Teams Up with Top Hollywood Talent –Tom Hanks and Anthony Zuiker

Announces New Project from Creators of ‘Rock of Ages’ and Third Slate of Original Programming for Men

ABC’s Ben Sherwood Announces a New Katie Couric Program as Part of Yahoo! News/ABC News Premier Media Partnership

NEW YORK - Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO), the premier digital media company, showcased a stellar line-up of original video for its monthly global audience of 700 million users at its Digital Content NewFront event today in New York City. Top Hollywood talent and industry leaders such as Tom Hanks, Anthony Zuiker, Ben Sherwood (ABC News), Bob Bowman (MLB), Ken Marino, Fabio Vivani (Top Chef) in addition to surprise guests, took part in Yahoo!’s event.

A trailblazer in original video programming online and #1 in Finance, News, Sports and Entertainment-News*, Yahoo! highlighted existing offerings and unveiled a number of new projects, covering a variety of topics – from sports to fashion to relationships – and featuring unique voices, hosts, and creative talent. The new projects include:

• From the creators of “Rock of Ages,” Matthew Weaver and Chris D’Arienzo introduce working title, “Dancing With Myself,” a musical “jukebox” comedy, produced by Matthew Weaver and RelativityREAL, featuring classic 80’s pop songs;
• Introduction of the company’s third slate of original video programming targeted at men, with six shows, including a talk show in development with Jeff Goldblum, “Stunt Nation,” with host Sal Masekela, demolition program “KaBOOM,” and daily show “The MANual”;
• The premiere of Katie Couric’s new web show on May 1, “Katie’s Take.” Each week, Couric will explore topics and issues that matter most to her viewers – including health, nutrition, parenting, and wellness. Every episode will feature interviews with top experts in a variety of fields as well as Couric’s own personal, fun and unique perspective. Poland Spring Natural Spring Water is the exclusive launch sponsor of this series which will be featured on a dedicated page on Yahoo!.

At the NewFront, Yahoo! highlighted what makes it unique among web distributors: Premium content, programming and curation, exclusive experiences, leading content verticals and the scale that only its global audience can bring.

As part of the premier news and information alliance between ABC News and Yahoo! News, Ben Sherwood was on hand to discuss the success of the partnership to date and announce “Katie’s Take,” a weekly online-only video program hosted by Katie Couric and only on Yahoo! News, with a focus on health and lifestyle trends and issues. Yahoo! walked through its groundbreaking 2012 election coverage, anchored by “Remake America,” a weekly video docu-series that follows the lives of six families as they strive to get back on track towards achieving the American dream. Yahoo!’s leading news video also features “Power Players,” a daily political series produced in conjunction with ABC News, featuring George Stephanopoulos, Jake Tapper, Jonathan Karl, John Berman, Amy Walter, Rick Klein, and Yahoo!’s Washington Bureau Chief David Chalian.

Yahoo! covered its journalistic excellence in Finance, with over 40 million unique visitors a month (comScore Media Metrix, US March 2012) coming to Yahoo! Finance for financial news and information, and more viewers watching Yahoo!’s original video programming “The Daily Ticker” and “Breakout” than any other business/financial show online or on cable television. Yahoo!’s leadership continues in sports, the No. 1 sports site online, with nearly 55 million unique monthly visitors (comScore Media Metrix, US January 2012) and is No. 1 in fantasy**. Yahoo! Sports has a standard of uncompromised investigative journalism—resulting in an impressive number of industry-shaping stories broken by Yahoo! journalists in 2012, from the Syracuse men’s basketball team scandal to a specific part of the New Orleans Saints bounty violations.

Yahoo!’s video franchises are programmed in the context of its leading media verticals, as well as in its premium video destination, Yahoo! Screen. The programs announced today complement an already robust video portfolio, which includes 15 original video production partners and over 40 original series, totaling more than 300 original episodes per month.

Yahoo!’s diverse original video portfolio includes:

• Branded Entertainment—Yahoo! has had a long history of partnering with marketers to develop custom programs and branded creative executions. For example, The Thread sponsored by Proctor and Gamble, had over 3 million unique users a month (comScore MediaBuilder, March 2012).
• Slates— With the launch of the Women’s slate, which to date has seen over 250 million streams (internal data), Yahoo! changed the way advertisers buy online programming by enabling them to buy ad spots across all eight new shows. The additional slates including the Yahoo! Comedy Channel and men’s slate will include the same “Share of Voice” opportunities for advertisers.
  • Yahoo! launched season two of the women’s slate, including five renewals and three new shows, such as ”Style Studio with Rebecca Minkoff,” hosted by the famed fashion designer (coming May 2012); ”The Yo Show,” featuring entertainment news reporter Michael Yo, and a new version of “In the Dressing Room with Cat Deeley,” hosted by the fashion expert and TV personality (coming this spring).
• Blockbusters—Yahoo! is uniquely positioned to deliver one-of-a-kind, immersive, global blockbusters from the world’s biggest storytellers –
  • ‘Electric City,’ is a new 90-minute, action-packed sci-fi adventure series; it marks Yahoo!’s first foray into original scripted programming.
  • Cybergeddon, a digital motion picture from CSI creator Anthony Zuiker, which, in partnership with Norton by Symantec, will bring to life the growing threat of cybercrime.

“The media and advertising industries are at a watershed moment, and no one is more poised to take advantage of the shift toward digital content than Yahoo!. Globally, we are a digital media powerhouse, providing high-quality, engaging & personalized content on every screen,” said Ross Levinsohn, EVP & Head of Global Media. “We’re partnering with industry leaders and top Hollywood talent, creating unique, premium experiences for distinct audiences around the world. By doing so, we create a tremendous opportunity for advertisers to connect with highly engaged and targeted audiences. We provide the content experiences that consumers want and the context that advertisers desire.”

“Yahoo! is setting the standard for original online entertainment,” said Mickie Rosen, SVP, Yahoo! Media Network. “We’re bringing celebrated storytellers and sophisticated production capabilities to provide our audience with the types of immersive experiences they’re seeking more of on the Web.”

“Yahoo! has emerged as the top choice for marketers,” said Wayne Powers, SVP, Advertising sales North America. “We understand better than anyone how to seamlessly blend their messages to target audiences within the context of our unique and compelling content experiences.”

Re-Imagining The Digital Canvas for Advertisers

Yahoo!’s original programming model provides advertisers with a unique buying opportunities, where they can align their brands with premium content at scale. With a creative canvas that uses innovative ad solutions, advertisers can reach and engage digital video audiences with streaming ads like Interactive Video Ads or through display ads like Video Ads for the Yahoo! Homepage.

Using its data and insights, content optimization and personalization technology, Yahoo! is able to identify programming topics that appeal to a variety of different demographics pertaining to the content of the shows. With its deep expertise in contextualizing video experiences, Yahoo! has developed the perfect opportunity for brands to laser-target their consumers.

The full descriptions for Yahoo!’s new original programming line-up for 2012 and beyond includes:

Working Title – Dancing With Myself (Debuts 2013)
From the creators of “Rock Of Ages” comes a musical “jukebox” comedy set in small town Ohio in the mid-80′s, and fueled by a soundtrack of the greatest pop/rock songs of that era. A comedic homage to after school specials of that era, the working title “Dancing With Myself” is an irreverent and satirical tale of one teen’s quest to fit in and find himself, his girl, and his passion… and maybe a few sweet dance moves along the way. (Matthew Weaver/ Chris D’Arienzo /RelativityREAL)

Men’s Slate of Shows and Talent:

Talk Show In Development- No Title (Debuts in July)
Host: Jeff Goldblum
Details to be announced soon
(Yahoo! Studios)

Stunt Nation (Debuts in July)
Host: Sal Masekela
A jump shot that bounces five ways to Sunday before landing in the hoop with nothing but net. The guy who stuffs 30 tacos in his face in 30 seconds. The synchronized dance number staged on a speeding rollercoaster…. For anyone who’s ever wondered how they did it (or if it’s all been faked), Stunt Nation is your fast-paced guide to online enlightenment. In each five-minute episode, we see three hilarious, cringe-inducing stunts and feats that demand a second look. But this isn’t just a clip review show. Each week, we’ll have an expert guest who, Mythbusters-style, will help our host breakdown the feat of the week. Each episode is capped off with the weekly FAIL, a feat gone horribly wrong, proving that while the Internet gives, it also takes away. Five minutes. Four feats. One ultimate show. (Fishbowl Worldwide Media. Executive Producers Vin Di Bona, Bruce Gersh and David Beebe)

Yahoo! Sports Minute (Live)
Host: Angela Sun
Like everyone these days, sports fans are busier than ever. But even though their time may be limited, their passion never is. That’s why there’s the Yahoo! Sports Minute –a daily show that quickly gets millions of sports fans up-to-speed on everything that is happening in the sports world. Hosted by the amazing Angela Sun, the Yahoo! Sports Minute is the series that anchors the entire Yahoo! Sports experience and this slate. The show has been the number one online sports show for four years running with more than 46M streams per year and over 7M minutes per month to the largest sports audience online. (Yahoo! Studios)

KaBOOM! (Debuts in July)
Host: To be announced
Featuring a gorgeous host, a hilarious explosives expert and plenty of firepower…it’s three minutes of man nirvana. The concept is simple and impossible to resist: Ridiculously fun objects getting blown to smithereens. Boom and repeat. Man is not capable of ignoring an explosion. It’s in their DNA. KaBOOM! speaks to that little deviant in each of us. Each episode features our jaw dropping “Bombshell” hostess introducing an item that is about to meet its demise. Objects include 500 Twinkies, 1000 eggs, a 10 ft stuffed Panda, a mountain of Boy Band CD’s… Next our charismatic bomb-geek-expert analyzes the fine points of what we can expect and how he is rigging the object for maximum kaBOOM! Ten cameras capture all the action in real time, slo-mo, super-slo-mo and of course our trademarked Slo-As-A-Mo-Fo. The aftermath is as fun as the set up. (Eyeboogie)

The MANual (Debuts in July)
Hosts: To be announced
Monday through Friday, The MANual presents the ultimate guide to rising above masculine mediocrity. From booze and babes, to sex and style, to food and fitness – we’ve gathered the world’s most influential men’s lifestyle experts and the world’s hottest women to bring you daily advice on simply being a better guy. Delivered with a concise mixture of humor and expertise, The MANual covers the topics we know men truly crave. Whether grilling a burger, complimenting a date, or finding your dream job, The MANual is the ultimate men’s guide to rising above the rest. (Yahoo! Studios)

Superfans (Debuts in July)
Superfans examines the amazing, bizarre and emotional extremes that fans will go to in their daily lives – all in the name of fandom. From family rooms modeled after Lambeau Field, to 300 straight days of wearing the same Drew Brees jersey, to 64 years without missing a game at Fenway, Superfans is an entertaining mix of unbelievable fanaticism and endearing loyalty. This addictive program is a sure-fire hit with our Yahoo! audience who craves extreme stories of fervor, oddity and love. (Yahoo! Studios)

About Yahoo!

