The graphic below shows that the teasers and extended cuts have reached ~55 million views (and counting!) while the actual TV ads recorded ~12 million views.

Allan Johnson, Content Strategist at Sharethrough, has kindly agreed to give us further insights.

Otilia Otlacan: What are the main drivers behind such a discrepancy and behind the viral quality shown by most Super Bowl ads?

Allan Johnson: The discrepancy has a lot to do with expectations. What’s great about Super Bowl spots is that people are conditioned to experience them as content they want to watch, not interruptive ads. People expect them to be good because historically, they are. They have big budgets and big cameos, and there’s way more creative freedom offered to the agencies producing the spots. Brands set out to entertain as a priority. Still, everyone knows that the spots themselves are going to have to be :30 or :60 in order to air on TV. So if you know the content is going to be great and there can be an extended cut which might run another 47 seconds longer, but which tells a story unconstrained by the :30 intervals, then viewers naturally know that the extended cuts will be the more entertaining format. Viewers are smart. Watch the Seinfeld ad that was edited for the Super Bowl and then watch the extended cut and it’s clear that the extra time makes a big impact in being able to properly set up the jokes.

Otilia Otlacan: What is the shelf life of a Super Bowl ad, can you comment on how quickly the online buzz vanishes post-game?

Allan Johnson: For a truly viral ad that really impacts the culture, the shelf life of a Super Bowl spot can last for months, even years. Probably the best, most recent example of such a spot was last year’s “The Force” for VW. That spot continues to perform exceptionally well. In addition to still being used on TV, it has steadily added millions of views each month and has collected over 50 million as of today. It will be interesting to see if such an impactful spot exists from this year’s crop. Both the Seinfled Acura spot and the Ferris Bueller Honda spot are showing signs of long lives. “The Bark Side” also looks as if it might stay relevant for month’s to come. “The Bark Side” is currently outperforming VW’s actual Super Bowl spot, “The Dog Strikes Back,” by 2 to 1, even though it was released as that spot’s teaser.

Otilia Otlacan: The top 5 most viral Super Bowl ads of 2012 were all car commercials. Is this a coincidence, have these campaigns been managed better, or is there an organic affinity between cars and the Super Bowl?

Allan Johnson: This was clearly a dominant year for the auto industry. What’s interesting to note, is that just 5 years ago, Audi was the only car manufacturer even advertising in the Super Bowl. They’ve come a long way fast. I think their preeminence was a direct consequence of VW’s success last year with “The Force.” That was such a runaway success that all their direct competitors in the auto industry felt that they needed to catch up, and it turned into an arms race. It’ll be interesting to see what happens next year. Will the other industries feel left in the dust themselves and come back with a vengeance? I wouldn’t be surprised to see this happen.

About Sharethrough
Sharethrough provides brands with a repeatable, scalable and transparent approach to distributing video content that guarantees viewership and maximizes shared engagement. Sharethrough drives engaged audiences for brand videos through its social video ad products, unique publisher network and proprietary targeting and optimization tools. Sharethrough is used by many of the world’s leading brands, including Sony, Microsoft, General Motors, Victoria’s Secret, Nestle and LEGO, as well as top agencies such as Pereira & O’Dell, Universal McCann, Evolution Bureau and Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. Founded in 2008, Sharethrough is a privately held company based in San Francisco, Calif. For more information about Sharethrough, please visit www.sharethrough.com.

COLUMBIA, Md. – Merkle (www.merkleinc.com), a leading customer relationship marketing (CRM) firm and the nation’s largest privately-held agency, announced it has been named in Ad Age’s Agency A-List Issue (January 2012) as one of the Ten Agencies to Watch. The special annual issue honors the best shops in several categories, based on the quality and effectiveness of their work – regardless of discipline or specialty.

The rankings are reported in several categories, using evidence of business success for the agency as conveyed by revenue growth, income growth and new business wins. In selecting the rankings, Advertising Age assessed factors like channel innovation, intellectual property ownership, product influence or creation, solution creativity and measurable results. Heavily considered was how effectively the agency has delivered strong results for its consumer-marketing clients. As the only CRM agency highlighted in the “Agencies to Watch” category, Merkle was cited for its advances in collecting and optimizing consumer behavioral data to increase customer loyalty and lifetime value; and for its digital intelligence and innovation.

“It is a tremendous honor to be recognized by Ad Age,” said Merkle president and CEO, David Williams. “We have been working hard to create a leadership position in the CRM agency space. Our ranking as an agency to watch validates the belief that by developing customer strategy as a business strategy, we help our clients build sustainable competitive advantage.”

Merkle’s systematic evolution from database marketing firm to full-service CRM agency has been chronicled over the last several years with consistent 20%+ revenue increases and employee expansion. Today, the company is comprised of more than 1500 employees, with 2011 revenue of $304 million and growing. More than 150 leading brands employ Merkle’s solutions to drive their integrated CRM strategies and maximize the value of their customer portfolios.

About Merkle

Merkle, a customer relationship marketing (CRM) firm, is the nation’s largest privately-held agency. For more than 20 years, Fortune 1000 companies and leading nonprofit organizations have partnered with Merkle to maximize the value of their customer portfolios. By combining a complete range of marketing, technical, analytical and creative disciplines, Merkle works with clients to design, execute and evaluate integrated customer marketing programs through a connected CRM strategy. With more than 1,500 employees, the privately held corporation is headquartered near Baltimore in Columbia, Maryland with additional offices in Boston; Chicago; Denver; Little Rock; Minneapolis; New York; Philadelphia; Pittsburgh; Seattle; San Francisco; Hagerstown, MD and Shanghai. For more information, contact Merkle at 1-877-9-Merkle or visit www.merkleinc.com.

SAN FRANCISCO – LiveRail for Advertisers Gives Agencies One Platform to Target, Deliver and Track Video Advertising

LiveRail, provider of the world’s largest real-time online video ad platform, today announced the launch of LiveRail For Advertisers, a new ad serving product that makes video campaigns easier to execute, more effective, and more measurable.

LiveRail For Advertisers (LFA) is a brand new platform designed from the ground up for online video and eliminates many of the complexities associated with traditional, legacy technology. LFA streamlines workflows with its video-native tools and interface, dramatically reducing the workload and time associated in trafficking, launching and managing large, multi-publisher video campaigns. Agencies can now leverage LiveRail technology for consistent campaign delivery at scale across their entire media plan; including major broadcasters, portals, ad networks and exchanges.

