Adform recruits Jose Fradé to lead local Portuguese support for online display advertising campaigns

Lisbon, Portugal – Display advertising specialist Adform has today announced that it is opening a new regional office in Lisbon, Portugal. The move comes as a result of an increase in media agencies and online advertisers looking for local support in running display marketing campaigns in the Portuguese market, which previously had been largely run out of Spain.

Adform will enable Portuguese clients to more readily run campaigns through its unique single platform that hosts a complete gamma of services for successful display advertising, from traditional ad serving to real time bidding to dynamic creative optimisation to rich media to attribution.

To open the new office, Adform has recruited Jose Fradé as its new Business Development Director for Portugal. Fradé will be largely responsible for the opening and development of the local Adform office in Lisbon, looking to complement the rapid growth achieved in the neighbouring Spanish market. Fradé joins Adform from Havas Digital Portugal, where he was country manager working with clients including Peugeot, Citroên, Nike, Reckitt and Barclays. Fradé will report to David Fulton, Adform’s Chief Commercial Officer.

Fradé commented: “The boom in real time bidding across major markets in Europe is now prompting a similar response in Portugal, with publishers looking for solutions to sell their remnant inventory and get more revenue. These changes in the buying landscape together with an influx of creative rich media innovations in how display campaigns are run, provides the perfect base for success in delivering effective campaigns for media agencies and online advertisers alike.”

Fulton added, “Our local presence in the European markets is a major advantage. Our new Lisbon office will offer the Portuguese display advertising market greater local support and flexibility, meaning we are swift to turn around responses to any client requests. We have our ears to the ground in terms of what are the best technology developments for our clients so that we can provide services that reflect the local and European needs of our customer base.”

About Adform
Adform is the European specialist in online display marketing solutions, closing the loop for media agencies and online advertisers by integrating media planning, buying, optimization and reporting into one place.

Adform’s unique platform incorporates display ad serving, rich media, video, mobile, dynamic ads, personalised targeting, and real-time bidding through integrations with major inventory players, making display advertising simple, relevant and rewarding.

Adform was established in Denmark in 2002 and now has offices in 12 countries including Nordics, UK, Germany, Spain, Italy and Portugal.

Visit http://www.adform.com for more information or follow us on Twitter www.twitter.com/adforminsider.

NEW YORK - PubMatic (http://www.PubMatic.com), the digital media platform company for publishers, announced partnerships with publisher-side ad servers that will be integrated through PubLink, the company’s enterprise app marketplace for publishers.

PubLink is a set of open APIs and pre-packaged integrations that enable publishers to use PubMatic’s strategic selling platform as a single point of integration to access partners and services in real time. Through PubLink open APIs, PubMatic’s platform services are now available to several ad servers such as AdJuggler, Adzerk and Zedo. These companies can now extend PubMatic’s real-time bidding technology to the ad servers’ publisher clients.

“PubLink extends the publisher base for PubMatic beyond its existing customers who are using a variety of ad serving technologies,” said Rajeev Goel, Co-Founder and CEO of PubMatic. “We’re excited that ad serving companies are eager to integrate with our platform. Together, we will bring best-of-class monetization capabilities to publishers and help them grow their businesses.”

PubMatic will connect ad servers’ customers to the programmatic media buyers working with PubMatic. The integrations will increase liquidity in the real-time bidding marketplace and help them improve monetization for their publishers. To further illustrate the benefits of the integration to their customers, Adzerk announced the partnership on their blog.

PubLink allows publishers to access a variety of point solutions including audience data, ad verification and privacy controls, enhanced analytics, malware scanning, mobile content optimization and mobile ad serving. PubMatic will continue to add more partners in the coming months.

“Working with PubMatic represents another important step in AdJuggler’s publisher monetization strategy,” said John Shomaker, CEO of AdJuggler. “Our Exchange Media Program team has integrated closely with the PubLink API bidding and reporting infrastructure to extend our proposition of providing higher CPMs and fill for our publisher customers.”

PubLink is fully integrated with PubMatic’s strategic selling platform and a complementary set of capabilities that work with the PubDirect suite of management tools for premium publishers. Through PubDirect and PubLink, premium publishers are powering their own holistic revenue strategies and leveraging the influence of their brands for advertising partners and consumers.

About PubMatic

PubMatic (http://www.PubMatic.com) gives premium publishers a real-time media selling platform for managing revenue and brand strategy. PubMatic’s platform combines real-time bidding (RTB), the most comprehensive brand protection tools, extensive audience insights and hands-on support to serve the world’s leading publishers. PubMatic is privately held, backed by funding from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Nexus Venture Partners, and Helion Ventures, and has seven offices around the world in the U.S., Europe and Asia.

Equips entertainment companies with advanced forecasting features and audience management capabilities to better manage cross-platform campaigns

SAN MATEO, California – FreeWheel, the video technology company serving enterprise-class entertainment companies, today unveiled three new extension products for their flagship ad management system, Monetization Rights Management® (MRM), that will support entertainment companies in delivering on their integrated television and digital upfront commitments.

Developed with input from programmer and distributor customers participating in the upfronts, the new products will allow MRM customers to offer a better experience for their viewers across connected devices, optimize ad revenue generation on their content, and give advertisers additional options to target specific audiences at scale.

Several existing FreeWheel customers have already deployed or have signed on to use the MRM extensions, which are:

·      Audience management, which publishers can use to bolster their proprietary data with third-party data sources and enhance ad targeting to known audience attributes at scale and across connected devices. MRM customers already target against specific content and content locations, but now they can provide more relevant ads for specific demographics of viewers

·      Scenario forecasting, a powerful management tool that predicts how inventory availability, ad delivery, and ad sell-through rates are affected by “what-if” changes to inventory settings, such as increasing commercial breaks or driving additional traffic to particular Web pages. This functionality protects a user’s experience while watching video content and balances supply with demand across inventory types

·      Extended forecasting, which gives MRM customers up to two full years of visibility on inventory availability during and after the upfronts season and how it adjusts due to seasonal programming events

The products have been designed with flexibility around the business of FreeWheel’s customers in mind. For example, one customer is leveraging audience management to not only enhance their targeting, but also execute demographic-targeted campaigns as make goods for under-delivery in linear TV, an especially useful feature to fulfill commitments emanating from upfront agreements.

“The television upfronts are rapidly changing to account for consumers watching video content on a variety of devices, as well as via many distribution methods, such as VOD and game consoles,” said Frans Vermeulen, SVP of Revenue and Strategy. “It’s vital that our customers are able to quickly expand their revenue strategies across devices and environments, and these solutions were developed with this in mind.”

The television upfronts generated $9 billion in ad sales, or 15 percent of full-year ad sales, for television networks last year, according to market research firm eMarketer. With an increased focus on multichannel advertising campaigns, as well as exposure from the Digital Content New Fronts, expectations are that larger, multiplatform campaigns will be utilized to take advantage of consumers viewing content on the nearest available screens.

FreeWheel makes video revenue decisions for 70 percent of the brands in thestandard cable TV channel line-up, the majority of which will hold presentations during the television upfronts.

Additional technical information about the new product extensions can be found on FreeWheel’s FreeThink blog.

About FreeWheel

FreeWheel manages the economics of content for the enterprise-class world of entertainment, offering technical infrastructure for revenue rights management and business operations, wrapped in advisory services. Founded and led by a team of executives from the world’s leading technology companies, FreeWheel’s solutions have already armed companies like AOL, ESPN, FOX, NBCUniversal, Sky, Turner, and VEVO with the technology andservices they need to profitably scale their professional content across devices and revenue models. For more information, visit www.freewheel.tv. Follow the company @FreeWheel.

Trust Index Shows that Ongoing Verification and Remediation Reduce Noncompliance and Increase Brand Safety

NEW YORK - DoubleVerify, the pioneer and worldwide leader in online media verification and real-time decisioning, today published its 2H 2011 Trust Index. The report highlights the positive impact that verification has had on the ad-serving industry in increasing accountability, transparency and insertion order compliance. It shows how campaign compliance is further strengthened when combined with blocking and remediation.

As part of the Trust Index research, DoubleVerify analyzed campaigns across more than 30 platforms and 150 networks and identified the most compliant ad networks from July to December 2011 as (alphabetically): 24/7 Real Media, aCerno, AudienceScience, Epic Marketplace, Microsoft Media Network, RocketFuel, Specific Media, ValueClick, and Yahoo! Network Plus and interclick from Yahoo!. Advertising platforms that were most compliant include (alphabetically): Cadreon, a part of the Mediabrands Audience Platform, MediaMath, and Xaxis.

“DoubleVerify is making a significant impact on the online-advertising industry,” said Oren Netzer, CEO of DoubleVerify.  “Verification and remediation continue to play a vital role in increasing industry transparency as well as driving displayadvertising compliance and campaign ROI.”

The Trust Index’s analysis of the second half of 2011 highlights the enormous improvements to noncompliance that comprehensive verification, combined with active remediation and blocking, brings to a campaign. Once remediation and verification take full effect, incident rates drop dramatically. Campaigns starting after July 1, 2011, saw a 25 percent drop in noncompliance rates after verification services started. By adding weekly remediation, campaigns showed a 46 percent improvement in average rate of noncompliance over campaigns using only verification. Blocking is another valuable way for providers to reduce noncompliance — one campaign saw 7 times higher average rates of compliance for the partners on which blocking was used.

In both 2H 2011 and 2H 2010, trends pointed to greater noncompliance at the end of the year, with 2H 2011 traffic increasing by more than 57 percent. The weeks surrounding Black Friday and Cyber Monday saw jumps in traffic up to 23 percent above the 2H 2011 average and noncompliance rates 12 percent above average. This increase in noncompliance was considerably larger on unverified traffic.

 Other highlights include:

• 44 percent of ads on verified campaigns were served below the fold (compared to 47 percent in 1H 2011)
• 13 percent of advertising pages included multiple ads for the same campaign (compared to 14 percent in 1H 2011)

DoubleVerify examined metrics from hundreds of advertisers, thousands of verified campaigns and more than 200 billion impressions to produce this bi-annual report, which can be downloaded at www.trustinadvertising.info and www.doubleverify.com/trustindex.

 About DoubleVerify

DoubleVerify (www.doubleverify.com) is the worldwide leader in online media verification and real-time decisioning. It is the top choice of marketers, agencies, ad networks, demand side platforms, exchanges and publishers looking to ensure quality advertising environments, campaign transparency and performance. DoubleVerify handles over 60 billion advertising impressions per month for hundreds of leading Fortune 500 marketers, advertising networks and platforms. A World Economic Forum 2012 Technology Pioneer, DoubleVerify is headquartered in New York City, with sales offices in London and engineering offices in Tel Aviv, Israel. Investors inDoubleVerify include JMI Equity, Institutional Venture Partners, Blumberg Capital, First Round Capital and Genacast Ventures.

Established in 2011, Poland, Epom Ltd. (www.epom.com) is a company with innovative vision, providing creative solutions for publishers, advertisers and networks, namely the integrated platform for fast and convenient digital ad-campaign management. Despite the fact that the enterprise is relatively new on the market, Epom has already got a lot of business partners, including major media companies from Eastern Europe, Latin America and Asia.

We have spoken to Epom’s CEO, Adam Jablonski, about the current challenges on the ad servers market, about being an European tech startup, and the company’s plans for the future.

Otilia Otlacan: Thank you for putting Epom on our map, it is great to discover a new initiative on the ad serving scene! Can you give us a little background on what led you to create Epom?

A few years ago I was a Head of an advertising agency in Poland, where we were trying to use various ad serving solutions. Unfortunately, all of them either couldn’t fit our requirements, or were too bulky and sophisticated to use.

Much because of that we started working on our own project, and it gradually got far beyond the limits of an in-house solution. At one point I just understood that we could really offer something unique to the market, that a great number of users would appreciate simplicity and convenience of Epom. Having already acquired enough experience with numerous advertisers and publishers, we have put all knowledge we had into creation and development of our solution, clearly acknowledging what exactly each and every user needed. This is, perhaps, what can be named among our keys to success.

Otilia Otlacan: How do you see the current ad servers market, what are the biggest challenges for a new player?

Undoubtedly, the current market features a wide range of ad serving solutions, much due to the rapid development of digital marketing itself and the companies’ willingness to use more money from their budgets in online marketing niche. At the same time, the majority of services in the relative market segment, like OpenX, DoubleClick or Zedo, for instance, were initially introduced more, than 10 years ago, and managed to attract large audience at a certain point of their history. In this respect, I’m absolutely sure that we know what we can offer to the clients, who are searching for something new.

It’s really surprising, or better to say, fortunate for us, that even the largest sites with a great amount of traffic don’t frequently understand the importance of an ad server, all opportunities and benefits that the its usage presupposes. Therefore, we have got an incredibly wide array of options and possibilities for development.

Otilia Otlacan: Is the fact of being a European startup a hindrance when competing on a market that is heavily US-driven?

I would dare say that the actual geographical location of the company’s office is hardly very essential in online business nowadays. It’s possible to manage the enterprise in Asia or Europe, while being mostly focused on the US market and vice versa. Obviously, online business market in the USA is traditionally considered to be the most developed one, yet there’re many trend-setters in the industry that aren’t US-based companies. Let’s just take a simple example: many large networks at Epom Market, like InMobi, Aditic, Buzzcity, Inmobi, or Adsmobi aren’t US-based businesses. Despite having been founded in Asia and Europe, they have succeeded in becoming large-scale and popular projects.

Otilia Otlacan: Who is your typical publisher, who would benefit most from migrating onto Epom?

As for today, both large sites and the mid-sized businesses tend to use our solution. The service isn’t too bulky, on the contrary, it’s very simple, yet comprises all necessary features and peculiarities.

We are especially happy to welcome large publishers, since Epom is a massively-scalable platform and, thus, enables to spare considerable sums of money, in case there’re a lot of impressions served. Moreover, there aren’t any additional, hidden fees, like a set-up fee or a maintenance fee, or the separate payment for particular functions of the platform. Everything is crystal clear.

Epom has been developed as a unified platform to work with any type of traffic or type of ads. Therefore, publishers, advertisers and networks, working with mobile traffic, mobile applications and videos, will certainly enjoy all advantages of ad inventory management opportunities, being available at one place.

Much because of that, one of the largest file-sharing services with huge amounts of traffic 4shared has recently begun its partnership with Epom. The company currently uses the full package of Epom features, including a mobile app and a video solution. In this respect, Epom is really perfect for such clients, especially due to its reasonable pricing.

Otilia Otlacan: Can you tell us about the Epom exchange, what verticals are best represented? Is the exchange open to all publishers or are there minimum impressions requirements?

The launch of Epom ad exchange is a logical and natural way of our project development. In particular, having already got a considerable number (pool) of publishers and advertisers, we have managed to offer them our professional help in solution of tasks and problems.

Namely, as for publishers with high-quality traffic, it’s the access for expensive ads and additional opportunities of traffic monetization. We are cooperating with leading networks, and the system works in such a way that the publisher gets the largest possible profit.

Undoubtedly, Epom Market is beneficial for all participating players. Each and every publisher can apply for membership in it, and we do not determine the minimum impressions requirements.