Yahoo! 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.net) or the company’s blog, Yodel Anecdotal (yodel.yahoo.com).

CrunchBase Information on Yahoo

New Brand Spotlights Videos that are Relevant NOW Across 14 Content Channels

NEW YORK - AOL launched AOL On, a platform of AOL’s complete video offerings and a curated video hub for consumers that offers premium video across 14 content channels including food, business, entertainment, style, tech, travel, health and others, reaching an audience of 57 million US consumers*. The launch of the AOL On Network brings AOL’s entire video offering under one umbrella that delivers premium content at significant scale within desired audience segments. Recognizing the increasing trend toward multi-screen consumption, all of the videos from AOL can be seen across four screens – desktop, tablet, mobile devices and connected TV devices. The launch of the AOL On Network was announced at AOL’s 2012 Digital Content NewFront, where more than 450 brand advertisers, marketers, agencies and digital and TV media buyers came together to see AOL’s new slate of video programming, meet original programming producers and casts, and experience the power and reach of the AOL brand.

At the center of the consumer experience is the AOL On video hub (http://on.aol.com), a premier destination for consumers to discover all the videos they should be watching. AOL On offers a true point of view, curating the best videos including news, lifestyle and entertainment. AOL On will surface the most relevant videos in real-time from a library of over 320,000 high quality, short-form videos created by more than 1,000 premier publishers and AOL. The voice of AOL On will be expressed through highly curated shows, channels and video playlists integrating a range of programming, from AOL original products to partner content. High profile celebrities like Nina Garcia, Rachel Roy, Heidi Klum, Adrian Grenier, Erin Fetherston, Marc Forgione, Sam Talbot and Christine Vachon have already signed on to curate AOL On playlists and share their passions and unique perspectives with audiences.

“AOL is a brand company. We offer innovative platforms like the AOL On Network, along with vibrant and engaging video content that we know people are flocking to the Web to consume at an unprecedented velocity,” said Tim Armstrong, Chairman and CEO, AOL. “With the launch of AOL On we are bringing people closer to the things that matter, while helping them discover and share the stories and information that color their lives.”

On Every Topic, On Every Screen:

The AOL On Network is comprised of the former AOL Video, goviral, StudioNow and AOL HD brands. According to eMarketer, U.S. online video spend is projected to reach $7 billion in 2015**. The AOL On Network is well positioned in North America to capture advertising through deep brand integration in the video experience, and sponsored content via pre-roll of channels and individual playlists across categories.

“AOL On goes beyond the traditional online video experience and delivers premium, curated video in the right context at the right time – be it on your desktop, tablet, smart phone or connected TV devices,” said Ran Harnevo, Senior Vice President, Video, AOL On. “Consumers need a destination to discover videos on the topics that matter when they want them. AOL On is at the intersection of relevant entertainment and information served in a way that helps consumers stay on top of what’s ‘on’ now.”

Harnevo continued, “The AOL offering can be a compliment or viable alternative to traditional TV-buying strategies, and we are well-positioned not only from a scale perspective, but from a programming perspective to capture TV dollars. It is undeniable that online video has strategic advantages relative to TV, and we have the programming, audience and measurement tools to not only target audiences but find them where they are on the Web.”

The AOL On Network is one of the top 10 video platforms on the Web, and is number one in categories including Fashion, Tech, Auto, Travel, Food and Home. The Network attracts 861 million video streams per month, with users spending a total of 2.4 billion minutes consuming video.*

Consumers can experience AOL On content across the desktop, mobile and tablet optimized sites and apps, and in the living room through AOL On HD via Samsung, Sony, Roku, Google TV, Boxee and Yahoo! Connected TV devices.

Original Programming Series Announced Today:

• Digital Justice – Live today on AOL On Tech and HuffPost Crime, Digital Justice is a weekly reality show that follows digital forensic investigators as they solve cyber crimes. The series deep dives into fascinating crime prevention units that are using the latest digital technology.
• Fetching – Written by Sex and the City’s Amy Harris, Fetching is set against the backdrop of New York City and stars Liza – a young woman who quit her job as a lawyer and ended her engagement in the same week—in hopes of pursuing her dreams of opening her own business, a doggy daycare store called “Fetching.”
• Little Women Big Cars – Debuting on May 7, the web series is centered around four soccer moms struggling to balance their busy schedules, family lives and sanity.
• Next Door Hero – A new, unscripted series that features everyday Americans with extraordinary stories. This new series will put an action-filled spotlight on America’s bravest everyday heroes.
• Nina Garcia – Whether you’re embarking on a new relationship, just starting a new career or have a new baby, two things just happened: you found a new life and you lost your groove. The swag, thrill and the mojo of your look is totally gone and there’s only one woman that can help you get it back: Nina Garcia.
• Tiger Beat Entertainment – A deeper, more thoughtful lifestyle and entertainment show for and by teens and young adults covering a wide variety of pop culture and lifestyle categories with a genuine point of view.
• ur + 1 – Similar to popular sports-related fantasy games, the ur + 1 gaming platform will allow users to pick teams of celebrities to compete for points based on their coverage on AOL properties. Celebrity-related content across HuffPost Celebrity, HuffPost Entertainment, Moviefone, AOL Music and HuffPost TV will be a part of the gaming experience, encouraging users to read, comment and share the content.

Earlier this month AOL announced a partnership with Nielsen to offer marketers guaranteed audience delivery for online video advertising campaigns bought across its properties. This is the first time that online GRPs – based on audience demographics, rather than clicks or impressions – are being used as the basis for advertiser guarantees on the Web.

* comScore March 2012; total U.S. video viewers

** eMarketer, July 2011

About AOL:

AOL Inc. (NYSE: AOL) is a brand company, committed to continuously innovating, growing, and investing in brands and experiences that 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.

Cost-per-engagement pioneer tackles wasted impressions with exposure-based viewable impressions pricing; launches new “Content Ads”

SAN FRANCISCO - SAY Media announced its cost-per-exposure (CPX) pricing model and the availability of “Content Ads” – a new ad product designed to meet the unique needs of small- to medium-sized businesses – that will be billed on the company’s new exposure-based pricing methodology. Helping lead the industry shift away from an impressions-based pricing structure and toward a more accountable and transparent model, SAY Media has developed the technology needed to ensure advertisers get the most value by charging only for ads that are visible within a user’s browser.

“Counting ads served and not ads seen is one of the biggest problems plaguing digital media. Web publishing today is built on an unconstrained pricing model that incentivizes more ‘impressions’ regardless of any connection to real users. In fact, according to comScore’s figures, more than 30 percent of ads served go unseen by consumers, which means one-third of advertisers’ dollars are wasted,” said Matt Sanchez, CEO, SAY Media. “Similar to our industry-first efforts around cost-per-engagement, the launch of CPX eliminates these wasted impressions by only charging for ads seen by consumers.”

The company’s newly released Content Ads feature a highly refined creative execution that looks and feels tightly integrated with adjacent editorial content. These ads are the company’s first product to be billed on the CPX-accountable pricing structure. This combination of factors help SAY Media clients achieve an average clickthrough rate three to four times higher than the industry average and guarantees brand exposure for their advertising spend. The introduction of this new ad unit and its exposure-based pricing coincides with a wider demand for accountability of display advertising metrics that the IAB, ANA and 4A’s recently brought to light with their landmark “Making Measurement Make Sense” initiative.

SAY’s initiative around standardizing a viewable impressions pricing model remains consistent with the company’s Clean Campaign vision to make digital media premium by eliminating webpage clutter and creating the right balance between editorial and advertising. SAY’s efforts to create more accountability and transparency in the industry through measures like CPX will provide a truer picture of the ROI of digital advertising and ultimately attract more advertising dollars for digital.

About SAY Media

SAY Media is a digital publishing company that creates amazing media brands. Through its technology platform and media services, SAY enables its portfolio of independent content creators to build passionate communities around key consumer interest areas such as Style, Living, Food and Tech. The company provides simple and accountable ways for the world’s top brands to engage with these passionate audiences, at scale, with a reach of more than 500 million people around the world. SAY Media is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices across North America, in the UK and Australia. For more information visit www.saymedia.com.

CrunchBase Information on Saymedia

Ahead of Digital Content NewFronts, AOL Becomes First Major Publisher to Offer TV-Like GRP Guarantee for Online Video

Leverages Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings^TM Measurement to Guarantee On-Target Audience Delivery

NEW YORK - AOL, Inc. (NYSE: AOL) announced it will offer marketers guaranteed audience delivery for online video advertising campaigns bought across its properties. This is the first time that online GRPs – based on audience demographics, rather than clicks or impressions – are being used as the basis for advertiser guarantees on the Web. AOL will leverage Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings^TM reach, frequency and gross rating point (GRP) measurement to determine how well it delivered ads to the desired target audience. As the digital content NewFronts approach, AOL is the first major publisher to use a TV-based guarantee model for its online video inventory. Online video ads are one of the fastest-growing formats: eMarketer predicted a 52% increase in online video ad spend for 2011.*

“As marketers and advertisers increasingly shift dollars from traditional television advertising to the Web, partnering with Nielsen puts AOL in a unique position to offer a more cost effective mechanism for reaching targeted audiences and a better or equal brand lift, reach and recall,” said Ran Harnevo, Senior Vice President, AOL Video. “AOL has a significant volume of high-quality content valued by advertisers and we are excited to take the lead on showing marketers the value and differentiated results we can guarantee.”

“With online video increasingly playing a role in traditional TV Upfront buying and selling, consistent cross-platform metrics are becoming more and more critical to proving the true value of advertising on a site, in terms that are familiar to brand marketers,” said Steve Hasker, President, Media Products and Advertiser Solutions, Nielsen. “This is the first time that online GRPs – based on audience demographics, rather than clicks or impressions – are being used as the basis for advertiser guarantees on the Web. We are pleased that AOL, the first major publisher to use an audience demo-based guarantee model for its online video inventory, turned to Nielsen’s highly accurate reach, frequency and online GRP measurement to drive increased confidence in their platform as a brand medium. We look forward to working with them to demonstrate their ability to effectively deliver on their clients’ goals.”