Advertisers and agencies can also take advantage of LiveRail’s native data integrations (with partners like Affine) to target their video ads to the appropriate audience, content or domain within the publishers they buy from. LFA’s “zero wasted impressions” technology enables agencies to control and pace their campaign’s delivery, reducing wasted spend and ensuring that publishers only deliver within the plan. For the first time, agencies can now dynamically analyze media environments for every impression request, ensuring brand safety and appropriateness of the content/media, and restricting delivery in real-time where needed.

LiveRail for Advertiser’s MRC-accredited reporting and analytics give video ad buyers insight into how their ads are performing through a multitude of filters, dimensions, and video-specific performance metrics. LFA empowers marketers with the data to truly understand the impact and ROI of their video ads, across all the placements, on all publishers, networks and platforms they buy from, helping demonstrate the value of media spend and inform future media purchasing decisions.

“Because we sit at the hub of the online video ad ecosystem, we understand the needs of all parties involved,” said Mark Trefgarne, LiveRail CEO. “Our full- and self-service options let advertisers and agencies select the level of support they need so they can leverage our video expertise. By combining the world’s best video ad technology with the consultative support of industry experts, we believe that LFA will become an indispensible tool for all agencies serious about video.”

LiveRail For Advertisers is a third-party ad server for video. Advertisers and agencies utilizing LFA must maintain their own direct media relationships, as LFA cannot be natively used to access or purchase inventory. For more information about LiveRail For Advertisers, visit http://www.liverail.com/LFAPR.php

About LiveRail

LiveRail is the core technology at the heart of the online video advertising ecosystem. LiveRail solutions enable and enhance the monetization of internet-distributed video and handle over 2 billion video ad impressions per month for many of the world’s largest media and advertising clients. Founded in 2007, LiveRail’s senior team is led by its founders, Mark Trefgarne (CEO) and Andrei Dunca (CTO). LiveRail Inc is headquartered in San Francisco, California, with offices in New York, NY and Cluj-Napoca, Romania. LiveRail is backed by Pond Ventures.

NEW YORK – Social media has dramatically altered the way that agencies and their clients approach consumer engagement campaigns, and in most cases, changed the way in which businesses connect with their target audiences. WORLDCOM Public Relations Group (Worldcom), the world’s leading partnership of independently owned public relations counseling firms, recently asked its Consumer Practice Group partners to share insights on the evolving role of social media as a consumer engagement tool, as well as trends that will potentially change the way in which social media is incorporated into consumer outreach campaigns in 2012.

“Consumer PR, like all forms of public relations and marketing, is fundamentally changing as a direct result of social media and other disruptive online communications channels,” said Will Ostedt, chair of the Worldcom Consumer Practice Group and vice president at The Pollack PR Marketing Group in Los Angeles. “Consumers are expecting to receive and acknowledge communication that is only relevant to them — anything else is ignored or disregarded. The future of consumer PR is to find ways to make messages relevant to consumers and to reach them using the right channels.”

The discussion revealed five emerging trends partners from the (EMEA) European Middle East Africa, Asian Pacific and America’s regions all agree will dramatically effect their approach to consumer engagement campaigns on behalf of their clients.

Location, Location, Location: Worldcom’s Consumer Practice Group is seeing a shift to more localized social media programs that are better able to target consumers and key into their unique values and cultural circumstances. These programs are not only aimed at engaging consumers and encouraging them to share their “brand love” with others, but also encouraging them to share their dollars with their local retailer.

Filtering the Noise: Consumers are learning how to maximize social media tools to fit their personal needs, first and foremost, by eliminating noise. A fundamental need to filter information combined with emerging filtration systems such as Google+ in which the information one sees is increasingly determined by past behavior and/or personal desire, means organizations will have to continually find new ways to permeate permission-based news streams in order to be seen and heard. More importantly, organizations will need to make themselves and their content relevant to a more defined audience.

Depth Over Breadth: The onset of social media has sent most consumers scrambling to widen their social networks, in an effort to secure the most friends and followers in complete disregard of boundaries, privacy and relevancy to their interests and belief systems. Beginning in 2011, a noticeable shift occurred where the depth of consumer networks became more important than their breadth. As consumers increasingly look to better meet their thirst for information that is relevant to their interests and lifestyle, the Worldcom Consumer Practice Group sees consumers limiting their engagement to the people and brands that best connect with their personal lifestyle in the confines of niche social networks, customized specifically for their interests.

Mobile is the New PC: The dramatic and disruptive rise of smart phones, tablets, eReaders and computerized mobile devices over the past two years has fundamentally changed how consumers interact. The result of this disruption is that the modern consumer is always connected, interacting in real time and vetting the relevance of bite-sized information on an ongoing basis. The Worldcom Consumer Practice Group identifies that due to this dramatically upward trend of mobile computing, brands and products will also need to be connected at all times and deliver real-time response and interaction with their consumers.

Twitter Surge: The launch of Apples’ iOS 5 in 2011 was met with much fanfare as the new operating system’s “bells and whistles” delighted current Apple mobile users and served as the impetus for others to make the switch to devices running iOS 5. But, buried in all of the “Cloud” talk, is the fact that iOS 5 provides consumers with direct Twitter integration. Having the social network woven into the fabric of mobile OS’s should lead to a broadened acceptance of Twitter as a part of everyday functionality, and increase users’ activity on the service.

“As social media continues to evolve in 2012, communication pros have the best opportunity and the most relevant skill set to guide organizations to build meaningful consumer engagement versus being purely content pushers,” added Dawn Doty, co-chair of the Worldcom Consumer Practice Group and vice president/partner of Denver-based Linhart Public Relations. “As the new year begins, we encourage all communication pros to continue to muscle into the discussions that matter within their organizations to maximize the channels that now allow this authentic consumer engagement.”

About the Worldcom Consumer Practice Group

The Worldcom Public Relations Consumer Practice Group is a multi-national partnership of PR firms who cumulatively have the broadest experiences and expertise across the spectrum of consumer products and services. Partner agencies create a powerful professional entity, affording clients a local, national, and international industry perspective, resulting in a competitive advantage for clients.

About Worldcom Public Relations Group

Established in 1988, Worldcom Public Relations Group is the world’s leading partnership of independently owned public relations counseling firms, with 107 partner agencies worldwide, in 91 markets, in 46 countries, across six continents. With more than 2,100 employees, and revenue of more than US $260 million, partners collectively serve national, international and multi-national clients seamlessly, while retaining the flexibility and client-service focus inherent in independent local agencies. Through Worldcom, clients have on-demand access to in-depth communications expertise from professionals who understand the language, culture and customs of the geographic arenas in which they do business.