Otilia Otlacan: What’s on your roadmap for the rest of the year?

Our professional ambitions can be revealed in numbers – we are planning to gain 40B monthly impressions till the end of this year. At the moment we are negotiating with several major publishers, who are ready to test and use our platform in their businesses.

Furthermore, paying much attention to the development of our mobile solution, we are planning to launch Mobile Ad Exchange this year. Besides, we will also be working on the expansion of Epom Market and are going to participate in various thematic exhibitions and seminars. These events are very useful in terms of real-life communication with target audience and can be considered a wonderful opportunity to hear your clients’ wishes, build and develop new valuable business relations.

As for the functionality of the platform, this year we will be working on the development of our mobile solution, SDK for Android and other platforms. We will also introduce the upgrades and modifications in network accounts, our video solution, not to mention our plans to add support of mobile rich-media ads and implement Behavioral targeting.

Otilia Otlacan: Is there anything else you would like to share with us?

I would like to add, that while creating Epom we had a purpose to launch a unified massively-scalable platform with all needed tools for effective real-time ad inventory management, so that our users would be able to run ads from different advertising platforms, mobile advertising networks and direct ads at one place. I suppose, we’ve done a really great job, as today Epom is increasing the number of its fans, and hopefully the readers of your magazine will also become our clients.

About Epom

Epom is an ad-serving and ad-managing platform proposing publishers, advertisers and networks advanced solutions for running and optimizing ad campaigns. Epom enables its users to run display, video and mobile ads all in one place and hence saves time, resources and brings more profit. Epom is a 100% web-based, massively scalable, real-time platform with free targeting, advanced campaigns management, graphical reporting, mobile solution, and more.

Proprietary Algorithm Automatically Adjusts to Individual Campaign-Critical Metrics to Optimize Media Allocations for Brands

REDWOOD CITY, CA – YuMe, the operating system for TV 2.0, today announced a first for the video advertising industry: the YuMe Placement Quality Index (PQI), a proprietary algorithm that monitors and identifies the optimal placement of video ads on digital properties. In this age of site list parity, media buyers need a better way to evaluate expected performance for their campaigns. Not all impressions are created equal, and the PQI ensures that campaigns deliver the best possible performance and maximum impression value to align with brand marketing objectives.

YuMe’s PQI algorithm is a composite function of key performance metrics that are important to brand marketers including: interaction rate (IR), video completion rate (VCR), video player size, player on-page location, among many others based on campaign objectives. A baseline PQI is calculated continuously for YuMe’s Connected Audience Network, so new campaigns can be evaluated in real-time against the average performance of the entire network. Additionally, as the campaign progresses, the real-time PQI calculations allow YuMe to automatically adjust campaign placements to optimize overall performance. As a result, the PQI highlights new opportunities to maximize the value of each impression per the advertiser’s desired price point, ensuring that each advertiser gets what they pay for. Placement quality is a critical component of YuMe’s 8 Essential Elements for successful video advertising.

“We are excited to be the first video ad network taking a dynamic approach to optimize performance so that advertisers do not have to rely on outdated or oversimplified data,” said YuMe CEO Jayant Kadambi. “With PQI, brands are assured that their campaigns will reach the right audience and run on sites that yield the highest possible performance according to their desired campaign objectives.”

YuMe has conducted extensive testing to demonstrate the impact of utilizing a PQI-based media allocation compared to a traditional site-list based media allocation on video ad campaign performance. In one instance, YuMe compared a set of 10 campaigns with major travel and telecommunications brands utilizing the PQI algorithm against 10 campaigns that opted out. These campaign sets and audience targets were identical, and the associated creatives were placed on the same digital publisher properties. Key findings of these tests include:

· PQI optimized video ad campaigns yielded a 215 percent lift in Interaction Rate (IR) as compared to campaigns which were not.

· PQI optimized video ad campaign yielded a 90 percent lift in Video Completion Rate (VCR) as compared to campaigns which were not.

PQI ultimately proves that site lists are less important than the actual placement on a page. One site might perform well for one campaign and quite poorly for another. PQI unearths valuable publisher inventory wherever it might exist based on the campaign type and goals.

Placement quality is one of YuMe’s 8 Essential Elements of video advertising for brands, which includes:

Ad visibility assurance: YuMe’s viewport detection solution guarantees that no impressions will go unseen, so every video ad impression truly extends reach and brand awareness.

Brand-safe distribution: YuMe ensures ads are associated with safe content to protect brand equity. Since video ad players are portable, YuMe’s brand security measures follow the video player wherever it goes to guarantee protection.

Cross-screen compatibility: YuMe enables marketers to reach any screen their customers are viewing, be it a computer, mobile device, or connected TV. Moreover, advertisers can build their YuMe Ads just once and run them on all screens.

Premium, 100% in-stream video inventory: User-initiated, well-lit video ad placements on quality publisher properties and applications yield high brand impact and optimal branding opportunities.

Video ad placement on professionally-produced content: YuMe ensures that the brand message is always paired with high-quality video content for brand credibility via the first-ever Placement Quality Index.

Highly interactive video ad units: Socially rich ad units drive brand awareness, favorability, recall, and purchase intent for immediate brand engagement.

Advanced, guaranteed audience targeting: YuMe delivers ads to the right audience using a variety of targeting techniques to meet audience guarantees, ensure relevance, and maximize brand favorability.

Powerful analytics for brand performance optimization: YuMe provides instant, actionable insight into video ad campaign performance across all connected devices.

About YuMe
YuMe is the software infrastructure provider powering digital video and the next generation of television with its operating system for TV 2.0. Its video advertising technology and services seamlessly connect advertisers, app developers, content distributors, consumer electronics manufacturers, and publishers across the globe. YuMe’s patent-pending Relevance Engine powers its premium in-stream video ad network, the YuMe Connected Audience Network, and its industry-leading advertising management solutions, ACE for Publishers and ACE for Advertisers. The YuMe Relevance Engine matches the right ad to the right audience on whatever screen they are viewing—PC, mobile, or connected TV. YuMe is a privately held company headquartered in Redwood City, CA with its European headquarters in London. The company is backed by Accel Partners, BV Capital, DAG Ventures, Intel Capital, Khosla Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Samsung Ventures, and Translink Capital. For more information, visit www.YuMe.com, follow @YuMevideo on Twitter, or like YuMe on Facebook at www.facebook.com/YuMevideo.

Combination now offers the first complete ad management platform enabling publishers to maximize revenue across all classes of buyers: Guaranteed, Ad Networks, DSPs and Exchanges

LOS ANGELES – OpenX Technologies, Inc. (OpenX), one of the world’s leading providers of digital advertising technology, today announced that Supply-Side Platform (SSP) LiftDNA will officially become part of OpenX. With the acquisition of LiftDNA, OpenX brings publishers a better way to optimize their ad revenue by unifying LiftDNA’s next generation SSP with OpenX’s premium ad server and its ad exchange into one seamless platform. Since LiftDNA’s solution is already integrated with OpenX’s platform, LiftDNA by OpenX™ is available immediately. The announcement was made at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Annual Leadership Meeting.

LiftDNA by OpenX™ increases revenue for publishers by using a breakthrough yield optimization approach: LiftDNA is the first and only yield optimization technology to work completely within a publisher’s ad server. By directly managing all non-guaranteed demand channels – Demand-Side Platforms (DSPs), ad networks, traditional SSPs and exchanges – from inside the ad server, LiftDNA is able to process all available pricing information for the publisher and thereby maximize competition and revenue. Furthermore, because it operates within the ad server, LiftDNA reduces discrepancies and system latency, both of which further increase publisher revenue.

Moreover, LiftDNA by OpenX™ can work within any ad server, not just OpenX Enterprise. This means publishers can quickly transform their existing ad servers into profit centers without switching. Since its launch in September 2009, LiftDNA customers have achieved revenue increases of 50-150% on average.

In addition to the publisher benefits, the combination of OpenX and LiftDNA will also provide benefits to buyers of ad inventory. In particular, the combination of OpenX Market and LiftDNA by OpenX™ creates a massive pool of Real-Time Bidding-enabled inventory totaling more than 100 billion ad impressions per month. The reach, scale and quality of this inventory provides one of the largest buying sources on the internet.

“We’re so excited about this acquisition because of the unique and innovative approach LiftDNA has taken to yield optimization,” said Tim Cadogan, chief executive officer, OpenX. “Building yield optimization directly into the ad server breaks the mold of remote, third partyservices, dramatically increases revenue and aligns perfectly with OpenX’s vision of providing publishers with a comprehensive revenue serving platform. We’re delighted to be able to bring thissuperior monetization solution to publishers around the world, starting today!”

“The philosophies of our two companies are so deeply aligned it made perfect sense to combine them,” said Vadim Telyatnikov, founder and chief executive officer, LiftDNA. “Furthermore, we have already been working with OpenX at a product level and together have successfully helped multiple clients since 2010. We’re thrilled at the opportunity to help more publishers make more money and build their businesses.”

LiftDNA by OpenX™ is available immediately. It is available in two primary packages, either fully integrated within OpenX Enterprise for clients that want the comprehensive revenue platform or as a standalone service. For more information, please visit www.liftDNA.com.

About OpenX

OpenX is one of the world’s leading providers of digital advertising technology, enabling businesses to manage and maximize their ad revenue. OpenX products, including OpenX Enterprise, OpenX Market and LiftDNA by OpenX™ provide a comprehensive revenue serving platform by combining ad serving, an ad exchange and a breakthrough approach to yield optimization.

OpenX Technologies, Inc. is based in Los Angeles and is backed by leading investors including Accel Partners, Index Ventures and SAP Ventures. For more information, please visit www.openx.com.

Industry-Leading Ad Serving Platform Supercharges HopStop with Mobile Capabilities To Power Hyper-Local Marketing to Millions of Users

NEW YORK – Mocean Mobile (www.moceanmobile.com), the standard in mobile ad serving, today announced the latest addition to their client roster, HopStop. The leading provider of pedestrian navigation and mobile transit services will now be able to drive greater relevance for mobile ads through hyper-local targeting on all major devices, including iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows and BlackBerry.

HopStop’s service is available in 68 global markets spanning 200+ major cities andis used by over two million mobile consumers every month. HopStop needed a technology partner that addressed the business requirements for precise mobile marketing with massive scale. After a thorough evaluation of ad serving platforms, it chose Mocean Mobile as the most complete mobile technology that met complex requirements in ad mediation, ad operations, ad sales and most importantly geo-targeting.

“HopStop helps people get from point A to point B. We know where people are coming from and where they are going. Mocean allows us to serve ads that are targeted to the user’s destination or current location,” said Joe Meyer, CEO of HopStop. “With Mocean, we can target mobile ads to specific zip codes, cities, neighborhoods, street addresses, exact x/y coordinates and GPS locations. If an advertiser wants to attract people looking for directions to Times Square or target someone walking through Times Square, Mocean helps us serve the targeted ad – and they make it very easy to do so.”

Mocean Mobile’s simple user interface and hyper-local geo targeting capabilities allow HopStop to point out locations and serve locally relevant promotions when users are searching for directions or are located in a specific vicinity. Mocean Mobile provides HopStop with insight into available impressions and ad performance in real-time. This empowers HopStopto guide advertisers with the right mobile marketing strategy.

“HopStop’s greatest value to advertisers is allowing them to reach consumers where they are and where they are going. Now the HopStop sales team can tap into that value by providing their advertisers with a robust and highly relevant geo-targeted ad offering.” said Dave Gwozdz, CEO of Mocean Mobile.

For more information:
• On Mocean Mobile’s ad serving platform, visit http://www.moceanmobile.com/solutions.
• To follow MoceanMobile on Twitter: @moceanmobile.
• To download one of HopStop’s free mobile apps, visit http://www.HopStop.com/mobile
• To learn more about HopStop’s geo ad-targeting capabilities, visit http://www.HopStop.com/advertising

About HopStop
HopStop (www.hopstop.com), a leading location-based travel service, provides door-to-door walking, biking, transit, taxi and hourly car rental directions to city residents and tourists alike. The company has built the first national network to facilitate and encourage intra-city as well as city-to-city travel by aggregating hundreds of transit systems into one streamlined navigational user experience. The company’s environmentally-friendly service is currently available in 68 major metropolitan markets throughout five countries including the U.S., Canada, England, France and Russia. HopStop also offers point-to-point directions, transit schedules and maps (and the locations of nearby subway stations and bus stops) via web (www.HopStop.com) and mobile (www.hopstop.com/mobile) services including industry-leading iPad (www.HopStop.com/iPad), iPhone (www.HopStop.com/iPhone), Android (www.HopStop.com/Android), Windows (www.HopStop.com/WindowsPhone) and Blackberry (www.HopStop.com/BlackBerry) apps, as well as a popular mobile site (m.hopstop.com). HopStop is based in New York City, and is financed by private investors.

About Mocean Mobile
Mocean Mobile created one of the first mobile technology platforms that streamlines publishers’, developers’ and app stores’ mobile revenue opportunities by giving them the ability to serve display ads to all mobile devices including smart phones, tablets and netbooks. Mocean Mobile integrates with the top rich media providers to ensure that publishers have capabilities to run the most engaging and comprehensive creative ad units on their mobile sites and apps. By integrating with the majority of 3rd party ad networks and agency side ad servers like DART and Atlas, Mocean Mobile combines state of the art direct sales campaign management with ad network mediation for the mobile world. Created in 2009, Mocean Mobile is led by a team of advertising and media veterans from Google, DoubleClick, Yahoo, and AdMob, with more than 100 years of collective experience in online and mobile advertising and technology. It operates under parent company Mojiva Inc., which has a total of $35 million venture funding from Pelion Venture Partners, Shamrock Capital and Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments.

Common Methodologies for the Evaluation of Campaigns Will Promote Growth, Consistency and Greater Transparency in the Interactive Advertising Buying and Selling Process

NEW YORK – The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) released the final version of “Guidelines for the Conduct of Ad Verification.” This advanced framework, developed in conjunction with the Media Rating Council (MRC), will ensure a common set of methods and practices for ad verification, ultimately providing vital assurances to marketers and publishers alike that companies engaged in the verification of interactive advertising campaigns can themselves be audited against a common, transparent standard.

“These guidelines introduce a transparent and auditable approach to ad verification practices in the industry,” said Steve Sullivan, Vice President, Advertising Technology, IAB. “While ad verification in principle is valuable to the digital advertising industry, the lack of accountability created tension between the publishers and marketers. We developed these guidelines to introduce a level of consistency into campaign assessments commensurate the industry’s standards for impression measurement.”

The guidelines provide a detailed set of common methods and practices for verification of online advertising, useful to verification vendors and users of verification services (both buyers and sellers). They include mobile, e-mail or lead generation campaigns of all types and address a wide range of topics, including:

- Ad-serving prevention (“ad blocking”) carries larger implications to the buyer and/or seller because the intended ad serving transaction is interrupted. The guidelines recommend that ad blocking may be used in instances where the relevant domain or page-level URL is already on a blocking list, for competitive separation and fraud prevention. Ad blocking should only be built into ad serving systems, so decisions are made pre-serve.

