Typically the first to adopt new advertising technologies, online publishers demand innovative solutions along with white-glove service supported by teams that understand their business. The Global Publisher Unit helps publishers expand beyond the basic ad unit experience and scale their rich media product offering with advanced, innovative technologies such as dynamic creative optimization, mobile and in-stream video.

The MediaMind Global Publisher Unit has collaborated with the IAB to develop four of the six IAB Rising Star Formats recently launched for North America. In response to MediaMind’s announcement of this new Unit, Peter Minnium, Head of Digital Brand Initiatives at the IAB stated, “The IAB views the MediaMind Global Publisher Unit as a key partner in setting industry standards and developing innovative formats that will enable consumers to connect with brands more effectively.”

Many of the leading global publishers already benefit from partnering with this unit. “As a unified team, we are even better positioned to support key global publishers such as MSN, Yahoo!, the budding social media marketplace, as well as news and entertainment broadcast channels such as NBC, CBS, etc.,” said James Dillon, Senior Vice President of the MediaMind Global Publisher Unit.

For more information on MediaMind, visit http://www.mediamind.com .

About MediaMind
MediaMind, a division of DG (NASDAQ:DGIT), is a leading global provider of digital advertising campaign management solutions to advertising agencies and advertisers. MediaMind provides media and creative agencies, advertisers and publishers with an integrated platform to manage campaigns across digital media channels and a variety of formats, including rich media, in-stream video, display and search. During 2010, MediaMind delivered campaigns for approximately 9,000 brand advertisers, servicing approximately 3,800 media and creative agencies across approximately 8,200 global web publishers in 64 countries.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New York – LiveIntent, the platform for buying and selling email ad inventory exactly like display, today announced it has integrated its services with advertising technology from Convertro, the leader in providing advertisers enhanced transparency into the effectiveness of their online marketing channels and optimization. This integration provides advertisers with a better understanding of the value of LiveIntent’s inventory within their overall digital media footprint.

Previous constraints in the email space only made it possible to track last click conversions or direct consumer behaviors back to email, but Convertro’s Multi-Attribution service allows advertisers access into every marketing touch that led to a conversion without limits on the number of touch points, cookie windows and other constraints. By partnering with Convertro, LiveIntent can now attribute an action back to an email ad placement, even if the consumer decides to shop around before converting into purchase.

“This integration was driven by our goal to provide advertisers with more knowledge and transparency into the impact of our email advertising offerings, ” said Jason Oates, President LiveIntent. “With Convertro’s unique attribution service, we can now prove to advertisers how effective their email advertising campaigns are by identifying how they impact the top (awareness) and bottom (conversion) of the sales funnel. This is important to brand and direct advertisers.”

“By tapping into Convertro’s technology, LiveIntent will now be able to prove to advertisers accurate contribution of email marketing efforts to best optimize their revenue from email ads,” said Jeff Zwelling, CEO and Co-Founder, Convertro. “Convertro strives to provide advertisers with transparency and in turn, give our customers the attribution they deserve.”

This integration is one of many strategic initiatives from LiveIntent, including new product offerings to its portfolio and personnel additions to accommodate the company’s rapid growth.

About LiveIntent
LiveIntent is the only company with a real-time display ad platform for email. LiveIntent works with advertisers, publishers and agencies to provide ad optimization, DSP / trading desk and exchanges capabilities. The company is venture-backed by Shasta Ventures, Battery Ventures, First Round Capital, Lerer Ventures and Grape Arbor VC. LiveIntent was founded in 2009 and is headquartered in NYC. For more information and a demonstration of the company’s technology in your own inbox, visit www.liveintent.com.

NEW YORK – Tremor Video, the largest independent online video advertising technology company, and TubeMogul, the fastest-growing media buying platform for video advertising, announced that Tremor Video has purchased InPlay, TubeMogul’s industry-leading video analytics for publishers. Tremor Video will integrate InPlay directly into VideoHub, its enterprise video platform, enabling a complete end-to-end video analytics solution for publishers.

InPlay helps publishers understand real-time engagement, viewership and performance data, and is relied on daily by hundreds of top media companies, video platforms and content creators. The transfer of ownership gives Tremor Video an industry-best set of publisher video analytics, allowing the company to give publishers and their partners the ability to measure, track, report and deliver on the signals driving the performance of video content.

TubeMogul, which started as a video measurement company for publishers, shifted its focus in the past year after launching the industry’s first demand side platform for video advertising. Although TubeMogul is divesting its publisher analytics, the real-time reporting tools developed for TubeMogul’s video advertising platform will be unaffected, giving clients uninterrupted access to audience, engagement and brand impact data by site and by ad.

The deal continues to enhance Tremor Video’s VideoHub suite of products, making insights gathered from more than 1 billion video streams available to help publishers understand how their videos are discovered, what drives engagement and much more. InPlay will be available to all publishers as part of VideoHub for Publishers, launching in Q1 2012.

“Publishers are demanding an analytics suite that provides a clear picture of how viewers are interacting with content in order to determine what creates the most value for advertisers,” said Bill Day, CEO of Tremor Video. “InPlay gives us industry-leading technology and a sound product that meets this market demand. By integrating with our existing VideoHub technology, Tremor Video can now offer our partners a view across the entire video landscape.”

“TubeMogul InPlay was built to help publishers better understand their viewers to drive deeper engagement, and it has largely delivered on that promise,” said Brett Wilson, Co-founder and CEO of TubeMogul. “As we shift our focus from publishers to brand advertisers, this deal helps us align our capabilities with the needs of marketers, while ensuring they get the transparency and reporting they have come to expect.”

The InPlay acquisition is the latest in a series of deals for Tremor Video. The company’s other recent purchases include ScanScout in November, 2010 and mobile ad platform Transpera in February of this year. Tremor Video plans to continue to be acquisitive, fueled by $37 million in funding raised earlier this year.

TubeMogul is also seeing tremendous growth, with recent partnerships in the connected TV, mobile and social space as well as new contracts with major agency trading desks worldwide. The company was recently named the seventh-fastest growing independent company in the San Francisco Bay Area, spanning Silicon Valley and beyond.

About Tremor Video

Tremor Video (www.tremorvideo.com) provides in-stream video advertising solutions to Fortune 1000 brand advertisers and top tier publishers. Widely regarded as the leader in online video advertising technology, the company leverages its award-winning decisioning engine, innovative video ad formats and publisher technology to deliver the campaign results and scale advertisers should expect from digital video. Tremor Video is the only video ad platform that can provide 100% brand safety by scanning and categorizing every single video stream before an ad is ever served. In addition, Tremor Video’s award-winning SE2 technology gets smarter at finding and engaging viewers with every ad served, enabling the company to welcome and encourage pay-per-engagement pricing. Founded in 2005, Tremor Video is backed by top-tier investors, including Canaan Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson Growth, General Catalyst, Keating Capital, Meritech Capital Partners, Time Warner Investments, and W Capital Partners.

VideoHub, a division of Tremor Video, is a first of its kind analytics console that helps marketers and agencies monitor the complex video ecosystem to dynamically match ads with content and viewers, deliver upon marketing goals, and maximize brand impact. Unlike traditional video management platforms, VideoHub focuses on effectiveness and delivers real-time analytics for deep transparency across ads, content, viewers, and performance. To request a demo, visit videohub.tv.

About TubeMogul

TubeMogul is the only video marketing company built for branding. As a demand side platform for video, TubeMogul integrates real-time media buying, ad serving, targeting optimization and brand measurement into its PlayTime platform. Over half of the Fortune 500 use TubeMogul to simplify the delivery of video ads in any format, optimize the impact of their brand message and maximize the effect of every dollar they spend.

Founded in 2006, TubeMogul is based in Emeryville, CA with offices in New York, London, Chicago, Los Angeles, Toronto and Sydney.

NEW YORK – Shazam®, the world’s leading mobile discovery company, today announced that Shazam for TV™ will play a major role in several television advertising campaigns running during the Super Bowl, an event known as much for its cutting-edge advertising as it is for the game itself. This year, Super Bowl sponsors are taking advantage of live second-screen audience engagement by incorporating Shazam into their TV commercials. Several brand sponsors will amplify their spots with unique mobile content and valuable offers delivered to TV audiences in real-time.

Andrew Fisher, Shazam’s Chief Executive Officer, said, “For more than a decade, advertisers have captured the imaginations of Super Bowl fans with their most creative and daring campaigns. This year, Shazam is proud to be a part of that tradition of innovation by partnering with some of the world’s leading brands to offer an unprecedented viewing experience. Over the last year, consumers have used Shazam to unlock special offers and content from the companies they love and know, they will be able to have that same level of interactivity during this year’s biggest television event, Super Bowl XLVI.”

Viewers who have Shazam installed on their smartphones will be able to use the app during The Big Game to enter sweepstakes for major prizes, get additional information about a brand or product, view additional special content, download free music and more.

Since launching Shazam for TV with a Dockers campaign in 2010, Shazam has continued to expand its offering, working with global brands such as Proctor and Gamble, Unilever, Pillsbury, Bud Light and Sony Pictures. To date, Shazam has delivered multiple custom interactive campaigns for partners ranging from global A-List brands to TV shows and one-off events like the Disney Christmas Day Parade on ABC.

“No one else has come close to delivering as many unique campaigns, nor do they have our scale, with more than 175 million people who use Shazam,” said Fisher. “Shazam is the leader in second-screen interactive TV, and brands and producers are actively extending their engagement with our proven technology at scale, driving real impact.”

Advertisers integrate Shazam for TV to extend their commercials to the second screen, creating a custom follow-on experience to achieve their goals and engage viewers. For example, when people use Shazam to tag a 30-second spot, they can unlock additional content or shop from their couch. And, since it is saved in their “my tags” list for later, it is automatically “bookmarked” to view anytime and anywhere.

About Shazam

Shazam is the world’s leading mobile discovery company, enabling people to experience and share content across mobile devices and the Internet. With more than 175 million people using the service in 200 countries, Shazam has created a new way to learn about music, TV and brands and share finds with friends.

For people who don’t yet have the Shazam application on their smartphone, it can be found on iTunes App Store, Android Market, Amazon App Store, AT&T’s AppCenter, Verizon VCast app store, Nokia Store, Windows Phone Marketplace, BlackBerry App World, and GetJar.

For further information about Shazam Entertainment visit www.shazam.com and @ShazamNews or follow them on Facebook.

Los Angeles, CA – PK4 Media, the premium online video advertising network and publishing company today announced the acquisition of JSFOUR, a media and technology company. As part of the acquisition JSFour founder, Jimi Smoot, will join PK4 Media as the VP of Product Development. The two companies have been in collaboration to develop an advanced video distribution platform named Bishop.

The Bishop Video Platform (BVP) is designed for the next generation of online video. At the core of Bishop’s DNA is JSFour’s Render platform, which was engineered for publishers to lower the cost associated with running video on their site. PK4 Media brings advertisers to the mix to offset any cost. Bishop is at the intersection of JSFour’s technology and PK4’s distribution strength. The platform provides an easy-to-use solution for publishers and advertisers seeking to incorporate video on their website, or in their marketing mix.

This ground-breaking format enables a new breed of marketing. Publishers no longer need content delivery network (CDN) relationships, a video player, or an expensive video platform. Now they can quickly and easily upload video to Bishop, embed a player and begin optimizing their content. Videos are automatically monetized. This easy to deploy solution also benefits creators. As content is deployed and syndicated across more than 4,000 sites within the PK4 Media distribution network, royalties go right back to the content creator.

“When JSFour showed us their low cost and streamlined method for publishers to add video their site, light bulbs went off instantly,” said PK4 Media CEO and Founder, Tom Alexander. “We knew that the publishers we have relationships with would benefit from this platform, and any costs would be offset through our brand partners. We acquired the technology almost immediately.”

Mr. Smoot built the Render Platform, the main asset acquired by PK4Media and the technology behind Bishop, while moonlighting during his tenure at Initiative. Throughout his diverse carrier, Jimi has worked on all of the sides of the advertising ecosystem gaining a unique perspective on the ins and outs of the business. He has held several positions in media sales and account planning. Most recently serving as Innovations Manager at Initiative, he was responsible for identifying cutting edge technology-based marketing opportunities for Dr Pepper, VIZIO and KIA. Holding a seat on the thinkLA Adzoo board, Jimi is an active member of the Los Angeles advertising community.

“As someone who is passionate about innovation, I’m absolutely pumped to see some of my technology advance a whole new video platform,” said Jimi Smoot, newly appointed VP of Product Development at PK4 Media.  “Bishop combines content creation with a broad and vast distribution system, enabling the next generation of online video advertising.”

PK4 Media is a premium advertising network and publishing company with a proprietary video platform for publishers, advertisers and content creators. The company offers a brand-centric, performance-based media solution through a unified network of brand-safe publishers.  The platform delivers advanced tracking, targeting and optimization capabilities extending beyond typical video ad solutions.

About PK4 Media
Founded in 2009, PK4 Media is headquartered in Los Angeles, California with sales offices throughout the United States, including San Francisco and New York. PK4 Media is a privately-held company led by industry leaders from OMD, Blue Lithium, ValueClick, Publicis, and Initiative. For more information, please visit: www.pk4media.com.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

About Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.

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

About State Farm

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

About Vizu

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

About YuMe

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

BOSTON, MA and COLOGNE, GERMANY – DataXu (www.dataxu.com), provider of the industry’s #1 ranked demand-side platform (DSP), announced that it has acquired the leading European DSP service provider, Mexad.  With offices in Germany, France, Spain, the United Kingdom, Italy, Poland, and Brazil, Mexad leads in European and Latin American market share, providing local service and superior results for customers across more than 60 countries.

Known for its exceptional customer service and expertise, Mexad will now offer DataXu’s leading digital marketing management platform, DX3 – the #1 ranked Current DSP Offering in the December 2011 Forrester Research, Inc. report, “The Forrester Wave™: Demand-Side Platforms, Q4 2011” – to brands and agencies looking to increase the returns on their digital investments. By uniting best-in-class service and technology, the combined powerhouse now offers advertisers a trusted neutral partner with the largest number of local service centers in the world.

Becoming part of DataXu comes at an important time for brands looking to run global programs, leveraging the effectiveness and efficiency of an enterprise-class platform.  As economic concerns deepen, companies are looking to digital marketing to increase sales and drive higher profits. Multinational advertisers that have relied on DX3 to optimize their digital marketing efforts in North America can now derive the same benefits at unrivalled global scale with country-specific expertise and local service.

“Budgets are growing by double digits as brands seek to capitalize on the cost-effectiveness, flexibility, and accountability that digital provides,” said Sacha Berlik, CEO of Mexad. “While we pride ourselves on supporting a variety of solutions, we’ve been acquired by the best in the industry.  We look forward to bringing our clients new capabilities provided by DX3, such as advanced attribution management and active analytics, which are not currently available from any other vendor in Europe.”

“The advertising industry is undergoing a seismic change as consumers around the world embrace digital devices and marketers struggle to keep up,” commented Mike Baker, CEO and co-founder of DataXu. “To succeed in this new world, a marketer needs to partner with a firm that offers not only the best technology, but also a globally-scalable service capability with expertise in data and analytics.  Together, Mexad and DataXu will provide a unique value to the world’s largest brands.”

About DataXu

DataXu has developed the industry’s only fully-integrated enterprise digital marketing management (DMM) platform – DX3. Comprised of the #1 ranked demand-side platform as well as sophisticated data management and attribution management capabilities, DX3 defines a new class of enterprise solutions that manage, optimize, and automate digital marketing initiatives to turn Big Data into profitable actions. DataXu’s executive team unites leading executives in digital media with MIT technologists. The private company is backed by Atlas Venture, Flybridge Capital Partners and Menlo Ventures. For more information, visit www.dataxu.com or follow us on Twitter at @dataxu.

About Mexad

Mexad, founded in 2008, is the first and leading European RTB-service provider with offices in London, Paris, Milan, Madrid, Cologne, Warsaw and Sao Paulo (Brazil). With access to over 20 billion RTB ad impressions per day, Mexad purchases the relevant ad placements at the right time for the right user for its media-agency clients. As the leading RTB specialist Mexad offers its agency clients the technology and services for using various auction-based exchange technologies for the purchase of advertising space on the Internet, in a synchronized, effective and brand-safe manner.

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

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

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

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

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

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

About 24/7 Real Media, Inc.

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

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

24/7 Real Media: The Science of Digital Marketing

About Panache

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

interclick has built an industry leading data valuation platform optimized to work with large data volumes across multiple providers and marketplaces. It dramatically improves data targeted solutions and optimizes returns for advertisers across a variety of pooled premium supply. interclick brings new premium supply and a rich set of campaign reporting tools that will allow Yahoo! to provide improved insights on performance.

“With interclick, Yahoo! has acquired technology and talent that will enable us to offer better and more efficient campaigns to marketers,” said Wayne Powers, SVP of North American Advertising Sales at Yahoo!. “We are pleased to welcome the interclick team to Yahoo! and look forward to the innovative new solutions we will be able to offer.”

Yahoo! expects to complete the acquisition of interclick through a “short-form” merger. In the merger, all remaining shares of interclick common stock (other than shares held by interclick, Yahoo! or their subsidiaries, and shares held by stockholders, if any, who properly exercise their appraisal rights under applicable Delaware law) will be acquired for $9.00 per share. After the merger, interclick will be a wholly owned subsidiary of Yahoo!.

In order to complete the “short form” merger, Yahoo! will exercise its “top-up” option pursuant to the merger agreement to purchase directly from interclick an additional number of shares, for $9.00 per share (the same price paid in the tender offer). Together with the shares purchased in the tender offer, Yahoo! will own at least 90% of the outstanding shares of interclick common stock.

About Yahoo!

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

SANTA MONICA, Calif. – Double Fusion, the leading independent in-game advertising network, announced its acquisition of NeoEdge Networks, a pioneer in social and casual in-game advertising. This strategic acquisition of NeoEdge’s assets positions Double Fusion as the premier, comprehensive in-game advertising solution for advertisers, brand marketers and publishers to reach any demographic playing any game genre on the PlayStation®3 system as well as social and casual platforms.

NeoEdge and its partners add over 100 million monthly video impressions in numerous casual and social games to Double Fusion’s extensive global network of 3 billion monthly impressions in top games from publishing partners such as Ubisoft, THQ and 2K Sports. In addition, much of this new social inventory is based on the latest highly engaging advertising formats designed to deliver powerful brand interaction with consumers.