AOL hosted clients at its Digital Content NewFront presentation on April 24 in New York, NY, and premiered significant video opportunities on sale to marketers and advertisers. As one of the largest online video platforms with original programs including Sessions, Heidi Klum on AOL, Moviefone’s Unscripted and The Engadget Show, it breadth and volume across audiences including women, teens & young adults and influencers.

Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings launched in August 2011 providing the first-ever Media Rating Council (MRC) accredited GRP for online advertising campaigns of any size with metrics similar to those used for TV advertising, enabling cross-media planning and analysis. Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings is part of the Nielsen Campaign Ratings suite, which provides a full range of premiere advertising audience measurement. Nielsen’s full suite of solutions also includes Nielsen Cross-Platform Campaign Ratings, which integrates media planning and measurement across television and the Internet to provide clients with total and overlapped reach and frequency of their marketing campaigns, and a Breakthrough metric for web campaigns for a more complete view of campaign performance, including how much of the total audience actually recalled the ad. Since its launch, Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings has run more than 600 campaigns for over 50 brands, across more than 400 websites. The service will be expanded to international markets, beginning with the United Kingdom, later this year.

*eMarketer, US Online Ad Spend Poised to Grow 20% in 2011

About AOL

AOL Inc. (NYSE: AOL) is a brand company, committed to continuously innovating, growing, and investing in brands and experiences that 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.

About Nielsen

Nielsen Holdings N.V. (NYSE: NLSN) is a global information and measurement company with leading market positions in marketing and consumer information, television and other media measurement, online intelligence, mobile measurement, trade shows and related properties. Nielsen has a presence in approximately 100 countries, with headquarters in New York, USA and Diemen, the Netherlands. For more information, visit www.nielsen.com.

CrunchBase Information on Aol
CrunchBase Information on Nielsen

With highly personalized recommendations, publishers see 4X increase in videos viewed, enabling greater revenue streams for content on smartphones, tablets, PCs and connected TVs

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - Ooyala, the fastest-growing company in online video, introduced a new innovation in content discovery that enables publishers to dramatically improve monetization of multi-screen video. In pre-release with select customers, the technology is already driving a 4X increase in consumer engagement, meaning longer viewing periods, more videos completed and increased revenue.

As the newest addition to its full suite of online video products and services, Ooyala’s content discovery technology uses proprietary algorithms, machine learning and collaborative filtering to deliver the most personalized content recommendations and dynamic programming guides across all screens. These advanced techniques leverage the data collected from nearly 200 million monthly viewers who watch Ooyala-powered video experiences across the web.

This global user base drives over two billion analytics events each day, providing detailed insights into viewer behavior and video trends. Ooyala’s content discovery engine applies real-time analytics processing to this and dozens of other inputs to provide a continuous stream of content recommendations that are locally, personally and socially relevant. These recommendations are seamlessly integrated into the viewing experience, leading to increased revenue streams from advertising, video-on-demand or paywall transactions.

“Ooyala’s vision is every screen personalized. Our new content discovery technology is a major milestone towards that goal. With automated content recommendations and personalized programming guides, we’re creating a much stronger connection between content providers and their audience,” said Bismarck Lepe, co-founder and president of products for Ooyala.

“Personalization is the future, not just for online video but for the entire TV industry,” said Jay Fulcher, chief executive officer of Ooyala. “Consumers today expect a linear, TV-like experience, whether on their phone, tablet, connected TV or PC. With our global reach and five years of collecting and analyzing big data for online video, we’re now giving publishers a decided advantage in delivering that experience in the most engaging and profitable way.”

“Forward-thinking content providers have figured out that success hinges on their ability to turn analog dollars into digital dollars,” said Mike McGuire, vice president, research, media industry advisory services for Gartner, Inc. “Capturing the attention and imagination of consumers engaging with TV content in new ways requires highly personalized video experiences driven by real business intelligence, where big data plays a major role.”

CrunchBase Information on Ooyala

Agencies, brands and publishers can create VAST-compatible ads

IRVINE, Calif. - Local Corporation (NASDAQ: LOCM), a leading online local media company, announced new online video ad capabilities for its rich media solutions, powered by the Rovion ad management platform.

Users can now develop creative for Video Ad Serving Template (VAST)-compatible ad units for in-player video distribution using the platform. In-Stream video advertising is a key component of ad campaigns, as video becomes a more prevalent vehicle for effectively delivering key messages and content.

According to research firm eMarketer, U.S. online video ad spending is predicted to grow 43 percent in 2012. The Rovion platform now offers agencies, brands and publishers a way to capitalize on this growth by providing a no-code creative environment to quickly produce VAST-compliant ads.

The company is also incorporating its flexible ad synchronization feature set into the Rovion platform. Flexible ad syncing makes it easy for anyone to choreograph complex interactions between multiple ad units on a single page served via a single ad tag, without the use of code.

“Our goal has been to create an innovative rich media ad platform that was unmatched in the marketplace that incorporates unique and disruptive features and functionality,” said Michael Sawtell, Local Corporation president and COO. “These additional feature sets move us closer to that objective.”

The Rovion ad management platform is a cloud-based solution that enables the advertising ecosystem to create and publish original rich media ads without code or Adobe Flash® authoring software. The platform is completely customizable and its drag-and-drop functionality helps companies develop rich media ad units with a single tag that can be viewed online or on mobile devices.

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

About Local Corporation

Local Corporation (NASDAQ:LOCM) is a local media company that specializes in connecting brick-and-mortar businesses with online customers using a variety of innovative digital marketing products including local rich media, local business and product search, mobile, SEO, web hosting, social media and daily deals. The company serves a million consumers a day on the flagship Local.com website, Spreebird.com and a network of over 1,000 regional media sites. To advertise, or for more information, visit: http://www.local.com/ orhttp://www.localcorporation.com.

Neal Richter, PhD, The Rubicon Project, and Qayed Shareef Join Renowned Team Providing Strategic Guidance to mediaFORGE

SALT LAKE CITY - mediaFORGE, the leader in dynamic display media innovation, is proud to announce the addition of two industry thought leaders to its advisory board, Neal Richter, PhD, and Qayed Shareef.

Neal Richter, PhD, Chief Scientist for The Rubicon Project, brings 15 years of experience as a software engineer and scientist. His in-depth expertise in machine learning, search engines, and computational advertising strongly position him to provide technological counsel as mediaFORGE continues to innovate display media products. Neal came to Rubicon via the acquisition of OthersOnline, an audience analytics startup. He also spent eight years creating self-learning artificial-intelligence based functionality for RightNow Technologies’ eService CRM suite. Neal has a doctorate in computer science from Montana State University.

Qayed Shareef brings to mediaFORGE more than 11 years of marketing, sales, and operations experience in digital advertising. Most recently, Qayed was Executive Vice President of Business Development at Epic Media Group, heading corporate development and strategic initiatives. Prior to Epic, Qayed served as General Manager for the Traffic Marketplace Ad Network (TMP), where he gained valuable expertise in campaign management, yield management, and publisher/business development for display, mobile, and video media. As a specialist in this area, Qayed will provide mediaFORGE with strategic insight into industry trends, and innovation and growth opportunities. He has a history of successfully serving in marketing and management consulting roles for other early-stage companies (Cheetahmail, Lowermybills.com and Virtual Iris), contributing to growth and success in their early stages.

“We feel extremely fortunate to have Neal and Qayed join our board of industry advisors,” says mediaFORGE CEO, Tony Zito. “Their combined knowledge of the online advertising industry will be a complement to the existing board expertise. We look forward to working with Neal, Qayed, and our other board members to drive mediaFORGE into its next stages of growth.”

The continued interest in mediaFORGE from industry leaders is validation of the company’s commitment to innovation and its leadership in display media.

About mediaFORGE

mediaFORGE is a dynamic display media company that creates personalized interactive ads proven to engage prospects and increase revenue. Its product suite includes solutions for prospecting, retargeting, loyalty nurturing, and reengaging lapsed-users. With its pioneering shared-revenue pricing model, mediaFORGE clients are only charged for ad engagement attributed to incremental revenue – never for impressions or view-throughs. With mediaFORGE, online marketers get a genuine strategic partnership with intelligent ads, a low-risk business model, transparent data reports, and best-in-class client service, making it the most compelling path to optimal return on ad spend. For more information, visitwww.mediaFORGE.com.

CrunchBase Information on Mediaforge

Leading Verification Technology Now Available Alongside Real-time Video Ad Platform

SAN FRANCISCO - LiveRail, the first real-time video ad technology platform for publishers, networks and agencies, announced that DoubleVerify’s ad verification technology is now available to the over 200 publishers, networks and agencies that use LiveRail’s video infrastructure technology, ensuring zero wasted impressions for LiveRail customers.

DoubleVerify’s pre-decision ad targeting technology, when activated by client request, will now provide networks and agencies using LiveRail with brand safety targeting data, ensuring brand ads only appear in the highest-quality, most suitable environments. As DoubleVerify’s targeting data is available in real-time, prior to the ad serving decision, the integration ensures better user experiences by avoiding the forced closing of video players — a common occurrence with other post-decision blocking technologies. Pre-decision targeting also eliminates any possibility that the verification technology would be compromised from changes to users’ browser settings.

By actively using DoubleVerify’s technology, advertisers, agencies and networks running on LiveRail can avoid negative ad placements, ensuring they get value out of every impression served and no impressions are wasted. In addition, LiveRail customers will have access to DoubleVerify’s reporting and analytics, providing a clear picture not only of ad placements and safety, but ad performance analytics.

The integration comes as part of LiveRail’s Video Brand Safety Alliance, a coalition of leading context verification, content analysis and privacy vendors to provide a unique, multi-dimensional view of online video. DoubleVerify and the other technology integrations supplement LiveRail’s existing URL whitelisting and syndication management capabilities, ensuring that video ads do not appear in environments that buyers deem unsafe and alleviating advertiser pain points in the still nascent world of video advertising.

“LiveRail is dedicated to delivering the tools for complete brand safety and transparency in online video,” said Mark Trefgarne, LiveRail CEO. “Video is still new and unfamiliar to many publishers, networks and agencies, and technologies like DoubleVerify are crucial for helping everyone gain a clear understanding of the ecosystem and the value each impression adds to their campaign.”

“As more advertisers move into the video space, they want increased assurance their ads are appearing in safe environments that drive maximum return,” said C. Eoin Townsend, DoubleVerify SVP Partnerships & Business Development. “Verification is becoming the industry standard, and we’re pleased to be a part of LiveRail’s mission to develop new standards for video brand safety.”

