct advertisers and agencies a singular access point to resources from these three market leaders will be invaluable, especially when integrated with our own deep base of patented contextualization and targeting technologies.”

About AlmondNet:

Founded in 1998, AlmondNet (www.almondnet.com) is a leading aggregator and distributor of data and a licensor of intellectual property and enabling technology for the delivery of targeted ads. AlmondNet’s data and proprietary technology enable the delivery of ads to computer users based on their observed online behavior wherever they may be found, in a privacy sensitive manner. AlmondNet is a board member of the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI).

About BlueKai:

BlueKai (www.bluekai.com) is at the center of the digital data economy and the largest data auction marketplace for all audience data. With quality and fair market pricing at its core, BlueKai attracts and aggregates intent data from top tier providers to reveal valuable in-market shoppers across key verticals. As a result, the BlueKai Exchange is the largest source of high performance intent data revealing over 160M unique consumers who are ready to buy. The BlueKai Exchange offers over 30,000 data attributes across in-market, demo, geo, psycho and occupational categories to increase performance and scale for direct response and branding campaigns.

BlueKai created the first online data marketplace designed with consumer transparency and control in mind. The BlueKai Registry enables consumers to see what marketers know about them, edit their online preferences and gain rewards in charitable donations. The privately held company is based in Bellevue, WA, and is a recipient of the AlwaysOn 2009 OnMedia 100 award as a Technology Innovator in Advertising.

About eXelate:

The eXelate eXchange is the world’s first open marketplace for behavioral targeting data and the leader in data management solutions for publishers. Through participation on the eXchange and access to proprietary data management tools such as eXelate’s teXi, data buyers build an instant behavioral targeting function and optimize their campaign delivery, while data sellers gain direct control over their audience data distribution and build a new privacy–friendly income stream. The eXchange includes over 40 top ad network, agency and demand-side platform buyers and dozens of leading publishers, who deliver targeting data on 150M U.S. unique users in lucrative verticals including Business-to-Business, Auto, Travel, Finance, Shopping and registration-based Demographics. For more information please visit www.exelate.com.

About LucidMedia

LucidMedia Networks, Inc. (www.lucidmedia.com) is a demand-side online display advertising management and targeting platform that delivers optimized, direct response and brand advertising campaigns to interactive agencies. LucidMedia DSP™ with ClickSense® page-level analysis and intelligent real-time bidding (RTB) is available as both a self-service and managed service to interactive agencies and their brand advertisers. The LucidMedia DSP employs an easy-to-use and secure agency interface to deliver proprietary campaign optimization, consolidated buying across the Internet’s largest repositories, unique insight into real-time inventory availability, universal frequency capping, and reach into 95% of the online population. Founded in 1999, LucidMedia processes 25 billion ad impressions every month for hundreds of major brand advertisers.

LucidMedia plans to apply the proceeds to continue expanding its recently launched self-service DSP (www.LucidMediaDSP.com) that enables agencies and advertisers to more efficiently manage their online advertising campaigns. The DSP leverages LucidMedia’s patented contextual targeting technologies to provide more than 14,000 categories along with page-level transparency and multiple layers of filtering to protect branded advertisers from inappropriate content.

This funding follows a December 2008 investment from a combination of institutional and individual investors including Lake Street Capital and Redleaf Group.

“With its unique demand-side platform, a strong base of patented technologies and a savvy and experienced management team, LucidMedia is exceptionally well-positioned for continued growth in the online advertising sector,” said April Young, MMV’s Senior Vice President and US Managing Director. “MMV is very pleased to support LucidMedia’s emerging leadership in this vibrant and growing space.”

“We are excited to have the support of the MMV team as we continue to develop unique products that redefine the online advertising industry,” said Tom Ervin, Chief Financial Officer of LucidMedia. “Our DSP represents a major opportunity for advertisers to leverage our technology’s operational efficiencies. We look forward to expanding these efficiencies and building our platform’s profile as an industry leading solution.”

About MMV Financial

MMV Financial is a specialty finance company providing creative debt solutions directly to technology and life sciences companies across North America. MMV is backed by top U.S. and Canadian private equity firms and financial institutions including CCP Equity Partners, Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, Fonds de Solidarité FTQ, HSBC Bank Canada, NewStar Financial Inc., ROI Capital, and Wells Fargo Company. For more information please visit www.mmvf.com.