Advertising: Global Industry Guide is an essential resource from MarketLine for top-level data and analysis covering the advertising industry. It includes detailed data on market size and segmentation, textual analysis of the key trends and competitive landscape, and profiles of the leading companies. This incisive report provides expert analysis on a global, regional and country basis.

Scope of the Report:

- Contains an executive summary and data on value, volume and segmentation
- Provides textual analysis of the industry’s prospects, competitive landscape and profiles of the leading companies
- Incorporates in-depth five forces competitive environment analysis and scorecards
- Covers the Global, European and Asia-Pacific markets as well as individual chapters on 5 major markets (France, Germany, Japan, the UK and the US).
- Includes a five-year forecast of the industry

Highlights:

- The global advertising industry grew by 5.9% in 2010 to reach a value of $86,758.2 million.
- In 2015, the global advertising industry is forecast to have a value of $113,424.8 million, an increase of 30.7% since 2010.
- Food, Beverage & Personal/Healthcare is the largest segment of the global advertising industry, accounting for 25.4% of the industry’s total value.
- Americas accounts for 42.1% of the global advertising industry value.

Why you should buy this report:

- Spot future trends and developments
- Inform your business decisions
- Add weight to presentations and marketing materials
- Save time carrying out entry-level research

Key Topics Covered:

Global advertising
Advertising in Asia-pacific
Advertising in Europe
Advertising in France
Advertising in Germany
Advertising in Japan
Advertising in the United Kingdom
Advertising in the United States

Companies Profiled:

WPP Group plc
Omnicom Group Inc.
Publicis Groupe SA
The Interpublic Group of Companies, Inc.
For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/cbcfe5/advertising_globa.

NEW YORK – E*TRADE Financial Corp. (NASDAQ: ETFC) announced that E*TRADE Securities LLC will return to the biggest advertising event of the year with a new Talking Baby commercial slated to debut during the NBC television network broadcast of Super Bowl XLVI on February 5, 2012. This marks the fifth anniversary of the iconic E*TRADE Baby campaign. An additional new Baby spot will be debuted this weekend during the AFC and NFC conference championships.

The new Baby ad is part of an integrated multi-channel campaign that highlights the full range of products and services E*TRADE offers to help investors plan their financial future, available both online at etrade.com and through the firm’s growing network of financial consultants and retail branches.

“We’re thrilled to announce the E*TRADE Baby is back to make his fifth consecutive appearance in the big game,” said Nick Utton, Chief Marketing Officer at E*TRADE. “The Baby has become an iconic brand ambassador that has enabled us to capture the imaginations of investors and effectively showcase the benefits of our investment solutions in a memorable and entertaining way.”

The Super Bowl spot, one of a series of new ads planned for 2012, features the E*TRADE Baby interacting with people facing special life events that trigger a need to consider financial planning.

“As E*TRADE continues to evolve its strategy and service offering beyond trading to serve investors’ full range of financial needs both near- and long-term, so too has our marketing strategy,” said Mr. Utton. “Our evolved approach keeps our campaign fresh and engaging by featuring meaningful life events that people can easily relate to, and providing a unique Baby perspective on the E*TRADE investing solutions available to help them.”

According to a recent survey commissioned by E*TRADE, approximately one-in-three (32%) of those who plan to watch this year’s Super Bowl expect to communicate with others during the game via Facebook® and/or Twitter®. To maximize the investment and reach of the Super Bowl ad before, during and after the game, the campaign’s online presence will include:

A new viral video featuring “Top Ten Baby Moments”
Real-time updates from the Talking Baby on Facebook and Twitter
Redesigned YouTube® Brand Channel featuring E*TRADE’s most popular commercials and videos
In addition to the new Super Bowl spot, E*TRADE will launch a new series of Investing Solutions television spots in February, showcasing products, people and tools in a unique demo format that presents a compelling case for choosing E*TRADE.

The campaign was created by Grey New York, E*TRADE’s advertising agency of record since 2007.

“Super Bowl” is a registered trademark of the NFL and is used here for factual purposes only. NFC and AFC are registered trademarks of The National Football League. E*TRADE Financial Corporation and its affiliates are not affiliated with the Super Bowl or the National Football League.

About E*TRADE Financial

The E*TRADE Financial family of companies provides financial services including online brokerage and related banking products and services to retail investors. Specific business segments include Trading and Investing and Balance Sheet Management. Securities products and services are offered by E*TRADE Securities LLC (Member FINRA/SIPC). Bank products and services are offered by E*TRADE Bank, a Federal savings bank, Member FDIC, or its subsidiaries. More information is available at www.etrade.com.

Heather Frank, previously vice president of consumer media for USA TODAY, has been named editor-in-chief of USA WEEKEND. O’Brien and Frank will both report directly to Hunke.

The USA WEEKEND marketing staff will be incorporated into the USA TODAY marketing team reporting to Sandra Micek, senior vice president of marketing for USA TODAY.

“USA WEEKEND is a key publication in our portfolio and I look forward to exploring ways to expand its potential. Michael and Heather bring vast experience to their new roles and will play a large part in the USA WEEKEND executive team that will position us well for the future,” said Hunke.

O’Brien, based in Chicago, joined USA WEEKEND in 2002 as account executive/Midwest and was   promoted to advertising manager/Midwest in 2004 and advertising director/Midwest in 2007. He was named vice president of advertising last year. Previously, he held positions with Time4Media, McGraw Hill and Cahners Business Information. O’Brien is a graduate of Barat College.

Frank joined USA TODAY in 2010 as general manager of Your Life and was later named vice president of consumer media in 2011. Previously, she led the content programming and operations teams for RevolutionHealth.com. Prior to that, she was the editor-in-chief for Meredith Corporation’s women’s lifestyle sites. From 1997 to 2003, she was an executive at America Online, where she led editorial teams in developing programming in response to popular culture and current events. Prior to joining AOL, Frank was the general manager for new media at WHERE magazines. Frank is a graduate of Newcomb College.

USA WEEKEND is a national weekly newspaper magazine with 22.6 million circulation and 49 million readers in print and online.  It is distributed through more than 800 newspapers. Awarded for its journalism and design, USA WEEKEND focuses on social issues, entertainment, health, food and travel. It has an expanded presence in the social media arena with active participation on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. USA WEEKEND is a Gannett Co. Inc. (NYSE: GCI) publication.