About LiveRail

The online video ad ecosystem runs on LiveRail. With over 3 billion monthly impressions (25% of all video ads) delivered via our platform each month, LiveRail is the technology behind many of the most sophisticated video advertising and media companies online. We help connect the video ecosystem, enabling publishers, ad networks, and agencies to transact more effectively and efficiently. 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.

CrunchBase Information on Liverail

Partnership will ensure placement on appropriate and non-fraudulent sites

NEW YORK - Criteo (www.criteo.com), the global leader in performance display advertising, announced a strategic partnership with DoubleVerify (www.doubleverify.com), the worldwide leader in online media verification and decisioning. The global deal will enable Criteo to take their stringent “brand safety” requirements to the next level. By implementing DoubleVerify’s proprietary technology within its real-time buying environment, Criteo will ensure that their performance display ads will not appear on inappropriate or fraudulent sites.

DoubleVerify’s proprietary technology acquires data from each impression in real-time and interprets whether or not the site on which the ad is being served is safe.

Uniquely, Criteo will use DoubleVerify’s data for every single one of its advertisers’ campaigns, and will use the data in real-time to prevent an ad being displayed in an unsafe location, rather than reporting this problem after the fact.

“Brand safety has always been critical for Criteo. We looked at the available options in the marketplace to move beyond our current multiple layers of in-house protection, and it became clear DoubleVerify is the best solution and the industry standard to ensure that our ads will only run as intended,” said Jonathan Wolf, Chief Buying Officer for Criteo. “We believe this is the first time globally that anyone has implemented ad verification as an always-on solution for all their advertisers, and in such a way as to act in real-time before an impression is bought. Our confidence in DoubleVerify allows us to go live immediately in the US, with roll out globally over the coming months.”

DoubleVerify offers a comprehensive suite of ad verification monitoring, blocking and compliance solutions. It also provides the accurate and compliant delivery of ads for the online advertising ecosystem – publishers, advertisers, ad agencies, ad networks, and demand side platforms.

“DoubleVerify and Criteo are two best-in-class display advertising companies, and we are delighted to provide Criteo with the highest level of content verification accuracy in the marketplace,” said C. Eoin Townsend, Senior Vice President, Partnerships and Business Development for DoubleVerify. “This partnership will allow Criteo to verify their inventory and ensure their campaigns are safe, efficient, and carried out to their full potential.”

The partnership between Criteo and DoubleVerify is currently live in the United States. A similar arrangement in Asia, Europe and the rest of the Americas is scheduled to roll out country by country over the next six months.

About Criteo

Criteo is the global leader in performance display advertising. We make online display advertising perform like search for over 2,000 of the world’s largest ecommerce companies. Display performs like search when it is paid on performance, scalable and personalized for each individual customer. Our full-service advertising solution enables ecommerce companies to drive increased awareness, consideration and sales, while only paying for results. Our unique ability to value each impression in real-time allows our advertisers to target the right user at the right time with the right message, all delivered at a guaranteed cost per click.

About DoubleVerify

DoubleVerify is the worldwide leader in online media verification and decisioning, a World Economic Forum 2012 Technology Pioneer. The company is verifying over 60 billion advertising impressions per month for hundreds of marketers and sell-side platforms, and its technology ensures quality advertising environments, campaign transparency and accountability. DoubleVerify is headquartered in New York City, with sales offices in London and engineering offices in Tel Aviv, Israel. Investors in DoubleVerify include JMI Equity, Institutional Venture Partners, Blumberg Capital, First Round Capital and Genacast Ventures.

CrunchBase Information on Criteo
CrunchBase Information on Doubleverify

Technology Acquired from Efficient Frontier Now Part of Adobe Digital Marketing Suite, Delivers True Multi-Channel Optimization

SALT LAKE CITY - Adobe Systems Incorporated (NASDAQ:ADBE) announced that technology acquired from Efficient Frontier is now available as part of the Adobe® Digital Marketing Suite, unifying social, search and display campaigns and creating true multi-channel optimization from disparate campaigns. This is a departure from multi-channel campaigns that are often operated with separate budgets, distinct data sets and unique workflows. The struggle to unify campaigns has often left digital marketers, who will collectively spend almost $100 billion globally this year on digital marketing and advertising*, in the dark as they allocate their digital ad budgets to deliver the best return.

“Adobe helps marketers deliver a high return on their ad spend investments by linking accurate attribution and forecasting capabilities to optimization across search, display and social,” said David Karnstedt, vice president and general manager, Advertising Solutions,Digital Marketing Business, Adobe. “Now marketers can replace what were traditionally ‘gut’ decisions with smarter, more accurate actions based on real data.”

Technology acquired from Efficient Frontier brings the following benefits to digital marketers and advertisers:

• Unified View of Multi-Channel Campaigns – Customers can see which channels and campaigns are impacting key business metrics, such as conversion and revenue
• Full Complement of Channels for a Multi-Channel Strategy – Adobe now offers campaign management and optimization for LinkedIn Ads, complementing campaign support for search, display and Facebook, with support for additional advertising channels and inventory sources on the way
• Flexible Attribution Models – Move from an over-reliance on “last-click” attribution to more flexible models that can provide a more accurate view into what channel, or combination of channels, is responsible for results
• Seamless Workflow from Insight to Action – Automates optimization to purchase more of what is working

Former Efficient Frontier technology is available to new and existing Adobe digital marketing customers and will expand with additional functionality as well as integrations with other products within the Digital Marketing Suite.

* = Source: IDC, Worldwide and U.S. Internet Advertising 2010-2014 Forecast and Analysis

About the Adobe Digital Marketing Suite

The Adobe® Digital Marketing Suite offers an integrated and open platform for online business optimization, a strategy for using customer insight to drive innovation throughout the business and enhance marketing efficiency. The Suite consists of integrated applications to collect and unleash the power of customer insight to optimize customer acquisition, conversion and retention efforts as well as the creation and distribution of content. For example, using the Suite, marketers can identify the most effective marketing strategies and ad placements as well as create relevant, personalized and consistent customer experiences across digital marketing channels, such as onsite, display, email, social, video and mobile. The Suite enables marketers to make quick adjustments, automate certain customer interactions and better maximize marketing ROI, which, ultimately, can positively impact the bottom line.

About Adobe Systems Incorporated

Adobe is changing the world through digital experiences. For more information, visit www.adobe.com.

CrunchBase Information on Adobe Systems

About Myles Younger, Head of Marketing and Business Development – Canned Banners
At Canned Banners, Myles evangelizes the company’s unique approach to automating and streamlining display ad design. He is also responsible for Canned Banners’ client and partner strategy, and for understanding where the company’s tools and expertise can add the greatest value in the display ad ecosystem. Prior to co-founding Canned Banners, Myles was a B2B marketer, most recently having held an international marketing role at Thomson Reuters.

CrunchBase Information on Canned Banners

Mogreet Mobile Campaigns Dominate the U.S. Market with Top Spanish-Language Broadcast and Media Companies

LOS ANGELES - Known as the world’s leading mobile video marketing platform, Mogreet is now cementing its place in the industry as the leading mobile messaging solution for Hispanic audiences.

Broadcasters and media companies, including Entravision Communications and impreMedia are among the growing roster of companies that are shifting their marketing and advertising investments from traditional channels to mobile. The Hispanic segment, in particular, offers significant opportunity for marketers, as research suggests that U.S. Hispanics are more engaged with their mobile devices than the average U.S. population. According to ComScore M:Metrics research, 71 percent of Hispanics consume content on their mobile phone, compared with the market average of 48 percent. “Our mobile platforms are becoming an increasingly important component of our sales platform,” said Walter F. Ulloa, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Entravision Communications Corporation. “We made a number of investments in our mobile capabilities during 2011, and the fourth quarter 2011 was our best mobile quarter ever, with mobile revenues more than doubling during the fourth quarter 2011 compared to the fourth quarter 2010.”

“Our platform is designed to grow broadcast and media audiences and most importantly, help radio and television stations, and media companies, take advantage of the hyper-growth in local and national mobile advertising,” said James Citron, CEO, Mogreet. “Using our platform, broadcasters and media companies are able to monetize the mobile channel by offering their advertisers the capability to connect with consumers through mobile and social media.”

Mogreet has launched many successful mobile marketing campaigns with leading Spanish-language broadcast and media companies, including industry giant Entravision Communications Corporation. “With Mogreet’s MMS messaging platform we have the extra advantage of offering our clients and advertisers a full and robust 360 degree interactive opportunity. Along with our TV, radio, online and the addition of Multi-Media Text messages, our clients see the immediate benefits of advertising with Entravision Communications,” says Esteban Lopez Blanco, Executive Director of Digital for Entravision Communications.

Some of the features in Mogreet’s platform include:

• Automated breaking news and multimedia content delivery (video, pictures, songs) via API, RSS and MRSS
• Full track song and podcast delivery to any mobile device in the U.S.
• Support for multiple mobile advertising formats, including pre- and post-roll video, images, text, and audio ads
• SaaS contesting and sweepstakes features
• Integrated handset detection capabilities enabling custom programming and app downloads by handset type
• Daily deals and rich media mobile coupons
• Mobile and social sharing features to drive audience growth and amplify advertiser messaging
• Real-time analytics and ROI reporting for advertisers

Mogreet’s platform is a cross-carrier solution with the ability to send messages to nearly all mobile phones in North America and Europe. Mogreet can deliver messages to a total market of 290 million+ consumers.

About Mogreet 

Founded in 2006, Mogreet is the leading mobile marketing platform for the delivery of rich media to mobile devices. The company works with leading marketers in entertainment, broadcast and traditional media, retail, consumer products, health care and real estate. The company has raised $10 million in venture capital from Ascend Venture Group, Black Diamond Ventures, DFJ Frontier, Spyglass Ventures and Clovehitch Partners. Mogreet is headquartered in Venice, California. http://www.mogreet.com

CrunchBase Information on Mogreet

Video advertisers given greater controls for blocking unsafe ad placements

SAN FRANCISCO - LiveRail, the first real-time video ad technology platform for publishers, networks and agencies, today announced that comScore’s validated Campaign Essentials (vCE) is now natively available to the over 200 publishers, networks and agencies that use LiveRail’s video infrastructure technology.

The vCE video validation solution is based on a JavaScript technology that allows LiveRail’s network and agency partners to block video ads from appearing in placements that may be damaging to the brand. In addition to the ad blocking controls, comScore vCE provides LiveRail’s video clients access to optimization tools and metrics like In-View and Engagement.

The integration comes as part of LiveRail’s Video Brand Safety Alliance, a coalition of leading context verification, content analysis and privacy vendors to provide a unique, multi-dimensional view of online video. comScore vCE and the other technology integrations supplement LiveRail’s existing URL whitelisting and syndication management capabilities, ensuring that video ads do not appear in environments that buyers deem unsafe.

“LiveRail is dedicated to providing clients with complete brand safety and transparency in online video,” said Mark Trefgarne, LiveRail CEO. “By integrating technologies like comScore vCE, we’re giving publishers, networks, and agencies the tools they need to make advertising decisions that help achieve their campaign goals and ensure brand ads do not appear in questionable environments.”

“comScore vCE helps major brands prevent their video ads from appearing next to questionable content, while at the same time letting brands and agencies know if their video ads were seen and engaged by users,” said Ryan Polley, comScore VP of Corporate Development. “We look forward to working with LiveRail to bring advertisers the confidence they need in leveraging the impact of video advertising.”

About LiveRail

The online video ad ecosystem runs on LiveRail. With over 3 billion monthly impressions (25% of all video ads) delivered via our platform each month, LiveRail is the technology behind many of the most sophisticated video advertising and media companies online. We help connect the video ecosystem, enabling publishers, ad networks, and agencies to transact more effectively and efficiently. 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.

CrunchBase Information on Liverail

New York, NY - Digital advertising company CPX Interactive today announced the second in a series of 2012 product launches – a suite of social media display advertising strategies. CPX leverages its unparalleled online reach to deliver social media solutions that include a dedicated social media network vertical, custom social integrated ads, in-app and in-game display units, and a managed cost per fan program for the Facebook platform. The packaging of these services is designed to help advertisers better understand new options, metrics and ROI strategies in the emerging social media landscape.

“Since the early days of the digital advertising industry, CPX Interactive has proven its ability to successfully optimize display advertising campaigns against any desired metric. Social media is simply the latest environment for online display, but the fundamentals remain the same,” said Mike Seiman, CEO and founder of CPX Interactive. “Ultimately, successful execution of these strategies is predicated on our ability to target and optimize huge amounts of quality inventory. We are now packaging them in a way that more clearly illustrates the potential for display advertising within social media.”The new offerings combine CPX Interactive’s proprietary online reach with deep-level partnerships that leverage cutting-edge technology development, thus creating a comprehensive menu of social media targeting packages.

About CPX Interactive

CPX Interactive is a digital advertising company consistently serving more than two billion daily ad impressions. Its global distribution engine includes both a private marketplace of more than 4,000 quality publisher sites and an on-demand network with access to virtually every major aggregator of digital media. CPX campaigns are churned through a continuous cycle of planning, execution, optimization, reporting and analysis – each leveraging the company’s unparalleled scalability. CPX has proven success with more than 300 major brands worldwide. For more information, visit http://www.cpxinteractive.com.

WowYow Brings an Entire New Experience to Online Video, Where Everything Seen and Unseen is a Potential Advertisement

SAN DIEGO - WowYow Inc. (http://wowyow.com/), a video technology and advertising company, launched today. The San Diego based startup has created an exciting new way to experience video. Products, places, services, music, even coupons for local retailers within video are now interactive advertisements. WowYow’s patent-pending technology embeds advertisements into the video itself, in the form of non-intrusive interactive visual identification.

Advertisers, agencies, and ad networks finally have an effective way to reach the mass video market. Consumers are more likely to respond to advertisements in which they have an active interest. WowYow’s new advertising model seamlessly allows the viewer to explore products, services, coupons, and much more all from within the video content. Advertisers realize a higher return on investment because this interactive advertising model delivers a true target market, interested and ready to buy.

For video publishers, video producers, and third party publishers, WowYow offers a whole new dimension of advertising revenue, without compromising show time or continuity. The WowYow distribution model includes virtually unlimited revenue potential because every product, place, or service within their video is connected to WowYow’s ad-stream.

“Just imagine all the possibilities,” said WowYow Founder and CEO Adam Boskovich. “With WowYow technology video has changed forever.”

WowYow loves San Diego and is excited to launch the company in southern California.

About WowYow Inc.

WowYow Inc. is a Video Advertising and Technology Company headquartered in San Diego, CA with team members in Northern California and the Silicon Valley.

For more information about WowYow’s technology or company, visit http://wowyow.com.

LiveRail Integrates With Affine, DoubleVerify and TRUSTe for Multi-dimensional View of Video Ad Safety

SAN FRANCISCO - LiveRail, the first real-time video ad technology platform for publishers, networks and agencies, unveiled the Video Brand Safety Alliance, a series of technology partnerships providing advertisers, agencies, publishers and networks with the highest degree of safety available for in-stream video placements.

The launch combines best-in-class offerings from Affine, comScore validated Campaign Essentials, DoubleVerify, Proximic, AdSafe Media, and TRUSTe with LiveRail’s own reporting, analytics, and video ad serving. All of the technology partners are now natively available to the more than 200 publishers, networks and agencies that utilize LiveRail’s video infrastructure technology.

The Brand Safety Alliance gives every player in the video advertising ecosystem access to a holistic view of brand safety. Agencies and networks can now offer their brand partners insight into URLs, semantic page content, and the content of the actual video accompanying ad impressions. In addition, advertisers and publishers can utilize privacy compliance solutions to incorporate privacy notice and choice into their video ads.

LiveRail customers can now take advantage of Affine’s industry-leading image-recognition software to automatically classify and tag the video in which their ads appear. With Affine’s frame-by-frame video analysis technology, advertisers now have the data needed to determine if video content aligns with campaign objectives and brand safety specifications.

DoubleVerify’s technology will provide brand safety targeting data before the advertisement is sent to the video player ensuring brands only run the highest quality environments for all video campaigns. In addition, advertisers can make use of TRUSTe privacy compliance solutions, ensuring they comply with industry self-regulation efforts and maintain consumer trust.

The new technology partners are the latest example of LiveRail’s dedication toward complete brand safety and transparency in online video. The LiveRail Safety Alliance supplements the company’s existing URL whitelisting and syndication management capabilities, ensuring video ads never appear in environments an ad buyer deems unsafe.

“Online video is a complicated space, and it’s very difficult to achieve scale while also ensuring brand safety,” said Mark Trefgarne, LiveRail CEO. “The LiveRail Safety Alliance is the first step toward a complete platform that lets advertisers pick and choose the partners they want to work with to achieve their campaign goals. By working with several of the leading data and technology companies, we’re giving video ad buyers fool-proof brand safety options.”

“Advertisers need a guarantee of brand-safe environments for video advertising, thus ensuring their ad dollars are efficiently spent and delivering the highest ROI,” said C. Eoin Townsend, DoubleVerify SVP Partnerships & Business Development. “We’re excited to partner with LiveRail to give advertisers the best possible targeting in the market and the assurance their video runs in quality environments.”

“Combining Affine’s video scanning technology with LiveRail’s existing transparency tools gives brand marketers a clear look at where their ads appear online,” said Mike Sullivan, CEO of Affine. “By combining the offerings of multiple partners, brands now have a multi-dimensional view into video safety.”

“As advertisers increasingly tap video to target and optimize marketing campaigns, they need to ensure that consumers have transparency into these practices,” said Chris Babel, TRUSTe CEO. “We are encouraged by LiveRail’s move to make privacy a priority in the online video market by giving advertisers a frictionless mechanism to implement TRUSTe’s industry-leading consumer preference management platform.”

In addition to the announced partners, LiveRail’s platform is fully interoperable with other ad safety technology, letting ad buyers integrate their existing partners into the LiveRail platform. Learn more at Videobrandsafety.com.

The story was first covered by VideoNuze here.

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.

CrunchBase Information on Liverail

Leading Provider of Digital Ad Technology Enables the Buying and Selling of New IAB Standard Ad Unit Portfolio Through Global OpenX Market

LOS ANGELES - OpenX Technologies, Inc. (OpenX), one of the world’s leading providers of digital advertising technology, announced that it will support the buying and selling of the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s (IAB) new online ad units through OpenX Enterprise, the company’s Software as a Service ad serving product for large publishers, and OpenX Market, a leading Real-Time Bidding (RTB) enabled advertising exchange platform. The new Standard Ad Unit Portfolio will include six new ad units (the “Rising Stars”) and are the first such units to be approved by the IAB since 2003.

The Rising Stars units are designed to meet marketers’ communications needs across the purchase funnel and to drive forward and create new opportunities for dynamic brand advertising. These six new interactive ad units have been developed and tested in partnership with leading publishers and agencies in the digital world. Since their introduction in 1996 and most recent update in 2003, the IAB Standard Ad Units helped to create the modern, scalable digital advertising industry. Today more than 80 percent of display ads sold follow IAB standards. The new Standard Ad Unit Portfolio was released at the fifth IAB Annual Leadership Meeting Ecosystem 2.0: Beyond Time and Space, this Sunday.

OpenX Market is designed to help publishers maximize revenue and to help advertisers much more easily reach their target audiences across large numbers of publishers. Advertisers benefit by having a simple way to buy across the enormous pool of primary inventory available from OpenX’s large publisher base. Moreover, OpenX’s just-announced acquisition of breakthrough Supply-Side Platform LiftDNA will provide significant benefits to buyers of ad inventory. In particular, the combination of OpenX Market and LiftDNA by OpenX™ creates a massive pool of RTB 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.

Since its launch in 2009, OpenX Market has seen significant growth and adoption by those recognizing the precision and strength of ad exchanges and the quality of both buy-side and sell-side customers that OpenX attracts. OpenX Market achieved a year-over-year revenue growth rate of nearly 700% in 2011.

“The IAB’s new selection of ad units should dramatically improve the digital ad industry,” said Jason Fairchild, chief revenue officer, OpenX. “Publishers are starting to see the value in running a smaller number of high-impact ad units, driving more user engagement and higher overall CPM gains of 300-400% for these new units compared with the more traditional units based on initial use. OpenX Market – as the first ad exchange to adopt the Rising Stars – will facilitate the publisher shift to these new units, and help bring scale to the buying opportunities.”

“With the six brand-friendly Rising Stars display ad units just becoming part of the IAB Standard Ad Units Portfolio, it is exciting to see adoption take a big step forward with this move by OpenX,” said Peter Minnium, head of brand initiatives, IAB. “This marks the first time an ad exchange has committed to the buying and selling of these dynamic and immersive formats. We look forward to others joining OpenX in embracing these units, since they are set to drive the entire interactive industry forward.”