About LucidMedia

LucidMedia Networks, Inc. (www.lucidmedia.com) is a demand-side online display advertising management and targeting platform that delivers optimized, direct response and brand advertising campaigns to interactive agencies. LucidMedia DSP™ with ClickSense® page-level analysis and intelligent real-time bidding (RTB) is available as both a self-service and managed service to interactive agencies and their brand advertisers. The LucidMedia DSP employs an easy-to-use and secure agency interface to deliver proprietary campaign optimization, consolidated buying across the Internet’s largest repositories, unique insight into real-time inventory availability, universal frequency capping, and reach into 95% of the online population. Founded in 1999, LucidMedia processes 25 billion ad impressions every month for hundreds of major brand advertisers.

LucidMedia developed its self-service DSP to improve efficiency and profitability by eliminating many of the cost structures and layers traditionally associated with online ad network buys while improving the levels of targeting, transparency and control available. It provides agencies and advertisers with the ability to easily audit the networks and exchanges on their media plans, efficiently acquire page-level contextually and demographically targeted inventory, ensure brand safety across all sources and, most importantly, enforce a universal frequency cap.

The self-service DSP provides:

Real-time Assessment (RTA): LucidMedia’s RTA provides immediate insights into real-time bidding availability involving traffic from the Internet’s leading traffic sources, covering up to 95% reach potential in the US. RTA at scale also provides branded advertisers with true preemptive brand safety and campaign optimization at the impression-level;
Real-time bid (RTB) inventory availability: Agencies and advertisers can get real-time insights by channel and by demographics, delivering the most flexible optimization available. LucidMedia’s optimization engine can evaluate thousands of campaign facets in real-time, project performance trends, and govern campaign targeting based on advertiser goals;
Dynamic inventory allocation: Inventory from all real-time bid sources, as well as spot buys, is automatically allocated to campaigns, enabling more efficient ad operations teams and higher returns;
Page-level semantic transparency: Provides deep insights into what drives the desired campaign outcomes and maximum campaign performance;
Proprietary content and audience targeting technologies: A universal frequency cap (UFC) and server-side database provide maximum control and leverage LucidMedia’s patented and proprietary content targeting and recently released audience targeting technologies;
Training: To support its self-service offering, LucidMedia offers direct training at no cost;
Custom data integrations: Integrations with all third-party data providers, as well as the ability to include advertiser-specific data, allows advertisers to easily reach the right audiences at the right time with their messages.
To learn more, interested agencies and advertisers can visit www.LucidMediaDSP.com.

“We developed LucidMedia’s self-service DSP based on the direct experience we’ve had in deploying our managed DSP service for hundreds of brand advertisers throughout the past 18 months, with continued focus on the ideals of a buy-side network paradigm that is more nimble, economical and in-touch with advertiser goals,” said Ajay Sravanapudi, Founder and CEO of LucidMedia Networks, Inc. “As industry-wide preference for agency-administered ad-buying and ad-trafficking platforms continues to grow, control is moving closer to the advertiser, intermediation is being reduced and prices are arriving at a true market-driven equilibrium. With an offering like our self-service DSP, advertisers can have more control over targeting, performance and safety.”

LucidMedia’s self-service DSP with integrated RTB gives agencies pre-impression filtering, post-impression auditing, and allows agencies to select the most effective impressions in real-time and then feed their campaigns with an optimization engine that automatically maximizes return on spend.

About LucidMedia

LucidMedia Networks, Inc. (www.lucidmedia.com) is a demand-side online display advertising management and targeting platform that delivers optimized, direct response and brand advertising campaigns to interactive agencies. LucidMedia DSP™ with ClickSense® page-level analysis and intelligent real-time bidding (RTB) is available as a managed service to interactive agencies and their brand advertisers. LucidMedia DSP employs an easy-to-use and secure agency interface to deliver proprietary campaign optimization, consolidated buying across the Internet’s largest repositories, unique insight into real-time inventory availability, universal frequency capping, and reach into 95% of the online population. Founded in 1999, LucidMedia processes 25 billion ad impressions every month for hundreds of major brand advertisers.