- Nested iFrames are often recognized as legitimate technology, but because of browser operational/security considerations, there is limited visibility into the legitimacy of iFrames filled with content from outside the parent domain. For that reason, the guidelines recommend ad verification vendors have procedures to classify and report whether advertising served into iFrames from other domains has been appropriately executed. In addition, the general nature of the verification tools used to view iFrame content should be disclosed. Moreover, it is recommended that the industry minimize the use of nested iFrames.

- Geo-targeting IP-based processes can vary in quality based on the geo-targeting vendor used. The guidelines recommend geo-targeting vendors subject their processes to independent auditing and that natural differences in geo targeting accuracy between vendors be taken into account.

“Consistent and transparent conduct of ad verification is vital for deepening confidence in the industry and driving the advancement of digital advertising,” said George Ivie, Executive Director and CEO of the Media Rating Council. “We believe the issuance of these guidelines represent a major step toward achieving these goals.”

For a copy of the Guidelines for the Conduct of Ad Verification, please visit www.iab.net/ad_verification.

About the IAB

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is comprised of more than 500 leading media and technology companies that are responsible for selling 86% of online advertising in the United States. On behalf of its members, the IAB is dedicated to the growth of the interactive advertising marketplace, of interactive’s share of total marketing spend, and of its members’ share of total marketing spend. The IAB educates marketers, agencies, media companies and the wider business community about the value of interactive advertising. Working with its member companies, the IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices and fields critical research on interactive advertising. Founded in 1996, the IAB is headquartered in New York City with a Public Policy office in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.iab.net.

Leading provider of digital advertising technology achieves annual run rate exceeding $100M

LOS ANGELES – OpenX Technologies, Inc. (OpenX), one of the world’s leading providers of digital advertising technology, announced it achieved a profitable fourth quarter as well as exceeding an annualized revenue run rate of more than $100M. The company also announced that it expects to continue its record of profitability during 2012 with continued robust growth across all areas of the company’s business.

2011 was a year of extraordinary success for OpenX during which the company served more than one trillion ad impressions and now handles more than 200 billion ad transactions per month. OpenX Market, the company’s unique ad exchange platform, saw a particularly strong year-over-year growth rate of nearly 700%. This massive growth in OpenX Market is a result of the growing number of publishers and advertisers recognizing the precision and strength of ad exchanges with the quality of both buy-side and sell-side customers that OpenX attracts. The company also continues to operate and manage key global partnerships, including OpenX Market Japan, a partnership with cyber communications inc. (“cci”), a subsidiary of Dentsu Inc.

The company’s advertising technology services, which include OpenX Enterprise, achieved a Q4 year-over-year growth rate of 100% compared with the same period in 2010, due to the acceleration of OpenX Enterprise, the company’s Software as a Service ad serving platform. OpenX has made significant progress over the last year in terms of both product adoption and revenue, proving its paradigm-shifting revenue serving capabilities are not only capable of driving revenue for publishers but can also do so at scale.

“2011 was a breakthrough year for OpenX with huge growth in global adoption of OpenX Enterprise and the phenomenal expansion of OpenX Market,” said Tim Cadogan, chief executive officer, OpenX. “Providing a comprehensive revenue serving solution for publishers to make them more money is the heart of what we are building and we are clearly demonstrating that we are able to do this at massive, global scale. The quality of the OpenX team and the growth levels we’re seeing put us in an incredibly strong position for 2012.”

With the launch in early 2011 of OpenX Enterprise, the Company offered the online advertising market the first true total revenue serving platform to make publishers more money. Since OpenX Enterprise combines an ad server with an ad exchange, it enables publishers to manage exclusive, guaranteed, non-guaranteed and real-time revenue sources all in one unified platform. As a result, for the first time publishers can maximize yield across all their ad revenue channels in real-time in one place.

Adoption of OpenX by major publishers, advertisers and partners has grown rapidly and is now used by thousands of customers across the world, including Groupon, cci, TheStreet.com, Turn, Invite Media, MediaMath, and [x+1].

“Reaching profitability is an important milestone in OpenX’s story,” said Rick Gombos, chief financial officer, OpenX. “What’s even more important is that we have achieved profitability by any measure of financial performance – EBITDA, cash flow and net income.”

About OpenX

OpenX is one of the world’s leading providers of digital advertising technology, enabling businesses to manage and maximize their ad revenue. OpenX products, including OpenX Enterprise and OpenX Market, provide a comprehensive revenue serving platform by combining ad serving with a unique ad exchange.

OpenX Technologies, Inc. is based in Los Angeles and is backed by leading investors including Accel Partners, Index Ventures and SAP Ventures. For more information, please visit www.openx.com.

LOUISVILLE, Colo. – Integration of national and local advertising content and the delivery of specific viewer-relevant messages within video on demand sessions were among multiple highlights from a Jan. 23-27 interoperability event hosted by CableLabs® focusing on advanced advertising over cable.

In its continuing effort to support the advancement of advertising technology and specifications, the CableLabs Ad Lab hosted an Advertising Interop that included seven participants, each of which contributed infrastructure such as ad decision managers (ADMs) and ad decision servers (ADS), and demonstrated interoperability over a variety of use cases in dynamic insertion of advertising into video on demand (VOD) content.

Canoe Ventures demonstrated its national VOD Dynamic Ad Insertion platform as a key benchmark for participating suppliers. Additional participants at the event included: Avail-TVN, BlackArrow, Harris Corp., Nagra-OpenTV, SeaChange International Inc. and This Technology.

Participants provided encoding and metadata preparation using web-based software solutions for an inventory of entertainment content and ad spots. Among key achievements from the Interop:

- The ADM and ADS systems were able to identify ad placement opportunities within a VOD listing, draw from the inventory of advertising inventory, and dynamically place the most relevant ad in either a pre-roll, mid-roll or post-roll location.

- Placement opportunity, content and subscriber information systems were involved to select the most relevant ad to be played out to the specific subscriber.

- Using multiple ad decision servers and a decision router, ads were dynamically placed from national, regional, or local inventories as defined by the placement opportunity information.

- A number of participant combinations were integrated for the first time during this Interop, demonstrating the value of the CableLabs SCTE 130 profile– a defined series of interfaces and processes for supporting addressable advertising delivery – and the CableLabs Document Profile Architecture, which streamlines the testing and validation process for SCTE 130-compliant technologies by allowing developers to emulate multi-platform architectures.

- SCTE 130 messaging was demonstrated between systems using the IPv6 addressing protocol.

- All of these steps were accomplished using the SCTE 130 interface standards, which define interfaces between logical components of an advanced advertising system that supports linear, on demand and DVR delivery platforms, and enables a granular levels of addressability.

“This CableLabs event demonstrated that MSOs’ systems, enabled by leading technology providers, are ready to handle national and local inventory splits for VOD advertising. This is a milestone along the path to delivering the appropriate operational support for nationally stewarded VOD advertising, which will enhance the value of the platform for programmers and advertisers alike,” said Arthur Orduna, Chief Product Officer of Canoe Ventures.

“By coming together in the CableLabs setting, we continue to validate the SCTE 130 advertising interface standard with a particular focus on the VOD revenue opportunities which cable operators are poised to exploit,” said Paul Woidke, Chairman of SCTE’s DVS Working Group 5 and SVP and General Manager of Advanced Advertising at Nagra-OpenTV.

“By having multiple participants bring their routers, servers, and other infrastructure, we were able to replicate an environment that would be valuable to a cable operator. This event demonstrated that national, regional and local advertising opportunities can be served from multiple sources and coexist within a single VOD session,” stated Rob Klippel, VP of New Products & Operations at Comcast Spotlight.

Don Dulchinos, SVP Advertising at CableLabs, said “The ease of new integrations and success of the participants in implementing very relevant use cases demonstrate that we now have a more mature eco-system for providing dynamic ads in VOD as a new cable revenue opportunity. CableLabs looks forward to hosting future similar events to continue the evolution of advanced advertising”

About CableLabs: Cable Television Laboratories (www.cablelabs.com) was founded in 1988 by members of the cable television industry. A non-profit research and development consortium, CableLabs is dedicated to pursuing new cable telecommunications technologies and to helping its cable operator members integrate those advancements into their business objectives. Cable operators from around the world are members. CableLabs maintains additional web sites at www.cablenet.org, www.ebif.tv and www.tru2way.com.

Significant Next Step in Implementing Display Ad Agreement Announced in Q411

SUNNYVALE, Calif. & NEW YORK – Yahoo!’s Right Media Exchange, the leading global private marketplace (NASDAQ:YHOO) and AOL (NYSE:AOL) today announced that AOL has selected Right Media Exchange as the platform to provide real time access to AOL inventory as part of the display advertising agreements announced in Q4 2011. The inventory AOL makes available under the display advertising agreement will be surfaced through the Right Media Exchange across the US and Canada. The overall agreement aims to improve the process of buying and selling premium online display inventory in the non-reserved space.

Right Media is the first and leading global advertising exchange with robust and proven technology designed to drive maximum performance and yield for buyers and sellers in real-time, in a private marketplace set up.

“Advertising.com has been a long-standing seat holder on the Right Media Exchange, having utilized the Right Media Exchange’s RTB capabilities since 2009. Now, with the addition of inventory from AOL sites, we look forward to AOL continuing to drive yield through their existing advertisers while connecting them with the exchange’s premium advertisers for maximizing yield while delivering on our mutual objectives,” said Brian Silver, Yahoo! VP, Ad Platforms for the Americas. “AOL’s selection validates Right Media’s commitment to building a premium marketplace on a global scale.”

“We have had a long term partnership with Yahoo and Right Media, and are excited to continue this partnership through this agreement. The agreement provides for Advertising.com to continue to access AOL inventory for our existing advertisers while providing increased competition through additional demand sources,” said David Jacobs, Senior Vice President, Advertising.com.

About Yahoo!:

Yahoo! (NASDAQ:YHOO) is the premier digital media company, creating deeply personal digital experiences that keep more than half a billion people connected to what matters most to them, across devices and around the globe. And Yahoo!’s unique combination of Science + Art + Scale connects advertisers to the consumers who build their businesses. Yahoo! is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. For more information, visit the pressroom (pressroom.yahoo.com).

Yahoo! is the trademark and/or registered trademark of Yahoo! Inc. All other names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective owner.

About AOL:

Having helped millions of Americans to get online, AOL Inc. (NYSE:AOL) is on a mission to inform, entertain and connect the world. The home of a world-class collection of premium brands, AOL creates original content that engages audiences on a local and global scale. We help marketers connect with these audiences through effective and engaging digital advertising solutions.

Integrated Solution Gives Brand Marketers Faster Page Load Times and a Superior Online Experience

NEW YORK, NY – TagMan (www.tagman.com), the global leader in tag management, announced today an exclusive strategic partnership with Digital Fulcrum (www.digital-fulcrum.com), provider of the Ghostwriter web performance optimization technology.

Through the partnership, TagMan is further expanding its tag management functionality to deliver optimal page performance for all types of tags, combining its unique ability to support any type of tag with Digital Fulcrum’s expertise in performance management.

“By joining forces with the leader in tag management technology, we’re able to bring improved site performance to a much broader market,” said Kevin LeFew, managing partner for Digital Fulcrum. “Our solution, combined with the services and metrics that TagMan delivers, creates an incredibly valuable tool that improves user experiences, better informs decision making, and ultimately drives revenue. We are pleased to be collaborating on enhanced services for marketers and publishers alike.”

The partnership will bring even stronger performance optimization to TagMan clients for their third party marketing tags. TagMan’s flexible system already can serve tags asynchronously, which allows tags to load independently of the page content rather than blocking it. TagMan also offers a solution to accelerate the loading of blocking (synchronous) tags using its patent pending smart loading approach (see our recent Tag Loading Whitepaper). Ghostwriter extends this solution further by allowing synchronous tags to be executed asynchronously without modifying the code, which enables TagMan to be used asynchronously with any third party tag.

“We’ve seen the majority of our current vendor base tags, which exceed 250, were written before browsers started to implement HTML5 features like asynchronous JavaScript,” said Paul Cook, CEO and founder of TagMan. “We’ve worked hard to optimize the dynamic loading of these synchronous tags, and Ghostwriter provides another alternative. Integration with Ghostwriter has helped us reach our target of support for any tag within an asynchronous container, allowing companies to de-couple their tags from their website performance and something alternative Tag Management Systems simply cannot do.

“No longer will marketers need to sacrifice functionality and page performance for their third party tags,” he continued. “They’ll have access to better data, faster page loading, and the freedom to work with any vendor. We are very excited by this partnership and it is already live and integrated for several clients.”

About TagMan
TagMan is the global leader in tag management, with the industry’s most mature and proven platform for the enterprise. Since launching the first, independent tag management platform in 2007, TagMan has helped over 100 customers solve tagging, site performance and attribution-related challenges. With over 250 vendor tags currently implemented, the award-winning TagMan platform provides customers like Travelocity, Virgin Atlantic, Subaru and others complete agility in managing existing partners and working with new technologies without the burden of costly implementation projects and resources. More information is available at www.tagman.com.

TagMan can be found on Twitter at www.twitter.com/tagman, and also has a LinkedIn page at http://linkd.in/yYGKEV. You can read the company’s blog at http://blog.tagman.com/.

About Digital Fulcrum
Founded by a team of online advertising experts with years of experience in facing publisher challenges, Digital Fulcrum is dedicated to providing its clients with superior services and solutions. GhostWriter is a transformational, patent pending, Web Performance Optimization solution that allows publishers, marketers and others to optimize, inspect, manipulate and monitor like no other. Digital Fulcrum is also in a deep partnership with AdMonsters providing all services offered via Admonsters Professional Services (APS) for North America.

Contact us today to learn more about what Digital Fulcrum can do for your business. www.digital-fulcrum.com or email to: info@digital-fulcrum.com. You can find our blog at http://digital-fulcrum.com/blog/.

Former AOL VP will drive the growth of OpenX’s breakthrough advertising technology service for large publishers

LOS ANGELES – OpenX Technologies, Inc. (OpenX), the world’s leading independent provider of digital advertising technology, announced the appointment of senior online advertising industry executive Eric Rosenthal as General Manager of the company’s Enterprise business. In the newly created role, Rosenthal will be responsible for rapidly increasing adoption of OpenX Enterprise, the company’s paradigm-shifting Software as a Service revenue serving platform. The appointment is immediately effective.

Launched in February 2011, OpenX Enterprise is the company’s digital ad technology platform that combines the capabilities of a true premium ad server with new, advanced ad exchange technology which enables publishers to maximize yield across all their ad revenue channels in real-time. Specifically, unified real-time ad decisions allow publishers to maximize the value of every ad impression, including allowing them to take full advantage of a wide range of Real-Time Bidding buyers in a controlled way. Combined with groundbreaking ad operations tools, highly sophisticated data capabilities, and massively flexible architecture with complete APIs, OpenX Enterprise solves some of the most fundamental challenges facing publishers.

“We’re very pleased that Eric is joining the team and look forward to him using his deep experience and knowledge of the industry to help grow our business and continue furthering the global adoption of OpenX Enterprise,” said Tim Cadogan, chief executive officer, OpenX. “Eric brings a wealth of experience from working directly with publishers and has a rare knowledge and understanding of what they need in today’s rapidly changing online advertising ecosystem to be successful.”