“This acquisition highlights our commitment to deliver a complete 360 degree in-game advertising solution for our clients and partners,” said Dan Chambers, Double Fusion’s Head of Sales. “Gaming has become much more than the entertainment of choice for males 18-34. With the dramatic rise of social and casual gaming, it’s now mainstream and appeals to women as well as Generations X and Y. You can basically find a game to fit every age and demographic.”

By offering a full spectrum of dynamic in-game advertising opportunities in console, social and casual gaming, Chambers points out that Double Fusion enables advertisers and brand marketers to reach “super targeted, super engaged, super consumers” with high impact campaigns.

According to technology researcher Gartner Group, worldwide spending on gaming will exceed $74 billion this year, up 10.4% from 2010. By 2015, spending will reach $112 billion with online gaming rising to $28.3 billion in 2015. PopCap Games Research reports that there are an estimated 98 million social gamers in the US, a 71% increase since just 2010.

Leveraging this explosive growth, in-game advertising is proving to be a ‘must have’ in today’s media buying mix. Gaming offers a uniquely engaging environment that leads to across the board better brand awareness and recall versus TV, radio, print or other media. In-game ads provide access to an affluent, brand-literate audience and reach every segment of the population. Having worked with some of today’s blue chip brands including McDonald’s, Twentieth Century Fox, Dr. Pepper, State Farm and Toyota, Double Fusion has exclusive in-game opportunities with 2K Sports, as well as games like Pro Evolution Soccer 2012, Square Enix’s Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment’s Mortal Kombat and Ubisoft’s Shaun White Skateboarding and Driver®: San Francisco.

“THQ has always had an excellent relationship with Double Fusion and we are excited about their recent expansion,” said Tim Walsh, Vice President, THQ Partners. “We have and will continue to embrace in-game advertising to add realism, information and an additional revenue stream for us and our developers.”

To expand its presence in Canada, Double Fusion also sealed an exclusive sales relationship with Toronto-based Cue Digital Media. Recently named one of “Canada’s Most Promising New Digital Companies” at The Digi Awards, Cue represents several highly visible, U.S.-based digital content sites, including UFC.com, Heavy.com, CollegeHumor.com, celebrity news site TMZ.com and FunnyOrDie.com.

“We are excited to add Double Fusion to Cue’s roster of top tier media properties,” commented Cue CEO David U.K. “With Canada’s gaming industry representing $1.7 billion in economic activity in 2011, with an expected growth rate of 17% over the next two years as per ESRB 2011 Canadian Study, there is clearly a massive opportunity for Canadian marketers to reach deeply engaged consumers through in-gaming advertising.”

To help leverage its expanding footprint, Double Fusion has also opened a New York sales office. Newly hired Jesse Paynter, with over 6 years of experience at AOL as well as stints at Turner Broadcasting and Ryan Partnership, will lead the team as VP of East Coast Sales. Paynter will be joined by Senior Sales Director, Lou Bridda and Sales Director, Don Snellings. Senior Sales Director Michele Sushin has also joined Chambers in Double Fusion’s West Coast office.

About Double Fusion

Double Fusion is one of the world’s leading in-game advertising networks with unmatched reach across console, social and casual gaming. Double Fusion connects Fortune 500 brands to millions of video game players through its award-winning dynamic ad-serving technology and marketing services. Double Fusion provides highly engaged, authentic experiences for gamers and the advertisers looking to reach them across all demographics, platforms and game genres.

Privately-held and headquartered in Santa Monica, Double Fusion has offices and/or affiliates in Buenos Aires, Jerusalem, London, Madrid, New York, Sydney, Tokyo and Toronto.

For more information: www.doublefusion.com and www.facebook.com/doublefusionads.

With Shopper Access, brands can connect both display and video ad campaigns with actual offline sales to understand campaign effectiveness and optimize it to increase their return on investment. This depth of data also allows brands to activate marketing campaigns using purchaser-based definitions such as light or heavy shoppers of specific products and categories, shoppers of competitive brands, “switchers” and other shopping-based behaviors.

For example, a diaper brand can use Specific Media’s Shopper Access to reach moms with an ad for baby wipes to drive cross-category and line-extension purchases. Specific Media is in discussions to apply the shopper-based solution to a number of brands from the largest CPG companies.

Nielsen Catalina Solutions, a joint venture between Nielsen and Catalina Marketing, accesses 60 million households from a subset of Catalina’s shopper data warehouse. Shopper Access provides insights into how advertising influences consumer purchase behavior. The data is anonymous and aggregated using a secure third-party agent, and does not contain personally identifiable information (PII) to protect the privacy of individuals. The shopper data is matched with Specific Media’s online audience and further modeled based on proprietary Nielsen Catalina Solutions’ shopper profiles.

“Nielsen Catalina Solutions is pleased to work with Specific Media on Shopper Access,” said Mike Nazzaro, CEO of Nielsen Catalina Solutions. “Specific Media has unmatched scale in display and video, a long history of pioneering precision marketing using behavioral triggers and a solid track record of data governance and integrity. They’ve also made significant investments in growing their CPG category and have emerged as a strong leader in this space.”

“The breadth and depth of the Nielsen Catalina Solutions data and analytics are unparalleled in the industry,” said Vic Catalfamo, vice president and head of Global Consumer Goods Category, Specific Media. “Our multi-year alliance with Nielsen Catalina Solutions will now allow our large base of CPG brand customers to reach shoppers whenever they are online, with display and video campaigns that are truly scalable across the Internet.”

About Specific Media

Specific Media is a digital media company driving viewership for content owners, engagement for brands and relevance for consumers. With capabilities spanning original programming, cross-channel distribution and addressable advertising, the company connects audiences, content and brands, adding meaning to each touch-point. As people discover new ways to consume content, Specific Media creates impactful media experiences no matter where they are.
www.specificmedia.com

NEW YORK – Two leading mobile advertising organizations, Crisp Media and Smart Device Media today announced that they have combined to create a full-service mobile advertising powerhouse. The combined company will continue doing business under the name – Crisp Media. Jason Young, Smart Device Media co-founder and former Ziff Davis CEO, will assume the role of CEO of Crisp Media.

This combination brings together Crisp’s market leading, rich media advertising platform with Smart Device Media’s unparalleled media marketplace of targeted, brand safe, premium inventory. As a combined business, Crisp Media will offer brands, agencies, and publishers a unique set of product solutions to enable high quality brand advertising to successfully extend to mobile and other emerging device platforms.

With the mobile ad market in the US expected to grow to over $4 Billion by 2013 according to Forrester Research, the activity level of larger brand marketers is ramping quickly. “We are seeing the inflection point of major brand marketers starting to embrace mobile platforms as an important part of their marketing mix,” said Tim Bajarin, President of Creative Strategies, a leading technology and mobile research firm.

Crisp Media expects to offer significant and unrivaled benefits to publishers and advertisers, including:

- Crisp’s industry leading HTML5 based rich media platform and Crisp Engage, the self service mobile ad management framework, which together enable the building, serving, and measurement of high impact rich media advertising on mobile and other emerging device types using open, industry ad formats (ORMMA, MRAID).

- The combined scale of the Smart Device Media and Crisp Select media marketplaces, matching premium brand advertisers with premium mobile inventory.

- An experienced services organization capable of executing award winning creative campaigns globally.

“As our clients look to extend their advertising activities into mobile environments we need partners that can offer turnkey solutions delivering best of breed capabilities in ad formats, ad targeting, and ad measurement,” said Michael Collins, CEO of Joule, a mobile marketing agency that is part of the WPP Group. Crisp Media will be uniquely positioned to offer open, scalable, and efficient solutions to meet these needs.

Crisp Media will provide publishers with a comprehensive solution set to help them create compelling advertising experiences that will provide high levels of reader engagement and maximum yield for their inventory. “As our audiences interact more frequently with our content brands via mobile based platforms, we are focused on creating the very best advertising solutions for our marketing partners,” said Cameron Clayton, EVP Digital, The Weather Channel.

“The mobile ad market is at the critical stage where premium brands are starting to play significantly,” said newly appointed Crisp Media CEO Young. “Yet because barriers to buy still exist, the premium market demands an integrated set of solutions optimized for its unique needs. Crisp Media will be a catalyst for the industry, by bringing together an unrivaled combination of platform, products, services, and team expertise.”

Boris Fridman, the outgoing CEO of Crisp Media, will continue to serve as a board member. “The combination of these two perfectly complementary businesses fulfills the vision Crisp Media has been working toward. The new Crisp Media will be an even stronger partner for the brands, publishers, and agencies we serve today,” added Fridman.

About Crisp Media

Crisp Media is a pioneer of mobile ad products that make HTML5 advertising scalable across device platforms for native apps and browsers. Crisp Engage, an interactive ad platform designed to deliver the slickest ads to multiple screens, enables agencies to easily build, manage and measure rich media advertising campaigns on connected devices. Crisp is also a founding member of the Open Rich Media for Mobile Advertising (ORMMA) standard API, an Open Source project for letting agencies deliver HTML ads to native applications. Leading brands — including GM, Ford, Toyota, VW, IBM, Intel, HP, Procter and Gamble, Unilever, Coca-Cola, HBO and Paramount Pictures — have run Crisp ads. For more information visit www.crispmedia.com

About Smart Device Media

Smart Device Media is a leading provider of mobile, premium display, special interest advertising channels. Smart Device Media offers brand marketers the ability to reach premium, targeted audiences at scale within high-quality editorial environments, and publishers an unparalleled ability to monetize their premium ad inventory with transparency.

Company web site: www.smartdevicemedia.com

The Boards of blinkx plc (AIM:BLNX), the world’s largest video search engine (“blinkx” or the “Company”) and Prime Visibility Media Group, Inc., a leading online performance advertising network and digital marketing agency (“PVMG”) are pleased to announce today that they have entered into a definitive stock purchase agreement (the “Purchase Agreement”) pursuant to which blinkx has acquired the entire issued and to be issued shares of common stock and the entire issued and to be issued shares of preferred stock of PVMG (the “PVMG Shares”) for an aggregate consideration of US$36 million (£22.4 million), to be satisfied in cash (the “Acquisition”).

The Acquisition consideration of US$36 million (£22.4 million) will be funded through blinkx’s existing cash balances and the proceeds from a proposed placing of new ordinary shares in the capital of the Company (the “Placing”) announced separately today. A separate announcement is being issued by the Company this morning which will contain details of the Placing.

In the event that the Placing does not complete for any reason, the Acquisition will be funded entirely from the Company’s existing cash balances.

Further details of the Acquisition are set out in the Appendix to this document, available at http://www.blinkx.com/article/acquisition-prime-visibility-media-group-inc-blinkx-plc~1667.

Transaction Highlights

PVMG’s network averages over 600 advertisers (measured over the 6 month period to 30 September 2011) and 350 publishers. Processing 1.5 billion queries, and generating 14 million ad interactions every day, PVMG has the reach and volume to meet the demands of metric-driven advertisers and enables publishers to monetise their traffic from multiple forms of advertising.

Following the Acquisition, blinkx expects to integrate PVMG’s platform with blinkx’s so as to enable the blinkx video search engine to respond to a portion of PVMG’s 1.5 billion daily queries with relevant video results. Where available these videos can be paired with rich media video ads that typically monetise at a higher rate.

In September 2011, the average effective cost per mille (eCPM) of PVMG’s sponsored text advertisements was approximately US$5.00, while blinkx’s standard untargeted sponsored video advertisements were priced at US$13.00. blinkx believes that the combined group will be able to realise some of the differential between these two rates to generate incremental revenue.

PVMG also operates a digital marketing agency which offers consulting services to assist customers in developing Internet marketing strategies to establish and enhance their digital presence, through Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), social media, email and mobile marketing services.

Following the Acquisition, blinkx expects that the agency business will provide useful insights into its brands’ Internet marketing strategies, which will enable blinkx to offer more compelling advertising solutions.

PVMG is led by a team of seasoned executives with deep and diverse expertise in the search, rich media, mobile and agency sectors of the digital marketing industry. blinkx expects to benefit from the strategic addition of PVMG’s senior leadership in key areas across its business. PVMG CEO, S. Brian Mukherjee, will be joining blinkx as EVP and GM for Search and Mobile.

PVMG’s consolidated audited financial statements for its financial year ending 31 December 2010 show gross assets of US$22.4 million, and gross revenues of US$29.9 million, and a net loss for the period of US$389,511.

The integration is expected to begin immediately, and by the end of the financial year ending 31 March 2013 the Acquisition is expected to have an annual revenue run-rate of between US$35 million and US$40 million.

Commenting on the Acquisition, Suranga Chandratillake, CEO of blinkx, said:

“Online video advertising continues to be the fastest growing format by a significant margin, and is forecast to reach $3.5 billion over the next three years. Brands continue to move an increasing amount of their TV advertising budgets to online video, but need to be able to reach an audience of equivalent size on the Web. We’re extremely excited about the Acquisition because the integration of our video search engine with PVMG’s text search platform will enable us to tap into a new audience of intent-driven consumers and deliver TV-style brand advertising to them, which gives us the opportunity to expand our customer reach and increase PVMG’s margins over time.”

Commenting on the Acquisition, S. Brian Mukherjee, CEO of Prime Visibility Media Group, said:

“As a close knit team with the shared sense of optimism to lead the next revolution of digital advertising, we are proud of our accomplishments at PVMG. We believe that the Acquisition puts us at the very heart of one of the most dynamic sectors of the digital advertising industry – online video. The combination of our powerful, proven high frequency transaction engine and audience reach with blinkx’s unrivalled video search technology and vast content index unlocks a tremendous opportunity for us to develop high value online video advertising solutions.”

blinkx Current Trading

Trading for the first half of the financial year ending 31 March 2012 has been strong. For the half year period to 30 September 2011, the Company expects to report revenues of approximately US$44.6 million, an increase of over 60% from the corresponding period ended 30 September 2010, and to report EBITDA for the half year of approximately US$5.7 million and an operating profit for the half year of approximately US$4.9 million , an increase of approximately 95% over the corresponding period ended 30 September 2010. For the half year period to 30 September 2011, blinkx expects to report cash and cash equivalents of approximately US$52.9 million. blinkx is pleased to report that the integration of Burst Media Corporation is proceeding very well. blinkx expects that the cost of restructuring will be approximately US$2.5 million; less than the market predicted US$4.5 million. The Company has also seen continued growth of the AdHoc advertising platform with new brands, including Kelloggs, Disney, Pimms and Nivea.
blinkx expects to announce its half year results on 11 November 2011.

PVMG Overview

Established in December 2007, and headquartered in New York, NY, Prime Visibility Media Group, Inc., is a digital marketing holding company with three operating units: Prime Visibility, LLC an award winning search marketing agency; AdOn Network, Inc., a long tail performance, cost-per-click advertising network; and Predic.tv, LLC, an early stage rich media advertising company, which intends to target premium online advertisers and publishers.

Clients of the display advertising platform Adform http://www.adform.com are now able to obtain optimum results from their Facebook campaigns by working exclusively with Alchemy Social; a well-known application owned by Experian, the global information services company http://alchemysocial.com/

The integration of Alchemy Social with Adform’s online platform means it is now possible to create and update the contents of banner ads and retrieve financial campaign data about Facebook campaigns. With this new offering, Adform becomes the world’s most complete cloud-based platform for managing, buying, measuring and optimising online campaigns within all display advertising including rich media.

“We are really happy with our partnership with Alchemy Social, which offers our customers a efficient way to compare all online display advertising,” declares Martin Stockfleth Larsen, director of marketing and new business at Adform. “The API integration is effective and serves up complete reports. Thus there is a time-saving element involved in exploiting the possibility, and the setup is more user-friendly than in Facebook’s own interface,”

“The Alchemy Social team is delighted to be working in partnership with Adform across major European markets. The rapid growth of Facebook advertising is fundamental to the display market as a whole and, as such, customers will benefit hugely from Adform’s integration of Alchemy within its existing offering. Alchemy’s partnership with Adform allows customers to manage Facebook campaigns as the separate entity that they are, whilst providing the ability to view them alongside other online activity,”explains Will Ashton, managing director of Alchemy Social.

By using Alchemy Social, an approximate 80 per cent higher click through rate (CTR) has been documented and a 50 per cent lower charge per click (CPC) than the average Facebook ad. Alchemy Social was the first application to optimise Facebook Ads’ though ads API and is now an optional product for Adform’s online platform of the same name.

About Adform
Adform close the loop by integrating media planning, buying, optimising, and reporting for all online display advertising in one place, thus saving an enormous amount of time, money and resources.

Adform’s unique platform incorporates display ad serving, rich media, video, mobile, dynamic ads, personalised targeting, and real-time bidding though integrations with major inventory players, making display advertising simple, relevant and rewarding for media agencies and online advertisers. Adform was established in Denmark in 2002 and now has offices in nine countries including UK, Germany and Italy. Visit http://www.adform.com or http://www.twitter.com/adforminsider for more information.

About Techlightenment
Techlightenment, an Experian Company, was founded in 2007 by Arjuna Gihan Fernando and Ankur Shah. Techlightenment develops technology to power social media advertising campaigns for multinational businesses and global advertising agencies. The company uses a data-driven approach to create, implement and track highly targeted online campaigns that effectively identify and reach key audiences. Customers include GlaxoSmithKline, Universal Pictures, Dr. Martens.
Techlightenment is a Facebook Preferred Developer Consultant and Advertising API Beta participant, and the only MySpace European Development partner.

For more information, visit www.techlightenment.com

REDWOOD CITY, CA – Heralding a first for the advertising industry, YuMe announced the availability of YuMe’s video advertising solution for Internet Connected TVs, the Embedded software development kit (SDK). LG Electronics is launching the first availability of YuMe’s advertising technology and services to support LG’s industry-leading Smart TV platform. The U.S. arm of global car manufacturer Toyota, Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc., is the charter advertiser for this first video advertising solution for Internet Connected TVs.