This announcement comes at a time when an increasing number of agency executives are contemplating buy-side networks for the financial benefit of capturing a larger share of advertising dollars. These organizations invariably need to seek out a platform provider with the necessary technology that will allow them to manage their campaigns more effectively, improve their current margins, and gain an edge over their competition. ADvisor DSP is available as a managed service so that LucidMedia hosts the software and provides the agency platform team with a secure login and the guidance they need during the transition. The platform uses an advanced, proprietary ad server designed specifically to support critical DSP features like universal frequency capping, robust auditing, content filtering, and targeting to pages as well as users. Discrepancy management and reconciliation, Atlas Universal Action Tag (UAT) compliance, and intrinsic support for engaging rich media technologies are also core capabilities of the platform.

“We began testing ADvisor DSP internally in January of 2009, effectively making it the online advertising industry’s first production RTB-enabled demand-side platform,” said Ajay Sravanapudi, Founder and CEO of LucidMedia Networks, Inc. “We have processed more than 100 billion impressions and delivered hundreds of successful campaigns in preparation for today’s launch. ADvisor DSP allows agencies to bring the full benefits of our optimized network in-house as they transition into a buy-side network. ADvisor DSP leverages our robust contextual analysis, page-level targeting engine, 14,000 micro-segmented categories, and precise brand-safe filters in a single interface under agency control.”

About LucidMedia

LucidMedia Networks, Inc. (www.lucidmedia.com) is a targeting network and ad management platform focused on delivering optimized performance and branding display advertising campaigns at the page-level for interactive agencies. Network capabilities are accessible through a hosted demand-side platform (DSP) with real-time bidding (RTB) called ADvisor DSP available to agencies as a managed service. LucidMedia and ADvisor DSP use intelligent, multi-source RTB strategies across the Internet’s largest repositories creating an unprecedented 45B impression-per-month potential that reaches 95% of the U.S. online population. Formally known as Entrieva, the company was founded in 1999 and today processes more than ten thousands ad requests every second for hundreds of major brand advertisers.

RESTON, Va. – LucidMedia (lucidmedia.com), the optimized contextual targeting display ad network, announced that its auditing service is now available at no cost to agencies.

Based on its Verified Inventory Platform (VIP) which launched in February and has since undergone significant testing in the field, the new auditing service gives interactive agencies the actionable performance insights they need to provide real transparency, inventory verification, and brand safety to their clients.

The new auditing service lets agencies take better control of their campaigns and squeeze maximum return from the multiple inventory sources they buy. With the new Software as a Service (SaaS) approach, agencies can quickly and easily leverage LucidMedia’s powerful page-level reporting without hardware, without administrative overhead, and now without cost. Interested agencies can harness the industry’s leading contextual platform to:

• Verify a brand safe environment across all of their interactive campaigns
• Discover the contextual segments that drive maximum user engagement
• Monitor the conversations into which their client’s ads are being placed

“Based on our decade of experience in the space and the unprecedented success of our contextual network, we felt it was imperative for us to now step up and take a leadership role in demand-side auditing. As the first-to-market in what has recently become a crowded space we decided to push the noise aside and let our agency partners deploy our auditing service for free,” said Ajay Sravanapudi, President and CEO of LucidMedia Networks, Inc. “This new offering extends LucidMedia’s full disclosure philosophy to the agency world without barriers. Never has an agency been given the ability to look across all of their inventory sources through the eyes of a page-level contextual engine. Extensive field-testing showed us agencies clearly get the value of our categorization, transparency, and brand safety and realize they can get all of that and more when they then buy their media from us.”

The new service from LucidMedia lets agencies audit campaigns using 14,000 contextual categories in both English and Spanish, filter for objectionable content, and even classify media by type including blogs, enthusiast sites, and social networks. Agencies can now take control of their campaigns and deliver on the promise of brand stewardship inherent in their relationships with advertisers. Interested agencies can get more information by going online to lucidmedia.com/verified, by emailing getverified@lucidmedia.com, or by calling (212) 532-2650.