Prior to joining OpenX, Rosenthal was at AOL where he was Vice President of National Sales and a member of the executive team that led Publisher Partner Development for AOL’s Rich Media Ad Serving platform (Pictela) for both publishers and agencies. In 2011, Rosenthal’s team achieved a tenfold increase in revenue. Rosenthal also brings experience as Senior Sales Director at DoubleClick (now Google DoubleClick) where he helped generate an annual run rate of more than $50M. Prior to AOL, Rosenthal was Vice President of Sales at Kyte (now Kit Digital), a leading online, social media and mobile video platform for live and on-demand content, where he increased revenues by more than 200%.

“I’m extremely excited to join OpenX and help publishers maximize their ad revenue through OpenX’s unique revenue serving vision,” said Eric Rosenthal, general manager, Enterprise. “OpenX had an incredible 2011 with hundreds of publishers signing up to use OpenX Enterprise. It’s truly a great time to be joining the team and helping to scale the business.”

Rosenthal began his career as Regional Sales Manager at Verizon Business before holding roles at Solbright (now part of Operative) and Panther CDN (now CDNetworks). He is a graduate of Ithaca College and holds an MBA in Marketing from The George Washington University School of Business.

About OpenX

OpenX is the world’s leading independent provider of digital advertising technology that enables businesses to manage and maximize their ad revenue. OpenX products, including OpenX Enterprise and OpenX Market, provide a comprehensive revenue serving platform by combining ad serving with a unique ad exchange.

OpenX Technologies, Inc. is based in Los Angeles and is backed by leading investors including Accel Partners, Index Ventures, SAP Ventures, AOL Ventures, Mitsui & Co. Global Investment, Inc., Presidio Ventures and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures. For more information, please visit www.openx.com.

Canada’s technology incubator, Intertainment Media, takes stake in Toronto advertising technology start up

NEW YORK / LOS ANGELES / SAN MATEO / TORONTO – Intertainment Media Inc. (“Intertainment” or the “Company”) (TSXV:INT / OTCQX: ITMTF / FRA: I4T) announced that it has finalized its early stage investment in Shiny Ads, an award winning advertising technology company, which specializes in the sell-side automation of premium inventory for online publishers.

Shiny Ads and its suite of products is well positioned to capture a share of the estimated $14 billion dollar self-serve ad market. Winner of the Foreign Affairs Technology Growth Initiative and chosen by the IDC as a top 10 digital company to watch, Shiny Ads currently counts an impressive list of clients including CBS Interactive, DeviantArt.com, Wikia.com, AdWeek.com, Unanimis.co.uk, and SourceInterlink as well a number of other tier one brands.

“Intertainment Media is very excited to close its investment in Shiny Ads. The potential for this advertising technology to successfully deploy on a global scale is, in our opinion, phenomenal.” said David Lucatch, CEO of Intertainment Media. “Intertainment Media is committed to its philosophy of investing, nurturing and developing leading edge technologies digital and social media platforms and the Shiny Ads investment was a natural fit with that mandate.”

“We are extremely happy to have an organization such as Intertainment Media share in our vision for our technology.” said Roy Pereira, CEO and Founder of Shiny Ads. “We look forward to tapping into their experience and resources as we look to take Shiny Ads to the next level.”

“The investment in the Shiny Ads platform provides a fantastic strategic opportunity for Intertainment Media’s current portfolio of investments.” said Brad Parry, CMO of Intertainment Media. “The ability to more efficiently direct premium advertisers to our available inventory across our multiple platforms will ensure that we are securing the best possible returns for our inventory.”

The initial early stage investment of $250,000 will provide Intertainment Media with an ownership stake in Shiny Ads and also provides the opportunity for Intertainment Media to increase its investment by an equal amount within six months at today’s valuation and will also provide Intertainment Media with a seat on the Shiny Ads board.

About Intertainment Media – www.intertainmentmedia.com
Intertainment Media Inc. is one of Canada’s leading technology incubators and is focused on developing, nurturing and investing in technologies and companies that provide technology solutions for brands and consumers alike.
Intertainment Media also owns and operates a number of key properties including Ad Taffy, itiBiti, Ortsbo, Deal Frenzy and Magnum, with investments in leading edge technologies and social media platforms including theaudience.com . For more information on the Company and its properties, please visit www.intertainmentmedia.com

Headquartered in the Toronto, Canada region, with offices in New York, Los Angeles and San Mateo, CA, Intertainment Media Inc. is listed on the Toronto Venture Exchange under the symbol “INT” (TSXV:INT) and in the US on the OTCQX Exchange under the symbol “ITMTF”. Intertainment is also traded in Europe, on the XETRA Exchange under the symbol “I4T”.

About Shiny Ads – www.shinyads.com
Shiny Ads is an advertising technology company specializing in sell-side automation of premium inventory. The award-winning Self-Service Advertising Platform is a core product offering. With Shiny Ads, smaller advertisers are able to quickly and easily purchase advertising without the need of industry knowledge, graphic designers, or a large budget. Shiny Ads is NOT an ad network, nor does it solicit directly from advertisers or ad networks. Shiny Ads is a solutions provider that supports direct sales team and works in conjunction with ad networks – providing online publishers with access to an untapped revenue stream. Visit website at ShinyAds.com or check out the demo at vimeo.com/shinyads/intro.

Sometimes it is lonely to be the CEO of the biggest independent advertising technology partner for publishers. The long view: my belief in standing behind the high quality publishers to make Internet advertising work at least as well as the best TV advertising – is a position not often shared. Yet I believe that we can make Internet advertising work brilliantly for high quality product launches and brand building. We won’t be stuck with text based CPC ads. We will show that the best sites can run fantastic graphical and video ads that sell great products.

I’ve been saying for months that the distinction between above and below the fold should go away, and I finally have company for my perspective. Good company: Comscore, Inc.

A week ago I attended an event in New York City at which Comscore unveiled its new Validated GRP(TM) tool that rates the effectiveness of digital ads. Validated GRP takes the rating standards advertisers apply to TV advertising (Gross Rating Points) and establishes a similar metric that will apply to digital advertising. For advertisers, this is a metric to judge online campaign effectiveness–to make an apples to apples comparison between the effectiveness of TV and the effectiveness of online display and video ads.

In the development of its Validated GRP tool, Comscore conducted a  major study on the quality of campaign delivery  that allowed it to investigate discrepancies between expectations and reality when it comes to ad delivery. The full study, the results of which will be released in March, included twelve major brands with household names like Ford, Sprint, Kimberly Clark, and Kellogg’s.

To conduct the study, Comscore used the AdXPose technology it acquired earlier last year. The AdXPose team tipped us off in advance because we were already partnered with them. We got a sneak preview of the study’s highlights, which we are now free to share here.

In December 2011, Comscore measured 2,975 placements on 380,898 site domains — totaling over 1.7 million impressions, all delivered in iframes.

The conclusion? Something we, as an ad server and a advertising technology partner for publishers, have already observed: many ads are served, but not seen. That’s because web pages are no longer mostly short pages with static user experiences; they’re long pages with dynamic usage. Many use the increasingly popular “infinite scroll”. By the time an ad at the top of the page is served, the reader may have already scrolled by. Yet many ads further down may be very visible to the user. In Comscore’s own words:

“It’s not just an ‘above the fold versus below the fold’ issue. Sometimes people scroll down quickly to get to the content they want, and miss home page ads. In those cases, the action might be below the fold. Compelling ads can work in both places – but only if they’re visible.” Comscore found that 24% of ads above the fold were not visible.

While this is not great news for the advertisers who paid for those campaigns, It is great to see Comscore measure this for advertisers. And it’s why we developed the InView slider formats. Web pages, like the Huffington Post and Daily Mail are getting longer. And they are increasingly optimized for tablets where users are quick to scroll and therefore quick to skip past the top of the page to get to the content they want to read.

Comscore’s findings become very important, especially as online advertising moves from simple banner display ads to on-page video. And I believe it will move to great video ads for cars, cosmetics and movies etc right on the page. Right now, we’re selling the InView Slider ad unit with great confidence that it works for advertisers wherever you place it. It only appears if the reader is going to see it. The InView slider gives publishers a way to boost revenue, and gives advertisers a great way to guarantee to catch scrolling readers.

We’re also launching an in page video ad that will appear when the viewer is guaranteed to see it.

The InView slider has been quickly adopted by publishers since the summer because all the revenue for the publisher is additional and yet there’s no additional work involved.

We look forward to Comscore publicly presenting the full results of its study in March, and of course we are proud to be their partner in making advertising on the web as good as the best advertising on national TV.

About ZEDO

ZEDO, Inc. is a digital ad solutions company that offers products and services for a publisher’s premium, self service, and remnant inventory. Products include ad network optimization, innovative rich media formats for publishers’ direct sales teams, full featured ad serving, behavioral targeting data built into the ad server, an exchange-like platform for publishers to sell behavioral and DMA targeted inventory at high CPMs (see: www.zedoadnetwork.com), a self service platform to allow advertisers to buy directly from a publisher, outsourced ad ops and more. These products are integrated into one technology platform for publishers to choose from, or use seamlessly together. ZEDO has been in the internet advertising industry for over 10 years, and is the most successful independent ad server in the US. The company provides innovative solutions that boost revenues for Internet publishers. ZEDO is headquartered in San Francisco and has four development centers in Russia and India.

Reach out to ZEDO at http://www.zedo.com, or follow the company on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/ZEDOadsolutions) and Twitter (http://twitter.com/zedoinc).

Brand-focused mobile ad network experiencing tremendous growth with plans for global scale

SAN FRANCISCO – Greystripe, a division of ValueClick Inc. (Nasdaq: VCLK), is announcing impressive expansion within the company, strengthening its position as the go-to mobile ad network for brand advertisers in North America and Europe. Since May, the company has doubled its team and opened four new offices in the U.S. while expanding its presence in Europe.

The largest brand-focused mobile ad network has doubled the size of its sales, engineering and operations staff, allowing it to offer innovative new products to its base of thousands of brand advertisers, agencies and mobile publishers.

As part of the expansion of its team, Greystripe has opened new sales offices in Atlanta, Seattle, Minneapolis and Phoenix. They are also announcing nine new executive hires. These new hires are:

Brian Pearlman, senior account executive, from Millennial Media
Ryan Bleich, senior account executive, from AOL
Chris Backschies, regional sales manager, from WeatherBug
Terah Bocchi, senior account executive, from Belo Phoenix
Jeff Margolis, senior account executive, from Adfusion
Bill Kramer, regional sales manager, from quadrantONE
Josh Parker, account executive, from Specific Media
Matt Sexton, regional sales manager, from RadiumOne
Ken Yonan, regional sales manager, from Specific Media

“We’re excited to grow our team and continue expanding in the coming year,” said Kurt Hawks, vice president of operations for Greystripe. “In 2012, we look forward to using this growth to reach advertisers in every significant U.S. market, continue innovation and push the envelope by creating the best in brand advertising for mobile.”

In 2011, Greystripe launched two new mobile ad units: video advertising and its popular Ad Boosters. Both have seen impressive results. Over 55 brands have run mobile video ads, delivering over 200 ad creatives. On average, 50 percent of consumers have watched the entire video ads, with click-through rates between 1 and 3 percent. Ad Boosters are a next generation ad format featuring social media integration, local content and deals. These Boosters make mobile advertising more relevant and valuable to smartphone users and have shown a 300 percent increase in click-through rates compared to similar ads without the Boosters.

After officially launching in Europe in February through a series of partnerships, Greystripe hired Tim Scoffham to head EU mobile growth. Scoffham came to Greystripe from 4th Screen Advertising, where he was the commercial head. The company has now established a direct European presence in the U.K., France, Germany, Spain and Sweden.

To find out more about Greystripe, visit www.greystripe.com

About Greystripe:

Greystripe, a division of ValueClick, Inc. (Nasdaq: VCLK), is the largest brand-focused mobile advertising network in the US by reach. Greystripe delivers the highest engagement and most sophisticated targeting for brand marketers, the maximum revenue for publishers and app developers, and the best ad experience for users. Greystripe’s proprietary advertising platform serves billions of rich media impressions to over 40 million users of touch-driven devices through more than 3,500 application titles and mobile websites across all major mobile platforms.

For more information, please visit: http://www.greystripe.com

About ValueClick, Inc.:

ValueClick, Inc. (Nasdaq: VCLK) is one of the world’s largest digital marketing companies. Through a unique combination of data, technology and services, ValueClick increases brand awareness and drives customer acquisition at scale for the world’s largest advertisers, and maximizes advertising revenue for tens of thousands of online and mobile publishers. ValueClick’s brands include Commission Junction, ValueClick Media, Dotomi, Greystripe, Mediaplex, Smarter.com, CouponMountain.com, Investopedia.com, and PriceRunner. The Company is based in Westlake Village, California, and has offices in major advertising markets worldwide. For more information, please visit http://www.valueclick.com.

For a newspaper publisher, everything starts and ends with revenue. As print has moved online, more and more of that revenue has had to come from online display advertising. Yet advertisers are reluctant to spend money on media buys they can’t measure. This has produced a problem at both ends of the equation: newspapers have lost revenue, and advertisers have lost confidence in their media plans.

That is because historically, the value of online ads to advertisers has been judged by where and how many times they were served. But there’s a big difference  between whether an ad is served online and whether it is actually seen by a reader rapidly scrolling down the page, as startups like AdXPose have pointed out. Increasingly advertisers will want to know if their ads are seen.

We’re on it. Last year, we partnered with AdXPose, which was acquired by comScore. Now we can document for our partners when we serve an ad and it is seen. comScore has shared with us numbers that validate our intuition that above and below the fold have become meaningless because of reader habits, and that new ad units can help generate new revenue for publishers.

For example, last year  one in four ads above the fold was never seen, and 32% of  all ads were delivered but never seen. This means ads below the fold, while traditionally less costly, were almost as effective as those in the traditional “best” spots above the fold.

Because we have been serving ads for over a decade, we were in a position to spot this early, and to do something about it.

We’ve come up with some new, best-in-class products that can be used by any publisher, whether they use our ad server or any other. They’re aimed at creating additional revenue for publishers, while assuring brands and advertisers their ads will be seen (we can prove it) in a brand-safe environment. As far as we know, we’re the first to do this.

We started as the infrastructure for our publisher partners when we served the ad. As we evolved, we became more of a full service outsourced ad operations company. This enabled us to learn more about how online advertising technology really works to help marketers, and therefore to help publishers.

This year, we have begun to launch new best-in-class products for all publishers whether they use our ad server or not. The best-in-class InView format, for example, will appear only if we know the user will see it – and that can be measured. This InView product is designed to meet the new ways readers consume publications.

We will also offer other best-in-class products for all publishers (regardless of which ad server they use). “TVAds OnPage” is a best-in-class video ad format. Ad Ops services from ZEDO are also best-in-class because we are a US company with high standards and because as the only ad ops company that builds an ad server we are a true technology expert that can run any ad server perfectly.

During the course of this year, we will roll out three more products for all publishers that are best-in-class.

