Along with traditional banner display ads and in-text options, InTopic Media also offers MicroBanners, a unique form of in-text advertising that turns text into advertiser logos. MicroBanner ads grab web visitors’ attention and direct them to specific products or information via pop-up notification, which allows advertisers to target key demographics at higher conversion rates than traditional in-text ads using underlined words only.

“MicroBanners give us an edge over the competition,” Bakker said. “Our data shows that MicroBanner ads generate significantly higher click-through rates than traditional banners while expanding brand recognition at no additional cost to advertisers. InTopic’s redesign allows our clients to take full advantage of our innovative technology at some of the highest payouts in the industry. We are offering even higher than usual revenue share for a limited time to celebrate our relaunch and reward our loyal base. We are excited about expanding our footprint in online advertising in the coming years and we anticipate a huge response to our new platform and services.”

InTopic Media, LLC, based in Atlanta, GA, offers a number of in-text and traditional online advertising solutions. For more information, visit www.intopicmedia.com or contact Jake Bakker directly at (678) 486-1916 or jbakker@intopicmedia.com.

NEW YORK – Kontera, the leading provider of context-driven advertising solutions, announced that it has partnered with AppNexus, the real-time ad platform used by global ad networks, demand-side platforms (DSPs), and other leading online advertising companies, in order to advance quality, reach and efficiency for marquee brand advertisers. This relationship was unveiled at the “IAB Innovation Days – The Future of Display” conference.

Kontera provides unique solutions that span In-Text and premier display placement, and use deep semantic context, predicted consumer intent, and publisher’s editorial and relevant social content within display ads. Kontera’s Synapse engine performs real-time editorial analysis, is used exclusively by more than 15,000 publishers, reaches more than 170 Million unique users, and delivers five times the brand lift of traditional display (comScore, July 2010).

“Large marquee brands count on Kontera for superior editorial placement to reach the right user in the right context,” said Brian O’Kelley, CEO of AppNexus. “We are delighted to be working with their team to bring their power, sophistication, and unique display offerings to the broader ecosystem.”

Led by the pioneers of the Web’s original ad exchanges at Yahoo!’s Right Media and Google’s DoubleClick, AppNexus offers a comprehensive suite of core infrastructure and ad technology capabilities including data management, optimization, APIs, financial clearing and support for directly negotiated media campaigns.

“AppNexus is widely used by the industry’s leading providers because it has great pathways into the display ecosystems, superior scalability, and best-in-class functionality,” said Yoav Shaham, CEO of Kontera. “We are excited to team with them to add their real-time bidding and campaign management capabilities to our display solutions for marquee brands and publishers.”

About Kontera

Kontera’s real-time Synapse Platform uses sophisticated semantic and web trend analysis to predict intent and to instantly react to user’s interests with relevant information and Ads. With Kontera advertisers gain greater targeting precision across the entire web, users find information that is relevant to their interests, and publishers increase interaction with their content. Kontera’s delivery platforms and solutions encompass the PC web, Mobile devices, and major social platforms. Kontera delivers its context and interest capabilities to the market through multiple partners. It is the exclusive in-content analysis and engagement platform for more than 15,000 web publishers. Kontera’s real-time Synapse platform is also being used within major display advertising platforms. The company works with top brand advertisers such as Toyota, Microsoft, AT&T, Samsung and L’Oreal to identify context and interest, and to provide unique brand experiences to more than 170 million users each month.

Kontera is backed by Sequoia Capital, Carmel Ventures, and Tanaya Capital. To learn more about Kontera, Kontera’s Social Boost, Related Content solutions, Mobile Advertising, Semantic Advertising or Contextual Advertising visit: www.kontera.com follow: facebook.com/Kontera, twitter.com/kontera.

About AppNexus

AppNexus is the real-time ad platform used by global ad networks, demand-side platforms (DSPs), ad exchanges, and other leading online advertising companies. Led by the pioneers of the Web’s original ad exchanges at Yahoo!’s Right Media and Google’s DoubleClick, AppNexus offers a comprehensive suite of core infrastructure and ad technology capabilities that empowers sophisticated companies to build, manage and optimize their entire display advertising businesses and provides single-point integration to the largest buyers and sellers of online advertising, including major aggregators and exchanges.

Based in New York City, AppNexus is backed by an outstanding group of investors; including Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, First Round Capital, Venrock, Kodiak Venture Partners, Ron Conway, Khosla Ventures, and Microsoft. For more information, visit www.appnexus.com.

NEW YORK – Vibrant, the leader of in-text and contextual solutions, announced it will revolutionize contextual advertising by extending the company’s VXPlatform to launch the new VIA Dynamic display product. VIA Dynamic is the first in a full suite of contextual products that the company plans to release throughout the year, delivering new revenue opportunities to premium publishers and powerful contextual marketing solutions to advertisers. Vibrant draws upon 10 years of contextual leadership, a #14 comScoreTop 50 Ad Focus Ranking, and a reach of 68% of the U.S. internet audience to deliver the VXPlatform.

Unlike other one-dimensional solutions, the VXPlatform leverages semantic analysis, frequency of words, page positioning, source code data, and demographics to determine contextual relevancy in the most accurate way.

“At Vibrant we believe that the best advertising experience is a relevant one. We want to create an online world with ‘context everywhere’ to help marketers integrate meaningful experiences into content for our 225 million unique users,” says Vibrant Co-Founder and CEO Doug Stevenson. “We’ve developed a platform that delivers unparalleled understanding of the Web, and goes further, serving creative that understands the context of the page and changes dynamically.”

For example, today a standard Bertolli ad might be served to a cooking site about Italian cuisine. With VIA Dynamic, that same Bertolli ad would be dynamically adjusted to include content taken from the page including ingredients, restaurants and chefs, etc. to enable a more precise match between page and ad.

VIA Dynamic also features Multivariant Creative Optimization, which further helps performance by changing visual aspects of the ads such as background color, fonts, call to actions, etc. Additionally, Vibrant SafeServe™, a proprietary ad verification service, is applied to all Vibrant contextual products, ensuring that the ads are delivered in a brand-safe environment.

Current products enabled through the platform include:

Vibrant In-Text Ads – Reach more than 225 million users across 6,000 premium publisher Web sites. In-Text combines precise word targeting with the brand impact of video and rich media.
VIA – Delivers relevant display ads to target consumers based on article relevance and user interests.
VIA Dynamic – Ads that change dynamically to match page content. Vibrant’s Creative Services Team designs and builds VIA Dynamic ads equipped with live feeds that enable advertiser creative to match the page context in real-time, creating unprecedented contextual relevancy.
Vibrant Related Content – Generates new page views by propelling forward navigation and re-circulating users throughout a website, network or portal.

About Vibrant

Vibrant (www.vibrantmedia.com) is a world leader in contextual technology aligning billions of words across the Internet with relevant video, information, tools, and advertising. With over 6,000 premium publishers, reaching 225 million unique users per month (comScore, 2010), Vibrant gives top brand marketers the opportunity to deliver highly targeted advertisements within premium Web content and offers publishers premium editorial tools to re-circulate users throughout their websites. Vibrant works with top brand advertisers such as Microsoft, Unilever, Warner Bros and AT&T. The company was founded in 2000 and has offices in London, New York, Boston, Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Paris, Hamburg, Munich and Dusseldorf. Vibrant’s rapid growth has been recognized by the Inc. 500 and Deloitte Fast 50 lists. Vibrant Co-Founder and CEO Doug Stevenson was named Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2010 for Metro New York. For more information, visit: www.vibrantmedia.com or www.hyperlinkevolved.com or www.facebook.com/vibrantmedia or http://twitter.com/vibrantmedia.

InText has taken the initiative and repurposed core contextual advertising concepts in order to give advertisers a greater opportunity to achieve higher conversions with a smaller ad budget. InText’s formula for success is to continuously remain sensitive to advertiser’s campaign options and solution needs. Advertisers are given a choice between multiple underlining schemes and five high impact intext ad units. While other companies only offer one InText ad unit color and design for keyword highlights, InText offers up to twelve, with unique smart lightbulb icon which appears next to each underlined keyword. InText is a giant leap ahead of the competition.

Charlo Barbosa, CEO is confident that InText.net will revolutionize contextual advertising stating that “not only is the product technologically appealing to advertisers, it’s appealing to affiliates as well because we are the only network that automatically signs up affiliates to the Advertiser Referral Program. We have really focussed on making the InText experience highly customizable for affiliates”. As the only company with an advertiser and affiliate referral program, Barbosa and his team have thought outside of the traditional confines of affiliate program conventions. It’s quite simple. With a link on the ad unit that says ‘Your Ad Here’, future advertisers are encouraged to click and advertise with Intext; following that click the affiliate of the ad unit will earn 5% commission for the life of the future advertiser.