About LucidMedia

LucidMedia (www.lucidmedia.com) is an online contextual display advertising network and technology platform focused on optimizing performance at the page-level for advertisers and their agencies. The company’s patented ClickSense® contextual advertising and targeting engine empowers advertisers to reach new levels of insight, safety, and cost-efficiency in their online advertising campaigns. LucidMedia categorizes traffic from many of the Web’s most respected networks and exchanges in both English and Spanish, providing advertisers with a way to more effectively target online advertising inventory and increase their return-on-spend. Today, many of the world’s largest interactive agencies, online advertisers, and ad networks are leveraging LucidMedia’s network and technology platform to drive increased revenue.

“Being recognized as a Red Herring 100 winner is a great achievement for LucidMedia and highlights our successful track record and rapid growth in the online advertising sector,” said Ajay Sravanapudi, President and CEO of LucidMedia. “For LucidMedia to be singled out for our uniquely transparent and brand safe solution, especially considering the very active and competitive nature of interactive advertising, is truly humbling. On behalf of our board and the entire LucidMedia team I would like to thank Red Herring for this honor.”

About LucidMedia

LucidMedia (www.lucidmedia.com) is an online display advertising network and media management platform focused on optimizing performance at the page-level for interactive agencies and agency digital initiatives. The company’s patented ClickSense® contextual advertising and targeting engine empowers advertisers to reach new levels of insight, safety, and cost-efficiency in their online advertising campaigns. LucidMedia categorizes traffic from many of the Web’s most respected networks and exchanges in both English and Spanish, providing advertisers with a way to more effectively target online advertising inventory and increase their return-on-spend. Today, many of the world’s largest interactive agencies, online advertisers, and ad networks are leveraging LucidMedia’s network and technology platform to drive increased revenue.

About Red Herring

Red Herring is a global media company, which unites the world’s best high technology innovators, venture investors and business decision makers in a variety of forums: a leading innovation magazine, an online daily technology news service, technology newsletters and major events for technology leaders around the globe. Red Herring provides an insider’s access to the global innovation economy, featuring unparalleled insights on the emerging technologies driving the economy. More information about Red Herring is available online at www.redherring.com.

Capital Connection, one of the nation’s premier venture and private equity conferences, is presented by MAVA in Washington, DC. This invitation-only event brings over 800 attendees from throughout the United States together with the same objective of building and investing in the region’s most promising companies. The conference employs a rigorous approach in recruiting; selecting and vetting companies to ensure the most exciting field of enterprises and investment opportunities in the mid-Atlantic region are showcased. Historically, 35-50 percent of earlier-stage companies at Capital Connection have attracted funding less than one year after presenting, a reflection of the caliber of companies chosen by the selection committee of investors.

“We are honored to be a part of this prestigious venture capital event,” said Ajay Sravanapudi, one of the original founders of LucidMedia. “As one of the presenting companies at this year’s Capital Connection conference we will have a great opportunity to showcase not only our unique online advertising industry solution but also our extensive progress on the business model. We are seeing that our successful track record, especially considering how recently we launched our network, and our plans for growth are resonating well within the investor community.”

“It’s been an outstanding experience for all of us on the Selection Committee to participate in selecting the early and expansion stage companies to present at MAVA’s Capital Connection ’09,” said Steve Fredrick, Grotech Ventures, one of the four committee co-chairs. “There is a wide range of technology solutions and products that these companies have developed that will be of interest to a broad spectrum of investors and potential partners. The quality and experience of the management teams were also important factors in the decision-making process.”

Capital Connection is one of the nation’s most successful and influential private investor events. Over the years, Capital Connection conferences have helped to shape the region’s entrepreneurial economy, generating more than $2.9 billion of venture investments in the presenting companies during their first year after participating. More than 200 high tech companies, representing combined equipment and services buying power of more than $1 billion, are typically in attendance at the event. MAVA represents private equity and venture capital firms with investment interests in the mid-Atlantic and beyond, entrepreneurs, and their strategic partners. MAVA provides a wide range of programs, information and forums designed to stimulate revenue and company growth, facilitate quality deal flow, encourage collaboration, and foster relationships among entrepreneurs, investors, strategic partners and customers. Membership includes more than 500 venture capital professionals representing nearly 125 firms with collectively more than $100 billion in capital under management. For more information, please visit www.mava.org.