We continue to move forward in product development, knowing we operate in a very fast-moving environment and we must continue to prove our value.

About ZEDO

ZEDO, Inc. is a digital ad solutions company that offers products and services for a publisher’s premium, self service, and remnant inventory. Products include ad network optimization, innovative rich media formats for publishers’ direct sales teams, full featured ad serving, behavioral targeting data built into the ad server, an exchange-like platform for publishers to sell behavioral and DMA targeted inventory at high CPMs (see: www.zedoadnetwork.com), a self service platform to allow advertisers to buy directly from a publisher, outsourced ad ops and more. These products are integrated into one technology platform for publishers to choose from, or use seamlessly together. ZEDO has been in the internet advertising industry for over 10 years, and is the most successful independent ad server in the US. The company provides innovative solutions that boost revenues for Internet publishers. ZEDO is headquartered in San Francisco and has four development centers in Russia and India.

Reach out to ZEDO at http://www.zedo.com, or follow the company on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/ZEDOadsolutions) and Twitter (http://twitter.com/zedoinc).

Industry-First, In-TV Brand Survey Capability from Vizu Gives Brands Real-Time Insight into Ad Campaign Efficacy

REDWOOD CITY, CA – YuMe, the operating system for TV 2.0, today announced that it is partnering with Samsung Electronics, the technology leader and innovator in electronics and telecommunications, to provide advertising on Samsung’s Smart TV Platform through YuMe’s Connected Audience Network. As part of this partnership, Samsung will host the first-ever connected TV Brand Lift study through YuMe’s relationship with Vizu, an online ad technology company whose solutions allow advertisers to measure and optimize Brand Lift in real-time. State Farm, North America’s leading choice for auto and home insurance, is the charter advertiser for this video advertising survey trial.

“Our sales partnership with YuMe allows Samsung to leverage their strong relationships with brands, agencies, and third-parties for the Samsung Smart TV Advertising Platform,” said Daniel Park, Vice President, Samsung Electronics, Media Solution Center. We believe the ability to reach consumers through Samsung’s market-leading Smart TV’s and Blu-ray Disc players presents a unique and compelling value proposition to marketers. YuMe is a valuable partner in evangelizing this opportunity and bringing brand advertisers in to participate in this interactive, emerging platform.”

The new connected TV Brand Lift study will gauge how ads impact consumers’ perception by randomly sampling viewers and presenting a small subset with an on-screen survey served from Samsung’s Smart Hub. Viewers respond to the survey using their TV remote. Responses from viewers who have not been exposed to the advertising are compared to those from viewers surveyed while the advertising is running in order to calculate the Brand Lift generated by the campaign. Powered by Vizu, this metric helps Samsung-YuMe advertisers improve messaging and audience targeting for current and future ad buys.

As the charter advertiser for this launch, State Farm is extending the reach of its popular Super Bowl MVP Aaron Rodgers campaign across all screens to drive both brand and social media marketing objectives.

“We are extremely excited to be part of YuMe’s Connected TV launch. The living room is becoming the ‘hub’ of household entertainment, both for traditional as well as online viewing, and the connected TV platform provides a State Farm-branded experience prior to the consumer watching their chosen video,” said Edward Gold, Advertising Director, State Farm Insurance Companies.

“With this new capability, our solutions now enable advertisers to measure and optimize Brand Lift across multiple screens, comparing and contrasting the results generated in traditional digital channels with those from connected television,” said Dan Beltramo, CEO of Vizu. “We are very excited to test this capability with YuMe and Samsung as we jointly lead the way into the next realm of digital media branding measurement.”

Samsung Smart TV advertising inventory expands the reach of YuMe’s Connected Audience Network to include the global leader in connected TV sales. YuMe provides advertisers with an integrated campaign platform for reaching consumers across TV, mobile, and online devices. YuMe’s premium video ad network enables advertisers to reach their target audience at scale whenever and wherever they consume content. With world class customer support, brand-safe content, unmatched data and analytics, powerful reporting, and tremendous reach, the Connected Audience Network offers the essential tools marketers need to engage consumers and ultimately exceed their campaign goals.

“Connected TV is an emerging platform, and we are excited to offer built-in solutions for evaluating ad campaign success across multiple platforms, which have never before been available to brands,” said Jayant Kadambi, CEO, YuMe. “Our YuMe platform works seamlessly to integrate multiple technologies that give companies like State Farm real-time viewer feedback, allowing them to successfully monetize cross-platform campaigns.”

About Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. is a global leader in semiconductor, telecommunication, digital media and digital convergence technologies with 2010 consolidated sales of US$135.8 billion. Employing approximately 190,500 people in 206 offices across 68 countries, the company operates two separate organizations to coordinate its nine independent business units: Digital Media & Communications, comprising Visual Display, Mobile Communications, Telecommunication Systems, Digital Appliances, IT Solutions, and Digital Imaging; and Device Solutions, consisting of Memory, System LSI and LCD. Recognized for its industry-leading performance across a range of economic, environmental and social criteria, Samsung Electronics was named the world’s most sustainable technology company in the 2011 Dow Jones Sustainability Index. For more information, please visit www.samsung.com

About State Farm

State Farm and its affiliates are the largest provider of car insurance in the U.S. and is a leading insurer in Canada. In addition to providing auto insurance quotes, their 17,800 agents and more than 66,000 employees serve 81 million policies and accounts – more than 79 million auto, home, life and health policies in the United States and Canada, and nearly 2 million bank accounts. Commercial auto insurance, along with coverage for renters, business owners, boats and motorcycles, is also available. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company is the parent of the State Farm family of companies. State Farm is ranked No. 37 on the Fortune 500 list of largest companies. For more information, please visit http://www.statefarm.com or in Canada http://www.statefarm.ca.

About Vizu

Vizu Corporation (www.brandlift.com) brings the same metrics used to measure and optimize brand advertising effectiveness in the offline world to the online medium. By providing the first real-time, enterprise technology platform that allows brand advertisers and their partners in the digital media ecosystem – publishers, ad networks, exchanges, and demand side platforms – to collaborate around measuring and optimizing Brand Lift metrics, Vizu enables its customers to move their target audience through the purchase funnel, from building awareness to creating intent and preference. Vizu’s brand advertising effectiveness platform is used by over 60% of Advertising Age’s Top 100 Brand Advertisers and Comscore’s Top 50 Media properties to support all key aspects of the advertising lifecycle, including media buying, audience profiling, and Brand Lift optimization.

About YuMe

YuMe is the software infrastructure provider powering digital video and the next generation of television with its operating system for TV 2.0. Its video advertising technology and services seamlessly connect advertisers, app developers, content distributors, consumer electronics manufacturers, and publishers across the globe. YuMe’s patent-pending Relevance Engine powers its premium in-stream video ad network, the YuMe Connected Audience Network, and its industry-leading advertising management solutions, ACE for Publishers and ACE for Advertisers. The YuMe Relevance Engine matches the right ad to the right audience on whatever screen they are viewing—PC, mobile, or connected TV. YuMe is a privately held company headquartered in Redwood City, CA with its European headquarters in London. The company is backed by Accel Partners, BV Capital, DAG Ventures, Intel Capital, Khosla Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Samsung Ventures, and Translink Capital. For more information, visit www.YuMe.com, follow @YuMevideo on Twitter (www.twitter.com/YuMevideo), or like YuMe on Facebook at www.facebook.com/YuMevideo.

NEW YORK – 24/7 Real Media, Inc., WPP’s marketing technology company, announced its acquisition of Panache®, a leader in digital video advertising fulfillment software and services.

The addition of the latest digital video advertising technologies to 24/7 Real Media’s award-winning Open AdStream® ad management platform, creates new and expanded revenue generating opportunities for clients of both companies and gives 24/7 Real Media the industry’s most comprehensive integrated advertising management platform.

“Panache’s technology capabilities and extensive selection of video ad formats are unmatched in the industry,” said David J. Moore, Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of 24/7 Real Media. “The addition of these assets to 24/7 Real Media’s robust offerings, will empower us to satisfy the large and growing appetite for video in the digital advertising marketplace.”

Online video advertising is expected to continue its explosive growth. A recent study released by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), conducted by Advertiser Perceptions, shows that 69% of marketers and 55% of agencies plan to increase their digital video advertising, with 22% growth predicted in the next 12 months.** 24/7 Real Media is now positioned to help its clients seize this growth opportunity. Panache’s Ad Catalog includes a portfolio of 25 formats, all of which are supported on a range of commonly used video players.

“24/7 Real Media is a respected leader in multiplatform ad management, targeting and analytics,” said Steve Robinson, President, Panache. “Our combined capabilities create opportunities to greatly boost video and advertising revenues for our clients across all formats and devices, while reducing their operating costs and increasing efficiencies. Any publisher serious about profitable video ad monetization needs to pause, put decisions on hold, and look at what our combined companies bring to the table.”

By fully integrating Panache’s digital video advertising capabilities into its market-leading technology platform, Open AdStream, 24/7 Real Media leaps ahead on in-stream video with workflow, formats, and analytics-driven insights that drive new revenue opportunities for publishers, advertisers and agencies alike. Advertisers now have access to scaled reach with brand safe video capabilities across 24/7 Real Media’s Global Web Alliance and many of the premium publishers leveraging Open AdStream.

** Source: An Inside Look at Demand Side Perceptions of Digital Video Advertising, http://www.iab.net/digital_video_perceptions

About 24/7 Real Media, Inc.

24/7 Real Media, Inc., a WPP company, provides digital marketing solutions for advertisers and publishers globally by empowering them to reach their target audiences with greater precision and transparency, resulting in better ROI. 24/7 Real Media’s award-winning ad management platform, Open AdStream®, and its Global Web Alliance of high quality publisher websites, have turned the art of reaching audiences across any digital medium into a measurable science. Behind every insight, there’s the experience of 18 offices in 12 countries, billions of global advertising impressions served every month and a stellar reputation as a leader in the digital marketing industry. 24/7 Real Media is headquartered in New York and operates throughout North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. For more information, please visit www.247realmedia.com.

24/7 Real Media is a member of the NAI and adheres to the NAI privacy principles that have been applauded by the FTC. These principles are designed to help ensure Internet user privacy. For more information about online data collection associated with ad serving, including online preference marketing and an opportunity to opt-out of 24/7 Real Media cookies, go to: www.networkadvertising.org.

24/7 Real Media: The Science of Digital Marketing

About Panache

Panache provides digital video ad fulfillment software and services that help premium publishers accelerate ad revenues through ad planning, innovative ad formats, workflow processes and performance metrics. Paired with professional services and unparalleled domain expertise, Panache enables leading premium publishers such as Fox News, CBS, and MTV Networks to grow their digital video advertising business with ease. Founded in 2006, Panache is a privately-held company headquartered in Los Angeles.

Video Technology Company Powers Industry Move Toward Real-Time Video Buying

SAN FRANCISCO – LiveRail, the first real-time video ad technology platform for publishers, networks and agencies, and MediaMath, the first and only enterprise-class DSP, announced that LiveRail will serve MediaMath as a video ad serving partner.

Through LiveRail’s technology, MediaMath can now empower marketing professionals to deliver more video advertising in real time across a network of top publishers, utilizing the same automatic buying, efficient pricing, and seamless delivery buyers expect from MediaMath’s platform. The DSP will also sell video inventory from LiveRail’s network of publishers.

Through strategic partnerships with the leading DSPs, LiveRail is now powering the industry transition toward automated, real-time video ad buying. With LiveRail’s technology, DSPs can manage their real-time video ad sales alongside their display sales, and also use LiveRail as a video ad server. LiveRail’s direct relationships with publishers also provide DSPs with both the video ad inventory and consumer targeting that buyers are eagerly taking advantage of.

Nearly $50 million will be spent on video RTB this year, but rapid growth in video ad networks, DSPs, and agency trading desks will lead to triple-digit growth in 2012. LiveRail’s technology touches all sides of the video advertising spectrum, helping agencies, DSPs, and publishers manager video ad sales, inventory, and analytics while ensuring multi-platform delivery, support of VAST and VPAID standards, and total buying transparency.

“Programmatic buying is taking off in the display ad space and buyers are increasingly interested in exploring the potential of video RTB,” said Joe Zawadzki, MediaMath’s CEO. “Because LiveRail offers fully automated buying and easy ad serving through its network of publishers, they were the ideal partner to accelerate our real-time video offering.”

“By further expanding its video offering, MediaMath is showing that ad buyers are very interested in the potential and efficiency of RTB for video,” said Mark Trefgarne, LiveRail CEO. “We’ve seen interest in video RTB grow steadily over the past half year, which is a great sign for the video ad segment. More potential buyers encourage more publishers to adopt the technology, opening up more inventory and creating more opportunities to match advertising to targeted viewers.”

About LiveRail

LiveRail delivers technology solutions that enable and enhance the monetization of Internet-distributed video. By focusing specifically on challenges and opportunities created by online video, its tools are designed to be easier, more efficient and more effective than traditional display ad servers to deliver and track advertising into this new medium. Founded in 2007, LiveRail’s senior team is led by its founders, Mark Trefgarne (CEO) and Andrei Dunca (CTO). LiveRail Inc. is headquartered in San Francisco, California, with offices in New York City and Romania. LiveRail is backed by Pond Ventures.

BEIJING – China’s leading mobile ad management platform Guohe Ad is working with Starbucks to place highly functional HTML5 ads in a select three premium mobile apps to create awareness for a massive Starbucks Christmas promotion.

This month, Starbucks has been rewarding customers with a bigger size of drink for their social check-ins at any of the over 200 Starbucks stores across Shanghai, Jiansu and Zhejing provinces. To create awareness for the promotion, Guohe selected social app Weico, magazine app Business Value and utility app Days Matter that are most attractive to high quality Starbucks customers – primarily young office workers, to run a mobile ad campaign.

Among the three selected apps, Weico is most influential as it is the most popular third party mobile app for Sina Weibo – the Twitter equivalent in China, and it now has over three million registered users and 500,000 daily active users; Guohe helped Starbucks to fill the most important position on Weico, and when users click on the banner ad, they will be directed to a HTML5 mini site that enables them to check-in and share about being at a Starbucks store without ever leaving the ad. It has achieved over 40,000 daily impressions between Dec 18 to 20, and the click through rate is around 1.4% on average.

“We are thrilled to team up with Starbucks,” said Neo Zhang, co-founder of Guohe Ad, “Guohe selected a few high quality mobile apps for this ad campaign and the feedback is very encouraging. We will continue to explore how we can better serve both developers and advertisers.”

“It is the first time for Starbucks to tap mobile advertising in China and it is really an impressive campaign,” said Lu Huang, Marketing Director of President Starbucks Coffee Shanghai, “The ad targeting and integration of social media efficiently helped Starbucks to convert mobile users into our real customers, it also enabled Starbucks to celebrate Christmas with customers in the online and offline world, and communicate the idea of Starbucks fourth place experiences.”