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 visitwww.openx.com.

CrunchBase Information on Openx

Online Content Pioneer Integrates Customized Social Media Streams into Ad Units

SANTA MONICA, Calif. - Demand Media® (NYSE: DMD) announced the introduction of a suite of rich media advertising units that incorporate its new Social Feed ad management tools. These tools allow advertisers to deliver customized social media content directly into their live rich media ads – including ads that feature video, audio, Flash and HTML5. In the coming months, brands like Klondike, American Egg Board and Purex, in addition to other leading marketers, plan to launch campaigns using the new products on Demand Media’s properties, which include eHow, LIVESTRONG.COM, Cracked and typeF.

“Our new social advertising products are designed to amplify and broadcast our advertisers’ campaigns across a variety of social platforms,” said Joanne Bradford, chief revenue and marketing officer at Demand Media. “We believe our new Social Feed ad units are the first to allow advertisers to enhance their video-enabled ads using customized content from their social media footprint.“

Demand Media’s new socially-enabled ad units expand when a site visitor rolls over the ad. The Social Feed ads give advertisers the option of integrating customized, real-time social feeds directly into their rich media ad unit.

“Klondike is excited to extend our social media programs through Demand Media’s unique ad unit, which will dynamically enable our Facebook and Twitter updates in real time,” said Mike Hurley, senior brand manager for Klondike.

The Social Feed ads allow advertisers to update their live ad units in real time, or post updates directly to their live ad and their brand’s Facebook page simultaneously. Advertisers can also choose to feed curated, live content from Twitter directly to their ad unit. The ad units also provide consumers with easy access to a brand’s Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or YouTube presence.

“Advertisers are investing millions of dollars to build healthy brand communities on a variety of social media platforms,” said Peter Luttrell, senior vice president of ad solutions at Demand Media. “Our new Social Feed ad products help marketers extend their existing social media investments across their entire online media buy and deliver customized social media content directly into their live ads in real-time.”

Demand Media’s social advertising products are currently available in both IAB standard and custom rich media units like billboards, site skins and overlays that support advanced functionality like video, audio, Flash and HTML5. The products are supported on Demand Media’s owned and operated properties including eHow, LIVESTRONG.COM, Cracked and typeF, and the network of independent websites represented by IndieClick, which includes Collider, Screenrant and HipsterRunoff.

To see Demand Media’s new Social Feed ad units in action, visit: http://demandmedia.com/socialads. For more information about Demand Media’s social advertising products, please visit http://advertising.demandmedia.com/contact/

About Demand Media

Demand Media, Inc. (NYSE: DMD) is a leading content and social media company that informs and entertains one of the Internet’s largest audiences, helps advertisers find innovative ways to engage with their customers and enables publishers to expand their online presence. Headquartered in Santa Monica, CA, Demand Media has offices in North America, South America and Europe. For more information about Demand Media, please visit www.demandmedia.com

CrunchBase Information on Demandmedia

Robust New Platform Will Put Creative Control in the Hands of Ad Agencies

Digitas and Mindshare Sign on as Beta Launch Partners

NEW YORK & MIAMI - AOL, Inc. (NYSE: AOL) announced the beta launch of Pictela Enterprise, a technology platform for the design, delivery and management of Premium Format ad units across the Web. Pictela Enterprise gives advertising agencies a clean, simple, guided self-service interface to manage all their clients’ brand assets and efficiently serve them into premium online display ads.

“We believe the power of opening our Pictela platform to agencies is the next step in scaling Premium Formats across the Web,” said Greg Rogers, Senior Vice President, Premium Formats, AOL, and CEO, Pictela. “Think of Pictela Enterprise as a content management system for ads, whereby creative professionals can efficiently deploy high definition ads across the Web, all the while being able to update and optimize the content of those ads in real time. We are putting the power of publishing in the hands of the ad agencies and their clients so they can take full advantage of the new larger ad sizes coming to market.”

Pictela Enterprise is a suite of products and services that includes:

• Pictela Management Center (PMC) - Pictela’s cloud-based platform for the creation, delivery and analysis of Premium Formats ads. The system currently supports six IAB standard sizes: 300×1050 (Portrait), 300×600, 970×90 (Pushdown), 728×90, 160×600 and 300×250. Pictela Management Center is backed by a cutting-edge ad-serving solution that organizes delivery of brand content through a set of standard applications for maximum production efficiency. It also supports standalone custom apps that specifically suit the needs of individual clients.
• Pictela Styles & Guides - Pictela’s ad formats are based on standardized, template-driven layouts that have proven, industry-leading engagement metrics. Users of Enterprise are provided with a design portal and detailed Style Guides for each ad size that contain asset, application and video requirements for pre-production and design.
• Pictela Reporting - Enterprise users have access to Pictela Reporting and Benchmarking. Not limited to clicks and impression data, users see key metrics including interaction rate, exposure time, interaction time and video completion. Third party impression, click, and engagement tags supported.
• Pictela Support - During the beta period, Enterprise clients will have access to a dedicated Agency Manager and Service Delivery team at AOL for training and business/technical support. Enterprise also provides a browser-based debugging tool to ensure the quality delivery of campaigns and standardized metrics.

Digitas and Mindshare have signed on as the beta launch partners.

“As two of the most innovative media agencies, Digitas and Mindshare already have many clients who deploy Premium Formats across AOL, and these Beta partnerships are a way to extend these efforts across the Web,” remarks Rogers.

“We’re thrilled to see that AOL has opened the Pictela management tool up to agencies and is willing to give control back into the hands of creative talent. Our ability to optimize client campaigns in-market and respond real-time to consumer interest and social conversation is an essential need in today’s marketplace,” said Robyn Katz Tombacher, SVP Business Operations Director at Digitas. “Being on the ground floor as a launch partner allows us to take early advantage of the rapid growth rate of custom high definition online advertising.”

Pictela Enterprise is certified to serve its ad units across AOL, Advertising.com, and most major online publishers.

Partnership with Moat

Today, AOL is also announcing a partnership with Moat, a brand intelligence and analytics company. “Moat is becoming a leader in measuring the effectiveness of online brand advertising,” said Rogers, “and we are excited to offer Moat Brand Analytics through Pictela Enterprise Beta.”

Jonah Goodhart, CEO of Moat, said, “We are thrilled to partner with AOL on this initiative. We think Pictela’s innovative creative platform combined with the standardization of Moat’s metrics is exactly the type of solution that will appeal to brand advertisers.”

AOL recently conducted research with Moat that compared user interaction rates across three different versions of the same brand ad: the IAB Portrait format vs. custom rich media vs. standard animated Flash (all 300×1050 in size). The results show that the IAB Portrait performed 12% better than the custom format and 72% better than the animated Flash version.* “The 12% difference does not sound like much, but there’s been a perception in the marketplace that the only way to build a highly engaging ad unit is through custom rich media executions,” said Rogers. “By teaming with Moat, we are validating the effectiveness of Premium Formats, while providing the benefits of repeatability and scalability through a productized approach.”

*Moat/KitchenDaily study, February 2012

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.

CrunchBase Information on Pictela

NEW YORK - Kontera, the leading Advertising Technology company, was selected by the US Israel Business Council to present at the 2012 Media-Tech Innovation Road Show on March 6th in New York City. Kontera was selected based upon the company’s technological innovation and leadership in the online media and technology space.

The Media-Tech Innovation Road Show is organized by the U.S. Israel Business Council (USI) and the Government of Israel Economic Mission to North America. It was set up to foster business relationships between American investors, senior media and technology industry executives and 15 of the highest-profile Israeli startups. As one of the selected companies, Kontera will brief senior executives on its Synapse platform, its suite of products, and new developments in Mobile and Social.

“We are honored to have been selected by the US Israeli Business Council,” said Kontera CEO Yoav Shaham. “It is gratifying to see the team’s hard work, talent, and innovations receive this type of recognition.”

Throughout 2011 Kontera’s Synapse platform has increased in intelligence and sophistication, and it now powers Kontera product offerings in Mobile, Display, In-content and Social media marketing.

For more information U.S Israel Business Council and the Media-Tech Innovation Road visit www.usibc.org.

For more about Kontera visit www.kontera.com.

About Kontera

The Kontera Synapse platform analyzes more than 400 million page views, in real-time, across 15k exclusive publishers and the majority of the comScore top 1000 sites on the web. Kontera Synapse understands conversation trends and editorial page topics, and is able to dynamically deliver brands’ advertising, content and social assets to create the highest relevance for brands with consumers. Top advertisers such as Chrysler, GM, Kraft, P&G and Microsoft rely on Kontera to deliver unique brand experiences to more than 170 million uses each month. Recent studies have shown that Kontera Display nearly doubles the performance of standard display and Kontera Mobile solutions deliver more than five times the response of typical mobile campaigns. To learn more about Kontera, aligning brands with quality editorial, Kontera Display, Mobile or Social Advertising visit: www.kontera.com, or follow: facebook.com/Kontera, twitter.com/kontera

CrunchBase Information on Kontera

New Ad Formats To Encourage Innovation in Brand Marketing Across Mobile Devices

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. - Driving richer brand marketing across smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) today unveiled the five winning Mobile Rising Stars ad concepts of its first-ever “Mobile Rising Stars” competition, at the fifth IAB Annual Leadership Meeting “Ecosystem 2.0: Beyond Time and Space” at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach. These formats are intended to work across all major mobile platforms and allow mobile ad buys at the same scale and scope as typical online display buys. The contest amassed a pool of over 60 innovative submissions, coming from more than three dozen companies.

The IAB Mobile Rising Stars stem from the larger IAB Rising Stars initiative, which seeks to create new canvasses for brand advertising on digital platforms. Once a Rising Stars unit has been selected, it will go through a testing process and, with success, be inducted into the IAB Standard Advertising Unit Portfolio, the definitive standards for the digital advertising industry.