About LucidMedia

LucidMedia (www.lucidmedia.com) is an online display advertising network and media management platform focused on optimizing performance at the page-level for interactive agencies and agency digital initiatives. The company’s patented ClickSense® contextual advertising and targeting engine empowers advertisers to reach new levels of insight, safety, and cost-efficiency in their online advertising campaigns. LucidMedia categorizes traffic from many of the Web’s most respected networks and exchanges in both English and Spanish, providing advertisers with a way to more effectively target online advertising inventory and increase their return-on-spend. Today, many of the world’s largest interactive agencies, online advertisers, and ad networks are leveraging LucidMedia’s network and technology platform to drive increased revenue.

With growing industry-wide demand from advertisers and agencies for increased levels of transparency, brand safety, and user engagement, LucidMedia developed the Verified Inventory program to address all three of these issues and more. Verified Inventory gives advertisers and their agencies access to higher levels of:

* ACCURACY: LucidMedia’s patented relevance engine determines the ‘aboutness’ of Web pages in real-time using more than 14,000 micro-segmented content categories, ranging from A&E/Amusement and Theme Parks to Travel & Tourism/Business Travel.
* BRAND SAFETY: With 32 top-level content channels (such as Automotive, Health, and Sports), 14 unique Media Classes (including news, blogs, social, and enthusiast sites), complementing the more than 14,000 categories, and hundreds of real-time objectionable content filters, LucidMedia Verified Inventory was developed to provide one of the cleanest, most ‘well lit’ advertising spaces for brands on the Internet.
* ENGAGEMENT: Verified Inventory is driven by the principle that increased contextual relevance drives additional user engagement which means more clicks, more acquisitions, more page-views, and ultimately more conversions.
* PROOF: LucidMedia supports the Verified Inventory program with its unique Proof Report, providing advertisers and agencies with some of the industry’s highest levels of transparency and accountability.

“In today’s economic environment, there is growing demand for granularity and truly accurate contextual relevance for advertisers to drive user engagement, while increasing and protecting the value of their brands,” said Ajay Sravanapudi, LucidMedia President and CEO. “We are excited to launch an offering that combines our custom advertising platform and patented natural language processing engine to classify content with unprecedented detail, matching the right ad with the right content at the right time.”

LucidMedia launched Verified Inventory to assure advertisers that while its network expands rapidly, quality is increasing in proportion. In adding to its traffic base, LucidMedia derives inventory from select multiple sources, performing an extensive prequalification of advertising inventory before accepting it to its network, including a deep semantic analysis at the page-level. This also includes analyzing all Verified Inventory content in the five critical areas of context, media class, language, custom keywords and objectionable content. Interested parties can learn more at www.verifiedinventory.com.

About LucidMedia

LucidMedia is an online contextual display advertising network and technology platform focused on optimizing performance at the page-level for advertisers and their agencies. The company’s patented ClickSense® contextual advertising and targeting engine empowers advertisers to reach new levels of insight, safety, and cost-efficiency in their online advertising campaigns. LucidMedia categorizes traffic from many of the Web’s most respected networks and exchanges in both English and Spanish, providing advertisers with a way to more effectively target online advertising inventory and increase their return-on-spend. Today, many of the world’s largest interactive agencies, online advertisers, and ad networks are leveraging LucidMedia’s network and technology platform to drive increased revenue.

RESTON, Va. – LucidMedia (www.lucidmedia.com), an online contextual display advertising network and technology platform, announced that it has been selected to the 2009 OnMedia 100 List. The OnMedia 100 Award is given to the top 100 private, emerging technology companies in the advertising, publishing, marketing, branding and public relations spaces. LucidMedia was selected by the AlwaysOn editorial team based on demonstration of growth, market opportunity, quality of innovation and customer traction.

”We are very pleased to be recognized with this honor, as LucidMedia has made many significant strides during the past year, ranging from our introducing the industry’s first Spanish-language contextual advertising platform to distributing our technology across the Yahoo! Right Media Exchange and a growing base of other partners,” said Ajay Sravanapudi, LucidMedia President and CEO. “We are extremely well-positioned for continued progress throughout 2009 and are grateful to the AlwaysOn team for recognizing our efforts to-date.”

LucidMedia and the other OnMedia 100 winners will be recognized at the OnMedia 100 Conference at the Ritz Carlton, New York City, on February 2-4. This two-and-a-half day executive conference is co-presented by Forbes and will feature presentations and high-level debates from CEOs, journalists, industry experts, investors and publishing and advertising executives.

“The 2009 OnMedia 100 companies have demonstrated their tenacity even in the toughest economic conditions that the technology world has ever encountered,” said Tony Perkins, founder and editor of AlwaysOn. “We applaud their success in pushing the boundaries of innovation, creating market opportunities and transforming the industry even in the earlier stages of their businesses.”

The OnMedia 100 winners were selected from among hundreds of other technology companies nominated by investors, bankers, journalists and industry insiders. The AlwaysOn editorial team conducted a rigorous three-month selection process to finalize the 2009 list.

A full list of all the OnMedia 100 winners can be found on the AlwaysOn website at http://alwayson.goingon.com/permalink/post/30893.

About LucidMedia

LucidMedia is an online contextual display advertising network and technology platform focused on optimizing performance at the page-level for advertisers and their agencies. The company’s patented ClickSense® contextual advertising and targeting engine empowers advertisers to reach new levels of performance, insight, safety, and cost-efficiency in their online advertising campaigns. LucidMedia categorizes traffic from many of the Web’s most respected networks and exchanges in both English and Spanish, providing advertisers with a way to more effectively target online advertising inventory and increase their return-on-spend. Today, many of the world’s largest interactive agencies, online advertisers, and ad networks are leveraging LucidMedia’s network and technology platform to drive increased revenue.

About AlwaysOn

AlwaysOn ignited the open-media revolution in early 2003 by being the first media brand to launch a global blog network. In 2004, AlwaysOn continued to lead the media industry in innovation by introducing a social network where members can connect and engage. AlwaysOn is also revolutionizing the media business by applying its open-media principles to its executive event series (Stanford Summit, AlwaysOn Hollywood, AlwaysOn Media and GoingGreen) and quarterly print “blogozine” by empowering its members to post and share their ideas and meet each other online. As our loyal readers know, AlwaysOn is committed to the free-market, merit-driven approach to reporting and event programming. No other media brand has dared to create such open interaction with its readers and event participants.

The funding is led by a combination of institutional and individual investors including Lake Street Capital, RLI Partners, Melton Investments, Silicon Valley investment veteran Milan Mandaric, and Redleaf Group, whose CEO, Michael Tomana, has joined the company’s Board of Directors. This is LucidMedia’s third round of funding.

“The continued expansion of LucidMedia’s network, as well as our overall growth, is particularly noteworthy during a time of consolidation throughout the broader online advertising sector,” said Ajay Sravanapudi, LucidMedia President and CEO. “In any economic climate, we believe that offering some of the industry’s highest levels of performance, insight and brand safety provides significant value to the industry and we are very pleased to further our commitment to our clients and partners by opening our Madison Avenue office.”

“LucidMedia has a unique base of proprietary technology, an impressive leadership team and a genuine opportunity to become a disruptive force in contextual online advertising,” said John Kohler, Chairman of LucidMedia’s Board of Directors. “The time is right for LucidMedia to invest in its strategic position and we look forward to working with the team to address the opportunities at-hand.”

“I have been watching LucidMedia for some time and am impressed by the company’s vision and execution, particularly in such a challenging economic environment,” said Bill Melton, head of Melton Investments. “The company’s unique approach to contextual advertising provides agencies, advertisers and other prospective clients with compelling ways to get the most out of their online spend.”

To learn more about working with LucidMedia’s New York City sales office, interested agencies and advertisers can contact LucidMedia at info@lucidmedia.com for additional information.
LucidMedia Networks, Inc.
274 Madison Avenue
Suite 701
New York, New York 10016
Phone: 212-532-2650

About LucidMedia:

LucidMedia is an online contextual display advertising platform and meta-network focused on optimizing advertising performance for advertisers and their agencies, as well as ad networks and publishers. LucidMedia uses its patented technology to empower advertisers to reach new levels of performance, insight, safety, and cost-efficiency in their online advertising campaigns. The company achieves this through delivering contextual relevance at the page-level for unparalleled targeting, transparency, optimization, and inventory. Through its patented ClickSense® contextual advertising and targeting engine, LucidMedia categorizes traffic from many of the Web’s most respected networks and exchanges in both English and Spanish, providing advertisers with a way to more effectively target online advertising inventory and increase their return-on-spend. Formerly known as Entrieva, LucidMedia was founded in 1999 and launched ClickSense in 2004. Using the deep contextualization of ClickSense, The LucidMedia Network is the first advertiser-centric ad network that can offer complete brand safety, real accountability, and transparency down to the page-level. Today many of the world’s largest interactive agencies, Web advertisers, ad networks, and ad exchanges are relying on LucidMedia to achieve their advertising revenue goals. LucidMedia is headquartered in Reston Virginia at the heart of the Dulles Technology Corridor, with a national sales office in New York City.