About Guohe

Guohe is the leading mobile ad management platform focusing in providing the most innovative solutions for advertisers and developers. It currently provides ad mediation, yield optimization, ad serving and data metrics services to thousands of app developers and brand advertisers. Launch in January 2011, Guohe has partnered with over 10 major ad networks globally, and is now headquartered in Beijing with offices in Shanghai and Taipei. Learn more about Guohe at http://www.guohead.com

New units go beyond static banners and allow brands to build industry-centric ads that incorporate social media, local content and deals into ad copy

SAN FRANCISCO – Greystripe, the largest brand-focused mobile ad network and a division of ValueClick Inc. (Nasdaq: VCLK), announced impressive results from its new mobile advertising units known as Ad Boosters, launched in October of this year. This next generation mobile ad format features social media integration, as well as local content and deals. They are aimed at making mobile advertising more relevant and valuable to smartphone users.

Ad Boosters are placed around a 300×250 full screen smartphone ad making it more engaging and interactive with the use of a branded logo and multiple click options. This improved engagement and interactivity drives higher click-through rates (CTR), as Ad Booster campaigns run to date have shown a 300 percent increase in CTR compared to similar-sized ad units that do not have the Ad Booster functionality.

Ad Boosters offer industry-focused and social units. Industry-focused ad boosters – a first for mobile ads – offer formats focused on targeted verticals, including: retail, consumer-packaged goods, automotive, travel, technology, consumer electronics, entertainment and health. These customizable boosters allow advertisers to direct users to multiple actions related to advertisers’ needs. Social Boosters allow brands to add buttons to engage users with social connections, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google+.

One of the first campaigns to run was a large consumer electronics brand that specializes in cameras. The campaign ran with two buttons: “Find Nearest Location” and “Watch Video”. The campaign has delivered 1.4 million impressions and saw 4 percent click-through rates – meaning 56,000 users clicked on the ad. Fifty-two percent of users clicked the locator button and 48 percent clicked the video button.

“Consumers’ mass adoption of the mobile web coupled with the rise in social media makes it a no brainer that mobile ads with social components will perform better than traditional formats,” said Kurt Hawks, VP of Operations at Greystripe. “We’re finding, despite a smaller screen than a PC, smartphones are becoming advanced enough to deliver more than a message but a true call-to-action – whether that means to find the nearest store location or participate directly in a location-based daily deal. Mobile ads are growing up and we’re excited to see consumers respond.”

The boosters, which are fully customizable, run in-app as an interstitial unit on iPhone, iPod Touch and Android devices. Buttons include:

Facebook
Twitter
YouTube
Google+
Mobile Website
Daily Deals
Buy
Video
Coupon
Store Locator
Recommend
Download
Call

For more information, visit: www.greystripe.com/boosters

About Greystripe

Greystripe, a division of ValueClick, Inc. (Nasdaq: VCLK), is the largest brand-focused mobile advertising network in the US by reach. Greystripe delivers the highest engagement and most sophisticated targeting for brand marketers, the maximum revenue for publishers and app developers, and the best ad experience for users. Greystripe’s proprietary advertising platform serves billions of rich media impressions to over 40 million users of touch-driven devices through more than 3,500 application titles and mobile websites across all major mobile platforms.

For more information, please visit: http://www.greystripe.com

About ValueClick, Inc.

ValueClick, Inc. (Nasdaq: VCLK) is one of the world’s largest digital marketing companies. Through a unique combination of data, technology and services, ValueClick increases brand awareness and drives customer acquisition at scale for the world’s largest advertisers, and maximizes advertising revenue for tens of thousands of online and mobile publishers. ValueClick’s brands include Commission Junction, ValueClick Media, Dotomi, Greystripe, Mediaplex, Smarter.com, CouponMountain.com, Investopedia.com, and PriceRunner. The Company is based in Westlake Village, California, and has offices in major advertising markets worldwide. For more information, please visit http://www.valueclick.com.

NEW YORK – 24/7 Real Media, Inc., WPP’s marketing technology company, announced the appointment of Nicolle Pangis to the new role of President, Europe. Pangis most recently served as 24/7 Real Media’s EVP, Global Media and Technology Product Management with responsibility for the overall health and growth of the global media and technology businesses. She will now lead all of 24/7 Real Media’s business operations in Europe including technology sales and operations, media businesses in France and the UK, and future activities in new European markets.

“The growth opportunities for 24/7 Real Media in Europe and the U.K. are tremendous and we are fortunate to have an executive with Nicolle’s skill set and experience to grow our existing client base and expand our businesses in the region,” said David J. Moore, Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of 24/7 Real Media.

Pangis has spent most of her career at 24/7 Real Media, in two separate stints. Between the two, she received her MBA and worked at a technology start up. As Director of Global Deployment and Business Integration, she oversaw all global projects and the coordination of joint venture expansions, mainly in Asia. Nicolle coordinated the opening of DTSI, a joint venture between 24/7 Real Media and Dentsu in Korea. When 24/7 Real Media was acquired by WPP in 2007, Pangis led the team that ensured the company was properly integrated into the WPP ecosystem.

In running Global Media and Technology Product Management since 2007, Nicolle has overseen the launch of five new versions of the company’s proprietary ad serving technology, Open AdStream®; numerous partnership agreements and integrations and most recently the launch of 24/7 Connect and 24/7 Real Media’s real-time bidding capabilities.

“I am delighted to be moving into this new role and leading the expansion of our footprint in Europe and the U.K.,” said Pangis. “The landscape of digital marketing has become very complex and I look forward to working with our clients to grow their revenue opportunities by leveraging the impressive single platform solution we’ve developed over the past several years for publishers and advertisers.”

Pangis holds a Bachelor of Science in Communication from Boston University and an MBA in Strategic Management and Marketing from Rutgers Business School. An active member of the IAB, she was instrumental in creating the IAB Networks and Exchanges Guidelines and currently serves as co-chair for the review and enforcement of these Guidelines in the industry.

Her new role is effective immediately.

About 24/7 Real Media, Inc.

24/7 Real Media, Inc., a WPP company, provides digital marketing solutions for advertisers and publishers globally by empowering them to reach their target audiences with greater precision and transparency, resulting in better ROI. 24/7 Real Media’s award-winning ad management platform, Open AdStream®, and its Global Web Alliance of high quality publisher websites, have turned the art of reaching audiences across any digital medium into a measurable science. Behind every insight, there’s the experience of 18 offices in 12 countries, billions of global advertising impressions served every month and a stellar reputation as a leader in the digital marketing industry. 24/7 Real Media is headquartered in New York and operates throughout North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. For more information, please visit www.247realmedia.com.

24/7 Real Media is a member of the NAI and adheres to the NAI privacy principles that have been applauded by the FTC. These principles are designed to help ensure Internet user privacy. For more information about online data collection associated with ad serving, including online preference marketing and an opportunity to opt-out of 24/7 Real Media cookies, go to: www.networkadvertising.org.

Study Also Highlights Data Security Risks and Lack of Standards Across the Web

San Francisco, CA – Krux (KruxDigital.com), the technology leader in audience data control solutions, released research findings (http://bit.ly/kruxtags) on tag proliferation and its implications for web performance and website data security.  The report reviews the state of the market; highlighting the business improvement opportunities for website operators; and challenging the industry to seek better standards for measuring web performance.

Using proprietary cloud-based data scanning techniques, Krux sampled a representative set of URLs from more than forty top US consumer-oriented websites throughout October 2011.  From that sample, the company calculated the number and types of JavaScript tags observed across web pages, measured typical page load times against both the Content Ready and On Load markers, and evaluated the types of tags present and their relative contribution to overall page latency and data leakage.

The research surfaced five key findings:

1.    Consumer web operators are suffering from ‘tag bloat,’ with an average of 25 tags per page across the sample, peaking at a staggering 121 tags.
2.    Tag proliferation erodes web performance, Krux observed significantly delayed page load times as a result of web operators’ expanding use of tags to enrich their websites.
3.    Third-party tags pose serious risks to website operator data security, with an average of nearly 30 data collection events per page view (with an ‘event’ defined as anytime a cookie is set, referenced, or modified on a consumer’s browser).
4.    Tag count and page latency are only loosely correlated, indicating a marked lack of standardization when it comes to the management, prioritization, and execution of tags in support of page performance optimization.  Website operators are crying out for new, intelligent approaches to tag management.
5.    The industry as a whole requires new metrics for measuring web performance and its connection to tags.

Krux undertook this study to provide clearer insight into tagging, latency, and data security challenges facing the industry.  The research reflected some surprising insights.  The analysis uncovered sites burdened by as many as 120 tags, consumers suffering through load times nearing 15 seconds, and nearly a third of data collection being conducted by parties who may be intentionally obfuscating their sources and purposes.

The report offers the Krux perspective on the role tags play across today’s consumer web; and an analysis of tag proliferation and its implications for web performance and data security. It also explores best practice considerations for website operators as they tackle the tagging conundrum. And finally, in the appendix, the company issues a call to action for the industry to anchor on a new set of standards for gauging web performance.

“Recent technology advances give web operators the tools they need to regain control, grow their business, and ensure the safer, faster, and smarter web experiences consumers have come to expect,” said Tom Chavez, Krux co-founder and CEO.  ”But technology is only part of the answer.  We issue a challenge to the industry — for all parties to raise the bar on transparency, data security, and web measurement standards overall.”

One such solution, Krux SuperTag, acts as an ‘ad server for JavaScript’.  It provides publishers with full tag lifecycle management; including workflow, flighting, pacing, and targeting – striking the right balance of control over tagging between AdOps pros and their IT counterparts.  Further, it serves as a secure gateway through which an operator can manage all of its data transactions.  This ensures that their trusted partners have access to the right data at the right times – and only then.  Most importantly, it can deliver page load improvements in excess of 30% through sophisticated tag parallelization, data throttling, and real-time decision making to balance user experience and revenue opportunity.

As Mr. Chavez summed it up, “Excessive page latency equals revenue loss, and unfettered access to websites by third-parties leads to significant opportunity cost from data leakage and theft.  Website operators need to ensure optimal web experiences for consumers and to protect the precious media and data assets on which their businesses were built.  Tag management is only part of the solution, but it’s likely one of single the best places to start.”

For more information and the complete research report, please visit www.kruxdigital.com.

About Krux Digital
Founded in 2010, Krux is building data fabric for the consumer web.  The company’s platform helps large and small websites control, energize, and responsibly monetize consumer data across screens and sources.  With Krux, websites become more secure, more intelligent conduits of consumer interests, behaviors, and intent.  With Krux, consumers gain confidence that their favorite websites are operating under the plain light of day.  More than twenty leading publishers and website operators in the US and Europe have adopted Krux technology.  Find out more at www.kruxdigital.com.

Delivers First Scalable Technology Solution Enabling RTB Within One Ad Management Platform

NEW YORK – 24/7 Real Media, Inc., WPP’s ad technology company, announced the availability of real-time bidding (RTB) within its proprietary ad management technology, Open AdStream®. With this new capability, 24/7 Real Media delivers the first enterprise-level technology solution that enables real-time bidding within a single ad management platform driving increased yield and superior control.

24/7 Real Media’s new RTB capabilities allow a publisher to put its inventory into a single ecosystem that dynamically allocates revenue and delivers optimal yield. This unique capability differentiates Open AdStream from other platforms in the marketplace today by allowing the publisher to filter and assign value to biddable inventory based on audience and context unlike other systems that require publishers to segment specific inventory for RTB. 24/7 Real Media’s new capabilities also give advertising clients a simple solution for bidding on premium, first-tier inventory from a trusted, accountable source.

“At 24/7 Real Media, we are always looking to innovate in ways that help our clients recognize new revenue opportunities,” said David J. Moore, Chairman, Founder and CEO at 24/7 Real Media. “By enabling publishers to open up their inventory for real-time bidding in a controlled way, we enhance the publisher’s ability to identify the actual worth of each segment of inventory on their site. Similarly, advertisers are guaranteed quality inventory from a biddable environment, where their messages are most likely to resonate with online users.”

Open AdStream’s real-time bidding technology provides publishers new opportunities for more revenue with less risk, serving ads to a new bidder only if it beats an earlier price or set floor. Unlike ad exchanges in the market today, 24/7 Real Media’s Open AdStream provides access for real-time bidding within a single decision engine. By using a singular system, instead of integrations between multiple systems, the experience for the users viewing the ads is improved due to faster page loading speeds and there are far less complexities for publishers managing their inventory. Publishers will receive only one report for all inventory sold and their cost is reduced because fewer calls are made by the ad server.

“The addition of real-time bidding to our technology platform allows publishers to surface inventory through RTB in the same way they leverage reserved inventory to ensure the highest yield on each impression,” said Nicolle Pangis, EVP, Product Management Global Media and Technology at 24/7 Real Media. “For advertising clients looking for a way to bid on top-tier inventory, we provide a simple, intuitive and accountable means for them to do so.”

Not only will this technology power publishers working with 24/7 Real Media, but it will also serve clients of the Media Innovation Group (MIG) and GroupM’s Xaxis through a connection to WPP’s proprietary DSP technology.

About 24/7 Real Media, Inc.

24/7 Real Media, Inc., a WPP company, provides digital marketing solutions for advertisers and publishers globally by empowering them to reach their target audiences with greater precision and transparency, resulting in better ROI. 24/7 Real Media’s award-winning ad management platform, Open AdStream®, and its Global Web Alliance of high quality publisher websites, have turned the art of reaching audiences across any digital medium into a measurable science. Behind every insight, there’s the experience of 18 offices in 12 countries, billions of global advertising impressions served every month and a stellar reputation as a leader in the digital marketing industry. 24/7 Real Media is headquartered in New York and operates throughout North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. For more information, please visit www.247realmedia.com.

24/7 Real Media is a member of the NAI and adheres to the NAI privacy principles that have been applauded by the FTC. These principles are designed to help ensure Internet user privacy. For more information about online data collection associated with ad serving, including online preference marketing and an opportunity to opt-out of 24/7 Real Media cookies, go to: www.networkadvertising.org.

Greystripe reports over 30 major brands now running mobile video ad campaigns on the Greystripe network

SAN FRANCISCO – Since launching its mobile video ad format earlier this year, Greystripe, the largest brand-focused mobile ad network and a division of ValueClick Inc. (Nasdaq: VCLK), has seen an increasing number of brand advertisers flock to video.

The mobile video ad units were launched in June 2011. Since then, over 30 brands have run campaigns, delivering over 100 ad creatives throughout the Greystripe network on iOS, Android and the mobile web. The demand for mobile video ads has increased significantly in recent months; Greystripe has already seen a 300 percent increase in the number of campaigns booked so far in Q4 of 2011 relative to all of Q3 2011.

Universal Pictures and its agency, Ignited, ran a successful campaign with Greystripe to drive trailer views and promote the theatrical release of the new film The Change-Up. The two-week campaign, targeting men 18-34, generated nearly nine hundred thousand complete trailer views. A video of the ad displayed on an iPhone can be seen here. In addition to entertainment, retail, consumer-packaged goods, insurance and electronics brands have all run mobile video ad campaigns with Greystripe.

“We are consistently seeing mobile ad dollars flowing to mobile ad digital as users embrace multiple screens — often using their smartphones and tablets while watching TV,” said Vikrant Gandhi, senior industry analyst at Frost & Sullivan.