- golfers and owners of full-size vehicles are highly likely to watch the game;

- sales professionals, husbands of single family households and sci-fi movie lovers are very likely to watch the game;

- those on the market for an Amazon Kindle are likely to watch the game.

Another interesting observation is that, although the Super Bowl ad spending has been decreasing in the past years, the percentage allocated to the Super Bowl from the advertisers’ annual budget is climbing steeply.

See below the infographic put together by BlueKai.

Combining Adap.tv’s RTB technology with Collective’s audience data, Collective’s private exchange will offer pre-roll video advertising space across targeted audiences and premium publishers in real-time auctions. Publishers include IPC, WWE, The Independent, Sony Music and iVillage.

The move will see Collective become the first in the UK to launch an RTB private ad marketplace for premium video programming.

“Our marketplace gives advertisers and agency partners a new way to access premium VoD inventory, but with this inventory being in such demand, we don’t see it as a low cost entry to buy video in the UK,” said Jamie Estrin, Director of Collective Video. “RTB pricing is controlled by supply and demand, and high quality premium video is always in high demand in the UK.”

Adap.tv’s interface will run the exchange that connects buyers with Collective’s pre-roll inventory.

“Our unique partnership with Collective will see the launch of the UK’s first RTB private marketplace for video,” said Brian Fitzpatrick, MD for EMEA at Adap.tv. “Real-time bidding is relatively new in the video space – our technology will offer Collective Video’s clients a new way to trade VoD directly.”

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 modelling, 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 London, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Collective’s investors include Accel Partners®, Greycroft Partners and iNovia Capital.
http://uk.collective.com/

About Adap.tv

Adap.tv builds the technology that makes buying and selling video advertising simple and efficient. The company’s products – Adap.tv for Advertisers, Adap.tv for Publishers and the Adap.tv Marketplace – work in harmony to connect video advertising buyers directly to sellers on a single platform. The Adap.tv Marketplace is the industry’s largest video marketplace for premium publishers and brand name advertisers, with over 6,500 sites selling inventory and hundreds of campaigns running daily. Based in San Mateo, CA and with sales offices in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle and London, please visit http://adap.tv/.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – Ace Metrix, the authority of television advertising effectiveness, today honors Microsoft Kinect as the 2011 Brand of the Year and State Farm Insurance as the Most Improved Brand of the Year. Microsoft Kinect delivered twelve ads that earned the highest average Ace Score (619) of the nearly 1,000 brands tracked by Ace Metrix in 2011. To be considered for Brand of the Year, a brand must have aired at least 10 new television ads during 2011.

“It is a remarkable achievement to make one great ad, which Microsoft Kinect did with its category award-winning commercial ‘Sensor Turned Voice and Movement To Magic.’ It is, however, an entirely different challenge to consistently create great ads – which is exactly what Kinect was able to do in 2011,” said Peter Daboll, CEO of Ace Metrix. “Kinect’s ability to seamlessly blend innovation, possibility, and storytelling across different lengths resulted in an average Ace Score which fundamentally outperformed the field. To think that Microsoft was able to sustain a strong Kinect launch in 2010 with such a compelling set of ads in 2011 is a testament to their outstanding agencies, brand teams, and production teams.”

Joining Kinect as the most compelling brands in 2011 were M&M’s, Apple’s iPhone brand, Coca-Cola and Applebee’s.

“While it is not surprising to see these iconic brands at the top of the list, it is worth noting that each has distinguished itself in highly competitive categories, not only emerging as the brand leader in areas like mobile devices, casual dining, non-alcoholic beverages, candies and snacks, but across the entire advertising landscape,” Daboll said. “While being likeable is important for brands, the ability to reach consumers across a variety of dimensions, from emotional to rational is what creates a strong Ace Score, and these brands performed exceptionally well in this regard.”

Most Improved Brand: State Farm

Most Improved Brand of the Year was awarded to State Farm who demonstrated the most significant increase in average Ace Score from 2010 to 2011.

“As a brand, State Farm made extraordinary strides in 2011 compared to 2010,” continued Daboll. “State Farm increased its average Ace Score by almost 14 percent while airing fewer ads. As a result, they were able to deliver far more value at significantly reduced production costs, making their marketing expenditure work harder in 2011.”

Top Five Brands of 2011, by Average Ace Score*

Click the brand name to view five of the top scoring ads of 2011.

*Definition: Ace Score is the measure of ad creative effectiveness based on viewer reaction to national TV ads. Respondents (n=500+) are randomly selected and representative of the U.S. TV viewing audience. The results are presented on a scale of 0-950, which represents scoring on creative attributes such as Watchability, Relevance, Desire, Attention, Change, Information and Likeability. Norm for ads over the last 90 days is 536. Brand of the Year is calculated from all brands that fielded more than 10 new pieces of creative in 2011. Most Improved Brand is calculated from those qualified brands as compared to their Average Ace Score from 2010. Average Ace Score of a brand is determined by totaling all of the Ace Scores earned by a brand in the calendar year of 2011 and dividing by the number of ads aired.

Ace Metrix will reveal scores for every Super Bowl ad on February 5th.

About Ace Metrix

Ace Metrix is the industry authority in measuring and understanding the impact of advertising creative. Through patent-pending Ace Score™ measurement technology, Ace Metrix collects and measures the consumer impact of every nationally breaking TV ad in near real-time. Through its Creative Lifecycle Management™ suite of products, Ace Metrix provides actionable creative analysis, from ideation through real-time in-market performance optimization, to many of the world’s leading advertisers and agencies. Ace Metrix works with leading global advertisers. For more information, visit www.acemetrix.com

Thomas joins USA TODAY from Sony Pictures Television, where he has been senior vice president of branded entertainment since 2009. At Sony, he was responsible for creating integrated advertiser relationships in all Sony video content,both television and digital.

“I’m really looking forward to joining the very talented team at USA TODAY. I think it’s an exciting time for the business and a great opportunity for me. I plan to hit the ground running and lead this new business sales team to success in 2012,” said Thomas.

Previously, he spent more than 10 years at Univision as senior vice president of sales development and marketing. He developed dozens of new business relationships during his tenure. Prior to that, he spent five years at Lifetime Television in sales development and new media. He previously held positions with the National Cable Association, Telerep Inc., and KTTV in Los Angeles.