The winning Mobile Rising Stars ad concepts are:

IAB Mobile Rising Stars			Description			Why Selected
Filmstrip			Scrollable, multipanel, horizontal or vertical ad unit, much like “The Filmstrip” Display Standard Ad Unit			Richly engaging experience with tons of content possibilities delivered in page with users fully in control
Slider			Overlay unit on the bottom of a page mirrors touch screen habit, prompting users to slide the entire page over, unveiling a full brand experience, much like “The Slider” Display Standard Ad Unit			Optimal creative space keeping viewer fully in control of ad experience
Adhesion Banner			Standard banner that “adheres” to its start position when device is rotated or when content is manipulated (e.g., with a tap to magnify)			Elegant solution to fundamental challenge
Full Page			Full screen experience that accommodates both portrait and landscape orientation			An ideal creative canvas—the whole screen—with interactive functionality
Push			A bottom or top banner that expands to full screen, not unlike “The Pushdown” Display Standard Ad Unit			Allows for an immersive, in-page ad experience, with users in control

Winning submitters included AOL, BabyCenter, Crisp, Google, Jivox, Mediamind, Medialets, Microsoft, Pointroll, Time Inc., The Weather Channel, and Yahoo!. These winning companies will now collaborate with IAB, its Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence, Agency Working Group, and mobile ad ops experts over the next 90-120 days to create detailed specifications for the units to run across screens and operating systems, as well as the mobile web and apps.

“Just yesterday, the Display Rising Stars winners were reborn as a key part of the IAB Standard Ad Unit Portfolio,” said Peter Minnium, Head of Brand Initiatives, IAB. “Armed with the kind of rich and creative elements that can take brands to a new level on connected devices, these Mobile Rising Stars are bound for similar marketplace acceptance. We are clearly at the beginning, but this is a significant step in leveraging mobile’s vast potential.”

“As consumers spend more time on their mobile devices, brand marketers need to find effective ways to be integrated into the mobile experience,” said Anna Bager, Vice President and General Manager, Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence, IAB. “The mission of finding these Mobile Rising Stars was a critical one, fraught with complexities—as evidenced by the fact that we needed to bring a number of companies’ entries into the fold in order to craft the five final winning concepts. That said, these new creative formats are standouts, which will deliver the kind of deep user experiences that will resonate with consumers on-the-go and garner the results that advertisers crave.”

The Mobile Rising Stars contest was originally announced at the IAB Mobile Marketplace in July 2011, when IAB put out a call for mobile ad units that would inspire and guide users to interact with brand marketing on connected devices.

The winners of the Mobile Rising Stars initiative were selected by a cross-disciplinary group that included agency creative directors, media executives, publishers and ad operations specialists, who judged the ad formats for their potential to propel brand creativity on mobile devices at scale.

“Mobile offers a huge opportunity for brand marketers,” said Ian Schafer, CEO and Founder, Deep Focus, and Mobile Rising Stars judge. “Being part of the judging process with colleagues across digital and mobile organizations was a remarkable experience—one that compelled us all to focus on the formats that will help enable creatives to build immersive mobile experiences that overcome challenges and maximize benefits that mobile screens provide. Ultimately, I think we’ve come up with some stellar ad formats that are winners in numerous respects, aptly being named Rising Stars.”

Other participants in the Mobile Rising Stars judging panel included:

• Ana Andjelic, Digital Strategist, Droga5
• Suzana Apelbaum, Creative Director, Anomaly
• Clemens Brandt, Executive Producer, BBDO New York
• Michael Brunick, Vice President, Strategic Solutions, Mediabrands Audience Platform
• Adam Cahill, Executive Vice President and Co-Media Director, Hill Holliday
• Pat Connolly, Head of Strategy, Condé Nast Ideactive
• Sia Ea, Creative Director, Ansible
• Jeannie Fratoni, Creative Director and Co-Founder, Red Door Interactive
• Molly Garris, Director, Digital Strategy, Leo Burnett and Arc Worldwide
• Jennifer Gavin, Head, Digital Development, BBH NY
• Michael Gurman, Senior Art Director, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners
• Steve Haroutunian, Vice President, Digital Production Manager, Mullen
• Ivan Kayser, Director, Strategy, Code and Theory
• Kathyrn Koegel, Vice President, Mobile Ad Innovations
• Tim Leake, Creative Director, Saatchi
• David Levin, President, Creative and Technology, 360i
• Gene Liebel, Chief Strategy Officer, HUGE
• Michael Lowenstern, Managing Director, Digital Advertising, R/GA
• Becky Minervino, Vice President, Group Strategy Director, McKinney
• Jesse Missad, Associate Director, Mobility, Starcom MediaVest Group
• Patrick J. Moorhead, Senior Vice President, Group Management Director – Mobile Platforms, Draftfcb Chicago
• Leslie North, Director of Interactive and Emerging Media, The Martin Agency
• Fredrik Oscarson, Chief Executive Officer and Executive Creative Director, Mobiento USA
• Catherine Patterson, Senior Vice President and Executive Producer, McCann Erickson
• Jarrod Riddle, Creative Director and Designer, Lifeislottery
• Gary Scheiner, Managing Partner and Chief Creative Officer, Rosetta
• Kaare Wesnaes, Director, Creative Technology, Cheil USA
• Darrell Whitelaw, Technology Experience Lead, co:collective
• Tony Whiteside, Creative Director, Ogilvy, New York
• Jonny Won, Manager, Mobile and Gaming Platforms, Hill Holliday

For additional information on the Mobile Rising Stars, please visit www.iab.net/risingstarsmobile.

About the IAB Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence

The IAB Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence, an independently funded and staffed unit inside the IAB, is charged with driving the growth of the mobile marketing, advertising and media marketplace. The Mobile Center devotes resources to market and consumer research, mobile advertising case studies, executive training and education, supply chain standardization, creative showcases and best practice identification in the burgeoning field of mobile media and marketing. Our agenda will focus on building profitable revenue growth for companies engaged in mobile marketing, communications and advertising, and helping publishers, marketers and agency professionals understand and leverage interactive tools and technologies in order to reach and influence the consumer. For more information or to find out how to join, please visit www.iab.net/mmcoe.

About 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, 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. IAB educates marketers, agencies, media companies and the wider business community about the value of interactive advertising. Working with its member companies, IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices and fields critical research on interactive advertising. Founded in 1996, IAB is headquartered in New York City with a Public Policy office in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.iab.net.

First Standard Portfolio Upgrade Since 2003 Showcases Brand-Friendly Ad Formats; Research Reveals They Entertain, Enlighten and Engage – at Scale

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. - Since their introduction in 1996 and most recent update in 2003, the IAB Standard Ad Units helped to create the modern, scalable digital advertising industry. Today over 80 percent of display ads sold have followed IAB standards. To drive the industry forward and create new opportunities for dynamic brand advertising, IAB released a new Standard Ad Unit Portfolio at the fifth IAB Annual Leadership Meeting “Ecosystem 2.0: Beyond Time and Space,” which includes a new range of formats designed to meet marketers’ communications needs across the purchase funnel. Among these are the IAB Rising Stars Display ad units, six new interactive ad units developed and tested in partnership with leading publishers and agencies in the digital world.

“The new IAB portfolio allows creatives to tell bigger, bolder brand stories,” said Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO, IAB. “The new units offer more space, greater functionality, and a broader range of user experiences—providing a collection of next-generation interactive canvases designed to leverage the rich, immersive benefits of digital.”

To measure the new units’ ability to deliver at scale for brand advertisers, IAB partnered with IPG Media Lab to conduct proprietary research with Affectiva, GazeHawk and Moat that looked at attentiveness, emotive response and brand lift. Working with BBDO, BBH, Razorfish and SapientNitro, campaigns were tested from AT&T, Jeep and Westin Hotels & Resorts, leveraging all six Rising Stars units for each. The test creative, which was showcased on MSN.com, was built by AOL/Pictela, DoubleClick/Google, MediaMind and Microsoft Advertising.

The research findings revealed that consumers interact significantly more with Rising Stars ads than with incumbent standard ad units (such as the leaderboard and medium rectangle). Users were 2.5 times more likely to interact with a Rising Stars ad unit than a standard ad unit, spent twice as much time interacting with the ad and took less time to react to the ad (two times quicker than with standard ads). Along with increased interaction, eye-tracking showed that users viewed ads longer (31% more) with Rising Stars units versus standard formats.

In addition, study respondents found the Rising Stars ads to be more “enjoyable” and “engaging” when compared to regular displays ads, and they were more likely to say the Rising Stars ads “improved my impression of this web site” and their opinion of the brand.

”Being able to combine eye-tracking and facial-coding with more traditional behavioral analytics and brand lift survey data, and to do all of that in a respondent’s home using their webcam, gives us an amazing new view into the true impact of these cool new ad formats” said Tim McAtee, Research Director, IPG Media.

“As marketers we are all going to be more efficient in maximizing our production resources by having more structure around rich digital advertising units,” said Christi Gettinger, Senior Director Brand Management, Westin Hotels & Resorts. “To date, publishers have been fairly fragmented in their offerings to advertisers and this ultimately drives up production costs to effectively reach our target audience. We are thrilled the IAB team is taking the lead in creating more opportunities for marketers to be effective in connecting with consumers online.”

“Creating truly engaging brand advertising in the digital world has—up until now—typically meant settling for one-off executions with limited reach,” said Emma Cookson, Chairman, BBH New York. “The addition of the Rising Stars to the IAB Standard Ad Unit Portfolio will help allow brilliant work to scale, much like TV has for years.”

“The Rising Stars Display ad units have already proven themselves in the marketplace with exponentially higher interaction rates and interaction time—the core metrics that matter for brand advertisers” said Peter Minnium, Head of Brand Initiatives, IAB. “They can only bring the interactive industry to new heights as part of the IAB Standard Ad Unit Portfolio.”

For the first time ever, the new portfolio offers marketers a range of IAB Standard Ad Units to deploy against their different objectives. Whether a campaign is brand focused and measured by engagement and attitudinal lift, or performance oriented and optimized for conversion, the new-for-2012 IAB Standard Ad Unit Portfolio provides the creative canvasses at scale to reach one’s goals.

To download all of the portfolio’s ad format specifications, please go to www.iab.net/displayguidelines.

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.

CrunchBase Information on Iab

Revises Specifications for Communication Protocol Between Video Players & In-Stream Video Ad Units – Enabling Rich Interactive In-Stream Advertising Experiences for Viewers and Richer Data for Publishers & Brand Marketers

NEW YORK - The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) released an update to “Video Player Ad-Serving Interface Definition” (VPAID) for public comment. An advanced communication protocol between video players and ad units, VPAID was initially released in 2009, offering cross-platform support for rich in-stream video ads. Extending and enhancing those original specifications, VPAID v2.0 provides in-stream video ad designers even greater interactive capabilities and support for improved reporting.

“Anyone involved in the video advertising supply chain can benefit from this upgrade to VPAID,” said Steve Sullivan, Vice President, Ad Technology, IAB. “Adoption of VPAID v2.0 improves the capture of rich in-stream advertising interactions and offers advertisers even more data about the increasingly creative advertising experience they provide for their consumers.”

VPAID v2.0 includes:

• Document Rewrite — The content in VPAID v2.0 has been reorganized and simplified. Special attention was given to the flow of explanations, empowering non-technical readers to understand VPAID and technical readers to implement VPAID.
• VPAID and VAST Integration — A valid VPAID object when layered with the IAB Video Ad-Serving Template (VAST) guidelines is highly recommended because VAST ads that include VPAID protocols can play in both VAST- and VPAID-enabled video players. This new version offers guidance on how to use VPAID protocols in a VAST ad unit.
• Support for HTML 5 — HTML 5 is a formatting language that has the potential to enable cross-platform/cross-device support for the latest trends in web media. Sample JavaScript code is provided with details that highlight the HTML 5 environment.
• Technical Feature Updates — Features to support advancing video capabilities such as skippable ads, self-regulation of online behavioral advertising, and interactions beyond the clickthrough have been added.

The public comment period for the IAB release of VPAID v2.0 will run through March 29, 2012. Once the public comment period closes, the IAB Digital Video Committee will meet to evaluate comments received, make any needed changes to the draft specifications, and release a final version. Comments are being accepted by email at adtechnology@iab.net.

For a copy of the public comment version of VPAID v2.0 and more information about VPAID, the working group and its members, please visit http://www.iab.net/vpaid.

About the IAB’s Digital Video Committee

The Digital Video Committee of the IAB is comprised of over 180 member companies actively engaged in the creation and execution of digital video advertising. One of the goals of the committee is to implement a comprehensive set of guidelines, measurement, and creative options for interactive video advertising. The Committee works to educate marketers and agencies on the strength of digital video as a marketing vehicle. A full list of Committee member companies can be found at: www.iab.net/digital_video_committee.

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.

CrunchBase Information on Iab

New Functionality Supports 2012 Election Ad Campaign Season

IRVINE, Calif. - Local Corporation (NASDAQ: LOCM), a leading online local media company, announced that its Rovion Ad Management Platform (RAMP) now includes the ability to add real-time polling results to any rich media advertisement, just in time for the 2012 election ad campaign season.

RAMP’s drag and drop functionality allows users to create polls and display results with just a few clicks. The platform’s easy-to-use reporting tool provides immediate results, helping companies and political campaigns quickly decipher polling insights, measure preference ranking and refine messaging.

“The ability to add real-time voting through RAMP’s self service interface eliminates the need for technical personnel and as a result, saves time and reduces cost. Especially with the upcoming 2012 elections, real-time opinion polls in rich media ads that cross mobile and desktop environments can be a powerful tactical advantage for campaigns,” said Michael Sawtell, Local Corporation president and COO.

According to STRATA’s recent survey of advertising agencies, 42 percent say their 2012 political ad spend will be more than 2010.

“We are excited to offer new and compelling features within RAMP, as we continue to integrate the platform and other recent acquisitions into our broader product suite and discover additional opportunities for strategic growth,” said Sawtell.

RAMP by Rovion is the first automated solution that enables agencies, the brands they represent and publishers to create and publish original rich media ads without code or the Adobe® Flash® authoring tool. The custom platform enables the flexible, creation of rich media ads using a single ad tag that can be viewed online or on mobile devices. For more information, please visit: http://www.rovion.com/.

About Local Corporation

Local Corporation (NASDAQ:LOCM) is a local media company that specializes in connecting brick-and-mortar businesses with online customers using a variety of innovative digital marketing products including local rich media, local business and product search, mobile, SEO, web hosting, social media and daily deals. The company serves a million consumers a day on the flagship Local.com website, Spreebird.com and a network of more than 1,000 regional media sites. To advertise, or for more information, visit: http://www.local.com/ orhttp://www.localcorporation.com.

Consumers spent more than 1.7 billion seconds engaged with SocialVibe ads in 2011, demonstrating engagement advertising captures people’s active attention

LOS ANGELES - SocialVibe, a digital advertising technology company, announced new milestones that further establish the company as the leader in the engagement advertising market. To date, the company has powered more than 500 opt-in engagement campaigns for more than 200 of the world’s leading brands including Toyota, Pepsi, GE and Disney. SocialVibe delivered advertisers more than 1.7 billion seconds of consumers’ active attention in 2011 by leveraging its unique engagement advertising technology platform and its network of premium publisher sites.

SocialVibe’s 2011 milestones include:

• Powered more than 500 engagement advertising campaigns for more than 200 leading global brands across five continents.
• Delivered 1.7 billion seconds of consumers’ active attention with brand messages.
• Doubled the number of engagements served compared to 2010.
• Amassed an extensive network of premium partner sites and apps to reach more than 100 million unique consumers every month.
• Integrated augmented reality technology into brand engagement ads, an industry first
• Published a research study with independent firm KN Dimestore that demonstrates more than 90 percent of people pay active attention to a brand message when interacting with a value exchange engagement ad.
• Introduced engagement advertising internationally into Latin America, and established a U.K. office to lead EMEA engagement efforts.
• Secured $20 million in funding led by Norwest Venture Partners.
• Doubled company headcount over 2010.
• Garnered industry awards, including a Social Media Influencer Award for a General Electric engagement campaign; first place in OMMA Social’s Instant RFP Showdown; and was recognized as one of the Hottest Tech Companies in Southern California by Lead411.

SocialVibe’s 2011 growth demonstrates that engagement advertising has not only experienced a significant increase in demand, it has evolved to become an established part of the marketing mix. In today’s online landscape where consumer attention is hard to capture, SocialVibe’s unique opt-in approach provides a more effective ad model. By allowing people to choose to engage with a brand message to earn something valuable and relevant to them in return, SocialVibe is able to guarantee consumers’ active attention for advertisers. Delivered on a cost-per-engagement (CPE) pricing model, SocialVibe’s rich media engagement ads enable advertisers to pay only for performance and avoid spending media dollars on advertising that consumers never see.

Brand advertisers have consistently achieved the following results with SocialVibe’s approach:

• 80-percent of people interact with engagements to completion
• An average of 63-seconds are spent with each engagement
• 41-percent of people go on to connect with the brand via a website or social media page

“One of the biggest challenges facing marketers today is effectively reaching consumers where their attention lives, which is why our unique engagement approach has been embraced by so many brands,” said Dave Levy, co-founder of SocialVibe. “SocialVibe’s engagement ads provide a motivation or reward in exchange for interacting with a brand message, and in turn, consumers welcome the experience and provide their active attention. This consumer-minded, opt-in approach has raised the bar for what’s possible in online advertising, and we look forward to building on our success to make this technology available to a broader audience in 2012.”

SocialVibe creates a marketplace based on guaranteed active attention, and its cloud-based advertising technology provides a scalable, transparent and measureable solution for both publishers and brands to effectively garner consumer awareness. With proprietary targeting technology and advanced data analytics, SocialVibe is able to ensure brands reach the right audience at the right time with the right message, harnessing consumer attention and translating it into meaningful results.

About SocialVibe

SocialVibe is a digital advertising technology company that powers engagement advertising for some of the world’s top brands. In today’s online landscape where consumer attention is hard to capture, SocialVibe’s rich media engagement ads guarantee active attention to a brand’s message across premium sites. Pioneers of the value exchange advertising approach for brands, SocialVibe enables advertisers to engage with consumers when they are most motivated to interact with a brand experience, such as while playing a game or seeking access to premium content. SocialVibe is based in Los Angeles, California and is backed by Norwest Venture Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Jafco Ventures and Pinnacle Ventures. For more information, visit www.socialvibe.com or check out twitter.com/socialvibe.

Marketers discover competitors’ keywords, spend, impression share and more to help optimize performance and maximize search ROI

CHICAGO - Digital marketing intelligence provider AdGooroo (www.adgooroo.com) unveiled Industry Insight, a versatile search marketing dashboard that provides advertisers and agencies with instant access to the world’s largest search intelligence database, including years of proprietary pay-per-click (PPC) data on virtually every industry and advertiser.

AdGooroo’s search intelligence database analyzes and collects data on millions of keywords and billions of individual search impressions per month for virtually every advertiser across more than 160 industry categories. Industry Insight enables search marketers to access this data—including specific keywords, estimated share of voice or impression share, estimated PPC spend, clickthrough rates (CTR), cost per click (CPC) and more—for each advertiser and industry category.

Using Industry Insight, search marketers have the ability to:

• Mine competitors’ keyword lists to uncover new traffic opportunities
• Quickly assess the competitive landscape and larger trends that may impact budgeting and performance in any vertical
• Gain immediate insight into any advertiser, including those too small to show up in panel-based datasets
• Compare any two advertisers across any time period by spend, clicks, CTR, CPC, ranking and more
• View historical/seasonal trends
• And more

“Industry Insight enables search marketers to easily monitor their competitors’ every online move and to better understand trends across their vertical category,” said Richard Stokes, founder and CEO of AdGooroo. “That means having meaningful, actionable data to benchmark and optimize your own campaign performance relative to the competition and maximize your search ROI.”

“FRWD has found AdGooroo’s Industry Insight to be instrumental in helping size the search and content opportunity in new categories, for both potential clients and clients new to search or affiliate marketing,” commented Aimee Reker, partner at digital marketing firm FRWD. “Industry Insight helps inform our content creation and content marketing recommendations by revealing historical competition within the context of demand and cost. It’s a simple and immediate way to see competitive trends back in time.”

Industry Insight can also be integrated with SEM Insight™, AdGooroo’s tactical intelligence tool for PPC managers, enabling daily visibility into competitors’ PPC campaigns, including all ad copy and landing pages. As an example of the benefits of integrating the two products, search marketers can filter Industry Insight reports by keyword group such as product category or top-performing keywords in order to view competitors’ PPC spend on individual product lines and more.

Central to Industry Insight is the accuracy of its data. AdGooroo measures more than 2.5 billion search impressions each month using servers located in local markets—the most accurate method of data collection possible. AdGooroo also utilizes proprietary PPC spend estimation models that are verified each month against known ad spend. Further, the company’s automated quality assurance solution provides proactive, seamless problem detection and resolution, 24 hours a day. In addition, the methodology noted above is backed up by dedicated engineering and support teams to help ensure customers’ success.

About AdGooroo:

Founded in 2004, AdGooroo is a leading provider of Digital Marketing Intelligence that drives competitive advantage for Internet marketers. More than 4,000 advertisers and agencies use AdGooroo’s on-demand tools to tap into the world’s largest database of search and display marketing data and gain actionable intelligence on their top competitors’ keywords, ad creative, backlink data, campaign statistics, budgets and more. For more information, visit AdGooroo.com.