Greystripe is benefiting from the massive shift of broadcast advertising budgets into mobile, driven by the efficiency and effectiveness of reaching the 40 percent of TV watchers who are on their smartphones and tablets at the same time (Nielsen). In addition, advertisers are flocking to Greystripe’s video format because of impressive campaign results. On average, consumers have watched the entire video ad 50 percent of the time, with click-through-rates of between 1 and 3 percent. This is particularly impressive because users have the option to skip Greystripe video ads at any time.

“Mobile video ads will be the major growth driver for brand advertising spend in 2012, as traditional broadcast budgets continue to flow into mobile and online screens,” said Michael Chang, Greystripe general manager. “Greystripe is well positioned to take advantage of this video-fueled growth because of a fantastic ad user experience and our ability to serve more full-screen mobile video ads into premium content than any other mobile ad network – over 1 billion per month.”

For more information visit: http://www.greystripe.com/videoads/

About Greystripe

Greystripe, a division of ValueClick, Inc. (Nasdaq: VCLK), is the largest brand-focused mobile advertising network in the US by reach. Greystripe delivers the highest engagement and most sophisticated targeting for brand marketers, the maximum revenue for publishers and app developers, and the best ad experience for users. Greystripe’s proprietary advertising platform serves billions of rich media impressions to over 40 million users of touch-driven devices through more than 3,500 application titles and mobile websites across all major mobile platforms.

For more information, please visit: http://www.greystripe.com

About ValueClick, Inc.

ValueClick, Inc. (Nasdaq: VCLK) is one of the world’s largest digital marketing companies. Through a unique combination of data, technology and services, ValueClick increases brand awareness and drives customer acquisition at scale for the world’s largest advertisers, and maximizes advertising revenue for tens of thousands of online and mobile publishers. ValueClick’s brands include Commission Junction, ValueClick Media, Dotomi, Greystripe, Mediaplex, Smarter.com, CouponMountain.com, Investopedia.com, and PriceRunner. The Company is based in Westlake Village, California, and has offices in major advertising markets worldwide. For more information, please visit http://www.valueclick.com.

Digital advertising company moves to world-class, real-time ad platform to maximize cost efficiencies.

New York, NY – CPX Interactive, a digital advertising company and global distribution engine, and AppNexus, the world leader in real-time advertising technology, announced that CPX has chosen AppNexus as its exclusive ad server in order to maximize operational and cost efficiencies for its clients. The new ad serving relationship with AppNexus, coupled with CPX’s vast reach and expertise in data integration, targeting and campaign optimization, will enhance its ability to provide agencies and advertisers with increased performance and publishers with the most sophisticated yield management controls and monetization tools on the market.

Additionally, CPX was named as one of the inaugural app providers for AppNexus’ groundbreaking new App Marketplace for the digital ad technology industry, also announced today at the AppNexus Summit. Through the AppNexus App Marketplace, CPX is building a customized reporting app to present relevant information to its multitude of publishers within the AppNexus Console user interface.

As a result of the exclusive ad server arrangement, AppNexus will provide CPX with its comprehensive suite of core ad infrastructure for buying and selling including ad serving, third-party data management and first-party data collection and support for more real-time and directly negotiated media campaigns.

“We are thrilled to announce our exclusive partnership with AppNexus and are extremely confident in its world-class platform to manage CPX’s enormous reach of nearly two billion global impressions per day,” said CPX CEO, Mike Seiman. “AppNexus has an incredibly scalable platform which can handle our rapidly growing ad serving and real-time bidding needs and, in allowing it to do so, we remain focused on our core competencies – designing and executing digital campaigns, driving the highest yield for our publisher partners and generating powerful and proprietary first-party campaign data.”

CPX Interactive delivers 60 billion impressions per month to more than 300 million global unique users in 65 countries and is recognized in the online advertising sector as a top-tier ad network. Some of their more than 4,000 direct publishers include Accuweather, Beliefnet.com, Examiner, Free Online Games, myYearbook, Local.com and Publishers Clearing House. CPX Interactive also works with 300+ advertisers, globally, on both performance and brand initiatives alike in verticals ranging from CPG, automotive, travel and finance to entertainment, social, health and retail.

“CPX is one of the most innovative ad networks in the market, renowned as an early adopter of industry-leading technologies,” said Brian O’Kelley, CEO and Co-Founder, AppNexus. “We look forward to helping the company continue to push boundaries and differentiate its business on top of the AppNexus platform.”

About CPX Interactive
CPX Interactive is a digital advertising company and global distribution engine, creating end-to-end solutions for advertisers and publishers across the online display advertising landscape. CPX Interactive delivers 60 billion impressions to more than 300 million unique users in 65 countries every month. The company was named to Inc.Magazine’s list of fastest growing privately held US advertising/marketing companies in both 2008 and 2009. For more information, visit www.cpxinteractive.com.

About AppNexus
AppNexus is the world leader in real-time advertising technology, serving the largest and most innovative buyers and sellers of online advertising, including Microsoft Advertising Exchange, Collective and Technorati Media. Led by the pioneers of the Web’s original ad exchanges at Yahoo!’s Right Media and Google’s DoubleClick, AppNexus offers the industry’s most advanced technology platform that empowers companies to build, manage and optimize their entire online advertising businesses. Based in New York City, AppNexus is backed by an outstanding group of investors including Microsoft, Venrock, Kodiak Venture Partners, First Round Capital, Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz and Ron Conway. For more information, visit www.appnexus.com.

LOUISVILLE, Colo. – CableLabs® has made the source code and development tools for a new advanced advertising toolset available under a free community license. Vendors and developers are invited to use the tools and to contribute to a technical community that supports new possibilities in interactive television advertising.

The Document Profile Architecture (DPA) Toolset is designed to encourage collaboration and development of advertising implementations tied to the SCTE-130 specification set. The SCTE-130 specification set prescribes techniques and approaches for the delivery of interactive and highly relevant advertising messages within cable-delivered video-on-demand and other media environments.

The publicly accessible resources for the DPA Toolset are now available dpatools.cablelabs.com.

“By opening access to the DPA Toolset to vendors, developers and the public at large, CableLabs is offering a speed-to-market resource that will accelerate the availability of technologies supporting advancements in electronic advertisement delivery, including the dynamic insertion of commercials into viewer-requested VOD streams,” said Don Dulchinos, CableLabs Senior Vice President, Advertising and Interactive Services.

The DPA Toolset streamlines the testing and validation process for SCTE-130-compliant technologies by allowing developers to emulate multi-platform architectures involved in the delivery of interactive advertising messages and related content across an array of distribution channels. These channels may include VOD streams, web pages, interactive program guides and other media vehicles.

The DPA Toolset solves a pressing challenge for advanced advertising technology developers: the need to assure interoperability across complex labyrinths of web services and message flows involved in the dynamic delivery of targeted advertising to cable customers. The DPA Toolset provides a specific, well-defined, interoperable and multi-vendor message set for each use case that occurs in the implementation of advanced advertising at national, regional and local levels. With the DPA Toolset, technology developers can test the performance of their solutions in advance of deployment at both isolated service points and across multiple service points involved in advanced advertising implementations.

How it works

The DPA Toolset creates profiles that define the valid web services message for every use case tied to SCTE-130 implementations. These profiles, combined with Web Service Description Language (WSDL) descriptions that define the functionality and parameters of web services involved in SCTE 130 implementations, can be used to test all elements and attributes of messages in an environment that emulates real-world deployments.

The toolset provides a two-pronged approach: a set of profiles and a tool to exercise those profiles. The profiles are exercised in a software emulator that can represent any SCTE-130 service at the message level. The toolset allows any mixture of real and emulated devices to make up a testable configuration. It validates that an actual message exchange contains the correct set of messages, and validates each message exchanged against a specific example of a profile.

Interop event

CableLabs hosted an interoperability event in July 2011 that allowed advanced advertising vendors to exercise the DPA Toolset for the first time.

“It’s critical to our business that the BlackArrow Advanced Advertising System maintains support for the latest standards — ensuring seamless deployments, and maximum interoperability. The DPA Toolset offers our development team a ready resource for testing and verifying the interactions of complex technologies within a real-world emulation environment,” said Chris Hock, Senior Vice President of Product for BlackArrow. “Our participation in the advanced advertising event held at CableLabs this summer enabled us to use the DPA Toolset in a laboratory environment to verify key interoperable aspects of our technical development.”

Although the DPA Toolset is initially directed at implementing and testing SCTE-130 messaging, the technology is generic to any web services messaging environment, including very large and complex problem spaces. The CableLabs community license allows free, non-commercial use of the DPA Toolset to address any problem space. CableLabs invites developers to contact the organization for further commercial use or distribution.

About CableLabs

Cable Television Laboratories (www.cablelabs.com) was founded in 1988 by members of the cable television industry. The Emmy Award winning laboratory is a non-profit research and development consortium that is dedicated to pursuing new cable telecommunications technologies and to helping its cable operator members integrate those advancements into their business objectives. Cable operators from around the world are members. CableLabs maintains additional web sites at www.cablenet.org, www.ebif.tv and www.tru2way.com.

Advanced Digital Cable™, CableCARD™, CableHome®, CableLabs®, CableNET®, CablePC™, DCAS™, DPoE™, DOCSIS®, EBIF™, Go2BroadbandSM, M-Card™, OpenCable™, PacketCable™, PeerConnect™, and tru2way® are marks of Cable Television Laboratories, Inc.

24/7 Connect offers an automated pipeline between advertising spend and premium inventory

NEW YORK – 24/7 Real Media announced its new offering, 24/7 Connect: an exclusive pipeline between digital advertising spend and premium inventory. With the 24/7 Connect offering, 24/7 Real Media expands upon its proprietary technology platform, Open AdStream®, to facilitate relationships between world-class advertisers and premium publishers for mutual benefit. On the sell-side, publishers gain a single point solution for campaign and deal management, with seamless ad management integration through Open AdStream, an intuitive user interface and no retagging necessary. On the buy-side, agencies and advertisers gain full-service access to premium publisher inventory and audiences. As a WPP company, 24/7 Real Media is uniquely positioned to bring this automated technology offering to market and service clients who are navigating both sides of the ever-changing but consistently fragmented buying equation.

“24/7 Real Media is constantly looking for ways to improve online advertising opportunities for both advertisers and publishers,” said Nicolle Pangis, EVP Product Management, Global Media and Technology at 24/7 Real Media. “We saw the market need to create a direct connection between advertisers and agencies looking for premium inventory opportunities for their campaigns, and publishers who want brand-safe creative to monetize their high quality sites and valuable audiences. We are bringing together both buyer and seller in a way that benefits both parties with 24/7 Connect. Most importantly, we are the first in the industry to offer a technology solution with transparency and premium opportunities with a focus on brand safety.”

Open AdStream publishers make their premium inventory available through 24/7 Connect and leverage 24/7 Real Media’s strong industry, advertiser, and agency relationships to expand revenue opportunities for their site. Publishers have the ability to input and categorize site and audience data for enhanced revenue opportunities.

“24/7 Real Media’s Open AdStream technology brings enormous value to our clients.” said Adam L. Soroca, Chief Product Officer & General Manager of Jumptap, the leader in targeted mobile advertising. “24/7 Connect enables Jumptap’s top brands and agencies direct access to plan against our premium mobile inventory and audiences. 24/7 Connect makes mobile media planning as easy and familiar as online, while accelerating our ability to make data driven insights.”

Likewise, advertisers and agencies using 24/7 Connect gain access to premium Open AdStream publisher inventory on which to run brand-safe campaigns and engage target customers. Advertisers and agencies can select the specific premium inventory appropriate for their campaign objectives. 24/7 Connect helps advertisers and agencies to achieve brand engagement with limited expenditure through advanced technological automation.

With advanced opportunities to understand and optimize performance, 24/7 Connect closes the gap between online publishers and advertising dollars.

To learn more about 24/7 Connect, please visit http://www.247realmedia.com.

About 24/7 Real Media, Inc.

24/7 Real Media, Inc., a WPP company, provides digital marketing solutions for advertisers and publishers globally by empowering them to reach their target audiences with greater precision and transparency, resulting in better ROI. 24/7 Real Media’s award-winning ad management platform, Open AdStream®, and its Global Web Alliance of high quality publisher websites, have turned the art of reaching audiences across any digital medium into a measurable science. Behind every insight, there’s the experience of 18 offices in 12 countries, billions of global advertising impressions served every month and a stellar reputation as a leader in the digital marketing industry. 24/7 Real Media is headquartered in New York and operates throughout North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. For more information, please visit www.247realmedia.com.

24/7 Real Media is a member of the NAI and adheres to the NAI privacy principles that have been applauded by the FTC. These principles are designed to help ensure Internet user privacy. For more information about online data collection associated with ad serving, including online preference marketing and an opportunity to opt-out of 24/7 Real Media cookies, go to: www.networkadvertising.org.

Senior Account Executives Jeff Zoss and Brenda Sitzman to Lead Latest Expansion

WESTLAKE VILLAGE, Calif. – ValueClick Media, a division of ValueClick Inc. (Nasdaq:VCLK), is pleased to announce the opening of two new offices in Minneapolis, Minnesota and Phoenix, Arizona. The Minneapolis office will be led by Jeff Zoss, formerly of MyPoints and CoolSavings; the Phoenix office will be led by Brenda Sitzman, formerly of AZFamily.com.

“We are excited to expand ValueClick’s presence into these important markets in the Midwest and Southwest,” said Greg Seyller, vice president of Midwest sales for ValueClick Media. “There are top tier clients and agencies in these markets, and we are excited to have excellent teams in place in these cities to build partnerships and serve their needs.”

According to eMarketer, Minneapolis’ online advertising spend is expected to reach $1 billion and $300 million in mobile marketing by the end of 2011. The region ranked among the top 20 U.S. cities for online marketing spend in 2010. Retail giants such Target and Best Buy are both headquartered in Minneapolis.

Jeff Zoss will be heading up the Minneapolis front. Zoss has been in the digital advertising space for 11 years, first at CoolSavings (Q Interactive) where he served as a sales director, and later at North American Membership Group, where he helped build the interactive sales group and MyPoints.

“Minneapolis is a key market for interactive media with a wealth of retail clients and a strong interactive agency presence,” said Zoss. “I look forward to servicing the Minneapolis marketplace by providing innovative performance advertising solutions to this region.”

Zoss’ experience includes creating, coordinating, managing and selling marketing solutions for clients and agencies in a variety of industries including retail, CPG, travel, education, financial services and media.

ValueClick’s expansion will also take them into the Southwest, settling in Phoenix. eMarketer predicts Phoenix will reach $800 million in online advertising spend and will continue to be ranked among the top 20 U.S. cities for online marketing spend in 2011. Fortune 500 companies in Phoenix include US Airways, Petsmart and University of Phoenix.

The Phoenix location will be led by Brenda Sitzman, a Phoenix native. Prior to her coming on board with ValueClick this year, Sitzman served as a digital account executive with Belo Corp, servicing the Phoenix market through AZfamily.com.

“I am thrilled to be a part of ValueClick Media,” said Sitzman. “Arizona is a continually growing digital market and I am so happy that ValueClick has recognized this and placed a dedicated in-market rep here in Phoenix.”