USA TODAY is a multi-platform news and information media company. Founded in 1982, USA TODAY’s mission is to serve as a forum for better understanding and unity to help make the USA truly one nation. Today, through its newspaper, website and mobile platforms, USA TODAY connects readers and engages the national conversation. USA TODAY, the nation’s number one newspaper in print circulation with an average of nearly 1.8 million daily, and USATODAY.com, an award-winning newspaper website launched in 1995, reach a combined 5.4 million readers daily. USA TODAY is a leader in mobile applications with more than ten million downloads on mobile devices.  The USA TODAY brand also includes USA TODAY Education and USA TODAY Sports Weekly. USA TODAY is owned by Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE: GCI).

San Francisco – In a recent survey of more than 450 advertising executives, marketers said that they will be allocating nearly 60% of their online budgets to brand advertising in 2012, indicating that spending on online branding may surpass spending on direct response advertising for the first time in the coming year. Some other top line findings from the report:

- 64% of marketers plan to increase their online brand advertising budgets in 2012, with 22% saying they will increase spending by more than 20%.

- In contrast, only 56% of marketers plan to increase their online direct response advertising budgets in 2012, with only 15% saying they will increase spending by more than 20%.

- Additionally, 60% of marketers responding indicated that they are allocating dollars away from direct response to brand advertising initiatives.

“These growth predictions are clearly optimistic, but very encouraging nonetheless,” says Dan Beltramo, CEO of Vizu, an online ad technology company that enables advertisers and publishers to measure and optimize Brand Lift in real-time. “There’s still more that needs to be done in order to realize those numbers and make online the medium of choice for brand advertisers. I believe that when brand advertisers understand that their online ads can now be measured and optimized using classic offline brand metrics such as awareness and purchase intent, we will see a further growth in their online ad budgets.”

Marketers agreed with Mr. Beltramo. When asked what would lead them to increase spending on online brand advertising:

·       Nearly 7 in 10 (68%) said “Improved clarity around the actual return on brand advertising investment.”

·       A majority (56%) also cited the “Ability to verify my brand advertising created the desired result (e.g. increased awareness of my product).”

·       In addition, a majority of respondents (53%) indicated the “Ability to use the same metrics to evaluate brand advertising effectiveness online as are used offline.”

“These issues are all indicative of a ‘metrics morass’ in the online medium, which often leads to information overload for brand marketers when trying to determine the efficacy of their advertising,” adds Mr. Beltramo. “In fact, 34% of respondents described themselves as ‘drowning in data’ when it comes to the online channel.”

Brands and agencies are in agreement on which metrics they would like to use to determine the effectiveness of online brand advertising:

- In the top spot, 8 in 10 of both agency and brand respondents said: “Brand Lift generated as a result of the advertising.”

- A majority (over 50%) of both also agree on “Sales generated as a result of the advertising.”

The survey also identified several opportunities to improve collaboration between brands and their partners in the digital media ecosystem, and maximize the value of online brand advertising initiatives:

Alignment around objectives:

- A vast majority (85%) of brands said it was “very important” to establish the primary marketing objective for a brand advertising campaign, and the metric used to measure performance against that objective, in advance of their campaign.

- Three quarters (73%) of media sellers also highlight the importance of this alignment, saying agreement around “what constitutes success” for the campaign was the number one thing that would help them improve results for advertisers.

- Unfortunately, only 18 percent of agencies said they are able to establish a single objective against which ROI will be measured with their clients in advance of a campaign.

Alignment around metrics used to measure performance against objectives:

- Brand marketers clearly indicate by a wide margin (55%) that they’d prefer to use “the exact same metrics used in the offline medium, and a few additional metrics specific to the online medium.”

- Media sellers, however, by a large margin (77%), say that they’re most likely to report only metrics related specifically to the online medium.

Alignment around metrics used to optimize performance against objectives:

- Nearly all brand marketers ranked “in-market optimization of campaigns against brand metrics” as “very important.”

- Agencies, however, said they are primarily optimizing against various measures of engagement (58% of the time) or even click-through rates (19%), as opposed to Brand Lift (16%).

- Not surprisingly, media sellers’ answers mirrored those of the agencies with whom they work.

“There are obviously opportunities to improve online brand advertising outcomes by ensuring everyone’s on the same page,” says Mr. Beltramo, “and our customers leverage Vizu’s technology to do just that. The last 10 years was the decade of direct response marketing online, but this will be the decade of online branding, and we’re excited to be a part of that.”

This study, conducted in November and December of 2011, was executed by Digiday and sponsored by Vizu Corporation. Download the full report here: http://brandlift.vizu.com/knowledge-resources/research/2012-industry-outlook/

You can also benchmark your organization’s brand advertising practices against industry best practices identified in this report here: http://brandlift.vizu.com/knowledge-resources/brand-ad-iq/

Digiday (www.digiday.com) is a media company and community for professionals who work in the digital media, marketing and advertising industry. Its mission is to connect the industry with insightful analysis and perspective, as well as each other. They provide key insights and information through their online publications and conferences that cover the changes, trends — and why they matter. They cover the industry with an expertise, depth and tone not find anywhere else. See Digiday.com to read or subscribe to their publications or for information on events; join Digiday LinkedIn or Facebook groups; follow them on Twitter @Digiday or their show commentary with #Digiday; or tune into live-streamed and archived video coverage of their events on their Livestream channel.

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 Top 50 Media properties to support all key aspects of the advertising lifecycle, including media buying, audience profiling, and Brand Lift optimization.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – Ace Metrix, the authority of television advertising effectiveness, announced the most effective ads overall and across 23 different categories for 2011, a list that represents the top one-half of one percent of all television ads to break in 2011. KitchenAid’s minute-long ad demonstrating its innovative food processor is the Ace Metrix Ad of the Year, achieving the highest Ace Score (699) of all ads in 2011. The Ace Metrix 2011 Top Ads list is the only list that represents the effectiveness of the top television creative by category as derived from a ranking of every new ad to air nationally in the year.

“Storytelling was a powerful creative tool for advertisers in 2011, as we saw from KitchenAid’s Ad of the Year and ads from Google that have put them on the map as a true brand marketer,” said Peter Daboll, CEO of Ace Metrix. “But to be a top ad, you need to deliver more than just ‘likeability,’ which is just one of the many criteria that go into an Ace Score. The highly effective ads on this list need to score well with consumers on multiple dimensions, such as relevance and information. It is an extremely high bar to be on the Ace Metrix ‘Ad of the Year’ list, which represents the best of the best. Our hats go off to the agencies, brand teams, and production teams that achieved this honor.”

In addition to storytelling, product innovation was a dominant theme for 10 of the 23 top category ads.