In keeping with our commitment to customization, affiliates have complete control over how and where the ads are placed. By using a wonderfully crafted site submission wizard, an affiliate can thoughtfully determine which pages should and shouldn’t display ads while providing surfers the ability to disable ads for a better browsing experience.

Advertisers are given the opportunity to structure campaigns according to their needs and budget, with bids starting as low as $0.05 for Run of Network traffic, $0.10 with the Global Network traffic and $0.25 for the Premium and top tier traffic. Affiliates will be happy earning a very generous 60% revenue share. In addition to text and image ads, InText also offers display ads as backfill to CPC ads and pays affiliates on a CPM basis if there aren’t any text ads to display. InText promises that advertisers will reach a dimension of inventory that remains virtually untapped, and with InText anti-fraud technology and intelligent conversion tracking, advertisers only pay for clicks not impressions.

For more information about InText and their innovative contextual ad solutions, please visit www.intext.net, read our press release at http://www.intext.net/press-releases or contact Theng Kuoch, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships at 1-877-452-5558.

NEW YORK – With the success of breakthrough in-text campaigns for Microsoft, Mercedes, Best Buy, Bankrate , MSNBC and ShopLocal that feature live feeds, enabling the distribution of real-time information within the content of a web page, Vibrant, the world leader in contextual advertising, is officially expanding its offering.

According to Doug Stevenson, CEO and Co-founder of Vibrant, “Advertisers are seeing great success by delivering live resources inside web content across Vibrant’s 4,500 premium publishers. It’s what our 170 million users want; it’s what they appreciate.”

Vibrant has delivered real time in-text campaigns for:

Bankrate.com – Bankrate.com was one of the first to leverage this capability to deliver real-time stock information in a ticker unit within web content.

Best Buy – Vibrant delivered relevant, real-time tweets from the Best Buy Twelpforce on web pages across the network.

Bing (Microsoft) — By optimizing for top trending news keywords, Vibrant enables the delivery of real-time search results within its ad unit.

Mercedes – Vibrant enabled Mercedes to deliver a dynamic Facebook feed.

MSNBC – MSNBC drives users back to top stories and breaking news on the MSNBC web site by embedding an RSS feed into its ads.

Shop Local – Vibrant delivers local shopping deals in real time from retailers in the ShopLocal network.

Zune (Microsoft) – Microsoft’s Zune ad unit delivers live music feeds when a user hovers over an artist’s name, song title or genre.

Working with the world’s leading global brands, Vibrant manages more than 50 billion hyperlinks, reaching 170 million unique users globally and 100 million uniques in the U.S., an increase of 24% since July 2009. Vibrant recently reported 51% Y-Y growth in Q2’10 and 45% Y-Y growth in H1’10. The company achieved a record-setting year in 2009.

About Vibrant

Vibrant (www.vibrantmedia.com) is a world leader in contextual technology aligning billions of words across the Internet with relevant video, information, tools, and advertising. With over 4,500 premium publishers, reaching more than 170 million unique users per month (comScore, July 2010), Vibrant gives top brand marketers the opportunity to deliver highly targeted advertisements within premium Web content and offers publishers premium editorial tools to re-circulate users throughout their websites. Vibrant works with top brand advertisers such as Microsoft, Unilever, Warner Bros and AT&T. The company was founded in 2000 and has offices in London, New York, Boston, Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Paris, Hamburg, Munich and Dusseldorf. Vibrant’s rapid growth has been recognized by the Inc. 500 and Deloitte Fast 50 lists. For more information, visit: www.vibrantmedia.com or www.hyperlinkevolved.com or www.facebook.com/vibrantmedia or http://twitter.com/vibrantmedia.

NEW YORK – Vibrant (www.vibrantmedia.com), the global leader in contextual advertising, is reporting 51% Y-Y growth in Q2’10, and 45% Y-Y growth in H1’10. Categories which have shown particular strength globally during the first half of 2010 include Automotive (up 44% Y-Y), Business & Finance (up 63% Y-Y) and CPG (up 124% Y-Y). This continued growth follows on the heels of a record-setting year for Vibrant in 2009 as brands increasingly leverage in-text to deliver content-driven advertising.

Marketers like Microsoft, Unilever, Best Buy and Blackberry RIM are using Vibrant hyperlinks to bring real information to users within the context of a page, such as search results, video streams, recipes, Tweets, product reviews and geo-targeted listings. In addition, brands increasingly see Vibrant’s solutions as an extension of their keyword search strategy.

Says Co-Founder and CEO Doug Stevenson, “We continue to see growth due to Vibrant’s ability to bridge the gap between search and display, helping advertisers cut through the online brand clutter to deliver a useful experience to over 170 million users. At the same time, Vibrant helps its network of more than 4,500 publishers monetize their pages while delivering real information to their readers.”

According to a recent Morgan Stanley report on internet trends, the percentage of time consumers spend online is more than double the equivalent ad spend, leaving a $50 billion global opportunity for online advertising. As marketers shift dollars from traditional ad channels, advertisers see the value in leveraging Vibrant’s growing online platform and premium publisher network to drive performance and user engagement.

Vibrant’s revenue growth has fueled investment in its technology, product and sales teams, increasing headcount 29% to 230 employees with offices now in 11 cities, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, Detroit, Chicago, London, Paris, Hamburg, Dusseldorf and Munich.

About Vibrant

Vibrant is a world leader in contextual technology aligning billions of words across the Internet with relevant video, information, tools, and advertising. With over 4,500 premium publishers, reaching more than 170 million unique users per month (comScore, May 2010), Vibrant gives top brand marketers the opportunity to deliver highly targeted advertisements within premium Web content and offers publishers premium editorial tools to re-circulate users throughout their websites. Vibrant works with top brand advertisers such as Microsoft, Unilever, Warner Bros and AT&T. The company was founded in 2000 and has offices in London, New York, Boston, Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Paris, Hamburg, Munich and Dusseldorf. Vibrant’s rapid growth has been recognized by the Inc. 500 and Deloitte Fast 50 lists. For more information, visit: www.vibrantmedia.com or www.hyperlinkevolved.com or www.facebook.com/vibrantmedia or http://twitter.com/vibrantmedia.

SAN FRANCISCO – Kontera, the leading provider of In-Text Advertising and Related Information solutions, announced Kontera Synapse, its next-generation In-Text relevance engine. Kontera Synapse makes the most relevant associations for end users, by identifying their topics of interest and predicting intent. For advertisers, Kontera Synapse massively aggregates and engages the most qualified audience from across the web. The technology has been shown by comScore to deliver advertiser performance that’s five times greater than traditional display advertising. Kontera Synapse’s new topical-targeting capabilities also provide a platform for a new class of related information and related search applications.

Kontera also announced two complementary capabilities for attaining superior brand engagement and campaign results. The company introduced Cost Per View (CPV) pricing and PerformancePLUS, a continuous optimization capability that boosts both brand awareness and direct response campaigns by as much as 20 to 30 percent.

ComScore studied the advertiser performance characteristics of Kontera Synapse engine over a three-month period, and released those findings today.

“Kontera In-Text advertising had a significant impact throughout the purchasing funnel,” said Graham Mudd, Vice President of Search & Media at comScore. “When compared to the comScore norms for display advertising, Kontera delivered five times as much brand awareness lift and twice as much brand purchase-intent lift. Furthermore, when we examined our consumer panel’s behavior, we saw that three weeks after being exposed to Kontera’s in-text ads, they were 400% more likely to search online for the promoted products and 2.5 times as many exposed panelists visited the product information pages.”

These results were attained through the breakthrough innovations of Kontera Synapse:

Topical targeting – Prior to Kontera Synapse, all In-Text technologies relied on fixed keyword lists for campaign targeting. With topical targeting Kontera is able to identify thousands of concepts and expanded phrases that are relevant to the topics of interest of any advertiser’s target audience. This provides greater campaign scale and selection of phrases and keywords that are more engaging to consumers.