Under the agreement, Right Media will support the use of LucidMedia’s patented ClickSense® contextual advertising targeting engine by buyers and sellers on the Exchange, enabling them, for the first time, to contextually categorize their display advertising inventory based on more than 60 vertically focused channels. The channels cover such areas as automotive, careers & jobs, clothing & apparel, finance, sports & recreation and dozens of others.

Publishers that choose to utilize the newly available contextually targeted advertising tags enable advertisers to more effectively target their inventory, based on relevance to their products or services. The ClickSense® deep contextualization engine for advertisers and publishers was developed over nearly a decade to analyze every impression in real-time and determine true meaning of content at the page-level. Today’s announcement follows several months of extensive and successful testing on the Right Media Exchange.

“LucidMedia’s ClickSense technology will significantly help increase the prospective yield of a publisher’s available inventory and improve an advertiser’s ability to contextually target ads to relevant content and categories through the Right Media Exchange,” said Bill Wise, General Manager, Right Media. “We are excited to bring this capability to Exchange participants and look forward to working with the LucidMedia team to deepen the use of ClickSense across the Exchange.”

“Right Media is clearly a pioneering exchange and we are thrilled to extend the capabilities of our ClickSense contextual targeting engine to the buyers and sellers that do business through it,” said Ajay Sravanapudi, LucidMedia CEO. “Contextually targeted ads can be significantly more relevant to users and thus more valuable to publishers, which we believe will ultimately allow advertisers to target their campaigns more effectively and drive improved conversions and return-on-spend.”

“As a network of publishers and advertisers involved in the launch, we have been impressed by the contextual targeting capabilities made available through the Exchange and believe that it will be an important part of our optimization strategy,” said Marc Thomas, Chief Operating Officer of Suite66, an online media company focusing on relevant media planning and buying. “Enabling advertisers to very accurately pinpoint available inventory and target highly relevant ads makes the process more effective and results-focused for everyone involved.”

About LucidMedia:

LucidMedia is an online contextual advertising platform and meta-network focused on optimizing display advertising performance for advertisers and their agencies, as well as ad networks and publishers. Through its patented ClickSense® contextual advertising and targeting engine, LucidMedia categorizes traffic from many of the Web’s most respected networks and exchanges, providing advertisers with a way to more effectively target online advertising inventory and increase their return-on-spend. Formerly known as Entrieva, LucidMedia was founded in 1999 and launched ClickSense in 2004. Using the deep contextualization of its ClickSense platform, LucidMedia has created a revolutionary hyper-targeted display ad network. The LucidMedia Network is the first advertiser-centric ad network that can offer complete brand safety, real accountability, and transparency down to the page-level. Today many of the world’s largest interactive agencies, Web advertisers, ad networks, and ad exchanges are relying on LucidMedia to achieve their advertising revenue goals. LucidMedia is headquartered in Reston, Virginia at the heart of the Dulles Technology Corridor.

Paul Rostkowski comes to LucidMedia most recently from Healthline, the health and wellness vertical portal, bringing with him a track record of successful growth and revenue generation. Paul’s addition completes the LucidMedia strategy of becoming a new media company and he joins at a pivotal point in the company’s execution. Before Healthline, Paul served as Hoover’s Vice President of Advertising responsible for their advertising sales strategy, development, and implementation. In this role Paul managed the Ad Sales team and oversaw the Ad Operations group driving nearly 300% growth during his tenure. Prior to joining Hoover’s, Paul was Vice President of Sales, Eastern Region at Winstar Interactive Media based in New York City. While at Winstar Interactive Paul directed the sales team to record interactive ad revenue growth and managed agency relations.