“Ads that demonstrated product innovation clearly knocked the socks off of consumers,” Daboll said. “The KitchenAid ad did this, as well as ads for Apple’s iPhone, Microsoft Kinect, BMW, and Kindle—which replaced Apple’s iPad as the top tablet ad this year. But what was interesting is that brands that you don’t immediately associate with innovation—like Lysol, Sears, and Columbia—used this kind of messaging very effectively too.”

Many of the top ads of 2011 also included messaging that demonstrated:

- Philanthropy, like Coca-Cola’s top-ranked “Arctic Home” ad that benefits the World Wildlife Fund or MasterCard’s “Stand Up to Cancer” Ad featuring Ray Romano.

- Value for money, like Olive Garden’s top-ranked “Something New for Lunch” ad, which also portrays appealing food imagery and achieved the second highest combination of relevance and desire of all ads in 2011 – a key sweet spot for restaurant advertisers.

- Environmental themes, like BMW’s top-ranked “Ch-Ch-Changes” ad that broke during the 2011 Super Bowl and promotes the company’s “advanced diesel” technology.

- Humor, like Snickers’ top-ranked ad portraying sharks participating in a focus group, which drove high “watchability” scores.

- Patriotism, like Budweiser and State Farm’s September 11th Tribute ads, the top ads of the year in the alcoholic beverage and insurance categories, respectively. These ads’ persuasion, likeability, and attention scores were instrumental in distancing them from other ads in their categories.

The Ace Metrix Ads of the Year, by Category (All ads can be viewed here)

*Definition: Ace Score is the measure of ad creative effectiveness based on viewer reaction to national TV ads. Respondents are randomly selected and representative of the U.S. TV viewing audience. The results are presented on a scale of 0-950, which represents scoring on creative attributes such as relevance, persuasion, watchability, information, attention, etc.

Ace Metrix will reveal the Brand of the Year 2011 on Monday, January 9, 2012.

About Ace Metrix

Ace Metrix is the industry authority in measuring and understanding the impact of advertising creative. Through patent-pending Ace Score™ measurement technology, Ace Metrix collects and measures the consumer impact of every nationally breaking TV ad in near real-time. Through its Creative Lifecycle Management™ suite of products, Ace Metrix provides actionable creative analysis, from ideation through real-time in-market performance optimization, to many of the world’s leading advertisers and agencies. Ace Metrix works with leading global advertisers. For more information, visit www.acemetrix.com.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – There were 30 percent more holiday ads in 2011 than 2010, reported Ace Metrix, the authority in television advertising effectiveness. But not all of them performed well, in fact, more than half of all holiday ads received Ace Scores that were below their category norms. The key characteristics of this year’s more successful holiday ads include philanthropy, story telling, and the creative inclusion of Santa Claus.

Retail and automotive remain the most prolific categories while a few unexpected brands got into the holiday spirit and created stand-out ads, including Jack Daniels, Aleve, Pillsbury, Marie Callender’s, and Allstate, which performed well above their category counterparts.

“Santa’s negotiating power has increased based on the effectiveness of this year’s top holiday ads. ‘Twas the season of story telling and Santa as Star,” said Peter Daboll, CEO of Ace Metrix of the most effective ads this holiday season. “It turns out, Santa sells: there were 35 new ads that featured Santa Claus this season, and each one scored higher than the norm.”

Case in point, the top scoring ad featured Santa talking to Siri on his iPhone for assistance with his 3.7 billion appointments. Best Buy aired the most effective campaign of the holiday season. The “Game on Santa” campaign, which ran a total of eight holiday-themed ads that provoked Santa with smart buying moms, were consistently higher scoring than the ads of its competitors.

But for many of the top ads, Santa was the key to consumer connection– whether using classic Santa in a red coat and white beard (Apple, Coca Cola), the children’s enthusiastic desire to reach Santa (Macy’s), or the depiction of a back-aching workshop Santa (Aleve).

2011 Top Holiday Ads*

*Definition: Ace Score is the measure of ad creative effectiveness based on viewer reaction to national TV ads. Respondents are randomly selected and representative of the U.S. TV viewing audience. The results are presented on a scale of 0-950, which represents scoring on creative attributes such as relevance, persuasion, watchability, information, attention, etc.

For others, the key to effective holiday ads was in the story telling. Pillsbury and Marie Callender’s aired top-scoring holiday spots with heartwarming story telling ads. Others, Duracell and Macy’s, both sponsored charities this season and had philanthropic ads in support of them.

“Story telling ads have become more and more popular this year because of their consumer effectiveness,” commented Daboll. “But humor, and a focus on the product works too, as we see with Apple, Nintendo and Sears spots.”

In addition to pure story telling, holiday ads that appeared from categories not typically associated with the holidays performed well. Daboll said, “It’s a welcome surprise to see brands such as Jack Daniels, Aleve and Allstate integrating holiday themes and as a result, delivering category leading ads.”

About Ace Metrix

Ace Metrix is the industry authority in measuring and understanding the impact of advertising creative. Through patent-pending Ace Score™ measurement technology, Ace Metrix collects and measures the consumer impact of every nationally breaking TV ad in near real-time. Through its Creative Lifecycle Management™ suite of products, Ace Metrix provides actionable creative analysis, from ideation through real-time in-market performance optimization, to many of the world’s leading advertisers and agencies. Ace Metrix works with leading global advertisers. For more information, visit www.acemetrix.com.

Follow Ace Metrix on Twitter for additional insight: Ace_Metrix.

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

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

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

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

Her new role is effective immediately.

About 24/7 Real Media, Inc.

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

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

The USA TODAY Sports Media Group, created in January 2011, encompasses all sports initiatives across USA TODAY, as well as Gannett’s 81 daily media properties, 23 broadcast television stations, HighSchoolSports.net, BNQT.com and MMAjunkie.com.

“Mark has unique, battle-tested experience in developing platforms that provide a first-classdigital offering for sports fans,” said Beusse. “He’s exactly the right person to help us build out a digital architecture that will present and deliver our content in the most engaging, user-friendly and relevant ways possible.”

A veteran of more than 20 years in digital multimedia, Kortekaas was most recently based in London with the BBC, where he served as general manager of its online technology group and, previously, as its controller for audio & music & mobile. Prior to that, he spent more than eight years as senior vice president and chief technology officer for CBS Interactive, where he was responsible for leading all technology aspects of consumer digital destinations including cbssports.com, cbsnews.com and cbs.com. He also helped develop and launch their hugely successful “March Madness on Demand” video platform for the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.

Before joining CBS, Kortekaas was senior vice president for technology at Sony Online Entertainment, and also served as director of technology at NBC, where he helped managed the development of NBC’s first online Olympics at nbcsports.com in conjunction with the 1996 Summer Olympics.

A native of Chicago, Kortekaas earned a masters degree from the Media Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from New York University.

USA TODAY is a multi-platform news and information media company. Founded in 1982, USA TODAY’s mission is to serve as a forum for better understanding and unity to help make the USA truly one nation. Today, through its newspaper, website and mobile platforms, USA TODAY connects readers and engages the national conversation. USA TODAY, the nation’s number one newspaper in print circulation with an average of nearly 1.8 million daily, and USATODAY.com, an award-winning newspaper website launched in 1995, reach a combined 5.4 million readers daily. USA TODAY is a leader in mobileapplications with more than ten million downloads on mobile devices. USA TODAY is owned by Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE: GCI).

NEW YORK, NY and RESTON, VA – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, and Buddy Media, the social enterprise software of choice for eight of the world’s top ten global advertisers, announced a strategic partnership to help brands and agencies measure and maximize the value of their social marketing programs. Mutual clients using the Buddy Media social marketing suite and comScore Social Essentials™ measurement service will not only be able to optimize their social communications via owned media, but also quantify the impact of the earned media using meaningful social media metrics, such as reach/frequency, demographics, online behavior and benchmarking of competitive brands in the social landscape.

As part of the partnership, the companies have agreed to integrate comScore data into the Buddy Media product suite and workflow to foster seamless social marketing optimization and performance measurement.

“Brands and agencies understand the importance of social media marketing, but often cite the need for the right tools to implement their strategies and the right metrics to evaluate their effectiveness. They have largely been designing their social marketing programs on faith, without the appropriate feedback loop to ensure their strategies are maximizing returns,” said Linda Abraham, CMO and EVP at comScore. “comScore is excited to join forces with Buddy Media to help brands gain the insights needed to design and improve their programs to deliver the greatest social marketing ROI.”

“Providing the best social insights and analytics for our more than 600 brand and agency customers has always been a core focus for Buddy Media,” said Michael Lazerow, CEO of Buddy Media. “We have innovated in social analytics organically, via acquisition and via partnership. Our partnership with comScore, the industry leader, enables us to provide an offering unlike anything else on the market. Buddy Media clients will continue to receive our analytics in the social marketing suite for free, but now have the option to purchase a premium product that integrates comScore’s best of breed web-wide measurement service.”

comScore and Buddy Media to Co-Host Webinar

Linda Abraham of comScore and Michael Lazerow of Buddy Media will co-present a webinar on Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 11:00 am ET, with insights on how brands can optimize their social marketing programs and evaluate their effectiveness using metrics that matter. To register for the webinar, please visit: www.comscore.com/comScore_BuddyMedia_Webinar_Registration

Availability

comScore and Buddy Media customers interested in the new service, which is available on a worldwide basis, should contact their respective account managers.

About Buddy Media
Buddy Media is the social enterprise software of choice for eight of the world’s top ten global advertisers, empowering them to build and maintain relationships with their consumers in a connections-based world. The Buddy Media social marketing suite helps brands build powerful connections globally with its scalable, secure architecture and data-driven customer insights from initial point of contact through point of purchase. Buddy Media is the most award winning social enterprise software company, winning the prestigious TechCrunch “Crunchie” Award for Best Enterprise application, named to the Advertising Age 2011 “Digital A-list,” and CEO and Founder Michael Lazerow was selected as 2011 New York Entrepreneur of the Year® by Ernst and Young. For more information, visit http://www.buddymedia.com.

About comScore
comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) is a global leader in measuring the digital world and preferred source of digital marketing intelligence. For more information, please visit www.comscore.com/companyinfo.

SAN RAFAEL, Calif. – A newly commissioned and recently released study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Autodesk (NASDAQ:ADSK) reveals that engaging customers online is becoming increasingly challenging for advertisers as consumers today are quick to compare content on the web to the latest Hollywood blockbuster, console game or television show.

Forrester Consulting interviewed executives at twelve leading digital agencies in the United States and Europe and concluded that, “rich digital media is not just a trend; it’s the future of advertising. Agencies leveraging innovative design tools and technology have proven their effectiveness in driving higher engagement online in a cluttered web environment.” According to Forrester, advertising and digital agencies with media design capabilities have a distinct competitive advantage over firms without similar resources.*

“The fire starter is always storytelling. If both the story and experience are good, people will talk about it in their social networks,” said David Ericksson, CEO, North Kingdom, a Stockholm-based digital agency with an impressive client roster that includes global brands Adidas, Toyota, Coca-Cola and Disney. “3D content creation has always been core to what we do and having access to the same tools as the bigger studios makes us competitive in the global arena. We would never be where we are without these tools and technologies combined with our talent.”

According to Forrester, video advertising is the fastest-growing segment within interactive marketing. The independent research firm expects interactive marketing spend to approach $77 billion by 2016, a 100 percent increase over what companies invest in interactive marketing today.**

The Forrester study, commissioned by Autodesk, revealed that agencies are using rich digital media in eight key areas: virtual photography; animation and motion graphics; interactive displays; product demos; gamelike experiences; social media drivers; online and mobile advertising and video production. The expansion is being driven by a unique confluence of elements, including increased consumer access to professional video programming online; rapid growth in the tablet and mobile device market and increased consumer expectations for high-quality content.

“We have noticed a marked increase in new customers from digital and traditional advertising agencies licensing our software,” said Maurice Patel, head of industry marketing, Autodesk Media & Entertainment. “Rich digital media empowers advertisers to tell richer brand stories, drive deeper engagement and ignite conversations on social channels such as YouTube and Facebook. These experiences increase fundamental engagement metrics such as time on-site, as well as improve metrics such as lowered bounce rates.”

*Read the Forrester study, “How Advertisers Are Driving Higher Online Brand Engagement with Rich Digital Media;” November 2011; watch video profiles of digital agencies Firstborn (New York) and North Kingdom (Sweden) and learn more on the new Digital Media Facebook page.