For example: Topical targeting allows automotive advertisers to expand from simplistic phrases, like “car performance,” to much more relevant phrases like “the exhilaration of exceptional cornering.”
Dynamic ‘A/B’ optimization – Kontera Synapse tests different topics and monitors how users interact with each page on the Kontera’s network in real-time. The In-Text phrases with which end users interact more represent users’ interests. In this way intent is determined through “the voice of the users.”
Phrase Discovery and Exploration – Kontera Synapse automatically identifies and tracks the trending of new phrases, as they appear across the network. Those phrases are cross linked to relevant topics and entities (people, places, etc.).
Comprehensive brand safety controls – Synapse includes a full suite of brand safety capabilities. Advertisers benefit from Kontera’s knowledge of sensitive topics and keywords within each category. In addition, specific ‘avoid’ lists can be defined for an advertiser or specific campaigns. These controls ensure that advertisers are not proximate to content that is harmful to their brand.
“Kontera Synapse culminates an intensive R&D investment throughout the past two years,” said Yoav Shaham, Kontera’s CEO. “With topical targeting we link concepts and phrases that manual keyword lists alone have no chance at identifying. Our related information and related search offerings deliver results that are more relevant to users’ intent. For advertisers we offer a much more qualified and engaged audience, at scale.”

New Engagement Pricing:

Kontera also introduced new Cost Per View pricing for brand advertisers whose campaign goals focus on engagement and awareness using video campaigns. The Cost Per View pricing model augments Kontera’s cost per click model. It allows brand advertisers to pay for qualified engagements, which in the case of many awareness campaigns may be a more important goal then clicks. Kontera’s platform has proven to be an exceptional performer for brand lift and product awareness, and traditional brand and TV advertisers have been clamoring for In-Text Cost Per View pricing.

New PerformancePLUS campaign optimization:

Kontera’s PerformancePLUS campaign optimization service provides advertisers with an additional boost that increases results for both brand engagement or direct response campaigns by as much as 30%. Campaigns are continuously improved through an on-going optimization of topics used, improving phrase selections, ad unit mix, and placement across the network. The result is a noticeable increase in end-user engagement throughout the life of the campaign. For action-oriented objectives like online registrations, online purchases, or the completion of referral forms, Kontera is able to monitor the back-end results and to boost performance to those metrics by 20 to 30%.

This story was originally reported on by Laurie Sullivan of Mediapost.

About Kontera

Kontera delivers the most relevant In-Text Advertising & Related Information solutions online. Kontera’s patented technology performs real-time semantic analysis of content and other information to dynamically hyper-link the terms that most accurately represent and predict user-intent and engagement. Kontera enhances consumer experience through superior phrase relevance, driving increased user interaction, unparalleled campaign performance for advertisers, and substantial revenue for publishers. Reaching more than 140 million unique users per month, Kontera’s exclusive network features over 15,000 vetted premium and niche publishers and represents a unique opportunity for advertisers to reach their target audiences through innovative text, rich media and video advertising units. Founded in 2003, Kontera is backed by Sequoia Capital, Carmel Ventures and Tenaya Capital and has offices in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta, London and Tel Aviv. To learn more about Kontera, Kontera’s Related Information and Content solutions, Semantic Advertising or Contextual Advertising visit: www.kontera.com.

NEW YORK – Zoomino.com, Inc, a provider of in-text discovery engines, announced the release of In-Text TV on the Glam Apps Platform. Once embedded by a web publisher, In-Text TV offers site visitors the opportunity to effortlessly discover informative and entertaining video clips related to any word or phrase appearing in an article or webpage.

Readers can access the In-Text TV display by using their mouse to trigger a highlighted keyword or select any word or phrase mentioned on the page. In addition to relevant videos, the In-Text TV display includes tabs for reading a synopsis of the keyword and viewing related photos. Also, the display contains an advertising unit, providing an additional revenue stream for web publishers.

“Unlike traditional in-text models, our primary focus is on enhancing the user experience. We are presenting to readers useful content that complements a site’s articles,” said Jack Huang, founder and CEO of Zoomino. “In-Text TV integrates multimedia and reference sources in an easy and effective manner.”

In-Text TV is part of the Glam Apps Platform, developed in 2008 to link publishers to new applications. Glam Apps help publishers drive differentiation and add new features to their sites without incurring development costs, grow their traffic, and create new revenue streams through revenue-generating apps. In-Text TV will be available to Glam’s 1,400+ publisher partners.

“This is a great tool for publishers because it helps them engage with their audiences on the page and their site,” said Ray Lee, Director of Product Management at Glam Media. “There’s no need to navigate elsewhere for content like videos, photos, and Wikipedia details.”

In-Text TV includes videos from a variety of sources and new content providers are being added regularly. Zoomino’s algorithms determine relevant videos based on contextual associations, popularity, publish date, and a variety of other factors. Recommendations are refined based on user behavior.

The Glam Apps Platform can be accessed at http://apps.glam.com.

About Zoomino

Zoomino is a provider of innovative discovery engines that enable websites to present related site and web content within a content page. Triggered in-text by a keyword mouseover, Zoomino helps readers explore content of interest at natural curiosity points, resulting in extended site visits and expanded advertising inventory. Zoomino’s content augmentation solutions for web publishers and advertising networks integrate seamlessly with site content and result in high levels of user engagement. Founded in 2008, Zoomino is a privately held company based in New York City. Zoomino also has an office in Guangzhou, China and operates a Chinese publisher network that includes leading news, auto, and travel sites.

About In-Text TV

In-Text TV is available at the Glam Apps control panel at http://apps.glam.com. Publishers can integrate the app with a simple ‘copy-and-paste’ of a few lines of Javascript. Additional information can be found at http://www.zoomino.com/us/intexttv/.

SAN FRANCISCO – After several months of in-market use with select customers, Kontera, the leading provider of relevant In-Text Advertising and Information Solutions, formally launched its newest ad unit family… the Freedom Ads.

The Freedom Ad family provides the opportunity to deliver deep brand engagement via an elegant user interaction by using an advertiser’s product or brand as the frame and dominant element of the unit. The ad unit’s unique out-of-the-box capabilities bring products and brand experiences to life, capturing the eye and imagination with an instantly recognizable, and relevant, communication. Kontera’s advanced semantic technology identifies highly pertinent key phrases, placing the units within the ideal context to deliver end-user value and maximize engagement and brand lift.

A familiar brand found the unit very effective: “With the perception of oatmeal being boring, OMD was challenged by Quaker Oats to deliver an impactful and engaging message to connect the dots between Quaker Instant Oatmeal and a rich oatmeal experience,” said Pranav Pandit, OMD’s Group Director of Digital Strategy. “Working closely with OMD to deliver an innovative ad solution, Kontera’s custom creative and Freedom Ad unit delivered on the campaign objectives while also returning the highest click-through rates across the campaign.”

The Freedom Ads family initially consists of two unit types, the Product Freedom Unit and Brand Freedom Unit:

The Product Freedom Unit delivers an elegant, instantly recognizable visual depiction of the advertiser’s product directly from within a highly relevant key phrase. This unique unit drives higher consumer engagement rates and overall product awareness.

Product Freedom units employ a clean design, simplicity, and actual product visuals, for maximum effect. Their compelling imagery and limited copy result in instant consumer recognition.. Product Freedom Units are ideal for product focused advertisers like CPG, Automotive, Apparel and Beauty, Consumer Electronics, and Retail.

The Brand Freedom Unit delivers a unique and holistic brand experience through tasteful interaction that engages, educates, and delights the consumer.

When combined with Kontera’s semantic relevance, the Brand Freedom unit delivers brand lift and superior brand engagement results. It does so by engaging qualified consumers directly with the brand, conveying the brand’s essence and value — maintaining elegance and gravitas all the while. The Brand Freedom unit brings to life elements of the brand that are instantly recognizable.

“Freedom Units enable brands to connect with their customers in a visceral way, when they’re most receptive,” said Hal Muchnick, President of Kontera U.S. “Our in-market results demonstrate that consumers engage at very high levels with these visual depictions.”

Advertisers concur. Answering a survey question on how well the new unit met “brand or awareness needs,” on a scale from 1-5, where 1 indicated “Very bad” and 5 meant “Excellent,” the 15 brands and agency teams who tested the unit gave the unit an average rating of 4.2. Asked how well the unit performed from a metrics perspective, the brands and agency teams gave it the identical rating of 4.2.

When they were asked how well the unit performed compared to all other units and networks on on-line ad venues on the campaign, the numbers rose to 4.8 out of 5. With a 5 meaning “Performed Much Better”, and a 1 meaning “Performed Much Worst.”

Would they use the Freedom Unit again? 100% of respondents said “Yes.”

In-Text advertising meets brands’ desires to connect with qualified consumers, and to deliver compelling brand experiences and promotional units. Kontera’s unique rich-media units, combined with its Story-Level Targeting delivers in-text brand placements that are highly relevant to the page contents and to user interests. As a result brands are able to effectively connect with users when they are most engaged and receptive. To learn more about Kontera’s advertising solutions visit http://www.kontera.com/index.php/advertisers

About Kontera

Kontera delivers the most relevant In-Text Advertising & Related Information solutions online. Kontera’s patented technology performs real-time semantic analysis of content and other information to dynamically hyper-link the terms that most accurately represent and predict user-intent and engagement. Kontera enhances consumer experience through superior phrase relevance, driving increased user interaction, unparalleled campaign performance for advertisers, and substantial revenue for publishers. Reaching more than 100 million unique users per month, Kontera’s exclusive network features over 15,000 vetted premium and niche publishers and represents a unique opportunity for advertisers to reach their target audiences through innovative text, rich media and video advertising units. Founded in 2003, Kontera is backed by Sequoia Capital, Carmel Ventures and Tenaya Capital and has offices in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta and Tel Aviv. To learn more about Kontera, Kontera’s Related Information and Content solutions, Semantic Advertising or Contextual Advertising visit: www.kontera.com.

SAN FRANCISCO – Kontera, the leading provider of relevant In-Text Advertising and Information Solutions, announced strong 2009 growth that spoke to its continuous technological innovation and a strong uptake from brand advertisers.

The company’s In-Text technology delivered superior related content for publishers and consumers, while delivering strong advertiser results. Kontera was able to significantly grow from both the publisher and advertiser perspectives. The company’s exclusive In-Text network finished the year with more than 120 Million monthly unique users. Traditional brand advertisers took note of the momentum, and as a result Kontera saw acceleration in brand awareness and brand building campaigns. Kontera’s direct advertiser spending had more than doubled in 2009 compared to 2008.

Technological Leadership:

Kontera’s advanced semantic analysis capabilities and technological advancements propelled the company’s expansion throughout 2009.

In May 2009 the company was named the 5th fastest growing advertising network by ComScore.
In August the company introduced its Story-Level Targeting technology, an advanced capability that understands articles at a very granular level, and is able to dynamically identify the key-words that will best resonate with readers.
In July Kontera’s core technologies for connecting the web received an impressive vote of confidence from the investment community. Having achieved profitability the company announced a significant injection of growth capital led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from Carmel Ventures and Tenaya Capital.
Sequoia Capital’s Mike Moritz observed that “Kontera has opened up the vast, uncharted territory of the internet – the detailed content of web pages. Thanks to Kontera’s semantic analysis of contents and meaning of a web page, users can now find information that previously lay buried and advertisements can be positioned with far greater precision. Kontera has shaped and now leads this new market.”

Kontera’s technology and ad unit innovations were noted by several advertising industry observers and thought leaders.

“Kontera’s fewer links, delivered semantically, are outperforming the other in-text models these days,” noted Tanya Irwin in a July 2009 article in OMMA Magazine.
Underscore Marketing President Tom Hespos, commenting on the topic of Brand Safety, noted that “technologies from ad network companies like Ad Pepper and Kontera do a good job of determining article topics, sub-topics, and sentiments. Their semantic technologies differentiate them from other offerings.”

Accelerated Adoption by Brand Advertisers:

Throughout the year Kontera was able to increase the number of large brand advertisers that used its solutions for expanding market awareness and brand engagement. The company’s unique creative execution, and ability to attain performance metrics for brand lift campaigns, helped it grow significantly, despite an overall difficult year for advertising.

Traditional Brand advertisers in such verticals as Apparel & Beauty, Consumer Electronics and Telecommunications, and Consumer Packaged Goods increased their spending with Kontera.

By Q4 twice as many beauty and apparel advertising campaigns had signed with Kontera’s service, when compared to the prior year. Prominent beauty and apparel brands advertising with Kontera included Kohl’s, H&M, JCPenney, Zappos, L’Oreal and Maybelline-Garnier.
Similarly, in the fourth quarter Kontera had reported more than 80% growth in brand advertisers in the Consumer Electronics sector over the fourth quarter of 2008, including major brands like Canon, HP, LG, Samsung and Epson.
Just after the close of 2009, Kontera reported that advertiser spending from the Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) sector had more than doubled and is now pacing at more than 2.5 times the prior year’s spending. Advertisers in this sector include prominent CPG brands such as Arm & Hammer, Dove, Rice Krispies, Snapple and Welch’s.
Kontera’s consistent ability to meet media planners’ brand campaign objectives was recently noted by expert planner Hollis Thomases, President of WebAdvantage.net. In a recent ClickZ article she noted that “Although every media planner has their bias, some networks and sites we’ve found that tend to consistently step up to the plate are Yahoo, Google, Kontera, Orbitz, About.com, Disney Online, Discovery, iVillage, and WebMD. To them and those like them, we say thank you!”

“I’m very proud that our team was able to deliver consistently strong results and solid growth throughout the year,” said Kontera CEO and Cofounder Yoav Shoham.

About Kontera

Kontera delivers the most relevant In-Text Advertising & Related Information solutions online. Kontera’s patented technology performs real-time semantic analysis of content and other information to dynamically hyper-link the terms that most accurately represent and predict user-intent and engagement. Kontera enhances consumer experience through superior phrase relevance, driving increased user interaction, unparalleled campaign performance for advertisers, and substantial revenue for publishers. Reaching more than 100 million unique users per month, Kontera’s exclusive network features over 15,000 vetted premium and niche publishers and represents a unique opportunity for advertisers to reach their target audiences through innovative text, rich media and video advertising units. Founded in 2003, Kontera is backed by Sequoia Capital, Carmel Ventures and Tenaya Capital and has offices in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta and Tel Aviv. To learn more about Kontera, Kontera’s Related Information and Content solutions, Semantic Advertising or Contextual Advertising visit: www.kontera.com.

SAN FRANCISCO – Kontera, the leading provider of relevant In-Text Advertising and Information Solutions, announced that as the fourth quarter nears its end, the company has seen more than 80% growth in the Consumer Electronics sector over the fourth quarter of 2008. With more than twice the number of Consumer Electronic campaigns advertising across the Kontera network, on average the Consumer Electronics campaigns are over 40% larger this year than last.

“Internet users are increasingly researching gaming, television, home computing, and home appliances, and as a result, we continue to see an increase in advertiser spending this holiday season”

Major electronics brands advertising with Kontera include Canon, HP, LG, Samsung and Epson.

Kontera has also had a high rate of returning advertisers because Consumer Electronics campaigns with Kontera show ever-higher consumer engagement and interaction rates. Across Kontera’s more than 100 million monthly unique users, the interaction rate in the Consumer Electronics sector is trending 60% higher than a year ago.

“Internet users are increasingly researching gaming, television, home computing, and home appliances, and as a result, we continue to see an increase in advertiser spending this holiday season,” said Kontera President Hal Muchnick. “Our Story Level Targeting capabilities deliver useful, relevant ads and consumer engagement during pre-purchase research.”

In-Text advertising meets brands’ desires to connect with qualified consumers, and to deliver compelling brand experiences and promotional units. Kontera’s Story-Level Targeting uses real-time semantic analysis to deliver in-text brand placements that are highly relevant to the page contents and to user interests. As a result brands are able to reach users when they are most engaged and receptive to learn about their products.

About Kontera

Kontera delivers the most relevant In-Text Advertising & Related Information solutions online.  Kontera’s patented technology performs real-time semantic analysis of content and other information to dynamically hyper-link the terms that most accurately represent and predict user-intent and engagement.  Kontera enhances consumer experience through superior phrase relevance, driving increased user interaction, unparalleled campaign performance for advertisers, and substantial revenue for publishers.  Reaching more than 100 million unique users per month, Kontera’s exclusive network features over 15,000 vetted premium and niche publishers and represents a unique opportunity for advertisers to reach their target audiences through innovative text, rich media and video advertising units.  Founded in 2003, Kontera is backed by Sequoia Capital, Carmel Ventures and Tenaya Capital and has offices in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta and Tel Aviv. To learn more about Kontera, Kontera’s Related Information and Content solutions, Semantic Advertising or Contextual Advertising visit: www.kontera.com.

SAN FRANCISCO – Kontera, the leading provider of relevant In-Text Advertising and Information Solutions, announced that two-thirds into the fourth quarter, it has already seen twice as many beauty & apparel advertising campaigns sign with its service as it saw a year ago. Additionally, the average apparel and beauty campaign is 59% larger, with total advertiser-committed spending in the category up 173 percent year over year.

Retailer campaigns running with Kontera continue to see high consumer engagement and interaction rates concomitant to this growth. Across Kontera’s more than 100 million monthly unique users the apparel and beauty campaigns are yielding twice as many brand engagements, when compared to the number of brand interactions in the 4th quarter of 2008.

“We’re pleased to see this rise in brand advertiser spending within the Apparel and Beauty category,” said Kontera President Hal Muchnick. “We perceive that major retailers are sensing a shift in consumer sentiment, and they are looking to reach qualified individuals who are engaged in pre-purchase research and information gathering, wherever those consumers may be on the web.”

In-Text advertising meets brands’ desires to connect with qualified consumers, with high precision, and to deliver compelling brand experiences and promotional units. Kontera’s Story-Level Targeting delivers in-text brand placements that are highly relevant to the page contents and to user interests. As a result brands are able to reach users when they are most engaged and receptive to learn about their products.

Kontera’s fourth quarter apparel and beauty retail advertisers include major brands such as Kohl’s, H&M, JCPenney, Zappos, L’Oreal and Maybelline-Garnier.

About Kontera

Kontera delivers the most relevant In-Text Advertising & Related Information solutions online. Kontera’s patented technology performs real-time semantic analysis of content and other information to dynamically hyper-link the terms that most accurately represent and predict user-intent and engagement. Kontera enhances consumer experience through superior phrase relevance, driving increased user interaction, unparalleled campaign performance for advertisers, and substantial revenue for publishers. Reaching more than 100 million unique users per month, Kontera’s exclusive network features over 15,000 vetted premium and niche publishers and represents a unique opportunity for advertisers to reach their target audiences through innovative text, rich media and video advertising units. Founded in 2003, Kontera is backed by Sequoia Capital, Carmel Ventures and Tenaya Capital and has offices in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta and Tel Aviv. To learn more about Kontera, Kontera’s Related Information and Content solutions, Semantic Advertising or Contextual Advertising visit: www.kontera.com.

SAN FRANCISCO – Kontera, the leading provider of In-Text Related Content and Advertising Solutions for web publishers, users and advertisers, launched its story-level targeting capabilities after months of testing on thousands of publishers with hundreds of ad campaigns. Story-Level Targeting achieves very high relevancy rates due to two key attributes, first is its ability to truly understand the overall gist of the story, and second is its ability to do this in real-time, whenever a story is served, thus taking into consideration the evolving nature of the story and the characteristics of each user. Story-Level Targeting is ideal for optimizing related information and both brand and performance oriented advertising campaigns, across both topically endemic and non-endemic web sites.

“We have developed our latest technological breakthrough in response to two clear market trends that we heard from both web publishers and advertisers,” said Yoav Shaham, CEO of Kontera. “First is the need for either related information or ads to be shown in real-time wherever qualified users are consuming highly-relevant information. Second, is the need for In-Text matching to be fully cognizant of the evolving nature of each page and the differences that occur from user to user and pageview to pageview. Existing approaches fall short. They limit campaign targeting and effectiveness to topically endemic sites, and they place ads using static or one-size-fits-all targeting.”

Opening Up a Highly Relevant and Broad Non-Endemic Inventory

Keyword targeting alone has proven to be insufficient in representing a user’s intent for reading a given story because it doesn’t necessarily encapsulate the broader page context, and can fail to resolve critical word ambiguities; words like “accord,” for instance, could apply to the car or to an agreement. If there isn’t a deep, semantic understanding of the page the user, publisher and advertiser can all suffer if the wrong association is made. As a result, Key-Word centric In-Text and contextual networks are restricted to showcasing advertisers only within endemic websites that are dedicated to a specific category.

Kontera’s story-level targeting algorithms digest and fully understand the overall theme of any story on any site. As a result, Kontera is able to more accurately match related content and advertisements to each page, and to select the most relevant keyword phrases, as a conduit to best represent user interest and intent.

Story-Level Targeting also allows Kontera to identify highly relevant articles, appearing on non-endemic sites, without requiring the site to be specifically “tagged” within an advertising category. Users see information that is truly relevant to them, publishers benefit from related information offerings and additional revenue streams. Advertisers are able to cost-effectively expand their campaigns to all high-relevance articles, on non-endemic sites, where qualified consumers increasingly get their information.

For example, Story-Level Targeting enables the showcasing of a BlackBerry ad within a story about smartphones featured on SmartMoney.com, a financial site. BlackBerry reaches their target audience – people who are researching or interested in the latest smartphone developments – even though they are on a finance site rather than a technology site.

Real-Time Analysis that is Ideal for Today’s Evolving Web:

Internet content is increasingly becoming a dynamic and evolving “dialogue.” Large publishers are increasingly adopting the blogging format, on-going story updates, comments, related links, referrals, and social media capabilities. These are all examples of ways in which media companies’ stories and web pages evolve content after their initial posting. Many large publishers also vary the content that they serve based on various end-user or personalization factors.

Static a priori targeting and advertising determination fails to properly evolve and “react” to evolving web stories. Similarly, static ad determinations fails to optimally react to any page content that varies from user to user and pageview to pageview.

Kontera’s Story-Level Targeting analyzes each pageview in real-time, when that page is served to the end-user. As a result, Kontera’s Story-Level Targeting is able to consider the totality of each story’s evolution, as well as automatically adjusting for all attributes that vary when different users access the page.

Story-Level Targeting, the ability to truly understand the overall themes of any story at any time, requires both sophisticated semantic analysis, as well as a real-time engine that is designed to handle today’s personalized and evolving web content.

About Kontera

Kontera delivers the most relevant In-Text Advertising & Related Information solutions online. Kontera’s patented technology performs real-time semantic analysis of content and other information to dynamically hyper-link the terms that most accurately represent and predict user-intent and engagement. Kontera enhances consumer experience through superior phrase relevance, driving increased user interaction, unparalleled campaign performance for advertisers, and substantial revenue for publishers. Reaching more than 100 Million unique users per month, Kontera’s exclusive network features over 15,000 premium and niche publishers and represents a unique opportunity for advertisers to reach their target audiences through innovative text, rich media and video advertising units. Founded in 2003, Kontera is backed by Sequoia Capital, Tenaya Capital and Carmel Ventures and has offices in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta and Tel Aviv. For more about Kontera, visit: www.kontera.com.

SAN FRANCISCO – Kontera, the leading provider of relevant In-Text advertising and information solutions for web publishers, advertisers, and users, announced today that it has closed a $15.5 million round of financing. The round recognizes the company’s unique semantic-analysis technology, its profitability, and the significant expansion of its advertising network. Sequoia Capital led the financing round, with participation from Tenaya Capital and Carmel Ventures.

“Kontera has opened up the vast, uncharted territory of the internet – the detailed content of web pages,” said Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital. “Thanks to Kontera’s semantic analysis of the contents and meaning of a web page, users can now find information that previously lay buried and advertisements can be positioned with far greater precision. Kontera has shaped and now leads this new market, which is why we organized a financing to further expand its thriving and profitable business.”

The company had an exceptional 2008 and continues to see strong momentum in 2009. In May of 2009 comScore announced that Kontera was the fifth fastest growing internet advertising network, with a 40% increase in audience throughout the prior 12 months. Globally Kontera now reaches more than 100 million monthly unique users. Throughout this period Kontera has consistently attained double-digit quarter-on-quarter revenue growth.

Despite the current economic headwinds the demand for relevant In-Text information and In-Text advertising has continued to grow. Kontera’s advanced real-time semantic technology has set it apart from others, and allows it to deliver highly relevant information and ads directly within web text and webpage contents. The results are value-added information for Internet users, greater site engagement and unobtrusive revenue sources for publishers, and an interested targeted audience for advertisers.

“Sophisticated semantic analysis is critical for succeeding in this new market,” said Yoav Shaham, Kontera CEO and co-founder. “Similar to search based solutions, In-Text only works if one truly and deeply understands the page content and all its nuances. In our case we also use learning algorithms and predictive real-time analysis, to uncover the users’ intent. There are many interesting applications of our game-changing technology, and we believe that we are just getting started. We will use this financing to scale our network faster and to expand our real-time semantic analysis platform, products and solutions.”

About Sequoia Capital

Sequoia Capital provides venture capital funding to founders of startups who want to turn business ideas into enduring companies. As the “Entrepreneurs Behind the Entrepreneurs”, Sequoia Capital’s Partners have worked with innovators such as Steve Jobs of Apple Computer, Larry Ellison of Oracle, Bob Swanson of Linear Technology, Sandy Lerner and Len Bozack of Cisco Systems, Dan Warmenhoven of NetApp, Jerry Yang and David Filo of Yahoo!, Jen-Hsun Huang of nVIDIA, Michael Marks of Flextronics, Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen of YouTube, Dominic Orr and Keerti Melkote of Aruba Wireless Networks and Jonathan Kaplan of Pure Digital. To learn more about Sequoia Capital visit www.sequoiacap.com.

About Kontera

Kontera delivers the most relevant In-Text Advertising & Related Information solutions online. Kontera’s patented technology performs real-time semantic analysis of content and other information to dynamically hyper-link the terms that most accurately represent and predict user-intent and engagement. Kontera enhances consumer experience through superior phrase relevance, driving increased user interaction, unparalleled campaign performance for advertisers, and substantial revenue for publishers. Reaching more than 100 Million unique users per month, Kontera’s exclusive network features over 15,000 premium and niche publishers and represents a unique opportunity for advertisers to reach their target audiences through innovative text, rich media and video advertising units. Founded in 2003, Kontera is backed by Sequoia Capital, Tenaya Capital and Carmel Ventures and has offices in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta and Tel Aviv. For more about Kontera, visit: www.kontera.com.

NEW YORK – Vibrant, the leader in in-text advertising and provider of “next-generation hyperlinks”, announced 20 worldwide finalists in its second annual in-text advertising competition, the Vibrant Awards. The Vibrant Awards recognize the best of in-text and contextual advertising from around the world. Submitted by the world’s top brand marketers and agencies, each nominee is evaluated by a panel of industry experts from the U.S. and the E.U. and, for the first time this year, online voting will be open to members of the advertising industry by logging on to: www.vibrantawards.com/vote

Winners are chosen based on three criteria:

1) Creativity of the campaign concept and its ability to align with words within web content

2) How in-text advertising contributed to the online campaign overall

3) Whether in-text advertising effectively communicated the brand message

Six awards in total will be announced in mid-July: the Global Platinum Award winner, regarded as the best in-text campaign in the world; two Gold Award Winners (U.S. and EU), and two Silver Award winners (U.S. and EU). Industry voters will act as an additional deciding vote on this years judging panel, helping to determine the winning campaigns in each region.

According to Vibrant co-founder and CEO Doug Stevenson, “For the second year now, we’ve invited the world’s top brands to enter their most creative and effective in-text campaigns which now reach more than 130 million users across the internet. These next generation hyperlinks have become important to the marketing mix and we want to congratulate those advertisers who are refining their hyperlink strategies. These brands recognize that the hyperlink is the ultimate online navigation tool – second only to search.”

The 2009 expert panel of judges who will evaluate the finalists’ campaigns includes:

US Judges:

* Chris Campbell, Executive Creative Director, Interbrand
* Lee Doyle, CEO, Mediaedge:cia
* Sean Finnegan, President, Chief Digital Officer, Starcom Media Vest
* Rebecca Lieb, Vice President, eConsultancy
* David Rittenhouse, Senior Partner, Media Director, neo@Ogilvy
* Josh Stinchcomb, Executive Director, Condé Nast Digital Business Group

EU Judges:

* Rick Corteville, Head of Digital Media, EMEA at Universal McCann
* Dominik Grollmann, Editor in Chief, Internet World Business Magazine
* Dave Hompe, Digital Director, Starcom
* Colwyn Munro, Executive Vice President, IDG Digital Solutions
* Adam Pace, Head of Digital Buying, Opera
* Guy Phillipson, CEO, IAB
* Julia Smith, Sr. Manager, IASH
* Tim Webb, Online Publisher, Business Technology Group @ Incisive Media
* Louisa Wong, Head of Network Advertising, Sky Digital Media

Online voting by members of the advertising industry kicks off June 3rd. To vote, simply visit www.vibrantawards.com/vote.

The Vibrant Awards finalists are:

1. Nintendo ‘DS Women’
2. Liberty Mutual ‘Responsibility Project’
3. Chevrolet ‘Silverado’
4. IBM ‘Smarter Planet’
5. Caress ‘Evenly Gorgeous’
6. Yellowpages.com ‘Local Search’
7. Hewlett Packard ‘Server Solutions’
8. 7UP ‘Cherry 7UP’
9. AT&T ‘Blue Room’
10. Ragu ‘Recipe Unit’
11. Flora ‘Pro-Active’
12. Intel ‘Centrino 2’
13. Xbox ‘Gears of War 2’
14. Powerade ‘Innergear’
15. Yell.com ‘Local Search’
16. Microsoft ‘Visual Studio’
17. Mini ‘R57 Cabriolet’
18. Volkswagen ‘Wertigkeit’ (Value)
19. Reebok ‘Jukari’
20. MSN ‘Live Search’

About Vibrant

Vibrant is a world leader in contextual technology and provider of the ‘next generation of hyperlinks’, aligning billions of words across the internet with relevant video, information, tools, and advertising. With over 4,000 premium publishers, reaching more than 135 million unique users per month (comScore, April 2009), Vibrant gives top brand marketers the opportunity to deliver highly targeted advertisements within premium Web content and offers publishers premium editorial tools to re-circulate users throughout their websites. Vibrant manages more than five billion words and phrases each month for top brand advertisers such as Microsoft, Unilever, Warner Bros and Sprint. The company was founded in 2000 and has offices in London, New York, Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco, Paris and Hamburg, with more than 200 employees. Vibrant’s rapid growth has been recognized by both the Inc. 500 and Deloitte Fast 50 lists. For more information, visit: www.vibrantmedia.com, www.vibrantmedia.co.uk, www.vibrantmedia.de, www.vibrantmedia.fr.

NEW YORK – Kontera, the leading provider of relevant In-Text Advertising and Information Solutions for web publishers and advertisers, announced the opening of new office locations in Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta that will allow the company to keep up with the growing demand for its products and services from both advertisers and publishers. The company’s share of the in-text market dramatically increased in 2008, and the demand for its products and services remains very strong so far this year. Kontera’s network grew by over 60% in 2008, and the company is expecting to continue this type of growth in the foreseeable future.

“We’re finding more and more that advertisers can drive better results with their marketing dollars with our technology once they use our in-text offerings,” said Hal Muchnick, President of US Operations Kontera.“We are seeing growth of our business through the monthly and quarterly renewals of satisfied clients, and through agencies recommending our product to other brands.”

Kontera’s semantic analysis algorithms enable advertisers to leverage the most contextually relevant keyword phrases to deliver messages through a user-initiated in-text ad unit. Kontera’s machine learning technology actually improves campaign performance over the full length of its term, enabling agencies to provide substantial branding impact on the front end with the kind of back-end performance results that only the most sophisticated optimization can provide.

“With agencies looking to deliver the kind of extra value for clients that today’s economy dictates, we see our growth as a tremendous validation of our rising stature in the online marketing community,” said Bryan Everett, Executive Vice President, Kontera. “The enhancements we continue to make to our product suite will enable us to provide even more value to our agency and direct clients and further solidify Kontera as a must-have on any online marketing plan.”

About Kontera

Kontera delivers the most relevant In-Text Advertising & Related Information solutions online. Kontera’s patented technology performs real-time semantic analysis of content and other information to dynamically hyper-link the terms that most accurately represent and predict user-intent and engagement. Kontera enhances consumer experience through superior phrase relevance, driving increased user interaction, unparalleled campaign performance for advertisers, and substantial revenue for publishers. Reaching more than 100 Million unique users per month, Kontera’s exclusive network features over 15,000 premium and niche publishers and represents a unique opportunity for advertisers to reach their target audiences through innovative text, rich media and video advertising units. Founded in 2003, Kontera is backed by Sequoia Capital, Tenaya Capital and Carmel Ventures and has offices in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta and Tel Aviv. For more about Kontera, visit: www.kontera.com

What is In-Text Advertising?

In-text advertising is a form of contextual advertising where specific words within a body of content are matched with relevant advertising content. Publishers use In-text advertising as an incremental revenue opportunity in addition to serving standard ad banner units.

How ContextWeb In-Text Advertising works

Jay Sears clarifies how the newly launching platform works: “ContextWeb publishers participating in the In-text program will see specific keywords double underlined within their content. Upon mouse-over of the keyword, the end-user will have the option to see and click on ads. The ads are specifically relevant to the keyword that has been double underlined, which enables advertisers to be precise in their targeting. As a publisher, you will be able to name a CPC AskPrice for all the in-text ads served to your account. No additional tagging or integration is required. ”

How to Participate

Self serve publishers on the ADSDAQ Exchange Selling Desk will be set to automatically serve In-text ads beginning March 31, 2009. Publishers can opt-out of In-text ads at any time.

Advertisers running on the ADSDAQ Exchange Buying Desk will be notified automatically once the program is open. Agency clients wishing to participate should express interest to their ContextWeb sales representative.

More details are given here, on the ContextWeb blog.

Vibrant In-Text Solutions offer both advertising revenue through Vibrant In-Text Advertising and editorial solutions through Vibrant Related Content. Vibrant In-Text Advertising highlights words and word phrases within premium web content. These words act as triggers, displaying relevant advertising when a user mouses over the word or phrase of interest. The ad, often video, is only activated once the user hovers over the word, and the advertiser is only charged when the user clicks on the ad itself.

According to a recent Nielsen Online report, commissioned by Vibrant, 70% of those surveyed felt that in-text ads are the most relevant to page content and 65% felt in-text ads are most effective in conveying their message. And, by extension, over half of respondents indicated a positive opinion of advertisers who use in-text ads-more than any other online format. Through Vibrant, top tier brand advertisers can reach over 120 million people worldwide with ads across 3,500 premium websites.

In addition to providing in-text advertising, Vibrant will work with ITV to provide Vibrant Related Content, an editorial tool which offers an automatic hyperlinking system to surface an additional layer of information to editorial hyperlinks. These links could include the websites related articles, video, music, and images. Clearly differentiated from Vibrant’s In-Text Advertising product which use a double-underline, these links mirror the style of the publisher’s own editorial hyperlinks with a tiny magnifying glass icon to indicate that further editorial information is available.

Says Gary Cole, ITV’s Head of Online Revenue, “The best thing about Vibrant’s in-text technology is that it enables us to deliver ads that are relevant to our users when they want to see them. Through in-text ads, we are able expand our ad real estate whilst ensuring a better user experience across our network.”

According to Craig Gooding, Co-founder and CCO of Vibrant, “ITV is a great addition to our growing list of 3,500 of premium publisher websites offering Vibrant In-Text Advertising. We also look forward continuing our roll out of Vibrant Related Content in the coming months and working closely with the ITV to surface valuable content from their editorial archives.”

About Vibrant

Vibrant, a world leader in contextual technologies and in-text advertising solutions gives marketers the opportunity to deliver highly targeted advertisements within premium Web content and offers publishers premium editorial tools to re-circulate users throughout their websites. Reaching more than 128 million unique users per month (comScore, Oct 2008), Vibrant manages more than five billion words and phrases each month for top brand advertisers such as Microsoft, Unilever, Warner Bros and Sprint. The company was founded in 2000 and has offices in London, New York, Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco, Paris and Hamburg, with more than 200 employees. Vibrant’s rapid growth has been recognized by both the Inc. 500 and Deloitte Fast 50 lists. For more information, visit: www.vibrantmedia.com, www.vibrantmedia.co.uk, www.vibrantmedia.de, www.vibrantmedia.fr.

About Friends Reunited

Friends Reunited is the original social network with over 19 million members, representing an unparalleled cross section of Britain’s online population. It was launched in 2000 as a back-bedroom hobby to put old school friends back in touch with each other and swiftly became a British media phenomenon. In 2005 Friends Reunited was acquired by ITV.

About ITV Network

ITV is the UK’s largest commercial broadcaster and the largest advertising funded media owner in the UK across all media: television, radio, press, cinema, outdoor and the internet. As a producer, ITV makes more hours of network television than any other UK commercial producer. With the digital transformation of the media sector, ITV is developing new businesses across different platforms and media. ITV.com, the home of ITV online, offers access to ITV programming, clips and exclusive content.

NEW YORK – Vibrant (www.vibrantmedia.com), the world leader in contextual advertising solutions, has announced the launch of Vibrant Related Content, the editorial application of its advanced patented contextual technology. This automatic hyperlinking system recirculates users to more related articles, video, music, and images within a website. Users in turn are able to conveniently access more information pertaining to subjects of interest. Vibrant Related Content is live in beta and will begin rolling out to 3,500 publishers. As for advertising, publishers may choose to monetize these units which can accommodate standard IAB ads.

Vibrant is already live on more than 3,500 premium publisher websites and reaches more than 120 million unique users worldwide with its commercial Vibrant in-Text Advertising product, identified by green double-underlines. Vibrant Related Content is clearly differentiated by mirroring the style of the publisher’s own editorial hyperlinks and adding a small magnifying glass icon to indicate that further editorial information is available. Publishers can customize both the appearance and functionality of the unit, which is skinned with the publisher’s look and feel.

According to a new, custom study by Nielsen Online, a service of The Nielsen Company, commissioned by Vibrant, in-text advertising has been shown to be one of the most relevant and most effective ad formats available.

Says Vibrant Co-founder and CEO Doug Stevenson, “Adapting our contextual technology for editorial use is a natural evolution as we expand our relationships with publishers and with users, ultimately, who enjoy interactivity and appreciate the convenience of in-text links to surface related information.”

According to Tim Brower, Director of Digital Development at Detroit Media Partnership, “Two things we really focus on at www.detnews.com and www.freep.com are offering a great user experience and making sure people find compelling articles. Vibrant Related Content offers a simple, effective way to achieve both, so implementing it across our sites was an easy decision to make.” Click here for demo. http://www.vibrantmedia.com/demos/verticals/US/BD/news/detNews/detNews _relatedContent_noAd.html (Due to its length, this URL may need to be copied/pasted into your Internet browser’s address field. Remove the extra space if one exists.)

According to one recent report on web use*, “Link-following continues to be the most common navigation action, accounting for about 45% of all page transitions.” By providing more links from within their own archives, Vibrant Related Content gives publishers a significant tool to propel “forward navigation,” eliminate “dead ends” and keep users on their website. In addition to the publisher’s own content, Vibrant intends to provide access to additional music and video content.

About Vibrant

Vibrant, a world leading contextual advertising network, gives marketers the opportunity to deliver highly targeted, user-initiated advertisements within the text of premium Web content and offers publishers premium editorial tools to recirculate users throughout their websites. The company works closely with advertisers, agencies and Web publishers to plan, buy, deliver and optimize contextual campaigns across 3,500 premium publisher websites. Reaching more than 120 million unique users per month (Comscore, May 2008), Vibrant Media manages more than five hundred billion words and phrases each month for top advertisers such as Microsoft, Unilever, New Line Cinema and IBM. The company was founded in 2000 and has offices in London, New York, Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco, Paris and Hamburg, with more than 200 employees. Vibrant’s rapid growth has been recognized by both the Inc. 500 and Deloitte Fast 50 lists. For more information, visit: www.vibrantmedia.com, www.vibrantmedia.co.uk, www.vibrantmedia.de, www.vibrantmedia.fr.

*”Not Quite the Average: An Empirical Study of Web Use,” Harald Weinreich and Hartmut Obendorf, University of Hamburg; Eelco Herder, University of Hannover; and Matthias Mayer, University of Hamburg, February 2008.

Jonathan Baron joins Vibrant as the new Vice President of International Sales where he will lead pan-European sales as well as new territories including Russia, Eastern Europe and Asia. Before coming to Vibrant, Baron served as Microsoft Advertising’s Asia Regional Sales Director and then led the Multinational Sales force for the U.S., EMEA and Asia. Prior to that, he headed pan -regional sales in Asia for MSN. Jonathan got his start in the publishing business at United News Media, EMAP and IPC.

Naomi Ferguson brings extensive knowledge and experience to Vibrant as Head of Technology Client Sales. Previously, Naomi managed the technology, telecoms and gambling categories at AOL. Prior to that, Naomi worked at the Financial Times where she was Group Head of Technology Client Sales.

Carl Jordan comes to Vibrant as Director of Publisher Solutions Europe. He will lead the relationship with publishers and extend Vibrant’s reach by solidifying its position as the partner of choice for publishers across Europe. Carl comes from Google where he was responsible for providing discovery, monetisation and commerce solutions to media and publishers within the EMEA region. The portfolio of products included Google Websearch, Adwords, News, Maps, AdSense and Checkout. Before that, Carl was Head of Agency Sales UK for Yahoo Search Marketing (formerly Overture) and prior to that he was the Agency Sales Manager for Emap Metro Online.

Sheila Williams, Vibrant’s new Publisher Solutions Director UK, comes from Associated Northcliffe Digital where she served as Head of Digital Partnerships. Sheila has worked in publishing for over 14 years, most of that online. Her broad experience includes selling display advertising on some of EMAP’s leading consumer magazines, agency sales across The Times and Sunday Times, sponsorship and promotions across IPC brands.

Says Craig Gooding, Vibrant COO and Co-founder, “We have nearly doubled our staff in London over the last six months in order to grow our existing European businesses and break into new markets in Russia, Eastern Europe and Asia. These high powered hires will, on the one hand, help grow our premium publisher network to deliver significant incremental revenues for our publisher partners and, on the other hand, deepen and expand our relationships with advertisers to deliver a suite of solutions based on our proprietary contextual technology.

Other new hires in the London office include: Matt Boak as Senior Account Manager, Alex Davies as Account Manager, Emmy Lacey as Account Manager, Tom Pepper as Account Manager, Fiona Salmon as Account Director, Fola Sullivan as Account Director and Anna Tracey, who returns to head the UK Sales team.
About Vibrant Media
Headquartered in New York, Vibrant Media is a world leading video and contextual advertising network, giving marketers the opportunity to deliver highly targeted, user-initiated advertisements within the text of premium Web content. The company works closely with advertisers, agencies and Web publishers to plan, buy, deliver and optimize Vibrant In-Text Advertising campaigns across thousands of websites. Vibrant Video provides measurable brand engagement through the largest pay per click video advertising network. Reaching more than 120 million unique users per month, Vibrant Media manages more than five billion words per month for top advertisers such as Sony, Intel, New Line Cinema, Microsoft and Toyota. The company was founded in 2000 and has offices in New York, Chicago, Detroit, San Francisco, London, Paris and Hamburg, with more than 200 employees. The Company’s rapid growth has been recognized by both the Inc. 500 and Deloitte Fast 50 list for two consecutive years. For more information, visit www.vibrantmedia.com.

“These awards reflect the growing influence of in-text on the advertising landscape as a whole.” Says Craig Gooding, CCO and Co-founder, Vibrant Media, “We have seen the industry embrace in-text advertising since our inception in 2000 and today Vibrant works with the world’s leading brand advertisers who are reaching more than 120 million users worldwide. The Vibrant Awards is designed to inspire excellence and we want to thank the winners for delivering some of the smartest, most impactful and creative executions of in-text and contextual video advertising across Europe.”

Hundreds of campaigns from around the world were considered and evaluated based on creativity, word selection and the campaign’s ability to effectively communicate the brand message/meet campaign objectives. European finalists included:
Adidas – End2End project
BP – Race for Champions
Chrysler France – Sebring Launch
Coke – Grand Theft Auto ‘Give a little Love’
Corel – Fortunately
Diageo – Pimms
Fiat – Fiat 500
Ford – Kuga
Fortis – Business leader
HP – The Computer is Personal
IBM UK – Wimbledon
Intel – Intel Centrium Processors
Karstadt – Jubel
Lloyds TSB – Premier Loans
Microsoft – Windows Mobile
Nike – Football T90
Nintendo – Super Paper Mario
Nissan – Urban Proof
Paramount Pictures – The Kite Runner
Sky – Lost Series 4
Tourism Ireland – Visit Ireland
Unilever – Axe Shock deodorant
xBox – Fun for all
Yahoo! – Yahoo! Answers
The distinguished panel of industry judges consisted of:

* Guy Phillipson, CEO, IAB UK
* Peter Bale, Executive Producer, Microsoft
* Dr. Jochen Kalka, Editor-in-Chief, W&V
* Susan Kingston, Business Director International, Neo@Ogilvy
* Rich Sutcliffe, Digital Editor, Media Week
* Richard Townsend, Managing Partner, Circus Street
* Rob Watt, Media Director, Avenue A | Razorfish

Three awards were presented.

Gold Award:
First Place (Gold) was awarded to Yahoo! Answers (Carat Digital, UK). The campaign creative was custom built for in-text and designed to intelligently align the Yahoo! Answers database of real user questions with relevant words within online web content. Each creative was pre-populated with actual questions asked by Yahoo!’s users. For example the word “pasta” would trigger the question “how do you cook pasta?”. This unit would drive users to real-time answers related to cooking pasta and the opportunity to post their own responses. This campaign ran across 12 different sectors and achieved an outstanding average CTR.

Silver Award:
Second Place (Silver) went to Fiat (Isobar, France) for their 2008 Fiat 500 campaign. Fiat used words such as ‘compact’, ‘chic’ and ‘fun’ to deliver creative that featured objects commonly identified with these words. These objects created a personality for the compact car and the relevant product and emotional words helped to raise awareness amongst their two target audiences of core targets and early adopters. The average CTR for the campaign was excellent.

Judges Choice Award:
Finally, the Judges Choice Award (Blue), is a special honour awarded to Chrysler France (Mediaedge:cia / Proximity BBDO, France) for its innovative and creative Chrysler Sebring launch in France. Creative agency Proximity BBDO France created five videos clips specifically for in-text that focused on daily situations (e.g. cooking dinner, asleep in bed, doing exercise). The creative maximised the intimacy of the internet with a comic video clip. As the user moved their mouse over relevant words within web content they would trigger an ad that would show a man who had been interrupted during his daily routines. The clips were shown relative to the time of day so if the user moused over in the morning they would see him being woken up or in the evening they would see him cooking dinner. The annoyed man would play an active role, directing users on how to use the unit to click for photos, car information, their local dealer or to request a brochure on the new Chrysler Sebring.

Vibrant will be hosting its US inaugural Vibrant Awards on 12th June in New York.

About Vibrant Media
Vibrant Media is a world leading video and contextual advertising network, giving marketers the opportunity to deliver highly targeted, user-initiated advertisements The company works closely with advertisers, agencies and Web publishers to plan, buy, deliver and optimise Vibrant In-Text Advertising campaigns across thousands of websites. Vibrant Video provides measurable brand engagement through the largest pay per click video advertising network. Reaching more than 120 million unique users per month, Vibrant Media manages more than five billion words per month for top advertisers such as Sony, Intel, New Line Cinema, Microsoft and Toyota. The company was founded in 2000 and has offices in New York, London, San Francisco, Chicago, Detroit, Paris and Hamburg, with more than 200 employees. The Company’s rapid growth has been recognised by both the Inc. 500 and Deloitte Fast 50 list for two consecutive years. For more information, visit www.vibrantmedia.co.uk.

San Francisco, CA, March 17, 2008 – Kontera, a leading provider of In-Text Advertising for online publishers and advertisers, announces the launch of the Kontera Hybrid, the first In-Text solution to deliver contextually relevant content and advertising in a single unit.

Kontera Hybrid enables publishers to serve related content and ads which appear when a user mouses-over a highlighted keyword. The new unit will feature links to related articles, videos, and images related to the highlighted keyword and page. Publishers will have the ability to display a contextually relevant advertisement from their own advertisers, from Kontera’s network of advertisers, or both.
For example, in an article about working out on MensFitness.com, the keywords “upper body” might be double-underlined and hyperlinked. When a user mouses-over the keyword, a Kontera Hybrid unit opens showing related articles, information and a MensFitness.com advertiser. The unit might include links to articles and videos about upper body workouts, or it could display other similarly themed content from MensFitness.com. Click here to see the Kontera Hybrid in action  at
www.mensfitness.com

The real value of the Kontera Hybrid to advertisers and publishers is in its ability to engage users. Publishers running Kontera Hybrid have experienced a 20% engagement rate for the ads and content featured in the unit, and an increase in page views. Kontera Hybrid utilizes the company’s technology, which is powered by over a dozen In-Text technology patents pending.

The Kontera Hybrid is being rolled out across several American Media, Inc. (AMI) websites, including Men’s Fitness, Star, and National Enquirer. AMI is a leading publishing company in the celebrity journalism and health & fitness categories.

“As a premium magazine publisher, with a wide variety of online properties, our biggest asset is our content,” said Pamela Russo, Vice President, Director Interactive Operations, American Media Inc. “We chose the Kontera Hybrid to be AMI’s exclusive In-Text solution provider because it increases user engagement by encouraging readers to read more of our content, and because it generates additional advertising revenue. Kontera’s technology drives high click-through rates for both the ads and the related content areas because of the high degree of relevancy.  The fact that the technology can dynamically deliver my own database of advertisers into the Kontera Hybrid is a benefit to AMI.”

“The name of the game in online advertising is ‘user value’ and ‘engagement’, and Kontera’s service, which integrates relevant informational content including video, text and images with relevant advertising, delivers on both promises,” said Michael Moritz, Partner, Sequoia Capital.

“For the first time in the In-Text market, the Kontera Hybrid is offering an In-Text solution that incorporates contextually relevant content and advertisements in a single unit whose unprecedented click-through rates serve as proof of the value provided to users, publishers and advertisers alike,” said Yoav Shaham, CEO and Co-Founder at Kontera.

About Kontera

Kontera is a leading provider of In-Text Advertising & Information Solutions, based on patent-pending contextual analysis technology that highlights the most relevant keywords in the content of a page and delivers the most relevant ads and information against the keywords.   Kontera works closely with advertisers and publishers to maximize revenue, optimize performance and enhance overall user experience.  Kontera has over 9,000 publishers in its network, reaches over 75 Million unique users per month and works with thousands of brand and direct marketers across many verticals.  Founded in 2003, Kontera is backed by Sequoia Capital, Lehman Brothers and Carmel Ventures and has offices in San Francisco, New York and Tel Aviv.  For more about the Kontera Hybrid, please visit: www.kontera.com/hybrid