The Embedded SDK powers the new LG advertising platform and is the only video advertising technology to be built into TVs, Blu-ray Disc™ players, and connected devices, providing an end-to-end solution for developers, advertisers, and consumer electronics (CE) manufacturers. The LG advertising platform leverages the power of YuMe’s cross-platform advertising technology to offer brands the ability to reach consumers with targeted, relevant video advertising on LG’s connected devices, including Smart TVs, Smart TV Upgraders, and Blu-ray Disc™ players. The LG-YuMe agreement will immediately offer brands the ability to advertise both in the LG Smart TV navigation experience as well as in applications with pre-roll and navigation experience ads. Additionally, LG will use YuMe’s ACE for Publishers to serve ads delivered within the Smart TV navigation experience.

“We are thrilled to work with LG on this first ever ad platform embedded in TVs. Over the past several years we have offered in-player, in-app, and now in-TV ad solutions,” said Jayant Kadambi, CEO, YuMe, Inc. “Even as consumer attention fractures, we offer brands a way to seamlessly reach consumers at every stage of interaction with the TV, and across all platforms and devices; and as the interactive TV market grows we expect to be the leader in delivering relevant advertising to consumers.”

“We selected YuMe because we were seeking an ad serving and monetization provider for the LG advertising platform with a solution that gives both developers and advertisers around the globe access to our broad set of devices,” said Young-jae Seo, Vice President, Smart TV team of LG Electronics. “YuMe’s advanced technology is flexible enough to work across our diverse range of chip sets for various connected devices, making it the right solution.”

“Toyota customers are watching video online, on their mobile phones and on TV, and we are excited to be able to reach this previously unreachable audience on smart TVs,” said Dionne Colvin, national marketing media manager, Toyota. “At Toyota, we pride ourselves on our innovative approach to advertising, and as media consumption habits change, we see a real opportunity to further engage consumers through YuMe and LG.”

YuMe’s Operating System for TV 2.0
The Embedded SDK joins YuMe’s extensive set of web and mobile SDKs—in addition to its platform SaaS solutions—and positions the company as the operating system for the next generation of TV, TV 2.0. The Embedded SDK provides CE companies and OEMs with the ability to embed software in their technology stack that will support video advertising out of the box. Since it is built into the firmware of the TV, advertisers and publishers are able to offer a more integrated, interactive advertising experience for consumers. The SDK provides an abstraction layer for quick porting and seamlessly addresses the diversity of chip sets. It also handles all the details of integrating with YuMe’s ACE for Publishers and Connected Audience Network, enabling OEMs and CE manufacturers to finally participate in the advertising value chain of television.

NEW YORK – M&A firm AdMedia Partners announced it acted as exclusive financial advisor to GA|PRC Group, a leading retail marketing agency, in its acquisition by RFE Investment Partners along with its equity partners Caymus Equity Partners and Starboard Capital Partners, and with debt financing provided by Fifth Third Bancorp and CapitalSouth Partners.

GA|PRC Group (comprised of GA, PureRed Creative and GAPRC Interactive) is a leading advertising agency that designs and executes integrated retail marketing programs – including premedia advertising execution, digital creative/design, digital asset management services, photographic services and interactive services – for national retailers including Dollar General, Duane Reade, Kohl’s, Lowe’s, Michaels, Safeway, SUPERVALU and S.P. Richards. As a single source provider of a customized turnkey solution, GA|PRC ‘s services significantly reduce retailers’ marketing operations costs, improve marketing execution processes and improve the brand experience at every touch point of their marketing campaigns through a broad set of eye-catching design, photographic and creative services. GA|PRC was founded in 1967, has 430 employees and is based in Stone Mountain, GA.

“This transaction demonstrates again that there is significant demand across a wide spectrum of leading private equity firms for platform marketing services companies with blue chip clients and attractive growth characteristics,” said Greg Smith, Managing Director at AdMedia Partners.

About AdMedia Partners

AdMedia Partners is a leading provider of middle market mergers and acquisitions advisory services to digital and traditional media, marketing and information businesses. Founded in 1990 and located in New York City, the firm has completed over 180 transactions worth over $8 billion since 1999. For more information, please visit www.admediapartners.com.

Select recent transactions completed by AdMedia Partners include representing the following firms:

ICUC, a leading social media moderating, monitoring and community development company, in its acquisition by Aegis Media’s iProspect.
LEVEL Studios, a leading digital marketing and technology services agency, in its acquisition by Rosetta, the largest independent interactive agency in the US and a portfolio company of Lindsay Goldberg.
OLSON, a leading integrated advertising/marketing agency, in its recapitalization and equity investment from KRG Capital Partners.
Cheil Worldwide in its acquisition of The Barbarian Group, an award winning digital creative and marketing company.
iCrossing Inc., a global digital marketing company, in its acquisition of Web development agency Proxicom, Inc.
Range Online Media, a search marketing and online media agency, in its acquisition by iProspect, a subsidiary of Aegis Group plc.
New Media Strategies, a leading interactive word of mouth marketing agency, in its acquisition by Meredith Corporation.
Brulant, one of the largest independent interactive marketing agencies, in its acquisition by Rosetta, a portfolio company of Lindsay Goldberg.
Triad Digital Media, LLC, an online media and advertising services company, in its significant growth capital investment from H.I.G. Ventures, LLC.
Marketing Direct, Inc., a leading provider of integrated marketing services to the healthcare industry, in its acquisition by KBM Group, a Wunderman company and member of WPP.
Media Storm, a leading media buying and planning agency, in its equity investment from Shamrock Capital.

About RFE Investment Partners

Located in New Canaan, CT, RFE Investment Partners (www.rfeip.com) is a private equity investment firm focusing on smaller, middle-market service, manufacturing and healthcare-service businesses. Since its founding in 1979, RFE has made investments in more than 120 companies operating in a variety of industries. RFE’s investment capital has spanned 7 partnerships, collectively amounting to more than $800 million of invested and available capital, and is currently investing from RFE Investment Partners 7, L.P., a $212 million private equity investment fund. RFE’s investors include corporate and state pension funds, banks and endowments.

About Caymus Equity Partners

Caymus Equity Partners (www.caymuspartners.com) invests in profitable middle and lower-middle market companies in attractive niches with strong growth potential. Caymus Equity Partners focuses on opportunities where it can leverage its prior experience and creativity to generate substantial value through a combination of organic and strategic acquisition growth. Caymus Equity Partners is an affiliate of Caymus Partners, a leading middle market investment bank.

About Starboard Capital Partners

Starboard Capital Partners is a financial and strategic sponsor that partners with management and private equity investors primarily in the acquisition of companies with initial enterprise values of $25 million to $250 million. Starboard principally focuses on developing partnerships with company owners and managements to enhance value through focused planning, driving organic initiatives and opportunistic add-on acquisitions. Starboard’s current portfolio of eight platform businesses represents more than $1 billion of revenue and approximately $100 million of EBITDA.

About Fifth Third Bancorp

Fifth Third Bancorp (NASDAQ: FITB) is a diversified financial services company headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio. Fifth Third has $111 billion in assets and operates 15 affiliates with 1,314 full-service Banking Centers. Fifth Third’s Structured Finance Group is a National Business Unit that calls on Private Equity Groups, providing both senior and subordinated debt to capitalize both acquisitions and recapitalizations.

About CapitalSouth Partners

CapitalSouth Partners was founded in 1998 to provide private equity and mezzanine capital to lower middle-market companies. Since its inception, CapitalSouth has closed over 60 transactions. With over $600 Million under management through multiple committed funds, CapitalSouth actively seeks to invest in lower middle-market companies located primarily in the South, but also throughout the U.S.

CapitalSouth Partners is headquartered in Charlotte, NC and operates full-service offices in Dallas, TX, Louisville, KY, Raleigh, NC and Orlando, FL.

The partnership with StudioNow has already yielded a new customer, ListingBook™, an online real-estate service. ListingBook will use the SundaySky platform to produce product showcase videos that are personalized for each user wishing to buy or sell a home.

“Businesses in nearly every market realize the power online video has in attracting prospects and converting them into buyers,” said Jim Dicso, President and CRO of SundaySky. “Working with StudioNow to extend SundaySky’s capabilities to its customers and content properties will enable users to fully leverage the potential of automated, customized video generation.”

“StudioNow provides companies with the resources they need to create, manage and distribute premium video that connects with consumers and builds brands. By adding the SundaySky technology to our suite of services, we can offer clients a way to create dynamic, highly personalized video in real time so they can produce on an even larger scale,” said Roy Oron, Vice President of Global Business Development.

About SundaySky

SundaySky has developed a newer, smarter way to use video to communicate with consumers in a deeper, more engaging, and more effective way. By using automated, real-time, personalized videos, leading organizations are significantly increasing their profits. Among our customers are Office Depot, Overstock.com and History Channel. Hundreds of thousands of videos are generated daily by SundaySky’s SaaS-based platform to connect with consumers in different stages of the customer lifecycle, driving them to take action. To learn more, please visit www.sundaysky.com.

About AOL

AOL Inc. (NYSE: AOL) is a premier global media company with a suite of brands and products serving consumers, advertisers and publishers worldwide. The AOL Huffington Post Media Group is a leading source of news, opinion, entertainment, community and digital information comprising a wide range of destination websites, including AOL.com, The Huffington Post, TechCrunch, Moviefone, Engadget, Patch, AOL Music, StyleList and MapQuest. The AOL Advertising.com Group includes Advertising.com, ADTECH, Pictela, Video (inclusive of AOL Video, goviral and 5min Media), Content Solutions and Sponsored Listings and serves a combined content and advertising market at scale through video, brand advertising, content and ad serving. AOL is focused on engaging consumers and providing online advertising services and solutions on both AOL Huffington Post Media Group destination websites and third-party websites, in addition to serving consumer platforms including AOL Mail, AIM, about.me, and mobile experiences. AOL also operates one of the largest Internet subscription access services in the U.S., which serves as another distribution channel for its consumer subscription products, such as AOL TechGuru and Computer Checkup.

SUNNYVALE, Calif. & SYDNEY – Efficient Frontier today announced that it has extended its international footprint with the acquisition of Downstream Marketing, the largest provider of digital marketing technology and services in Australia. The acquisition provides an opportunity to accelerate growth internationally as well as across emerging mediums such as social and mobile. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“The acquisition of Downstream Marketing represents a key milestone for Efficient Frontier as we capitalize on the huge market opportunity that exists outside of the U.S.,” said David Karnstedt, CEO and President of Efficient Frontier. “By acquiring a market leader in a key growth region, we will be able to provide new opportunities for our global customer base.”

Downstream Marketing has been a partner of Efficient Frontier since 2006, licensing its platform and providing search and display marketing for its clients. Downstream Marketing has captured significant market share, having grown twice as fast as the general market. They serve many of the leading digital marketers in the region including American Express, Avis, Sun Corporation, Vodafone, Westpac and Weight Watchers.

“For the past five years, Downstream Marketing has successfully deployed Efficient Frontier’s platform to manage digital marketing for our name-brand clients,” said Steve Knowles, CEO of Downstream Marketing. “We’re excited to officially join forces with them to expand our product offerings in our market as well as provide additional global reach to Efficient Frontier’s existing client base.”

Per the Australian Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), online advertising expenditure in Australia reached $2.45 billion, up 20% YOY in the 12 months ending June 30, 2011. Search was up 23% YOY, and Display was up 12% YOY. The online advertising business is on track to surpass $3 billion in 2012.

About Efficient Frontier

Efficient Frontier is a leader in online digital marketing, managing search, display and social media campaigns for advertisers and agencies around the world. Efficient Frontier currently manages more than $1 billion in annual digital marketing spend on behalf of its clients globally.

In May 2011, Efficient Frontier acquired Context Optional, the leading provider of social marketing management solutions for global brands on the leading social networks, including Facebook and Twitter. Context Optional’s Social Marketing Suite enables global enterprises to build, manage and measure their brand presence, and engage their fans to increase mindshare, word of mouth, customer loyalty and website traffic. Together, Efficient Frontier and Context Optional offer a complete solution for brands to acquire, activate and drive value from fans and followers.

Efficient Frontier is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, with offices in New York, Chicago the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and India, and technology licensing partnerships in Japan and Hong Kong. Context Optional is headquartered in San Francisco. Efficient Frontier is a privately held company with funding from Redpoint Ventures and Cambrian Ventures. For more information on Efficient Frontier, visit http://www.efrontier.com and for Context Optional visit http://www.contextoptional.com.

About Downstream Marketing

Downstream Marketing is Australia’s leading provider of digital performance marketing solutions, managing search, social and display advertising for a range of clients across the financial services, travel, technology, telecommunications and online retail sectors. Utilizing market-leading optimization technologies developed by Efficient Frontier, Downstream Marketing maximizes performance from digital marketing investment by household brands in Australia & New Zealand. Headquartered in Sydney, Downstream Marketing services clients located across Australia and New Zealand.

San Diego, CA – Ad-Juster, Inc. today announced it has partnered with Adometry™, Inc., the leader in cross channel attribution, verification and optimization solutions, to give digital publishers improved visibility and control over ads running across their sites. As part of the agreement, Ad-Juster will integrate its delivery data collection service with Adometry TagScan™. This will help Ad-Juster publisher partners ensure that third-party data from ad exchanges, ad networks, trading desks and direct ad buys do not interfere with site performance by introducing latency, distributing malware or collecting unauthorized data.

Adometry TagScan gives publishers the transparency and controls needed to enforce policies and identify issues, both before trafficking ads and with ongoing monitoring of their sites. TagScan can alert ad operations teams before issues are escalated or become crises. Publishers working with Ad-Juster can now seamlessly enable TagScan to monitor ads running through their systems and alert them of any policy violations – all without the need to import ad creatives.

“Tag management is a key part of digital campaign success, and our integration with Adometry’s TagScan is an important step in providing the ‘why’ to specific tag-related discrepancy situations,” said Mike Lewis, President of Ad-Juster, Inc.

“Our goal is to improve the performance of online advertising for digital publishers, advertisers and agencies,” said John Dietz, vice president of Product Management for Adometry. “By teaming with Ad-Juster, we are helping its publisher partners prevent data leakage, protect against malware, and improve site performance for the advertisers they serve.”

About Adometry
Adometry, Inc. provides scoring, auditing, verification, and attribution metrics to optimize results for online advertisers, agencies, publishers, and ad networks. Tracking billions of impressions in real-time, reporting on where they appeared, for how long, and to what effect; the Adometry mission is to bring greater levels of transparency and accountability to the online advertising industry. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, Adometry is privately held and backed by Sierra Ventures, Austin Ventures, Shasta Ventures and Stanford University. For more information visit www.adometry.com.

About Ad-Juster
Ad-Juster is the world’s only 3rd party reporting and discrepancy management tool. Ad-Juster currently provides actionable data to over 60 digital agencies, networks and publishers. Ad-Juster automatically identifies and reports ad delivery discrepancies – helping manage one of the digital ad world’s most painful problems. See Ad-Juster.com for more information.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Evidon is the world’s first and largest provider of privacy and compliance solutions for digital media, and creates a platform for companies to comply with the European ePrivacy Directive, industry self-regulatory programmes, and to audit and manage website cookies. VivaKi is the leading media and digital agency in the US self-regulatory programme, delivering billions of in-ad notice impressions served on behalf of their clients, and this agreement will affect a broad range of companies across a variety of verticals including automotive, finance, retail, CPG and pharmaceutical.

Marco Bertozzi, EMEA Managing Director for the VivaKi Nerve Center, comments: “We have been using Evidon’s solutions in the US for some time and our clients are pleased with the results. We are now looking to strengthen and expand our strategic relationship, as part of our commitment to ensure best practice in the area of online privacy. VivaKi is a strong supporter of privacy controls and we support our clients’ desire to empower consumers to make informed decisions about their information use online, while complying with the ePrivacy Directive”.

CEO of Evidon, Scott Meyer, adds: “This decision by VivaKi to extend the agreement with Evidon into the UK and Europe further underlines our leading market position and track record of exceptional delivery of results. Evidon works in tandem with VivaKi’s agencies and the VivaKi Nerve Center’s Audience On Demand team to educate and implement the OBA solution for clients in the US, and we are excited to expand this support to the European market. We look forward to delivering privacy and compliance solutions on behalf of their extensive list of clients”.

About VivaKi

VivaKi is part of Publicis Groupe (Euronext Paris Exchange: FR0000130577; and part of the CAC 40 index) the world’s third largest communications group.

VivaKi aggregates the marketplace influence of four autonomous brands, including two global media agency networks: ZenithOptimedia and Starcom MediaVest Group; and two leading digital marketing agencies: Digitas and Razorfish. On behalf of its agency brands and their clients, VivaKi faces the market to help identify and build technology, message distribution, audience aggregation and content solutions for the future. Sitting at the core of VivaKi is the VivaKi Nerve Center, which serves as a think tank, R&D center and testing ground to activate new pathways for clients to connect with consumers in an increasingly digital world. VivaKi also includes a Talent & Transformation Practice, which leverages the scale of the VivaKi brands to develop and deliver tools and approaches designed to attract, develop, train, motivate and reward the world’s best people.

For more information, please visit www.vivaki.com

About Evidon

Evidon is the world’s first and largest dedicated provider of privacy and compliance solutions for digital media.

The company provides strategy and technology to help leading brands, agencies, publishers, and solutions providers comply easily with privacy law and self-regulatory “Ad Choices” programs across North America and Europe. Evidon serves Ad Choices notice on billions of impressions on behalf of these businesses—in the U.S. and in local languages across Europe—giving consumers transparency into and control over how their information is used online. With insights fuelled by its popular Ghostery browser extension and its rich, 800+ company privacy database, Evidon also helps businesses control their audience data.

By protecting themselves and empowering consumers, businesses build their brands and improve results. For more information, please visit www.evidon.com

Speaking without prepared notes, Ma revealed that he plans to spend the coming year in the United States. “After 12 years, I need some time to rest. This year has been so difficult for me. I’m now coming out for a year,” said the spry Alibaba chief, whose company is based in Hangzhou, China.

Ma was asked if he wanted to acquire Yahoo, the struggling U.S. internet pioneer that owns 40% of Alibaba. “Yes. We’re very interested in that. We’re very interested in Yahoo because our Alibaba Group is so important to Yahoo and Yahoo is important to us. We are interested in the whole piece of Yahoo,” he said, adding that Alibaba also has talked with other prospective buyers. However, a deal would be very “complicated,” Ma cautioned. “I cross my fingers and say that we are very, very interested in that.”

Alibaba’s takeover of Yahoo would represent something of a role reversal, symbolizing how much China’s internet—and to some degree, its economy—has eclipsed the United States’. In 2005, Ma sold a 40% stake in the fledgling Alibaba to Yahoo in exchange for $1 billion and control of Yahoo China. The Alibaba-Yahoo relationship has been strained in recent years and Ma has telegraphed his desire to reduce or buy back Yahoo’s stake. “We appreciate yesterday, but are looking for a better tomorrow,” Ma told the Stanford audience.

He described Jerry Yang, co-founder and board member of Yahoo, as “a good personal friend.” Ma added, “Without the Yahoo investment, we wouldn’t be that successful today. Yahoo is one of three companies that woke me up to the internet. Without the internet, there would be no Alibaba and no Jack Ma.”

Ma downplayed recent investor concerns that Chinese regulators will clamp down on the “variable interest entity” (VIE), a vehicle that has allowed foreigners to indirectly invest in Chinese internet companies and for those firms to go public in overseas stock markets. “The VIE is a great innovation,” [but] “we’ve got to make the VIE really transparent,” said Ma. “I don’t see that the government is going to shut it down,” he added.

Ma reflected on some of his successes and failures since founding Alibaba in 1999 as an online venue for small Chinese firms to connect with overseas buyers. Visiting Silicon Valley that year, “I was rejected by so many venture capitalists. [But] I went back to China with the American Dream,” he recalled.

Today, the Alibaba Group, with 23,000 employees, dominates e-commerce in China, largely through its Hong Kong-listed Alibaba.com business-to-business site, Taobao consumer-to-consumer marketplace, and Taobao Mall, a business-to-consumer site for branded items. Ma said his e-commerce enterprises have helped China’s small businesses succeed and made Chinese consumers smarter about purchase decisions. “We feel proud because we’re changing China,” he said.

The conference took place shortly after Beijing announced that China’s internet population has surpassed 500 million—about double the number in the United States. Two of the five biggest internet firms in the world, by market value, are from China. U.S. pioneers, including Yahoo, eBay, Google, and Facebook, have failed to make significant inroads in China, where the government exercises strong control over the internet and foreign ownership. In contrast, Chinese internet firms have grown rapidly, coming up with technological and business innovations for their domestic market, and seeking investors, technical know-how, and talent overseas.

“They are growing very quickly and have global aspirations. The days of thinking that’s just an eBay copy is an old mindset,” said Marguerite Gong Hancock, associate director of SPRIE. “The arrows are now pointing in both directions.”

In a brief appearance, Stanford President John Hennessy told the audience that China and the internet “are the two most exciting things happening in the world.” There are more than 1,000 students from China at Stanford, by far the largest group from a single country outside the U.S., he added.

Conference-goers heard from Joe Chen, Stanford MBA ’99, founder and chief executive of Renren Inc., a social networking site popular among Chinese university students. Discussing the emergence of the social web in China, he described his company as positioned on the “bleeding edge of SoLoMo,” describing the intersection of social, local, and mobile technologies coined by venture capitalist John Doerr. Chen suggested that social networking (based on relationships) has emerged as an alternative to online search (based on keywords) for obtaining and sharing information. Social networking will transform commerce, entertainment, content distribution, and communications, just as online search did, he predicted.

China’s social networking and media companies have developed their own innovations, sometimes ahead of U.S. companies, said Chen. The world’s first social networking farming game, for instance, was launched on Renren in 2008. Renren went public on the New York Stock Exchange in May, beating Facebook to the IPO trough.

Conference organizers described SPRIE research on venture capital investments and networks in China. Researchers analyzed data on more than 2,000 Chinese companies, nearly 800 investment firms, and more than 600 individuals, including their university and company affiliations. Using the data, they created visualizations—circular nodes with lines extending out in a web—of the relationships among companies, investors, and entrepreneurs. “This is the power of network analysis,” said Hancock, showing onscreen a moving image of how China’s “investment constellation” changed from 1996 to 2011. The densest venture clusters are in Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. The research identified more than 40 venture capitalists involved in China who have ties to Stanford, she said.

Venture capitalists discussed the landscape for funding internet startups that are proliferating in China. “Early stage is still quite bubblish,” said Tim Chang, MBA ’01, managing director of the Mayfield Fund. “There’s a lot of hot money doing drive-by due diligence.”

Entrepreneurs described a frenetic, hyper-competitive environment for startups. “It’s brutal. There are periods I cannot sleep for a month because of the massive pressures,” said Fritz Demopoulos, co-founder of Qunar.com, China’s largest travel web site, which recently sold a majority stake to Chinese search giant Baidu. But “there’s still so much room to grow,” said Demopoulos. “The runway in China is long.”

NEW YORK – AOL announced today that it has brokered a unique partnership with VivaKi, the strategic entity that combines the media and digital assets that sit inside of Publicis Groupe. This partnership aims to explore the online video advertising arena and continue to innovate and identify top performing ad models that are best for advertisers, publishers and consumers. This initiative will leverage the success and momentum of VivaKi’s ongoing research effort, The Pool, which has conducted extensive research and testing in the online video space. In its first three waves of research or “lanes,” the ASq was selected as the most superior online video ad model, out-performing the industry’s pre-roll standard.

To date, ASq has 15 certified publishers, including AOL, and has supported over 150 client campaigns across 35 advertisers and garnered more than 400 million impressions. This partnership between VivaKi and AOL will build on the success of this model and identify other formats that provide more personalization and social components within the online video user experience. ASq is powered by VINDICO, a leading video ad management platform, which will also serve the VivaKi-AOL partnership.

“We are excited to be partnering with VivaKi to push product innovation forward and evolve online video ad models,” said Tim Armstrong, Chairman & CEO, AOL. “We challenged the industry last year with the launch of Project Devil in display, which helped us rethink how content and advertising should be viewed on the Web, and we wanted to explore what the Devil principles and philosophies could mean for video ad formats. There is still so much opportunity for growth and innovation.”

“We know the ASq is a breakthrough idea, but there is room for more ad models that support the medium. No other platform can be sustained through simply one format, look at TV or display,” said Tracey Scheppach, VivaKi’s EVP/Innovations Director and Co-Founder of The Pool. “We gave our employees around the world, as well as our trusted partners, an opportunity to voice their ideas for the best online video ad models and we received 72 ideas in total, which we’ve narrowed down to the top three that will go into testing.”

The first model that will go into field trial testing consists of a pre-roll overlay within a video player that gives the viewer an option to click and expand the ad into a branded toolbar, which provides viewers with multiple ways to interact with the brand. The second model is a slate ad format that asks whether the viewer would like to watch a full :30 ad or a :15 ad and then answer a question immediately following the ad. The third and final model is a pre-roll overlay that provides buttons for Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social platforms to enable a seamless way to interact and share ads with their social circle. To reinforce the sharing option, this model would also include a billboard at the end of the pre-roll or at the end of the content. VINDICO will handle ad serving for all three models during this process.

Since its inception in 2008, The Pool has launched nine lanes globally and logged over 35,000 hours, working with over 100 different companies while reaching 262 million consumers.

This lane will kick off in November 2011 and is open to all VivaKi clients. Results are expected in early 2012 and official names will be given to the three models during The Pool process.

About AOL

AOL Inc. (NYSE: AOL) is a premier global media company with a suite of brands and products serving consumers, advertisers and publishers worldwide. The AOL Huffington Post Media Group is a leading source of news, opinion, entertainment, community and digital information comprising a wide range of destination websites, including AOL.com, The Huffington Post, TechCrunch, Moviefone, Engadget, Patch, AOL Music, StyleList and MapQuest. The AOL Advertising.com Group includes Advertising.com, ADTECH, Pictela, Video (inclusive of AOL Video, goviral and 5min Media), Content Solutions and Sponsored Listings and serves a combined content and advertising market at scale through video, brand advertising, content and ad serving. AOL is focused on engaging consumers and providing online advertising services and solutions on both AOL Huffington Post Media Group destination websites and third-party websites, in addition to serving consumer platforms including AOL Mail, AIM, about.me, and mobile experiences. AOL also operates one of the largest Internet subscription access services in the U.S., which serves as another distribution channel for its consumer subscription products, such as AOL TechGuru and Computer Checkup.

About VivaKi

VivaKi is part of Publicis Groupe (Euronext Paris Exchange: FR0000130577; and part of the CAC 40 index) the world’s third largest communications group. VivaKi aggregates the marketplace influence of four autonomous brands, including two global media agency networks: ZenithOptimedia and Starcom MediaVest Group; and two leading digital marketing agencies: Digitas and Razorfish. On behalf of its agency brands and their clients, VivaKi faces the market to help identify and build technology, message distribution, audience aggregation and content solutions for the future.

About The Pool

The Pool is a first of its kind industry program that unites the financial resources and thought leadership of its clients and a host of content providers to test and create industry standards for new advertising models. By “pooling” insights and resources, this initiative aims to identify future engagement models across a variety of emerging media platforms. Participating clients and content providers are given the opportunity to view and evaluate new advertising models and receive access to all proprietary research ahead of the marketplace. The following lanes have been launched and released: Lane 1: US online video – November 2008 launch, February 2010 industry release; Lane 2: US short-form online video – July 2009 launch, September 2010 industry release; Lane 3: China online video – April 2010 launch, April 2011 industry release. The following Lanes have been launched and are still in progress: Lane 4: UK online video – October 2010 launch; Lane 5: MENA display – September 2010 launch; Lane 6: Spain online video – November 2010 launch; Lane 7: Australia online video – March 2011 launch; Lane 8: China online video/cross media metrics – August 2011 launch; Lane 9: US Tablets – October 2011 launch.

Prashant Mehta, CEO, Komli Media, said, “Jivox has great technology and built a fantastic team under Naren Nachiappen’s leadership. We are really excited to partner with Jivox as its leading edge platform brings tremendous value to all our advertisers and publishers across the Asia Pacific region. ”

As part of this partnership, Komli Media acquires related assets from Jivox, including existing publisher and customer relationships in India, while Jivox will also support Komli Media as a platform licensee and a strategic partner.

Naren Nachiappan, Managing Director, Jivox India, said, “We are very excited about our partnership with Komli Media and believe this is a great opportunity for us to scale our business. Since our launch in India over 2 years ago, we are pleased to have become the fastest growing and largest video ad network. As we considered different options for expansion in the APAC market, it was clear to us that Komli Media had the unique combination of leadership, vision and APAC presence which makes them our ideal partner. We see significant benefits in this partnership for our customers and partners which will now have access to a comprehensive digital media product set from Komli Media.”

About Komli Media
Komli Media is Asia Pacific’s leading digital media network. Its digital advertising technologies enable marketers to reach, acquire and foster audiences and publishers to maximize their revenues. Komli Media provides marketers with innovative solutions across brand marketing, performance marketing, social media, and video advertising. ViziSense, India’s leading online audience and ad measurement platform is powered by Komli Media technology. PostClick, Australia’s leading site representation firm, and Indoor Media, the UK’s leading ethnic ad network, are both subsidiaries of Komli Media. Headquartered in Mumbai, Komli Media now has offices in Bangalore, Chennai and New Delhi (India), Hong Kong, Manila and Singapore (SEA), London, Melbourne and Sydney (Australia), and New York, Redwood City, Toronto and Des Moines (North America). Find out more at http://www.komli.com.

About Jivox
Jivox is the leading cross-platform interactive video advertising technology company. The Jivox platform enables brand advertisers, digital agencies and publishers to deliver highly engaging video ads powered by interactive and social sharing features. Using Jivox creative tools, interactive video ads can be easily authored and delivered in-stream, in-banner and on mobile devices and tablets. Jivox is the only provider that delivers and measures interactive video advertising online and to popular HTML5-compatible mobile devices, including the Apple iPad, iPhone and iPod touch, Android devices and Blackberry. Jivox technology ensures these ads run on all platforms without worrying about all of the challenges of HTML5/Flash, operating systems, browsers, video encoding, form factor and other issues with delivering video ads across multiple platforms. Jivox provides sophisticated campaign performance tracking, brand awareness and purchase intent analytics for advertisers via BrandGage — its proprietary real-time analytics platform. The Jivox platform is used by several hundred media companies and agencies including Gannett, Bloomberg, Weather Underground, Sun Times Media, InteractiveOne, Starcom, OMD, FUOR Digital, GroupM and Lee Enterprises. For examples of Jivox Ads see: http://www.jivox.com/demoads.

NEW YORK – Casale Media Inc., a leading premium online media company, today announced a strategic relationship with Turn Inc., the only open, enterprise-level digital marketing platform, giving Casale’s current roster of nearly 3,000 premium publishers access to advertisers within the Turn platform. This integration dramatically increases the volume and selection of quality advertising for Casale’s publishers while giving Turn’s advertising partners more premium media environments to choose from.

For the past eight years, Casale Media’s mission has been to pioneer online advertising technologies that help the industry live up to its potential, seamlessly connecting the highest quality publishers with effective advertising. The integration with Turn is another step to that end, giving premium publishers exposure to new revenue opportunities with leading agencies and Fortune 500 brands who utilize the Turn platform without having to give up control of their advertising inventory.

Snagajob, the leading provider of talent management solutions for hourly employers, currently uses Casale Media’s premium exchange – CasaleX – to help sell out its advertising inventory, which includes more than 250MM ad impressions each month. The integration of Casale Media and Turn gives Snagajob an even larger demand source and additional opportunities to maximize the company’s revenue on unsold inventory. In addition, Snagajob maintains the control and transparency for which Casale Media is known by determining exactly which ads can appear on its site and at what rate.

“Our goal at Snagajob is always to place the highest quality and best targeted advertisements on our site given our unique audience,” said Shade Wilson, Director B2B Marketing at Snagajob. “The integration of Turn with CasaleX strengthens our ability to reach that goal. Each month, we fill a large percentage of our high value unsold inventory through CasaleX while also keeping complete control over which ads end up on our site.”

“This partnership was driven by our clients’ strong desire for access to the premium publishers available through Casale,” said Bill Demas, president and CEO of Turn. “Having scale and access to quality inventory from partners like Casale is critical for our clients and working with them has been a real pleasure. Not only was Casale one of our fastest real-time bidding integrations, it has quickly become one of our top fifteen inventory partners in terms of volume – a perfect testament to both teams’ efforts.”

“Partnering with Turn allows us to continue delivering on two of our biggest publisher promises: quality and control,” said Joe Casale, CEO of Casale Media. “By giving our premium publishers access to even more quality advertisers while still maintaining control of their ad inventory, these publishers can continue to optimize ad performance on their sites through new sources of demand.”

About Casale Media
Since 2003, Casale Media has been redefining the standard for online media quality, ad delivery management and media optimization technologies with premium services that generate measurable success for all stakeholders in media and marketing. CasaleX, the industry’s first true premium exchange with real-time bidding, is a high quality, brand-safe media marketplace that gives publishing partners maximum control and advertisers premium impressions from 3,000 of Casale Media’s actively monitored publishing customers.

The company’s premium advertising network, MediaNet, is used by eight of the top 10 U.S. online display advertisers and reaches nearly 70 percent of the U.S. online audience. One of the leading independent online media companies, Casale Media is guided by its dedication to needs-based development and quality-focused culture. More information is available at www.casalemedia.com.

About Turn
Turn is the advertising industry’s only open, enterprise-level digital marketing platform that delivers exceptional campaign performance and real-time audience insight for cross-channel engagement. The Turn Platform is utilized to manage the advertising campaigns for over fifty Fortune 200 brands. Turn’s global infrastructure, optimization algorithms, intuitive software and analytics represent the future of marketing and advertising. Turn is based in Silicon Valley with locations in New York City, Charlotte, Chicago, London, Dallas, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. For more information visit www.turn.com.

Emeryville, CA – Tribal Fusion, the global online display advertising provider, and BlueKai, the world’s only complete platform for data management, analysis and acquisition, have struck a new deal to more deeply integrate BlueKai Exchange data for audience insights and online media buying through Tribal Fusion.

The agreement enables display campaigns planned and bought through Tribal Fusion to be tailored based on users’ purchase intentions ‘in real time, all the time’ and enable additional scale when targeting campaigns at users with specific purchase intent behavior, as well as improved campaign optimization and faster set-up times.

It will also help Tribal Fusion provide richer audience insights reports for its advertiser and agency clients to detail the precise purchase behavior of converting customers and enable even more effective media planning and buying.

The deal builds on the two companies’ existing relationship in which Tribal Fusion is a BlueKai Premier Partner and adds a new layer of integrated data to Tribal Fusion’s already extensive user data and profiling platform, E9.

“BlueKai’s purchase intent data, in particular, is complementary to our own interest-based data, increasing the efficiency of our audience insights and look-alike models,” says Doug Conely, Senior Director of Data and Targeting at Tribal Fusion. “We’re also excited about the opportunity to extend our dynamic ad capabilities using auto model and travel destination purchase intent data.”

“We recognized the potential of third-party audience data several years ago and were an early partner of BlueKai,” says Dilip Da Silva, CEO of Tribal Fusion. “We’ve built our technology to work hand in hand with theirs and our teams have worked closely together over time to understand the pockets of opportunity and scale our businesses. This integration is the next step.”

“We are excited to see partners like Tribal Fusion embrace the BlueKai Exchange as one of their integrated third-party data sources,” says Jon Ingalls, Chief Marketing Officer at BlueKai.  “The partnership is a testament to Tribal Fusion’s ongoing commitment to delivering data-centric targeting strategies and meaningful audience analytics to their clients.”

Tribal Fusion (www.tribalfusion.com) is a digital marketing solutions company that drives superior results at all levels of the purchase funnel. Our company is built around dedicated vertical teams that leverage their industry-specific knowledge of “what works” to create fully customized advertising solutions to help companies capitalize on opportunities at every level of the consumer decision process. From custom “brand channels” to increase awareness to vertical-specific targeting tools to drive immediate purchase, Tribal Fusion offers smarter solutions that drive greater results.

Tribal Fusion is a part of the Exponential Group of online businesses – a technology-enabled media services company that delivers innovative products and services to meet the demands of today’s digital advertisers and publishers. Through a variety of offerings that includes Tribal Fusion, the Exponential™ group of businesses enables online advertisers to reach their target audiences from around the globe to across town. Headquartered in Emeryville, CA, Tribal Fusion operates offices across the US, India, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

BlueKai (www.bluekai.com) provides leading solutions for comprehensive data management, acquisition and analytics to maximize performance from all audience data. The BlueKai Platform™ is a complete technology solution for managing private data assets and analyzing campaign performance to maximize return on marketing dollars. The BlueKai Exchange™ is the world’s largest marketplace for anonymous 3rd party audience data, with exclusive access to BlueKai Intent™ and branded data in reaching more than 200M unique users across the entire marketing funnel. As an industry leader in consumer transparency and control, BlueKai has created book-end solutions including a registry for consumers to see what marketers know about them, edit their online preferences and gain rewards through charitable donations. The privately-held company is based in Cupertino, Calif. and is a recipient of the 2011 OnMedia B2B Company of the Year Award.

Acquisition Will Create One of the Largest Social Media Content Companies with over 240 Million Users & 100,000 Publishers —Creating the First Paid, Owned & Earned Media Platforms for Brands

BRISBANE, Calif. – Glam Media, Inc. (www.GlamMedia.com), the number one vertical social content platform company with the largest online global reach for women, today announced that it is acquiring Ning (www.ning.com), the leading online platform for building social websites, including more than 100,000 custom branded fan sites.

“Ning is the clear leader for creating custom social websites and communities. Acquiring Ning adds a natural extension to our social media platform, new distribution channels and a talented Silicon Valley team, all of which support our aim to connect brands with engaged, passionate audiences,” said Samir Arora, Chairman and CEO of Glam Media. “With the addition of Ning, Glam Media will truly become the first next generation media company in the post-social world.”

Since launching the first social blog community in 2005, Glam Media has experienced tremendous success, growing from just seven publishers and 12 authors to more than 2,500 publishers and 4,000 authors globally today. The company has trusted relationships with more than 1,000 leading brand advertisers and is a Top 10 web property with more than 85 million monthly unique visitors in the U.S. and more than 200 million globally.

Combining Ning’s world-class technology and deeply engaging social platforms with Glam Media’s super premium advertising solutions and reach will accelerate the company’s vision of bringing brand marketers online by helping them to engage with passionate social communities across all digital mediums.

Glam Media together with Ning will set the standard for the future of media by providing their clients with the reach of portals, the deep connections and interests of Facebook, and the influence of trusted conversations.

“Social media is transforming the way brands are reaching their audiences. The Ning platform and its Network Creators, combined with the power of Glam’s advertising solutions, will ignite the delivery of our Brands+Social integrated programs at significant scale,” said Fernando Ruarte, CTO & EVP Platform & Products at Glam Media. “Together, Glam and Ning will address important challenges that currently exist for marketers by enabling social media-activated brand campaigns to run in contextual environments that go beyond the few large social networking sites that exist today.”

Ning

Founded in 2004, Ning is the world’s largest custom platform for social communities and networks. The company has experienced explosive growth since it successfully moved to a subscription-based business model led by CEO Jason Rosenthal. Since 2010, Ning has increased the number of paying customers from 17,000 to more than 100,000 and grown its revenue by over 500 percent. Today, Ning has more than 100 million registered user social profiles and reaches more than 60 million monthly unique visitors. The company’s customers are the most active champions of brands, causes and organizations seeking to make an impact in the world using social media.

Ning makes it easy for brands of all sizes to build custom and powerful social brand fan pages and web sites as diverse as Linkin Park’s fan social network, Martha Stewart’s mentorship community, Scott Brown’s virtual campaign office and the collaborative hub for the Peace Corps. More than 50 percent of Ning sites are integrated with social applications such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+, which helps to amplify messages across each member’s social graph.

Ning will operate as a new business unit within Glam Media. Jason Rosenthal, Ning’s CEO, will join Glam as EVP Social Media & General Manager of Ning, and will be a member of the Glam Media executive team.

“Our passion at Ning has always been to make social and mobile core to every web experience, and to leverage the power of community to change the world and drive value for customers,” said Jason Rosenthal, CEO of Ning. “Connecting our customers with super premium brand advertisers has been a core part of our vision from the earliest days of the company and joining with Glam Media – which shares our roots and belief in the power of social – delivers on that promise.”

Additionally, Marc Andreessen will join Glam Media’s board of directors, joining the top venture firm investors in Glam — Accel’s Thereisa Ranzetta and DFJ’s Tim Draper — as well as Co-Founder of Glam Media Fernando Ruarte, Dr Marcel Reichart from print media leader Hubert Burda Media, and Glam Media Founder & Chairman Samir Arora. Marc is a Silicon Valley pioneer who created Mosaic, the first web-browser and was the co-founder of Netscape Communications. In 2009, Marc created the venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz, with Ben Horowitz that invests in leading edge technology companies. He currently serves on the boards of Facebook, HP, eBay and other leading technology companies.

“Glam Media is one of the most dynamic companies in the digital media space, and I am excited to help guide their further expansion,” said Marc Andreessen. “With the fusion of Ning’s leadership and social networking technology, and Glam’s solid stake in the world of digital advertising, publishing and content creation, there’s no limit to where we can take the company.”

Platforms and Products for Brands and Publishers

Ning joins Glam Media’s suite of next-generation advertising, social, and content platforms, which include:

GlamAdapt – super premium ad serving platform
GlamMobile – full-scale mobile advertising, content and social platform
GlamCreate – content creation management platform
GlamEnable – content platform to enable mobile sites and applications
GlamConnect – first social networking platform for professional authors and bloggers

The acquisition of Ning will allow Glam Media to provide its 2,500 publishers and 4,000 authors with even more innovative ways to connect, create and broadcast authentic content across multiple mediums and social streams – all in one place. Glam publishers will be able to leverage new services that enable them to grow their audiences on desktop, mobile and video and increase frequency, leading to higher levels of engagement.

Additionally, Ning Creators running active online communities will have new opportunities on desktop and mobile devices to monetize their sites and grow successful businesses.

For more information about Glam Media, visit: www.glammedia.com.

About Glam Media

Glam Media is the pioneer of vertical media that connects the world’s top brand advertisers with targeted vertical audiences online. Glam invented the first commercial blog network in 2005 to harness the power of Social Media for brands. Since then, it has grown to a reach of 85 million unique monthly visitors in the U.S. and more than 200 million globally, and is #1 for women and is a Top 100 US Web Property. Glam Media has more than 2,500 publishers organized across multiple vertical categories online including: Glam.com for Women, Glam Entertainment for Adults, Brash.com for Men and Bliss.com for health and wellness seekers.

Glam Media has headquarters in Silicon Valley, New York, and London, with offices in Brisbane in California, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, London, Munich, Hamburg, Berlin, Düsseldorf, Tokyo, Pune, Mumbai and Paris. Glam Media’s investors include Information Capital, Accel, DFJ, Walden Ventures, Hubert Burda Media, GLG, and Aeris.

About Ning

Ning is the leading online platform for the world’s organizers, activists and influencers to create social experiences that inspire action. For brands of all shapes and sizes, Ning makes it easy to build custom and powerful social websites. Ning Networks span categories like politics, entertainment, small business, non-profits, education and more, connecting millions of people every day around the topics they are passionate about. Palo Alto, Calif.-based Ning was co-founded in October 2004 by Chairman Marc Andreessen and Gina Bianchini. For more information, visit www.ning.com.

NEW YORK – IgnitionOne, the first closed-loop Digital Marketing Suite, announced a strategic partnership with DataPop, a provider of technology to improve search ad relevancy. The two companies have already combined their search technologies with great results on behalf of ABetterStay.com, which offers consumers access to independent hotel properties worldwide.

IgnitionOne’s Digital Marketing Suite was used to manage ABetterStay.com’s paid search campaign and automate keyword bids in real-time. The DataPop platform improved the relevancy of the search campaign’s content by creating and changing keywords, ad creative and landing pages based on ABetterStay.com’s dynamic inventory and unique position in the marketplace. This resulted in better engagement with the ads, which coupled with effective keyword bid automation and campaign management from IgnitionOne, led to a 140% increase in revenue attributable to paid search.

“DataPop and IgnitionOne have improved the relevancy of our search advertising while keeping our costs in line and increasing our revenue return,” says Erik Hovanec, CEO of LeisureLink, the parent company of ABetterStay.com. “Their combined technologies have greatly improved our ROI from search.”

The automated approach offered by IgnitionOne and DataPop allows marketers to spend less time managing paid search tactics, such as managing keyword bids and building ad groups, while still improving their campaign performance and online revenue.

“DataPop’s core competency in crafting contextually relevant advertising at scale and in real-time enables us to deliver better performing search ad campaigns on behalf of our clients,” said Roger Barnette, President of IgnitionOne. “The result is greater revenue, higher ROI and a greater ability to achieve specific sales goals, such as monetizing flash sales or moving product more quickly during peak seasons.”

“Marketers who harness the full breadth of data at their fingertips, such as consumer search behavior, promotional calendars, product inventory levels, pricing information and more, are able to deliver a better search experience for their customers,” said Jason Lehmbeck,CEO and Founder of DataPop. “We believe that more personalized advertising is a long-needed innovation in search, and we’re excited to partner with IgnitionOne to bring this solution to more marketers.”

IgnitionOne will present on “Improving Paid Search with Inventory-Based Optimization” at Shop.org in Boston this Wednesday. More information about the session can be found at http://bit.ly/mVuK8g.

About IgnitionOne

IgnitionOne is the world’s first closed loop Digital Marketing Suite, offering multiple solutions to improve online performance within a single interface. Solutions include ad management and optimization (search, display and Facebook), cross-channel attribution and website optimization. The company currently powers more than $20 billion in revenue each year for some of the world’s leading online marketers, including General Motors, Chico’s, Ann Taylor, Fiat and advertising agencies such as MRM Worldwide, CyberAgent and more.

For more information, please visit http://www.ignitionone.com or follow the company on Twitter @ignitionone.

About DataPop

DataPop is a search marketing technology provider that simplifies how companies create high-performing, customized and relevant search ads. Recognizing the need for a radically new way of managing paid search campaigns, the DataPop team developed an entirely new ad optimization platform for its clients.

BOSTON, MA – Nexage, the leading provider of market liquidity in mobile advertising, and Turn, the industry’s only end-to-end platform for managing data-driven digital advertising, today have announced a strategic partnership. This agreement enables clients of the Turn Media Platform to buy mobile advertising inventory at the impression level on Nexage’s real-time bidding (RTB) exchange, an integrated component of the Nexage Revenue Platform.

Nexage’s RTB exchange, combined with the data layer of the Nexage Revenue Platform, enables buyers to target and buy on a real-time, impression-by-impression basis. This capability enables buyers to identify an audience that is relevant to specific advertising campaigns and to drive campaign ROI. Nexage’s RTB exchange is growing 84% per month, and becoming an important engine to accelerate buyers’ mobile business and to drive overall market liquidity.

Through the partnership, Nexage is enabling Turn, and their more than 60 Fortune 200 brands that utilize the market-leading Turn Media Platform, to access billions of mobile application and mobile web impressions—and specifically target those impressions that deliver the greatest value to advertising campaigns.

As a single point of control for campaigns utilizing mobile, video and display advertising, the Turn Media Platform enables marketers to automate audience targeting and media buying across every inventory source from one centralized interface. Delivering thousands of campaigns and analyzing billions of daily impressions, the Turn Media Platform is the industry’s most powerful and best performing demand side platform (DSP) for data-driven advertising.

“We are both proud and thrilled to announce our partnership with Turn, which brings world-class brands and clear market leadership in audience-based media buying to mobile advertising,” said Ernie Cormier, CEO and president of Nexage. “Through this partnership, we combine Turn’s buying power with our RTB exchange to enable mobile advertisement campaign success and to drive overall market liquidity.”

“A critical component of Turn’s business strategy is to provide our clients with access to the industry’s broadest range of RTB inventory across mobile, video and display channels,” said Bill Demas, CEO and president of Turn. “Nexage is an ideal partner for us as the company combines RTB leadership with robust mobile capabilities. This enables our clients to integrate the mobile channel with their display and video campaigns and delivers on the promise of multi-channel advertising.”

Nexage continues to grow its roster of demand sources with the top three online demand side platforms (DSPs) now active on its RTB exchange; in addition, they have added nine more bidders in Q3 alone.

About Nexage

Nexage is the leading provider of market liquidity for buyers and sellers in the mobile advertising market. The Nexage Revenue Platform, comprised of a RTB exchange and mediation, maximizes revenue for publishers and developers, and campaign ROI for demand sources and advertisers. Nexage serves our customers and partners on a worldwide basis, including publishers, developers, and demand sources. Nexage is rapidly scaling as buyers and sellers realize greater value for their mobile advertising business; today, Nexage manages more than 8B monthly impressions and serves over 100 global ad sources, over 200 publishers, and over 700 sites and applications. Nexage has offices in Boston, New York, and San Francisco. Come visit us at www.nexage.com or follow us on Twitter @Nexage.

About Turn

Turn has developed the digital advertising industry’s only integrated, end-to-end platform for data and media management. The Turn Audience Platform and Turn Media Platform are currently utilized to manage digital advertising campaigns for over sixty Fortune 200 brands. Turn’s global infrastructure, intuitive software and analytics, and open ecosystem for partners – all available in a real-time integrated environment – represent the future of digital advertising. Turn is headquartered in Silicon Valley, California, with additional offices in London, UK, New York, Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

For more information visit: www.turn.com.

This strategic acquisition brings additional scale to the video advertising opportunities available from Exponential®, which already include Firefly Video. With the combined market share of AdoTube and Firefly Video, Exponential is now one of the largest global video providers. While Firefly Video offers a cost-per-engagement model that leverages Tribal Fusion’s global display inventory, consisting of the second largest worldwide global reach of 453 million, AdoTube offers advertisers innovative video solutions that leverage in-stream video inventory.

Exponential will operate AdoTube as an independent entity. AdoTube will leverage Exponential’s global footprint, which consists of 33 locations across 23 countries and will immediately expand its presence globally from just the United States. AdoTube will also apply Tribal Fusion’s advanced audience platform, consisting of data, targeting, optimization, and audience insights to its in-stream video solution, making it the most advanced video offering in the market.

AdoTube, based in New York City, was founded by Leo Grzhonko and Constantine Goltsev in 2007 who partnered with Josh Winograd and Steven Jones to join in leading the executive team. AdoTube offers a variety of innovative in-stream video formats that move beyond simple insertion of TV ads into video content, and allow users to engage, interact and provide feedback within the video ad unit.  AdoTube’s Polite Pre-Roll is the least intrusive In-Stream video ad unit, allowing users to skip ads and where advertisers only pay for completed views. Publishers also benefit from the Polite Pre-Roll format, as users are less likely to leave their site due to being forced to watch in-stream ads.

“We are big believers in the potential of online video advertising and this acquisition accelerates our growth in the rapidly growing online video space,” says Dilip DaSilva, Exponential Interactive’s CEO. “In-Stream video ad serving is very much in its infancy, but by combining the advanced data, targeting, optimization, and insights available in the more mature display space with AdoTube’s innovative and interactive video solutions, we feel we can offer advertisers online video solutions that leverage the best of online advertising and engage users in a much deeper way than simply inserting TV ads into online video content.”

“This is a great transaction for all stakeholders as this relationship provides AdoTube with access to Exponential’s extensive global foot-print and advanced audience platform,” says Constantine Goltsev, AdoTube’s CEO.  “Impactful advertising is about using creativity to engage users and leave a lasting and effective impression. The AdoTube platform lets advertisers augment their TV ads with interactive elements to create engaging ads. Combining this with an advanced audience platform, lets advertisers engage specifically with their most desirable target audience.”

AdoTube™ (http://adotube.com) is the leading global in-stream advertising technology company. AdoTube’s powerful and flexible technology provides a centralized end-to-end digital video solution offering publishers and advertisers easy and efficient access to in-stream video advertising across all media platforms.  An early pioneer, AdoTube spearheaded the Polite Pre-Roll® and has continually spurred innovation in the online video ecosystem. With its sophisticated and comprehensive video ad management platform combined with a full service video ad network, and third party media measurement system, AdoTube is simplifying the complex world of digital video for publishers and marketers, while delivering engaging experiences for consumers.

Exponential Interactive Inc (http://www.exponential.com) the parent company of Tribal Fusion and FireFly Video, is a technology-enabled media company that delivers innovative products and services to meet the demands of today’s digital advertisers. Through a variety of offerings, the Exponential group of businesses enables online advertisers to reach their target audiences from around the globe to across town.

From premium publishers and CPM advertisers to performance marketing and highly engaging video solutions, Exponential delivers results for online advertisers. Each of its businesses – Tribal Fusion®, Firefly Video™, FullTango® LeadGenuity® and EchoTopic® – brings state of the art optimization technology, media services and years of experience in representing publishers and delivering highly successful campaigns for our advertising clients.

NEW YORK – PointRoll, a Gannett Company and leading provider of digital marketing technology, announced a strategic alliance with Tremor Video, the largest independent online video technology company. The partnership enables brands to buy video advertising on a national level through Tremor Video’s network while targeting and dynamically serving locally relevant in-stream video advertising through PointRoll– bringing part of the $17 billion local TV advertising market online.

The joint venture will now provide major brand advertisers with a fully integrated dynamic video solution that will allow them to maximize their video marketing spend. Ford is just one of the advertisers who has leveraged this alliance and is currently running a dynamic in-stream video campaign. The 15-second video ad’s final frame presents an offer dynamically delivered at run-time based on each viewer’s geography that gives them the option to visit their local dealer’s website.

“As video has become a more prominent element in online advertising, we wanted to apply the same dynamic nature to it, as we have with display advertising,” said Keith Morris, SVP, Group Account Director, Tier 2 Digital at Team Detroit’s Retail First division. “Being able to bring localization of offers and messaging to online video ads is the next natural step in the progression of our dynamic online strategy and coordinating the efforts of Tier 1 and Tier 2.”

“The goal of successful interactive advertising is to make the ad feel like part of the viewing experience,” said Jason Krebs, SVP and Chief Media Officer at Tremor Video. “This partnership enables advertisers to leverage Tremor Video’s technology and network to achieve national scale and PointRoll’s dynamic delivery capabilities to engage consumers at a precise local level.”

“The tremendous success of Ford’s dynamic end card campaign proves that video is no longer one size fits all,” said Catherine Spurway-Hepler, SVP of Strategy at PointRoll. “At PointRoll, we put killer creative and data optimization to use in all of our campaigns, no matter the platform, to drive success. By partnering with Tremor Video, we can supplement our mission with their technology to deliver engaging and applicable video ads on a national scale.”

About PointRoll

PointRoll, a Gannett Company (NYSE: GCI), is the leading provider of digital marketing services and technology. PointRoll enables advertisers, agencies and Web publishers to create, deliver and measure interactive and action-inspiring online video, rich media display, digital circulars, mobile, and social campaigns. Delivering both the art and science of the digital engagement, PointRoll provides the creative tools, analytics, distributed content, and expertise marketers need to effectively engage consumers and make a memorable and measurable impression. Evolving beyond the banner, PointRoll allows marketers to find consumers wherever they are across any digital platform and deliver a relevant and engaging brand or direct response experience, dramatically improving ad effectiveness. Serving more than 500 billion impressions for more than two-thirds of the Fortune 500 brands, PointRoll delivers measurable online advertising campaign results. For more information, visit http://www.pointroll.com or follow us @pointroll.

About Tremor Video

Founded in 2005, Tremor Video (formerly Tremor Media) (www.tremorvideo.com) provides in-stream video advertising solutions to Fortune 1000 brand advertisers and top tier publishers and is widely regarded as the leading video company online. Leveraging their innovative video ad formats and publisher technology, Tremor Video delivers the mass reach and campaign results advertisers should expect from digital video. Tremor Video is the only video ad platform that can provide 100% brand safety by scanning and categorizing every single video stream before an ad is ever served. Powered by award-winning SE2 technology, Tremor Video’s video algorithm also gets smarter at finding and engaging viewers with every ad served, enabling the company to welcome and encourage pay-per-engagement pricing. Tremor Video is a privately held company headquartered in NYC with 10 national and international offices.

LONDON – The OFT’s guidance, revised and published for consultation on 14th June, finds Google and Twitter “inappropriate” for debt management companies. The guidance proposes to impose restrictions on the use of Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising and social networking. The industry was given until September 6th to respond.

Andrew Smith, director of marketing and external affairs for ClearDebt and spokesperson for The Debt Resolution Forum (DRF), commented: “The DRF believes that, as long as a licensee’s search engine marketing is legal, that intellectual property and defamation laws are enough to ensure its proper use and any further restrictions would be a restraint of trade.”

This OFT document represents draft guidance for all licensees actively practising debt counselling and debt adjustment.

The guidance also extends to cover involvement in forums and blogs, and the use of contextual advertising (targeted advertisements based on the content of websites on which the adverts appear).

The document states “The OFT considers that search engine sponsored links and online messaging forums which limit the number of characters are unlikely to be an appropriate means of providing consumers with sufficiently balanced and adequate information.” Preventing organisations from using advertising platforms could raise objections to restraints being placed on commercial freedom.

The guidelines that have been issued to the debt market could soon be applied to the credit industry, which is currently under government review. ‘Credit’ is the 5th most expensive term to bid for on Google, at $47.12 per click. Text ads appearing in the Google search results were responsible for 97 percent of the Google’s revenue over the past year.

Andrew Smith, of ClearDebt and the Debt Resolution Forum, comments: “It seems to DRF that as long as profiles within social applications and content of linked pages are compliant, that there should be no reason to restrict licensee’s use of these media. Enforcing this restriction would leave commercial licensees without a legitimate right of rebuttal or being able to defend company reputation.”

“The DRF also believes that to impose the requirement that any content on social networks should be identified, as a promotional statement would be inaccurate, unfair and a restraint of reasonable commercial freedoms and business practices.”

“It is understood that statements made by a licensee should be compliant wherever they appear, but content on Facebook/Twitter and other social networking is not necessarily only marketing communication. It can also be conversational, informational or campaigning. We agree paid-for content should be distinguished as such and, on the internet, should link to pages that are fully compliant. We believe a clear distinction needs to be drawn between paid-for social media and ordinary day-to-day use of social media by licensees.”

SEATTLE – Today, Marchex, Inc. (NASDAQ:MCHX) announced continued momentum for its digital call advertising opportunity through a partnership with CityGrid®, a leading local content network that connects web and mobile publishers with local advertisers. This agreement will increase the breadth of Marchex’s Digital Call Marketplace through CityGrid’s extensive network of local web and mobile publishers, including Citysearch, Urbanspoon, Insider Pages and hundreds of other leading web and mobile properties.

CityGrid Media will place Marchex’s national and local advertisers in relevant call advertising placements across its CityGrid® advertising network – to connect them to consumers through phone calls when these consumers are looking for relevant products or services. Through Marchex’s technology platform, advertisers pay for these live customer connections on a performance pricing model, Pay For Call (PFC), and then utilize call analytics to better understand the value of these calls.

“We’re excited to partner with Marchex and believe there is a great opportunity to create live connections between our local consumers and Marchex’s advertisers,” said Rob Angle, SVP at CityGrid Media. “Marchex’s digital call advertiser base is a great fit for our network and we believe we can show them a lot of value from our network of local publishing partners.”

“We see strong momentum for digital call advertising, among both national and local businesses, and are focused on partnering with mobile and web traffic leaders to continue to increase the breadth of our digital call marketplace,” said Pete Christothoulou, COO at Marchex. “CityGrid® is one of the most valuable and recognized local content networks and represents the type of partner we look for to help us drive live connections, new customers and more sales for our advertisers.”

Marchex has created a technology platform that creates, manages and optimizes digital call advertising campaigns to drive quality inbound phone calls from consumers to businesses. The platform includes many components, such as Pay For Call (PFC), mobile voice search and call analytics technologies.

The Marchex Digital Call Marketplace creates opportunities for live connections between advertisers and potential customers by targeting call-ready consumers through all digital media channels, including mobile, online and VOIP. Advertisers pay for these live connections on a performance basis, Pay For Call (PFC). The Marchex Digital Call Marketplace includes hundreds of thousands of advertisers seeking to drive quality inbound phone calls to their businesses from more than one hundred call media publishers spanning a broad range of media channels.

About CityGrid Media:

CityGrid Media is an online media company that connects web and mobile publishers with local businesses by linking them through CityGrid®, its local content and advertising network. CityGrid Media owns and operates leading local consumer properties including Citysearch, Insider Pages and Urbanspoon.

CityGrid Media is an operating business of IAC (NASDAQ: IACI).

About Marchex:

Marchex’s mission is to unlock local commerce globally by helping advertisers reach customers through the phone when they are ready to buy.

Our performance-based call advertising products, Marchex Call Connect and Marchex Call Analytics, are reinventing how businesses acquire and upsell new customers through phone calls. Our award-winning Small Business Solutions products empower businesses to efficiently monitor their online presence, communicate with their customers, and acquire new ones. Every day, our products support hundreds of thousands of advertisers and partners, ranging from global enterprises to local businesses.

For more information about Marchex (NASDAQ: MCHX), please visit www.marchex.com.

WESTLAKE VILLAGE, Calif. – ValueClick (Nasdaq: VCLK) announced that it has closed its acquisition of Dotomi, the leading provider of data-driven, intelligent display media for major retailers. The Company also announced an update on its share repurchase program, including the repurchase of 3.4 million shares since August 5 and an increase in its total repurchase authorization to $100 million.

“We are thrilled to formally welcome Dotomi to ValueClick, as their expertise and scale complement our strengths in performance-based display and affiliate marketing,” said James Zarley, chief executive officer of ValueClick. “As illustrated by our recent share repurchase activity and our board’s increased share repurchase authorization, we remain confident in our ability to gain market share as our Media division expands further into branding, mobile and video and capitalizes on cross-selling opportunities with our affiliate marketing advertisers. We are committed to offsetting the shares issued in the Dotomi transaction with continued share repurchase activity.”

Dotomi Acquisition Closed

ValueClick has acquired all of the outstanding equity interests in Dotomi for upfront consideration consisting of: (a) 7.1 million shares of ValueClick common stock; (b) the assumption of 0.5 million fully vested stock options; and (c) $148 million in cash (net of cash acquired). In addition, ValueClick has assumed 0.4 million shares of unvested restricted stock which will vest over a one year period and 0.5 million unvested stock options which will vest over a period ranging from one to three years.

A portion of the acquisition was funded by the Company’s Amended and Restated Credit Agreement, as described in the Company’s Form 8-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on August 24. This credit agreement provides the Company with $200 million of total available credit with a five year term, including a senior secured revolving credit facility of $150 million and a $50 million term loan.

John Giuliani will continue to lead Dotomi and will report directly to ValueClick chief executive officer, James Zarley. Additionally, Mr. Giuliani has joined ValueClick’s board of directors.

Dotomi’s results of operations will be included in ValueClick’s consolidated and Media segment results beginning on August 31, 2011. For the one month period ended September 30, 2011, ValueClick anticipates that Dotomi will contribute approximately $8.5 million in revenue. The acquisition is expected to add approximately $2 million in amortization expense and approximately $1 million in stock-based compensation expense to ValueClick’s third quarter results. Dotomi was not included in the Company’s third quarter 2011 guidance provided on August 2.

Share Repurchase Program Update

Today, ValueClick also provided an update on its share repurchase program. Since August 5, the Company has repurchased 3.4 million shares of its common stock for a total cost of $49.5 million. These repurchases represent over 44 percent of the shares issued upon closing of the Dotomi acquisition. Year to date, ValueClick has repurchased 6.0 million shares of its common stock for a total cost of $87.2 million.

Additionally, the Company announced that its board of directors has increased the share repurchase program authorization by $86 million, bringing the current share repurchase program authorization to $100 million. The Company intends to continue to use its share repurchase program to offset the shares issued in the Dotomi acquisition.

About ValueClick

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

“This deal is another step forward in expanding DG’s presence in the fast-growing Internet advertising vertical,” said Scott Ginsburg, Chairman and CEO of DG. “The combination of MediaMind, Unicast and EyeWonder brings together a highly qualified roster of professionals, a complementary footprint of offices and geographic locations, along with innovative technologies to connect advertisers and agencies with the most desirable audiences on a worldwide basis.”

EyeWonder is a leading provider of interactive digital advertising products and services, including online video and rich media solutions, serving Fortune 1000 companies and premium marketers around the globe. In addition to helping advertisers, interactive agencies and content publishers create, build, track and optimize campaigns, EyeWonder is recognized globally for its technological expertise around targeting. EyeWonder Predictive Behavioral Targeting served over 3.5 billion targeted impressions in the most recent quarter.

“To fulfill our vision of converging TV and online media, we require a strong global position in online advertising,” said Neil Nguyen, President and COO of DG. “By joining EyeWonder with Unicast and MediaMind we are strategically establishing an online media powerhouse. We are delighted to welcome our new colleagues to DG.”

DG expects EyeWonder to generate revenues of approximately $36 million to $37 million for full year 2011. In addition, the Company anticipates realizing $7.0 million in cost synergies in the first twelve months following the close of the EyeWonder transaction. Subject to customary closing terms and conditions the transaction is expected to close on September 1, 2011.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch acted as financial advisor to DG.

About DG

DG FastChannel®, Inc. (now known as DG) provides innovative technology-based solutions to the advertising, broadcast and publishing industries. Through its television unit, including the MIJO, Treehouse and SourceEcreative brands, the Company serves more than 5,000 advertisers and agencies through a media distribution network of more than 28,000 radio, television and print publishing destinations throughout the United States, Canada and Europe. DG’s internet division, comprising MediaMind, EyeWonder and Unicast, provides data driven digital advertising solutions to more than 9,000 brand owners, using approximately 3,800 media and creative agencies across 8,200 web publishers in 64 countries. DG utilizes satellite and internet transmission technologies, creative and production resources, digital asset management and syndication services that enable advertisers and agencies to work faster, smarter and more competitively. DG extends its benchmark of excellence to a wide roster of services ranging from custom rich media solutions and interactive marketing to direct response marketing and global creative intelligence. For more information, visit www.DGit.com.

CINCINNATI – dunnhumbyUSA, a global leader in building brand value for consumer goods and retail companies, and TRA, a leading media and market research company that helps clients increase TV advertising effectiveness and product sales by matching anonymous television tuning data with consumer purchasing behavior data, today announced a partnership. The partnership leverages dunnhumbyUSA’s data, expertise, customer relationships and analytics to accelerate TRA’s leading solution linking TV viewership and shopper purchase behavior. As a result, consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies, advertising agencies and television networks will benefit from the industry’s most comprehensive solution for understanding and improving advertising effectiveness.

Utilizing TRA’s patented Media TRAnalytics® software – which matches second-by-second measurement of TV viewing habits from more than 2 million set-top box households with the purchases of 60 million U.S. households – the solution enables more continuous and accurate results to help companies improve ROI and eliminate waste from ad spends. The companies will also provide clients with custom analytics regarding campaign success and results as well as advanced targeting insights based on viewers’ product purchase behavior.

“We are pleased to partner with dunnhumbyUSA, the industry leader in helping companies increase brand preference,” said Mark Lieberman, Chairman and CEO of TRA. “dunnhumby’s expertise analyzing consumer behavior in-store is a strong addition to the existing Media TRAnalytics® platform, which offers media buyers and sellers the television industry’s most diverse and powerful media marketing database. This partnership will be an important accelerant for the industry, helping media buyers and sellers move away from reliance on traditional panel-based demographics to deliver more effective media plans, measurement and custom analytical capabilities.”

“At dunnhumby, we have found that companies experience success and build preference for their brand by putting the customer at the center of their business decisions,” said Stuart Aitken, CEO of dunnhumbyUSA. “Our partnership with TRA, an innovator within the fast growing space of media analytics, is one more extension of that model, and will offer clients the opportunity to deliver more relevant content, improving the customer experience and at the same time, providing better ROI for advertisers.”

About TRA, Inc.
TRA, Inc. (www.traglobal.com) is a media marketing and analytics software company whose products help advertisers, agencies and television networks improve advertising targeting, accountability and return on media investment. TRA’s Media TRAnalytics® is a web-based platform that matches the TV advertising households actually receive with the products the same households actually buy, enabling TRA’s clients to find “The Right Audience®” while providing an unmatched level of transparency, measurement, media planning/selling and improved ROI. Licensed users of Media TRAnalytics® include 4 of the top 10 advertisers, 45 of the top 100 brands, as well as the top agencies and networks. TRA’s investors include Intel Capital, Kodiak Venture Partners, WPP and Arbitron. TRA is the recipient of the BeyeNETWORK’s 2009 Vision Award for Business Impact in Analytics. TRA is certified under ISO 27001, the information security management system standard published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) designed to ensure security controls for protecting information assets. TRA owns U.S. Patent No. 7,729,940, entitled “Analyzing Return on Investment of Advertising Campaigns by Matching Multiple Data Sources” and U.S. Patent No. 8,000,993, entitled “Using Consumer Purchase Behavior for Television Targeting.”

About dunnhumbyUSA:
dunnhumby is the global leader in personalizing customers’ experience of retailers and brands. Analyzing data from over 350 million people in 25 countries, we help companies put customers at the center of every decision. We use our insight to improve customers’ experience of stores and communications to earn their lifetime loyalty. Our work with some of the world’s biggest retailers and brands has demonstrated that those companies that deliver value to customers through personalization become and stay their customers’ first choice. This strategic approach to putting the customer first in business improves our clients’ like-for-like sales and profit margins – or, put simply, their brand value. dunnhumbyUSA is a joint venture of The Kroger Company and London-based dunnhumby. Employing more than 1,500 people in 30 offices in Europe, Asia and the Americas, dunnhumby serves a prestigious list of companies including The Kroger Co., Tesco, Coca-Cola, General Mills, Kimberly-Clark, Macy’s, Panera Bread Company, PepsiCo and Procter & Gamble. For more information, visit www.dunnhumby.com.

Rockfish, which is based in Rogers, AR, with offices in Little Rock, AR, Dallas and Cincinnati, boasts a client list that includes such major marketers as Walmart, Sam’s Club, Cisco, Procter & Gamble, United Health, EA Sports and Tyson Foods. In 2010, Inc. magazine included the agency on its list of the 500 fastest-growing companies in the US.

“Rockfish is a fantastic addition to the WPP Digital family,” Mark Read, CEO of WPP Digital said. “Kenny Tomlin [CEO, Rockfish] and his team have built a smart company that understands how technology is changing communications and business. Its work demonstrates how it can apply this to drive innovation for clients. We’re delighted that under Kenny’s leadership we will be continuing to develop the Rockfish brand and helping the team to maintain the rapid growth they have shown since they started in 2006.”

“WPP is the most successful and highly awarded holding company in the world,” Tomlin said. “The rapid growth of Rockfish into one of the world’s foremost digital innovation companies most appropriately aligns with WPP and their vision for our continued success. We believe that our best days are still in front of us and consider this an important next step in the evolution of Rockfish.”

Rockfish was founded in 2006 and employs 150 people. It provides clients with strategic consulting, technology, mobile, design and digital marketing services. It was named “Small Agency of the Year” by Advertising Age magazine in 2009 and was third on their “Agency A-List” in 2010. OMMA magazine, a publication devoted to coverage of online media and marketing, recognized Rockfish as its “Best Web Design and Development” agency of the year in 2010.

This acquisition continues WPP’s strategy of investing in fast growing sectors and markets and further strengthens its capabilities in the digital marketing sector. The transaction is subject to regulatory approval and the approval of Rockfish’s shareholders.

About WPP Digital

WPP Digital is the digital investment arm of WPP, the world’s leading communications services group, with billings of $66 billion and revenues of approximately $15 billion. Its remit is to act as a catalyst for change within the Group in the digital media space. Its prime goal is to champion digital technologies and new media innovations and to stimulate, support and enhance existing Group company activities in this area. Activities include identifying acquisitions/partnerships/investments, funding start-ups, establishing training programs and instigating cross-Group knowledge sharing forums. For further information, please visit www.wpp.com.

About Rockfish

Rockfish is a Digital Innovation Partner for brands such as Walmart, Sam’s Club, Cisco, and Tyson Foods. Rockfish provides digital solutions for their clients that are meaningful to their customers and measurable to their business. Rockfish has been recognized as the OMMA 2010 Agency of the Year for Web Design and Development, ranked third on the 2010 Ad Age Agency A-List that recognizes the ten best agencies in the world, and placed in the 2010 Inc. 500 Fastest Growing Companies. Rockfish is headquartered in Rogers, AR, with offices in Dallas, TX, Cincinnati, OH and Little Rock, AR.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Jumptap, the leader in targeted mobile advertising, announced partnerships with four leading providers of primary off-line data, helping mobile advertisers deliver highly-targeted and effective campaigns. These partnerships are the first in the industry to combine off-line audience insights and true network scale.

Jumptap’s advertisers have already seen great results from this deeper level of data. Jumptap recently helped a major auto advertiser target ads to ZIP codes including customers that show a high inclination toward its brand. Ads targeted to these ZIP codes showed lift over broadly targeted ads in virtually every campaign. One campaign showed an 85 percent lift over the control campaigns not using data targeting. For more information on this campaign and other data, download Jumptap’s June 2011 MobileSTAT report.

As part of these strategic partnerships, Acxiom, a leader in marketing services and technology that provides consumer segmentation and targeted direct mail solutions, supplies Jumptap with anonymous information to assist advertisers in reaching audiences in a specific demographic or life stage.

Datalogix, the leader at integrating database marketing and digital media, provides Jumptap with the ability to use anonymous purchase-based data in key verticals such as retail, consumer packaged goods, loyalty and more. Past purchases are the strongest predictor of future purchase behavior and the Datalogix database includes almost every U.S. household and contains over $1 trillion in consumer purchase behavior.

“There is no question that mobile marketing will be of increasing value to companies that want to drive deeper brand loyalty and customer engagement,” said Chris Scoggins, SVP & GM DLX Platform, Datalogix. “This partnership allows Jumptap to leverage Datalogix’s proprietary targeting segments, thus ensuring that the correct audiences are reached across all mobile devices.”

Polk, the automotive data and marketing solutions leader, supplies Jumptap with offline indexing reports for vehicle segments, make and model information by ZIP code. This comprehensive, anonymized data helps advertisers on the Jumptap network target mobile device users who are more likely to buy certain makes and models of automobiles.

“Initial test results have shown a significant lift in click-throughs when Jumptap has used Polk ZIP data to prioritize targeting,” according to Andrew Price, Vice President, Sales and Client Services at Polk. “We are very encouraged by Jumptap’s leadership in utilizing third party data for mobile targeting and look forward to continuing to integrate Polk data into Jumptap’s automotive ad campaigns.”

TARGUSinfo, the leading provider of On-Demand Insight, delivers AdAdvisor elements, which leverage TARGUSinfo’s proprietary offline segmentation platform – providing audience targeting capabilities on large numbers of U.S. households based on lifestyles, propensities, brand preferences and many other attributes.

“Increasingly, marketers are creating content to leverage the interactivity of mobile devices. This innovative content can go to waste without the right audience to interact with it. AdAdvisor’s unique data goes beyond demographics to behaviors and lifestyle characteristics of large groups of U.S. households. In a privacy friendly manner, AdAdvisor will help Jumptap effectively deliver the appropriate audiences to marketers at scale,” said Paul McLenaghan, Vice President of AdAdvisor, TARGUSinfo.

A common, key ingredient to all of these partnerships is a commitment to privacy standards. Each data partner certified that its practices comply with Jumptap’s privacy standards, which require that users are given notice and choice about how their data will be used. Aggregated information from the partners will be leveraged to provide enhanced targeting based on partner data, without personally identifying users. In addition, Jumptap provides its own opt-out for ads delivered to users of apps or mobile browser users, allowing users to choose to decline ad targeting, if they wish.

Because of these partnerships, Jumptap’s advertisers are able to target relevant ads to mobile users more likely to be in certain life stages, segments, or even more likely to purchase a certain type of product. The benefit for the users is they are served more relevant advertising, seeing offers that more closely match their situation and needs. Publishers also benefit as they serve ads that better suit the needs of their users which results in better ad performance and a better consumer experience.

“The unique benefit of mobile advertising is that it reaches consumers on a personal level, which is both a challenge and a tremendous opportunity for advertisers,” said Paran Johar, Chief Marketing Officer at Jumptap. “Our relationship with each of these partners benefits advertisers with higher return on ad spend, rewards our publishers with better monetization, and provides consumers with the most relevant ads.”

Jumptap Privacy Standards

Jumptap is committed to preserving the balance between respecting consumer privacy and delivering relevant ads that align with consumer interests. As a charter member of the DAA mobile advisory committee, we understand that mobile devices are far more personal than PCs and we have designed our policies with this in mind. We firmly believe in both transparency and choice when it comes to the collection and use of data.

We strive to maintain high standards. It is our practice to avoid sensitive issues, such as medical information, for profiling and we offer one of the most extensive opt-out programs in mobile advertising. We are committed to working with industry organizations on establishing and upholding standards. We strive to make privacy protocols simple to execute and we are constantly evolving to stay on point with the advanced innovations in targeting and ad delivery. Our privacy policy is available on our website and can be viewed here.

About Jumptap

Jumptap is the leader in targeted mobile advertising. With an unmatched portfolio of technology patents, Jumptap’s data-driven solutions deliver the highest ROI for advertisers, and the best yield for publishers, across multiple platforms. The company partners with digital and media agencies, publishers, wireless carriers and brand advertisers, to deliver an array of mobile advertising solutions. For more information, visit www.jumptap.com or follow us on twitter.com/jumptap.

About Acxiom

Acxiom is a recognized leader in marketing services and technology that enable marketers to successfully manage audiences, personalize consumer experiences and create profitable customer relationships. Acxiom’s superior industry-focused, consultative approach combines consumer data and analytics, databases, data integration and consulting solutions for personalized multichannel marketing strategies. Acxiom leverages over 40 years of experience in data management to deliver high-performance, highly secure, reliable infrastructure management services.

About Datalogix

Datalogix is the leader at integrating database marketing and digital media. Our mission is to leverage the power of purchase-based audience targeting to drive measurable online and offline sales. We offer audience segmentation and integrated media programs directly and through all leading digital media companies. Datalogix is based in Westminster, CO, with offices in New York, Boston and Chicago. Please visit us at www.datalogix.com.

About Polk

Polk is the premier provider of automotive information and marketing solutions. The organization collects and interprets global data, and provides extensive automotive business expertise to help customers understand their market position, identify trends, build brand loyalty, conquest new business and gain a competitive advantage. Polk helps automotive manufacturers and dealers, automotive aftermarket companies, finance and insurance companies, advertising agencies, media companies, consulting organizations, government agencies and market research firms make good business decisions. A privately held global firm, Polk is based in Southfield, Michigan with operations in Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States. For more information, please visit www.polk.com.

About TARGUSinfo

TARGUSinfo, the trusted provider of On-Demand Insight® to the most recognized brands, links and delivers 300 billion real-time attributes a year to drive smarter and more profitable customer interactions on the Web, over the phone and at the point of sale. For more than a decade, America’s top brands and most respected companies have turned to TARGUSinfo to enable improved audience targeting, better customer experiences, higher conversion rates and increased customer lifetime values by using TARGUSinfo identification, verification, scoring and location solutions. TARGUSinfo offers a complete range of solutions to help organizations make better real-time decisions leveraging patented processes built on a proprietary network of hundreds of data feeds and its unique predictive analytics capabilities. A profitable and privately held company, TARGUSinfo is headquartered in Vienna, Va. with offices in San Diego, Chicago, San Francisco and New York. For more information, visit www.TARGUSinfo.com.

Today’s consumers are increasingly connected across a broad spectrum of devices such as smart phones, tablets and wired computers. The recent study Welcome To The Era of Agile Commerce by Forrester Research reports that consumers don’t interact with channels. Instead they interact through touch points such as a brand’s website, the call center, mobile apps/sites, in-store, and social media (Source: Forrester Research). They demand easier ways to connect, research, engage and purchase. The key to creating successful advertising campaigns is making it seamless for the consumer to engage across these touch points. Giving consumers the option to connect from their mobile devices direct to an advertiser’s call center is key to creating this seamless experience.

“Our goal at Epic is to give our clients a comprehensive package that addresses all of their advertising needs. For many types of products and services, especially big-ticket items, consumers want to speak with someone live,” said Don Mathis, President and CEO of Epic Marketplace. “RingRevenue’s call performance marketing platform allows advertisers and agencies to create call-based campaigns that not only encourage and measure phone engagement but also deliver more customers and, ultimately, revenue to their business. We’ve seen how quickly the call-based channel is exploding and their team has a proven track record of success in this space.”

In addition to advanced call tracking capabilities, RingRevenue’s call performance marketing platform brings real-time call analytics, performance-based pricing controls, search keyword call tracking, SMS campaign integration and more to Epic’s mix of technology, giving them the ability to deliver more revenue and better ROI to advertisers and agencies.

“We are pleased to be partnering with Epic to deliver high-value inbound calls to their client base in the US and UK. Integrating call performance marketing together with their already powerful technology platform and award-winning marketing team is a combination that is sure to deliver brands more customers and more revenue,” said RingRevenue CEO Jason Spievak.

To sign up as an advertiser or publisher and begin promoting call-based campaigns click here: http://epic.ringrevenue.com/signup

About Epic Marketplace

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

About RingRevenue, Inc.

RingRevenue® improves every marketing campaign with better quality leads, higher conversions and increased ROI. By tapping the power of the phone, RingRevenue’s patent-pending call performance marketing platform captures and converts more high-value customers. RingRevenue’s comprehensive tracking and analytics consistently increase revenues from mobile, print and other “offline” media while also improving the performance of online campaigns such as search, email and display. RingRevenue powers many of the leading performance marketing networks and agencies. To learn more about RingRevenue or to request a demo, please visit ringrevenue.com or call 866-943-6426.

NEW YORK – IgnitionOne, an international digital marketing technology and solutions company, has acquired AdJug, Europe’s leading display advertising exchange for unsold premium inventory. The two companies will integrate their technologies to provide marketers with a sophisticated solution that simplifies the buying, targeting and measurement of online advertising.

IgnitionOne’s Digital Marketing Suite (DMS) is a centralized set of tools and services that boost performance and measure online advertising across search engines, websites and Facebook. The DMS will incorporate AdJug’s Dynamic Creative Technology, which customizes advertising creative in real-time, based on people’s interests and Web behavior.

Furthermore, the AdJug Exchange will give IgnitionOne customers complete control over their display ad placements and traffic volume. The Exchange currently serves three billion plus ad impressions per month to more than 67 million unique users, across more than 2,000 publishers and 4,000 sites worldwide.

This deal will enable IgnitionOne, which currently generates more than $20 billion in online sales for marketer and agency clients such as General Motors, Chico’s, Ann Taylor and Fiat, to increase its global reach and offer an unrivaled suite of online marketing solutions.

“The online ad market is overcrowded with complicated and overlapping technologies. With this deal, IgnitionOne is simplifying digital marketing for agencies and brands,” said Will Margiloff, CEO of IgnitionOne. “We are growing rapidly to meet advertisers’ demands and, with AdJug on board, we can further realize our ambition for the Digital Marketing Suite to be the leading advertising technology platform.”

“Our Dynamic Creative Technology (DCT), combined with IgnitionOne’s audience scoring technology, will give AdJug’s customers better response, greater reach and efficiencies through the industry’s most advanced online advertising platform,” said Michael Stephanblome, co-founder and CEO of AdJug.

For IgnitionOne, which formed through the integration of SearchIgnite and Netmining’s on-site solutions earlier this year, the acquisition increases its global footprint to nine offices in Asia, Europe, the Indian sub continent and the USA, employing more than 200 people. AdJug’s Exchange will give IgnitionOne customers greater access to advertising inventory in new markets, and enable agencies and brands to create international campaigns from one dashboard.

AdJug Co-Founders Michael Stephanblome and Satish Jayakumar will join IgnitionOne’s executive team, strengthening the company’s leadership in Europe. Stephanblome was previously managing director for Gumtree.com and ran marketing for eBay in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Before AdJug, Jayakumar was the Director of European Strategy for MIVA.

Tomorrow Focus, a leading internet group in Europe, will retain a 20% share in AdJug and advise the company as it expands across Europe.

About IgnitionOne

IgnitionOne is the world’s first closed loop Digital Marketing Suite, offering multiple solutions to improve online performance within a single interface. Solutions include ad management (search, display and Facebook), cross-channel attribution and on-site optimization all through a single, simple-to-implement website tag. IgnitionOne currently powers more than $20 billion in revenue each year for some of the world’s leading online marketers and agencies, including General Motors, Chico’s, Ann Taylor, Fiat, MRM Worldwide, LBi and others.

For more information, please visit http://www.ignitionone.com or follow the company on Twitter @ignitionone.

About AdJug

AdJug Ltd., based in London, Munich and Bangalore, is the largest and longest-running transparent display ad Exchange for premium unsold inventory in Europe. The AdJug Exchange serves three billion+ ad impressions per month to more than 67 million unique users per month. Currently the company has over 500+ advertisers and relationships with more than 2,000+ publishers and 4,000 sites worldwide. AdJug helps advertisers and agencies to achieve superior campaign performance. Its optimization technology uses data aggregation to build dynamic re-targeting segments, which find conversions across ad Exchange inventories.

SANTA MONICA, Calif. – Demand Media® (NYSE: DMD) announced a renewal and expansion of its ongoing advertising partnership with Google to monetize Demand Media’s owned and operated properties and premium content inventory. The comprehensive, global advertising relationship brings together Demand Media’s ability to create compelling content experiences with Google’s extensive reach, ad platform technology, and ability to monetize all parts of the online advertising ecosystem. Also as part of this deal, Demand Media will provide content for new, brand-safe channels launching within the Google Display Network Reserve, a product that allows advertisers to guarantee impressions across bundled, premium inventory.

“Google has been and continues to be an important partner to Demand Media. Combining our ability to create compelling, advertiser-friendly content that consumers desire with Google’s best-in-class solutions for the online advertising ecosystem, this deal marks a significant evolution of the relationship between our two companies,” said Richard Rosenblatt, chairman and CEO of Demand Media. “Given the expansiveness and international scope of this deal, we are enthusiastic about the impact this will have on Demand Media and Google’s worldwide audiences of consumers, advertisers and agencies.”

The expanded, global partnership includes an extensive range of features that will improve and expand the products and services offered to consumers and advertisers alike, including:

Display advertising: An extension of the two companies’ existing agreement to monetize Demand Media’s properties via AdSense for Content and the DoubleClick Ad Exchange
Premium ad Serving: An extension of the two companies’ existing agreement to manage and serve ads through the DoubleClick for Publishers platform
Demand Media’s properties will be included in premium, brand-safe channels within Google Display Network Reserve

About Demand Media

Demand Media, Inc. (NYSE: DMD) is a content and social media company that serves consumers, advertisers, publishers and creative professionals with a diverse portfolio of properties, products and services. Through brands like eHow, LIVESTRONG.COM, Cracked and typeF, Demand Media informs and entertains one of the internet’s largest audiences every month, helps advertisers find innovative ways to engage with their customers and enables publishers to expand their online presence. Founded in 2006, Demand Media is headquartered in Santa Monica, CA with offices in Kirkland, WA; Austin, TX; Chicago, IL; New York, NY; and London, UK. For more information about Demand Media, visit: www.demandmedia.com

SCHAUMBURG, Ill. – Nielsen Holdings N.V. (NYSE: NLSN), a leading global provider of information and analytics around what consumers watch and buy, announced that it has acquired Marketing Analytics, Inc., one of the pioneers of marketing mix modeling and a recognized leader in analytics and advanced planning software. Marketing Analytics’ 52 employees will join the Nielsen team, and Nielsen will acquire all other assets including software and ongoing client projects

The acquisition enables Nielsen to provide marketers of fast moving consumer goods with the most complete and timely view of the impact of media and marketing – a distinct advantage when developing marketing plans across multiple channels, such as online and offline advertising, in-store promotions and consumer promotions.

“We are committed to providing insights and innovative solutions to help our clients drive effective marketing programs with quantifiable returns on investment,” said John Lewis, president and CEO, Consumer North America, Nielsen. “Fast moving consumer goods marketers require advanced, real-time, predictive analytic insight. By combining Nielsen’s global reach with Marketing Analytics’ expertise and advanced modeling and scenario planning applications, we can drive increased value for our global clients seeking the optimal marketing mix and spending level to maximize their sales.”

“Huge possibilities open up with the integration of our people, expertise and industry-leading software with Nielsen’s vast data assets and broad professional services footprint,” said Ross Link, founder and CEO, Marketing Analytics, Inc. “We’re joining a great team I am proud to be part of at Nielsen. Together, we can set the standard for helping clients examine what’s possible and what’s best for their marketing mix.”

Headquartered in Evanston, Ill. and founded in 1991, Marketing Analytics, Inc. helps companies measure the impact of their marketing plans on sales by combining deep modeling expertise with robust software applications. Link, a long-time innovator in marketing modeling, will continue to lead the group and work to integrate these capabilities into Nielsen offerings.

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.

SANTA MONICA, Calif. – Demand Media® (NYSE: DMD) announced the acquisition of Los Angeles-based IndieClick, a premium online advertising company that specializes in connecting brands with passionate and engaged consumers. IndieClick’s innovative multi-platform advertising campaigns deliver impactful, integrated brand experiences. The acquisition complements Demand Media’s strategy to connect advertisers and consumers around unique content and compelling web experiences and expands the size and reach of its direct ad sales force.

IndieClick represents a curated portfolio of important online destinations in the comedy/humor, entertainment, film, music, lifestyle, and fashion categories that are especially relevant to enthusiasts, with a focus on the 18-34 year-old demographic. As mainstream media continues to fragment, marketers and advertisers are following suit. IndieClick provides brands and marketers with the transparency that allows them to participate in the ongoing, consumer-driven conversations via fresh, fun and innovative campaigns. As the web becomes more independent, IndieClick leverages its inventive approach to ad units, audiences and an overall spirit that more advertisers are trying to capture on the web.

“We built our business by listening to consumers, who are using independent websites more each day. It’s a natural progression that marketers want to augment established online channels to find more engaged consumers enjoying these independent web experiences,” said Joanne Bradford, chief revenue officer at Demand Media. “IndieClick has a knack for identifying fresh and compelling online content, while delivering brilliant creative that connects marketers to these untapped, yet passionate consumers.”

Advertisers such as Mazda, Schick, Hornitos, and Coachella Music and Arts Festival, as well as numerous film and music companies have all leveraged IndieClick’s capabilities that include rich media, multi-platform premium display advertising, media planning and creative services, in addition to transparent and deep publisher integration. The company’s internal creative group builds unique, first-to-market ad products to help create truly innovative campaigns.

“Core to both companies is a deep focus on understanding consumers,” said Peter Luttrell, CEO of IndieClick. “We have been successful because we understand specific, hard-to-reach audiences better than anyone in the industry – and that translates into the development and execution of incredibly successful campaigns that work well for marketers, publishers and consumers alike.”

The IndieClick team will immediately enhance Demand Media’s ability to monetize its audience on Cracked®, the most visited humor site on the web (comScore US), with a large 18-34 demographic. Additionally, advertisers on Demand Media properties will have immediate access to this hard to reach demographic across the IndieClick publisher network.

Double M Capital was the financial adviser and Sullivan & Triggs, LLP was the legal adviser to IndieClick in the transaction with Demand Media.

For additional information about partnering with IndieClick as a publisher or advertiser, please go to www.indieclick.com.

About IndieClick

IndieClick helps advertisers reach an influential audience of nearly 30 million unique visitors in the US through innovative ad formats – including rich media, video, mobile and social media – that are integrated onto carefully selected destinations. IndieClick’s publisher network has the highest concentration of young adults age 18-34 according to comScore and serves more than two billion ad impressions to this audience. For additional information about IndieClick, please visit: www.indieclick.com.

About Demand Media

Demand Media, Inc. (NYSE: DMD) is a content and social media company that serves consumers, advertisers, publishers and creative professionals with a diverse portfolio of properties, products and services. Through brands like eHow, LIVESTRONG.COM, Cracked and typeF, Demand Media informs and entertains one of the internet’s largest audiences every month, helps advertisers find innovative ways to engage with their customers and enables publishers to expand their online presence. Founded in 2006, Demand Media is headquartered in Santa Monica, CA with offices in Kirkland, WA; Austin, TX; Chicago, IL; New York, NY; and London, UK. For more information about Demand Media, visit: www.demandmedia.com.

WESTLAKE VILLAGE, Calif. – ValueClick (Nasdaq: VCLK) and Dotomi announced that they have signed a definitive merger agreement whereby Dotomi will become a wholly owned subsidiary of ValueClick. Privately held Dotomi is the leading provider of data-driven, intelligent display media for major retailers.

Dotomi creates and delivers display advertising where the ad creatives and media placements are dynamically adapted in real time at the user and impression level. The Company works directly with clients to integrate anonymous data and then surrounds each client with technology enabled marketing services. Dotomi manages everything from brand strategy and dynamic creative development to message delivery and decisioning. This data-driven, end-to-end approach results in display advertising that improves consumer brand engagement and generates measurable sales lift both online and offline for its clients.

Through its unique set of capabilities, Dotomi has developed strategic, direct relationships with over 100 retail brands, including over forty brands from the Internet Retailer Top 100. Led by Chief Executive Officer John Giuliani, Dotomi is based in Chicago and has 160 employees.

“Dotomi’s end-to-end offering attracts large brands because of its ‘simple sophistication.’ John and his team have built a great business integrating the technical and consultative points in the display value chain,” said Jim Zarley, chief executive officer of ValueClick. “Together with ValueClick’s portfolio of products, we will be in a position to meet the needs of marketers with a single relationship that will create marketing and analytic consistency. Our combined scale and expertise should accelerate their adoption of digital media. Together we believe we will create a new powerhouse in branding and performance-based advertising.”

“We are excited to join ValueClick and contribute our expertise to their enviable portfolio of digital marketing services,” said John Giuliani, chief executive officer of Dotomi. “There is a strong cultural fit between the two companies and a shared idea to make it easier and more reliable for clients to adopt digital marketing that makes a big impact. We look forward to joining forces with ValueClick to bring the scale that marketers are looking for across the consumer purchase funnel.”

Deal Terms

Under the terms of the agreement, ValueClick will acquire all outstanding equity interests in Dotomi for a total up-front consideration of approximately $295 million, consisting of approximately 55 percent in cash and 45 percent in ValueClick common stock. In addition, ValueClick will assume unvested Dotomi restricted stock and options which will vest over a period ranging from one to three years. Dotomi management will receive the majority of their consideration in ValueClick common stock, which will have a twelve-month lock-up, while the outside investor base will receive either cash or a combination of cash and ValueClick common stock. ValueClick anticipates receiving approximately $15 million in working capital from Dotomi at closing.

To fund the cash consideration, ValueClick will utilize a combination of cash from its balance sheet and availability under its existing line of credit.

This transaction has been approved by the board of directors of each respective company and the majority of stockholders of Dotomi. ValueClick anticipates the acquisition will close near the end of August, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals.

John Giuliani will continue to lead Dotomi and will report directly to ValueClick Chief Executive Officer James Zarley. Additionally, Mr. Giuliani will be nominated to join ValueClick’s board of directors.

For calendar year 2011, Dotomi expects to generate over $80 million in revenue. ValueClick anticipates that this transaction will be accretive on an adjusted-EBITDA1 multiple basis in 2012.

Jefferies & Company, Inc. acted as exclusive financial advisor to Dotomi on this transaction.

About ValueClick

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

“DIRECTView is one of many sources of data Nielsen is incorporating in our efforts to provide higher quality local TV audience measurement,” said Steve Hasker, President, Nielsen Media Products & Advertiser Solutions. “Our innovative approach to enhance local TV measurement addresses the technological limitations of using set top box data alone, and we expect it will provide valuable benefits to local TV markets.”

“The integration of our DIRECTView data with Nielsen’s local market data marks an important milestone for return path data,” says George Shababb, President, Kantar Media Audiences North America. “The sample size and granularity made possible through return path data advances what audience measurement has traditionally been able to deliver and will help offer advertisers in local markets an improved service.”

Nielsen selected Kantar Media’s DIRECTView service because it is one of the largest set top box services in the United States that anonymously covers live and time-shifted viewing. Nielsen’s use of the DIRECTView data to enhance its industry-leading audience measurement approach follows a successful proof-of-concept test that provided greater stability in local TV audiences.

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.

About Kantar Media

Kantar Media is a unit of Kantar, a leading information, insight and consultancy group that is part of WPP. WPP is the world’s largest communications services group with billings of $66 billion and revenues of approximately $15 billion. Kantar Media, which is represented in over 50 countries, helps clients master the world’s multimedia momentum through analysis of print, radio, TV, Internet, cinema, mobile, social media, and outdoor worldwide. Kantar Media offers a full range of media insights and audience measurement services through its global business sectors—Audiences, Intelligence, TGI and Custom. Kantar Media companies also include Compete, Cymfony and SRDS. Drawing upon the deepest expertise in the industry, Kantar Media tracks more than 3 million brands and delivers insight to more than 22,000 customers worldwide. www.KantarMediaNA.com.

ZestADZ, based in Chennai, India, was founded in 2007 and is led by Asif Ali, a technology entrepreneur. ZestADZ helps advertisers and agencies deliver targeted mobile advertising campaigns to drive brand awareness, generate traffic and leads, and increase purchase intent amongst other options. ZestADZ currently delivers 5 billion mobile ad impressions globally each month. The company also has an office in the United States. The mobile division of Komli Media, which includes ZestADZ, is run by Amit Bhartiya, Vice President, together with Ali who will head mobile products.

Komli Media acquired ZestADZ for its strong team and sophisticated mobile advertising and analytics platform across feature phones and smartphone platforms such as iPhone, Android, and Windows Mobile.

Prashant Mehta, CEO, Komli Media, said, “We’re thrilled to have the ZestADZ team as part of the Komli family and see a strong cultural fit between our two companies. Under Asif’s leadership, they have built a strong technology platform that complement’s Komli’s own real-time ad serving technology to make this a mutually rewarding partnership.”

According to eMarketer estimates, Asia Pacific mobile internet users will nearly double from 623 million in 2011 to more than 1.22 billion in 2015. At the end of 2015, it is estimated that one out of every two mobile users worldwide will reside in Asia Pacific. Within India, the mobile internet penetration is today estimated at 40 million users and is expected to grow to over 200 million users by 2016.

Asif Ali, CEO, ZestADZ, added, “We are looking to leverage Komli’s leadership position in the Asia Pacific region to accelerate the adoption of mobile advertising by leading agencies, advertisers, and publishers. We will continue to bring innovative products to the market. This combined with Komli’s brand, market penetration and experience will help us to advance our leadership position in the space.”

According to a recent forecast from Gartner, worldwide mobile advertising revenue is set to double in 2011, growing to US$3.3bn from $1.6bn generated in 2010. This growth is coming from increased 3G/4G access, smartphone platforms such as Android, and the increasing accessibility of low-cost handset platforms.

About Komli Media
Komli Media is Asia Pacific’s leading digital media network. Its digital advertising technologies enable marketers to reach, acquire and foster audiences and publishers to maximize their revenues. Komli Media provides marketers with innovative solutions across brand marketing, performance marketing, social media, and video advertising. ViziSense, India’s leading online audience and ad measurement platform is powered by Komli Media technology. PostClick, Australia’s leading site representation firm, and Indoor Media, the UK’s leading ethnic ad network, are both subsidiaries of Komli Media. Headquartered in Mumbai, Komli Media now has offices in Bangalore, Chennai and New Delhi (India), Hong Kong, Manila and Singapore (SEA), London, Melbourne and Sydney (Australia), and New York, Redwood City, Toronto and Des Moines (North America). Find out more at http://www.komli.com.

About ZestADZ
ZestADZ is a leading global mobile advertising marketplace with offices in Los Angeles, Des Moines, and Chennai. ZestADZ services leading brands, agencies and mobile app companies globally through its self service offering. ZestADZ delivers 5 billion mobile ad impressions each month with active operations in over 20 key markets. ZestADZ delivers value through mobile analytics, highly targeted advertising and local advertising in key markets. For more information, please visit http://zestadz.com or its blog http://zestadz.wordpress.com

With an average of 170 million monthly connected users worldwide1 making calls domestically and internationally and approximately 30 million concurrent users at peak times2, Skype’s reach and engaged user base make it an attractive platform for brands to market their products. Popular with both business users and consumers alike, Skype offers rich communications ranging from free Skype-to-Skype audio and video calling, to Group Video Calling and making low cost calls to landlines and mobiles all over the world.

Dentsu and Skype will offer advertisers an opportunity to be part of the Skype experience through ‘Skype Home’ which provides a large masthead space for advertisers to display rich and interactive ads. Skype users are shown to spend more time on Skype Home – an average of 2 hours3, as compared to other non-Skype platforms, providing advertisers an excellent opportunity for targeted, dynamic advertising.

The display advertisement will be designed to deliver the advertiser’s message directly to Skype users, featuring the following:

1) A large-sized advertisement, larger than a typical banner ad, appears on the Home tab as default when Skype for Windows starts. With one click on the ad, it expands to twice its original size. It will go back to the original size by clicking CLOSE.

2) Interested users will see richer, interactive content in the extended ad after clicking on the original. In addition, the ad can be linked to the advertiser’s official website just like other web banners to offer users more details.

3) The number of advertisers will be limited to one per day to avoid the ad from being lost in competitors’ ads.

4) Users who wish to hide the ad can do so by simply clicking on “Hide Ad.” The ad can also be displayed back again.

1 For the three months ended 30 June 2011
2 As of March 2011
3 Source : Nielsen NetView Japan May 2011, time spent per person per month

This is a first step in providing a Skype solution for advertisers in Japan, and Dentsu and Skype will continue to explore various advertisement options to better enable enterprises to market their brands.

*For advertising campaigns that are not multi-national or multi-regional in nature.

About Dentsu Inc.
Founded in 1901, Dentsu Inc. has held the position of the world’s largest single-brand agency for almost 40 years. Through its unique “Integrated Communication Design” approach, Dentsu offers multinational clients the most comprehensive range of advertising and marketing services in the industry. While continuing to pursue innovation in the digital arena, Dentsu is active in the production and marketing of sports, movies, anime, and other entertainment content on a global scale. The Dentsu Group has more than 6,000 clients and close to 20,000 employees worldwide.

Amsterdam, the Netherlands – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world,  announced that JIC STIR has signed a Letter of Intent to award a three and a half year contract to comScore and Intomart GfK, to be the official source of record for internet audience measurement in the Netherlands. Inaugural data for the Dutch market will be made available in early 2012.

The new internet audience measurement service is based on a combination of website server date with an opt-in panel of more than 25,000 internet users in the Netherlands, to provide accurate measurement of digital audiences. Other enhancements to the new STIR service include faster processing, weekly data reporting and tools for measuring campaign effectiveness.

“comScore and Intomart GfK have delivered a strong and innovative proposal that matches the ambitions that we have formulated as JIC STIR and the flexibility of comScore and Intomart GfK to submit a joint proposal proved to be very successful,” said Frans Kok, managing director of JIC STIR. “All parties within the JIC (VINEX, BVA and PMA) stand firmly behind the use of a methodological approach that combines panel and server data for more accurate audience estimates, and we are convinced it will set an example for other countries. Enhancements to the STIR service, including an enlarged panel and weekly reporting, will substantially increase the value of the research for media planners and advertisers.”

“We are pleased to be selected by JIC STIR as the Netherlands’ preferred digital audience measurement provider,” said Enrico Verhulst, vice president business development at comScore. “comScore’s experience combining panel and server data in the Unified Digital Measurement platform will enable us to provide the Dutch market with the most comprehensive and accurate online audience ratings and competitive intelligence, as well as insights into the effectiveness of digital advertising that will promote the development of online advertising in this market.”

About STIR
In 2009, STIR has been transformed into JIC STIR, a joint industry body with the sole objective to carry out the survey in a valid and reliable way. Partners in JIC STIR are the advertisers’ association (BVA), the media agencies (PMA) and the internet publishers (VINEX, previously STIR). For more information, please visit: http://www.stir.nl/english/

About Intomart GfK
Intomart GfK, part of GfK, globally ranking nr. 4 in market research, is primarily known for its expertise in audience research. Intomart GfK’s media unit currently provides the Dutch Television Audience Measurement (SKO), the Radio Audience Measurement (JIC-Radio) and the National Readership Survey (NOM). Since 2006, Intomart GfK and Nedstat, now comScore, have jointly carried out the Internet Audience Survey commissioned by STIR. Intomart GfK-Media is also a provider of customized usage and appreciation research of new and “old” media. For more information, please visit: www.intomartgfk.nl

About comScore
comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) is a global leader in measuring the digital world and preferred source of digital business analytics. Through recent acquisitions, including web analytics provider Nedstat, comScore has grown from a leading digital market research company into a digital business analytics provider, offering services such as web analytics, advertising effectiveness measurement, digital copy testing and mobile network quality analysis. For more information, please visit www.comscore.com/companyinfo.

NEW YORK – Collective, a full service provider of media and technology solutions for display and video advertising, announced that it has acquired Tumri, the leading provider of dynamic creative optimization and personalization solutions for advertisers and agencies. The deal closed for an undisclosed amount.

Just months after the acquisition of video ad platform and services company Oggifinogi, the transaction further empowers Collective’s end-to-end audience buying solutions for brand advertisers by enabling the delivery of massively customized creative content at scale.

“A lot of companies can deliver impressions. At Collective, we help brand advertisers turn that impression into an expression,” said Joe Apprendi, CEO, Collective. “Tumri gives us the capability to target the right audience with the right messaging and ad format, dynamically based on data intelligence.”

Apprendi maintains that most optimization to date has focused on the ‘who’, which represents the data piece, and the ‘where’ –the ad environment– while not enough emphasis has been placed on optimization of the creative, the ‘what’. Further, the delivery of creative content leads to interaction rates that are over ten times the interaction rates of the campaign control group.

The acquisition strengthens Collective’s ability to manage the entire ad delivery process, enhancing audience buying, optimization and overall ad efficacy while adding much greater cost efficiencies for advertisers.

“DCO has been largely relegated to the direct and ecommerce channels, but its application can have spectacular results for brand advertisers as well. The combination of Tumri and Oggifinogi provides a rich, video-enabled canvas through which brands can connect with consumers across the entire spectrum of online display advertising,” Apprendi added.

Tumri powers dynamic marketing campaigns for many of the world’s most prominent brands including Nike, HP and Travelocity among others, who leverage the platform to cross-sell and up-sell a catalog of products and services based on a user’s actual site browse or action, driving maximum relevancy and ROI.

“Collective’s evolution as a business has brought incredible market opportunities across the entire display ecosystem,” said Hari Menon, CEO, Tumri. “Combining Collective’s AMP audience buying platform with intelligent ad versioning has created a powerful tool for advertisers, allowing them to engage with consumers with exact using the right creative.” Luma Partners advised Tumri on the transaction.

Continued Platform Development

Tumri’s deep engineering expertise in data-driven marketing platforms, ad serving optimization and analytics will be applied to Collective’s own AMP® Data and Media Management Platform technology roadmap. The combined engineering operation will greatly enhance and accelerate AMP product development, enabling Collective to release new features and functionality to both buy-side and sell-side customers using AMP.

About Collective

Collective helps brand advertisers connect and engage with target audiences across display, video and social media. Collective’s industry expertise provides a strategic advantage to its clients by leveraging proprietary audience modeling, insights and ad effectiveness metrics. Our flagship products, Collective Display and Collective Video®, are powered by AMP®, our market-proven data and media management platform. Collective is headquartered in New York with offices in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Los Angeles, San Francisco and London. Collective’s investors include Accel Partners®, Greycroft Partners and iNovia Capital. For more information, please visit www.collective.com.

About Tumri

Tumri is the leading provider of dynamic creative optimization and personalization solutions for advertisers and agencies. The Tumri Ensemble platform combines next-generation ad-serving with dynamic creative production to enable real-time 1:1 personalized marketing at scale. With Tumri, marketers can effectively cross-sell and up-sell a catalog of products or services to their consumers based on a user’s actual site browse or action, driving maximum relevancy and ROI. Marketers also benefit from a powerful auto-optimization engine and dynamic creative reports that allows for a more accurate and timely view of campaign metrics. Tumri powers dynamic marketing campaigns for many of the world’s most prominent brands including Nike, HP and Travelocity among others. To date, Tumri has executed more campaigns, served more impressions and created more distinct dynamic creative experiences than anyone in the space.