Abderrezak Kamel, most recently with Autonomy where he was heading the Intelligent Content and Application Enablement group, brings over a decade of experience in Information Retrieval and Natural Language Processing (NLP). Abderrezak will oversee the technology roadmap and be responsible for the robustness and relevance of the ClickSense contextual advertising platform. Prior to Autonomy Abderrezak was the Chief Architect and Director of Advanced Product Development at the Semio Corporation which was acquired by LucidMedia, then Entrieva, in 2002. Previously Abderrezak was a PhD student in Computational Semiotics at Leonardo da Vinci University, Paris, France and completed his MS equivalent in Artificial Intelligence (AI) at the University of Montpellier, France in 1994.

Ajay Sravanapudi, President & CEO of LucidMedia, said of Mr. Rostkowski, “Our innovative hyper-targeting solution is rapidly becoming an industry standard for contextual advertising among ad exchanges and publisher optimizers. Having an industry rainmaker like Paul on our team means we are perfectly poised to make the most of the contextual revolution in the advertising industry. Paul has proven he can bring in revenue and oversee the kind of operation we require to succeed as a new media company. He is an advocate for the advertiser with deep agency, network and publisher contacts which makes him a great asset to LucidMedia.”

Ajay went on to comment on their new CTO, “We are delighted to have Abderrezak return to LucidMedia especially after his work with Autonomy. It means a great deal to the team here at LucidMedia and he can hit the ground running. He will play a crucial role in taking the ClickSense engine, which he helped design five years ago, to the next level as the contextual advertising platform of choice for the display advertising industry.”

About LucidMedia:
LucidMedia is a small media company with a big answer to the challenge of lifting display ad revenues. Formally known as Entrieva, LucidMedia was founded in 1999 and launched ClickSense® in 2004. Using the deep contextualization of their patented ClickSense platform, LucidMedia has created a revolutionary new hyper-targeting display ad network built exclusively for advertisers. The LucidMedia Network is the first advertiser-centric ad network that can offer complete brand safety, real accountability, and transparency down to the page-level. LucidMedia is headquartered in Reston Virginia at the heart of the Dulles Technology Corridor only minutes from Washington, D.C. and Dulles International Airport. Today many of the world’s largest interactive agencies, web advertisers, and ad exchanges are relying on LucidMedia to achieve their advertising revenue goals.

RESTON, Va., March 18, 2008 (PRIME NEWSWIRE) — Entrieva today announced that it is changing its company name to LucidMedia to coincide with the launch of its new contextual ad network. The LucidMedia Network creates high-value online ad inventory using their patented ClickSense contextual advertising engine.

Ajay Sravanapudi, President & CEO of LucidMedia, said, “LucidMedia is taking a radical new advertiser-centric approach to the ad network model by creating a completely transparent new value tier of display ad inventory aggregated exclusively for agencies and advertisers.”

The LucidMedia Network uses ClickSense deep categorization to deliver more than 12,000 micro-segments for content targeting far deeper than anything available before. The new level of insight from the deep ClickSense categorization and detailed Proof Report(tm) is for the first time in history putting complete transparency, accountability and quality control into the hands of the advertiser and their agencies.
“The display ad industry has been desperate for transparency and accountability but opacity has always been a big part of the ad network business model. With ClickSense cataloging every impression we can show advertisers and agencies exactly where every ad dollar is being spent. This is the kind of complete transparency that makes real brand safety and quality control possible; things that have never really been a part of the industry,” added Sravanapudi.

About LucidMedia

LucidMedia is a small media company with a big answer to the challenge of lifting display ad revenues. Formally known as Entrieva, LucidMedia was founded in 1999 and launched ClickSense(r) in 2004. Using the deep contextualization of their patented ClickSense platform, LucidMedia has created a revolutionary new high-value display ad network built exclusively for agencies, advertisers and ad exchanges. The LucidMedia Network is the first advertiser-centric ad network that can offer complete transparency, brand safety and real accountability down to the impression-level. LucidMedia is headquartered in Reston Virginia at the heart of the Dulles Technology Corridor only minutes from Washington, D.C. and Dulles International Airport. Today many of the world’s largest interactive agencies, web advertisers, and ad exchanges are relying on LucidMedia to achieve their advertising revenue goals.