For more information, please contact Jeff Zoss at Jzoss@valueclick.com or Brenda Sitzman at Bsitzman@valueclick.com, or call 612-605-6107 (Minneapolis) or 480-219-4208 (Phoenix).

About ValueClick Media

Thirteen years of experience and access to the global data resources of ValueClick, Inc. make ValueClick Media the largest and most robust audience network of its kind. Proprietary consumer behavioral data, direct relationships with 8,500 publishers and access to additional inventory via real-time bidding, advanced behavioral targeting and optimization technology, strict network quality controls and superior service make ValueClick Media the network leading marketers and agencies rely on to reach their performance objectives. For more information, visit www.valueclickmedia.com.

About ValueClick, Inc.

ValueClick, Inc. (Nasdaq: VCLK) is one of the world’s largest digital marketing companies. Through a unique combination of data, technology and services, ValueClick increases brand awareness and drives customer acquisition at scale for the world’s largest advertisers, and maximizes advertising revenue for tens of thousands of online and mobile publishers. ValueClick’s brands include Commission Junction, ValueClick Media, Dotomi, Greystripe, Mediaplex, Smarter.com, CouponMountain.com, Investopedia.com, and PriceRunner. The Company is based in Westlake Village, California, and has offices in major advertising markets worldwide. For more information, please visit www.valueclick.com.

Peter Jurew, SVP Marketing; Sandy Drayton, Director of Communications

NEW YORK – 24/7 Real Media announced today the appointment of Peter Jurew and Sandy Drayton to newly-created leadership positions within 24/7 Real Media’s expanded global marketing organization.

As the company’s first Senior Vice President of Marketing, Jurew will oversee global marketing initiatives across the company. Drayton, as 24/7 Real Media’s first Director of Communications, North America, will lead all public relations and communications efforts to enhance the company’s brand. Together, they will develop a marketing strategy to support the revenue and growth goals of the company.

Jurew is an established digital marketing and brand development strategist with a 25-year record of working with iconic media brands. Most recently, he was Vice President of Marketing for Meredith Corporation’s Digital Media division. Jurew will report to David J. Moore, Chairman, Founder & CEO of 24/7 Real Media.

“The addition of Peter Jurew to 24/7 Real Media not only enhances our ability to market products and services, but also expands our ability to seize strategic opportunities and grow our brand globally,” said Moore.

“I am so excited to join the 24/7 Real Media team at a time when the demand for digital technology solutions is exploding,” said Jurew. “Compared to a few of the brands I’ve helped to develop, 24/7 is a new company and yet, at the same, it’s a legendary brand in the digital space Everyone here is ready to take it to the next level.”

Jurew’s experience includes senior marketing executive roles for a number of blue chip media brands including People magazine, where he served as Associate Publisher, Marketing; and The New Yorker, where he helped lead the iconic brand’s return to profitability after decades of losses. He also developed the business plan for the launch of Every Day With Rachael Ray for the Readers Digest Association, and worked on the successful development of SmartMoney and smartmoney.com for the Hearst/Dow Jones joint venture. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English and Political Science from Boston College.

Sandy Drayton brings more than 20 years of experience in public relations and communications to this new role at 24/7 Real Media. Most recently she was a senior member of the Corporate Communications team at AOL and previously led Communications at The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research; Rodale’s Women’s Health and Time Inc.’s Entertainment Weekly and LIFE. She helped transition EW from a newcomer in the industry to one of the most trusted and quoted sources of entertainment news. Drayton graduated from Bowdoin College with a BA in Government.

Both Jurew and Drayton are based in 24/7 Real Media’s global headquarters in New York.

About 24/7 Real Media, Inc.

24/7 Real Media, Inc., a WPP company, provides digital marketing solutions for advertisers and publishers globally by empowering them to reach their target audiences with greater precision and transparency, resulting in better ROI. 24/7 Real Media’s award-winning ad management platform, Open AdStream®, and its Global Web Alliance of high quality publisher websites, have turned the art of reaching audiences across any digital medium into a measurable science. Behind every insight, there’s the experience of 18 offices in 12 countries, billions of global advertising impressions served every month and a stellar reputation as a leader in the digital marketing industry. 24/7 Real Media is headquartered in New York and operates throughout North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. For more information, please visit www.247realmedia.com.

24/7 Real Media is a member of the NAI and adheres to the NAI privacy principles that have been applauded by the FTC. These principles are designed to help ensure Internet user privacy. For more information about online data collection associated with ad serving, including online preference marketing and an opportunity to opt-out of 24/7 Real Media cookies, go to: www.networkadvertising.org.

Shiny Ads (www.shinyads.com) has just announced the launch of their audience targeting platform; Roy Pereira has kindly agreed to give us more insights into this breakthrough product that helps publishers make the most of of their ad inventory.

Otilia Otlacan: First of all, congratulations on the launch of the Shiny Ads Audience Targeting platform! What can you tell us about the drivers behind this launch, what has made you look into a self-serve audience targeting solution in addition to your existing display platform?

Roy Pereira: Our Shiny Ads self-serve advertising platform has always allowed online publishers to take smaller ad buys for their ad products.  We’ve allowed those publishers a large degree of customization for those ad products including setting their own price, pricing model, and targeting options.

Some of our online publishers have registration-only sites where they collect at least the user’s email address and perhaps their gender, age and name.  To enable these online publishers to leverage that data, without privacy issues, and offer more targeting options to their advertisers, we’ve introduced Shiny Ads Audience Targeting.

We’ve also had several of our publishers who run social network want a more complete “Social Ads” platform that is similar to other larger social networks.  Shiny Ads Audience Targeting gives them that product as a black box without them having to tie separate multi-vendor products together.

Otilia Otlacan: Is the new new Shiny Ads Audience Targeting solution cookie based?

Roy Pereira: Cookies are used for frequency capping ads as well as to cache user information. Unlike an ad network based solution, Shiny Ads Audience Targeting only operates directly on a publisher’s site(s) and does not aggregate across a multi-publisher network.  Thus, the user’s data (and cookies) never leave that one publisher’s control.

Otilia Otlacan: Audience targeting is usually tightly linked to certain privacy issues, particularly in the EU legislation. What are the implications of this new addition to the Shiny Ads platform for your EU-based publishers?

Roy Pereira: Shiny Ads Audience Targeting is able to obtain user data either from the publisher itself (if it has it) or deduce it from several sources, including 3rd-party data marketplaces.  We work with our publishers to ensure that they have the right to use the data they have on their users to ensure that it meets privacy laws in the countries they are based in.  If the user data is sourced by our system, then our license agreement with the data marketplaces provides sufficient privacy coverage.  No PII data is stored on our systems.

Otilia Otlacan: One of Shiny Ads’ key features is the straightforward integration with mainstream ad servers used by publishers. Will this still be the case?

Roy Pereira: You are correct that our core product, Shiny Ads Self-Serve Advertising Platform, is unique in that it directly integrates with 7 of the top ad servers.  This has a lot of benefits including removing the burden of adding JavaScript ad tags and having to reserve inventory.

To allow for the real-time user-acquisition nature of Shiny Ads Audience Targeting, we’ve had to inject our own optimizing server in the flow.  This allows our solution to obtain the user data (from which ever source), and optimize the ads available based on that viewer’s information.  The prediction engine uses historical performance data for similar users to create a list of the most likely interesting ads and does so in real-time.  This creates a much higher conversation rate for the ad campaign which completes the CPC campaign quicker and generate more revenue for the publisher as more ad buys are completed in less time.

Otilia Otlacan: The online advertising space is changing at great speed – what’s on the roadmap for Shiny Ads in the near future?

Roy Pereira: Our mantra in the Shiny Ads office is sell-side automation for premium inventory.  We are always looking at how we can increase revenues and profit margins for premium publishers.  We will be expanding our programmatic buying abilities as well as distribution sources.  The first brings in more deals to the publisher’s ad products directly using our existing and future APIs and ordering interface, of which we already support three; smaller advertiser, smaller agency, and inside sales.  The second allows the purchased ads to be directly integrated into more destinations such as ad servers.

About Roy Pereira, Founder & CEO Shiny Ads
Roy has over 15 years of experience in technology companies and has been involved in 5 startups with his first in 1992, which focused on Internet and Email software. He has been a marketing executive at both medium-sized public corporations and VC-funded startups. He has a highly technical background with several patents and Internet standards to his name.

Follow Roy Pereira on Twitter at http://twitter.com/roymap and on LinkedIn at http://linkedin.com/in/roypereira.

More about Shiny Ads: see ShinyAds.com or check out the demo at vimeo.com/shinyads/intro.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – AdJuggler Inc., the industry leader in high performance, SaaS-based digital ad management systems, has display advertising veteran Christopher Weiss as vice president of product marketing. Mr. Weiss joins AdJuggler from LucidMedia, a leading demand-side platform (DSP), enabling numerous advertisers, trading desks, and agencies to leverage real-time bidding (RTB) and contextual user profiling to efficiently reach the right audiences.

“Chris joins us at a time when AdJuggler is experiencing significant growth from its Exchange Media Program (EMP). EMP provides our publisher and network customers a turnkey solution for monetizing inventory through a variety of direct and RTB-enabled sources,” said John Shomaker, CEO of AdJuggler. “His experience at LucidMedia with audience targeting, data integration, and bidding engines will help accelerate our platform priorities around monetization, mobile, and network management.”

“The AdJuggler solution is both comprehensive and intuitive compared to the many digital advertising platforms I have used throughout my career,” said Chris Weiss. “Between the early success of EMP and our strong customer base, AdJuggler has a great opportunity to be the engine behind forward-thinking networks and leading publisher groups.”

Mr. Weiss will oversee AdJuggler’s platform roadmap, customer advocacy program, product marketing, and the company’s Exchange Media Program (EMP). He brings more than 15 years of product management and product marketing experience across several software segments, and is PMC-certified in enterprise product management.
Prior to joining AdJuggler, Chris was responsible for marketing and product management at LucidMedia, a leading demand-side platform (DSP) and digital advertising management solution based on sophisticated real-time bidding (RTB) and analytic targeting.

AdJuggler is also pleased to announce that Dan Swanson has been promoted to Director, Engineering.

About AdJuggler
AdJuggler provides a leading SaaS-based digital ad serving platform for publishers, content networks, ad networks, and digital marketers across the world. The company enables full-featured campaign targeting and ad management across video, rich media, and mobile display formats, along with its Exchange Media Program, which monetizes non-guaranteed inventory from numerous RTB traffic sources to optimize CPM. Custom development services and a robust API are also available to tailor AdJuggler to customers’ specific business needs. The company is headquartered in Alexandria, VA and can be reached at www.adjuggler.com.

Publisher Annex Recruits Best-in-Class Mobile Web and App Developers to Guide Publishers on How to Build the Best Sites for Mobile Monetization and Create Engaged Mobile Audiences

NEW YORK, NY and LONDON – Mocean Mobile, the standard in mobile ad serving, today announced the launch of the Publisher Annex, the first global industry group focused on helping publishers extend their revenue opportunities into mobile. The group’s members include AirKast, Applico, FreeRange Communications, Golden Gekko, The Hyperfactory, Polar Mobile, Trilibis Mobile, Wapple and ZuMobi. They all exemplify the deepest expertise in mobile web and app development and will collaborate on regular initiatives such as white papers, regional presentations and direct consultations to large-scale publishers looking to improve their current mobile web or app presence, or to enter into the space for the first time. The group is scheduled to present a workshop at IAB MIXX on Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2011.

“Mobile publishing and application development is one of the biggest opportunities the industry can embrace right now — the better the mobile sites and apps, the better the audience engagement and opportunity to monetize,” said Dave Gwozdz, CEO of Mocean Mobile. “The Publisher Annex will provide the guidance that large-scale publishers need to fully capitalize on the mobile opportunity worldwide.”
The Publisher Annex, which is best equipped to develop solutions for publishers experiencing more than 10 million page views per month from wireless devices, offers a group of the most innovative mobile web and app developers, along with experts in mobile monetization. The launch members comment on the impact this initiative will have on the industry below:

“As one of the largest mobile app networks with over 900 customers made up of Fortune 1000′s media companies, AirKast is excited to be part of Mocen Mobile’s Publisher Annex. We see this as a great initiative to bridge the gap between the world of mobile publishers and advertisers.” — Larry Leung, CEO

“Applico is glad to be working with Mocean Mobile. The Publisher Annex will provide a much needed resource to many companies and it goes hand-in-hand with Applico’s mission to bring our clients into mobile with ease and efficiency.” — Alex Moazed, President and CEO of Applico

“FreeRange360 is pleased to be partnered with Mocean for this shared opportunity to engage our potential audience and further contribute to the overall impact on traditional advertising, marketing, and media streams.” — Jon Maroney, CEO

“Mobile is the world’s fastest growing industry, with new technologies, solutions and companies appearing every day. In such a landscape, finding and working with the best partners is crucial for success. Golden Gekko, as the global leading mobile web and app developer, is very excited to be part of the Publisher Annex network. Mobile is a huge opportunity for the publishing industry, and to offer easy access to best of breed partners for mobile initiatives will be a great advantage for everyone involved.” — Miguel Banuelos, Director of Accounts – US, Golden Gekko

“It’s great to see a company like Mocean Mobile pulling together various parties across the ecosystem to help make publishers’ lives easier. As we know, consumers need great mobile destinations with great content, and Mocean Mobile is helping make this happen by providing a seamless process to publishers.” — Geoffrey Handley, co-founder and CEO, The Hyperfactory

“Polar is excited to work with Mocean Mobile on the Publisher Annex. As a long-standing partner, we look forward to evangelizing great mobile technology for content producers.” — Marlon Rodrigues, Director of Alliances at Polar Mobile

“Today’s consumers are incredibly mobile-savvy. Marketers and content providers who’ve launched mobile programs have seen their customer engagement and retention rates improve, thus resulting in increased revenues. With Publisher Annex, those new to mobile can also take advantage of this emerging, high-impact channel.” — Ted Verani, SVP of Sales and Marketing at Trilibis Mobile

“Mobile web publishing is going to the next level and the Mocean Mobile initiative is key to the ongoing growth of the industry. We are delighted to be part of Publisher Annex, which we believe will be hugely successful.” — Rich Holdsworth, Wapple, CEO

Publishers who are interested in being part of the group or learning about mobile monetization from the Publisher Annex can contact: avale@moceanmobile.com or visit www.publisherannex.com

About Mocean Mobile
Mocean Mobile created the first technology platform that streamlines publishers’, developers’ and app stores’ mobile revenue opportunities by giving them the ability to serve display ads to all mobile devices including smart phones, tablets and netbooks. Mocean Mobile integrates with the top rich media providers to ensure that publishers have capabilities to run the most engaging and comprehensive creative ad units on their mobile sites. By integrating with the majority of 3rd party networks and agency side ad servers like DART and Atlas, Mocean Mobile combines state of the art direct sales campaign management with ad network mediation for the mobile world. Created in 2009, Mocean Mobile is led by a team of advertising and media veterans from Google, DoubleClick, Yahoo, and AdMob, with more than 100 years of collective experience in online and mobile advertising and technology. It operates under parent company Mojiva Inc., which has a total of $35 million venture funding from Pelion Venture Partners, Shamrock Capital and Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments.