Bank of America, Cleveland Clinic, CNA, Frito-Lay, and Mercedes-Benz Leveraging New Formats to Achieve Online Marketing Goals

NEW YORK, NY – The Online Publishers Association (OPA) announced a group of leading brands implementing the new ad units across OPA member sites. The units, which were originally announced in March, are designed to help marketers deliver their brand experiences directly on the pages of these rich content sites. Today, a total of 37 OPA member companies are making the units available and several are running major advertising campaigns across a variety of sectors including consumer packaged goods, automotive, and financial.
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Multi-Disciplinary Forum Includes Agency Creatives for the First Time

NEW YORK – The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) announced that it has held its first meeting of the Re-Imagining Interactive Advertising Task Force, comprised of top online publishers, media agencies and, for the first time, creative officers from the nation’s leading advertising agencies. The new task force’s objective is to develop a comprehensive roadmap for the next stages in the evolution of interactive advertising to ensure that ad formats meet the growing business and creative needs of advertisers, agencies and publishers.
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AdRevenue 09 Brings Hundreds of Industry Thought Leaders Together to Discuss the Changing Economics of Online Display Advertising

PubMatic (www.PubMatic.com), a global ad revenue optimization company that works with thousands of premier online publishers and hundreds of ad networks, announced AdRevenue 09 (www.AdRevenue09.com) — a conference that will focus squarely on the changing economics that are driving the online display advertising industry and how large online publishers can increase their advertising revenue by leveraging the latest trends and technology.

AdRevenue 09 is accepting speaking request submissions until May 29th, 2009. Details can be found at www.AdRevenue09.com.
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New Widget Delivery Platform Extends the Reach of MIVA’s Expanding ALOT Brand

NEW YORK – MIVA Direct, Inc., the toolbar, homepage and content division of digital media and advertising company, MIVA, Inc. (NASDAQ:MIVA), announced the beta release of ALOT Desktop, a free software application that enables users to display widgets directly on their computer desktops without having a browser window open.

Through the new product, users can choose from a range of different ALOT widgets that they can customize and then add to their desktops. These widgets include an online radio player, news headlines, weather and celebrity gossip. It is intended that with future releases of the product, users will be able to access any widget from MIVA Direct’s rapidly expanding online widget portfolio, ALOT Buttons.

The ALOT brand was launched by MIVA Direct in Q4 2007 and is designed to ‘Make the Internet Easy’ by aggregating ‘best of the web’ content within widgets that can be displayed across toolbars, homepages and now desktops. ALOT’s toolbar and homepage products come pre-configured across 40 different categories, enabling MIVA Direct to build up niche vertical audiences. The ALOT music and recipe toolbars, for example, currently have over 900,000 and 500,000 users respectively.
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Ad Revenue Optimizer PubMatic Develops Thought Leadership Conference Focused on Increasing the Value of Unsold Inventory Amid Online Advertising Slowdown

PubMatic (www.pubmatic.com), which provides more than 5,000 online publishers with real-time ad optimization, announced AdRevenue ‘08 (www.adrevenue08.com), the first conference dedicated entirely to improving the value of ad inventory for online publishers and ad networks. PubMatic, known for recognizing trends in ad network pricing with its AdPrice Index, identified the need for a forum where the most respected names in the online advertising come together to address strategies to maximize industry-wide ad inventory revenue.

During the one-day summit taking place November 14th in San Francisco at the Golden Gate Club, attendees are invited to meet with leading technology entrepreneurs, executives, established media and industry thought leaders from Adify, Avenue A / Razorfish, ContextWeb, Draper Fischer Jurvetson, Forrester Research, Google / DoubleClick, NBC Universal, Quantcast, and other innovators in the industry.
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Four out of 10 consumers have made a purchase based on advertising they saw on a social media site, and 76 percent welcome advertising on social networks, according to a report published earlier by Razorfish (www.razorfish.com), one of the industry’s largest digital marketing agencies. FEED: The Razorfish Consumer Experience Report can be found at http://feed.razorfish.com.

FEED documents the results of a 2008 survey that Razorfish conducted of more than 1,000 connected consumers (a coveted group who spend money online and have access to broadband). According to the Razorfish Digital Consumer Behavior Study, connected consumers are adopting social media and web 2.0 technologies with startling regularity.

“Connected consumers embrace social media, are actively building and refining their own trusted personal networks and are rapidly dabbling with emerging communication offerings like Twitter”, said Garrick Schmitt, Razorfish Group Vice President of Experience Planning and FEED editor. We find that consumers are more open to advertising as part of their everyday experience than commonly assumed.
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Avenue A | Razorfish announced today that the agency has shortened its name to Razorfish and launched its new website — www.razorfish.com.

‘For four years we have operated as a single agency with integrated capabilities in the global marketplace, and we don’t need two names anymore,’ Razorfish CEO Clark Kokich said. ‘Although both Avenue A and Razorfish are excellent choices as standalone brands, the Razorfish name enjoys stronger brand equity around the world.’

The Avenue A | Razorfish name was the result of a 2004 merger between Avenue A, one of the first companies to plan and buy digital media, and Razorfish, one of the first companies to counsel clients on digital marketing strategy, creative, and web design.
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Avenue A | Razorfish congratulates Lanctot on being named to the MEDIAWEEK 50 for second consecutive year.

Seattle September 22, 2008 – Avenue A | Razorfish, one of the largest interactive marketing companies in the world, today named Jeff Lanctot as the agency’s new chief strategy officer. Lanctot is also named for the second time in the 2nd annual MediaWeek 50, a list of the country’s top media executives that was published today.

Lanctot joined media-buying concern Avenue A in 1999, five years before the merger with Razorfish. He most recently served as SVP, global media. He replaces Darin Brown, who moved in June from the CSO position to president of Avenue A | Razorfish Europe.

Lanctot will work closely with CEO Clark Kokich to develop the company’s capabilities in the United States and abroad, build processes and teams to bring those capabilities to market, and oversee partnership and investment strategy.
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