**Source: “US Interactive Marketing Forecast, 2011 To 2016,” Forrester Research, Inc., August 24, 2011.

About Autodesk

Autodesk, Inc., is a leader in 3D design, engineering and entertainment software. Customers across the manufacturing, architecture, building, construction, and media and entertainment industries — including the last 16 Academy Award winners for Best Visual Effects — use Autodesk software to design, visualize and simulate their ideas. Since its introduction of AutoCAD software in 1982, Autodesk continues to develop the broadest portfolio of state-of-the-art software for global markets. For additional information about Autodesk, visit www.autodesk.com.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – Questus took top honors as Agency of the Year during an awards dinner celebrating the first-ever iMedia Agency Awards, Tuesday, Dec. 6, at the iMedia Agency Summit in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Joining Questus were agencies winning awards in nine other categories, garnering the top votes in each category from a field of more than 50 finalists. All nominees and winners were selected during several weeks of voting on iMediaConnection.com, which saw more than 16,000 votes cast from industry executives and no small amount of “campaigning” on the part of nominees.

“We’re obviously thrilled to have been voted Agency of the Year,” said Joseph Dumont, partner with Questus, after accepting the award. “We have fantastic clients, a driven and passionate team, and had a terrific 2011 on a variety of levels and we’re looking forward to an even better 2012. This is a great way to end a great year, here with our partners at iMedia.”

The winning agencies in each category were: Questus, Agency of the Year; Ignition Interactive, Digital Boutique Agency of the Year; Starcom, Campaign of the Year (for ESPN’s Igniting Football Enthusiasts During 2011 NFL Draft); AKQA, Most Innovative Agency Website; MediaStorm, Best Agency for Video; Hyperfactory, Best Agency for Mobile; 22squared, Best Agency for Social; Razorfish, Best Agency for Out-of-Home; Digitas, Best Agency for Integrated Media; iProspect, Best Agency for Search.

“ESPN has such a strong appreciation of and support for putting human understanding at the center of brand efforts, and we’re so excited to have won this for work with clients who understand the importance of digital within the human experience. Digital media provides an amazing palette for marketing creativity, and we’re grateful to the recognition for the ideas at play in this effort,” said Amy Dickerson, Associate Director, at Starcom USA.

To see the final nominees and learn more about the work that got them to the finalist stage at the iMedia Agency Awards visit www.imediaconnection.com/iMediaLists/2011/agency-award-winners/. The 2012 iMedia Agency Awards will be presented at the iMedia Agency Summit, Dec. 2-5 2012, back at the Camelback Inn, Scottsdale, Ariz.

“iMedia is so excited to launch this yearly iMedia Agency Awards event spotlighting a spectacular list of agency finalists known for their industry-leading accomplishments. These agencies represent an extraordinary body of work that is driving digital marketing to new heights. Congratulations to everyone,” said Josh Messinger, VP Online, iMediaConnection.com

About iMedia Communications

Founded in 2001, iMedia is a community that inspires and propels the industry’s most powerful digital marketing partnerships, professionals, and ideas through events and media. For more information on iMedia Summits visit www.iMediaConnection.com\Summits.

For example via Good Buys Media’ weekly e-blast to 5,000 media buyers, Context Logic offered inventory on WISH, a social recommendation engine built on top of Facebook that surfaces up goods and services relevant to the consumer based on the consumer’s interests, friends, and context, well below its standard rate card cost. Similarly, See Jane Fly offered inventory at half-off for a limited time period on Wayfare a brand new quarterly online magazine that celebrates the journey of travel, offering endless inspiration, instant trip solutions, and the intersection of home, style, and travel.

“For publishers we provide an incremental bump in sales revenue, access to customers they may not currently be working with and a way of testing new inventory against established advertisers,” says Chris Arens, Partner and Client Services Director at Catalyst S+F. “For buyers we provide access to special opportunities for opportunistic budgets, access to innovative, exclusive deals they wouldn’t otherwise see and new testing opportunities without taking hundreds of meetings.”

Catalyst S+F (www.catalystsf.com) is a “Marketing Capital” firm that helps clients combine selling a product or service (Marketing) with sources of profit or benefit vs. the competition to produce ideas, intelligence and insights (Capital) that achieve an advantage in the areas of marketing, sales or consumer insights. A hybrid marketing services consultancy, structured like no other firm, Catalyst S+F brings intelligence, ideas and insights to sales, media and marketing for the purpose of providing an advantage in the marketplace for its clients.  The privately-held San Francisco-based company was founded in 2007 by John Durham and Cory Treffiletti, who together, have nearly 40 years of marketing and sales experience, much of it in the digital media industry. Catalyst S+F, where the S+F stands for Strategy and Fundamentals, has grown substantially in the last year and currently has 12 clients.

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

NEW YORK — PointRoll, a Gannett Company and the leading provider of digital marketing technology, reports record growth in online shopping this year as consumers dive into Black Friday deals early. PointRoll reported a 14 percent increase in retailers’ digital circular offers powered by ShopLocal technology from 2010 to 2011 and an overall 15 percent increase in page views across the top ten retailers. As a result, consumers drove double-digit percentage increases over 2010 in website traffic (49 percent) and page views (65 percent) for the Sunday before Thanksgiving (November 20, 2011). Early offers and Black Friday promotions encouraged early action by consumers.

As technology continues to change consumer shopping behavior, retailers responded in full force this season. PointRoll’s multiple marketing and advertising distribution platforms saw increases, year over year, in traffic and offers for pre-Black Friday shopping. Mobile device usage was up five percent and consumers accessing offers via iPads grew by 85 percent over 2010 figures with most of this increased use and access taking place the Sunday preceding Black Friday. On that day mobile and iPad access increased by 234 and 223 percent respectively compared to 2010 levels.

“Online holiday shopping continues to happen earlier and consumers are now preparing on Sunday rather than waiting until after Thanksgiving dinner to identify the best offers,” said Rob Gatto, CEO of PointRoll. “Additionally, consumers are expanding where and how they shop online and in-store while retailers are looking to capitalize with more localized and dynamic, audience targeted offers and advertisements delivered across multiple platforms.”

Even procrastinators did not delay as long as usual – possibly motivated by an increase in midnight Black Friday sales. Historically, PointRoll reports that 10pm EST is the highest traffic hour for Thursday, as consumers look for that final offer before beginning their shopping. This year, 9pm EST was the peak hour, with traffic still remaining strong at 10pm.

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. PointRoll’s ShopLocal technology enables brands to distribute local marketing promotions to any digital format including online circulars, display advertising, Facebook, digital out of home, mobile, and more – with added intelligence. Powering 46 of the top 50 retailers’ circulars, PointRoll’s ShopLocal product suite utilizes advanced localization and learning to deliver more relevant and optimized product and promotion content to any digital platform. For more information, visit http://www.pointroll.com or follow us @pointroll.

London, UK – Improve Digital (www.improvedigital.com), the European Sell Side Platform (SSP), launches an updated version of 2010’s successful ‘market map’ as a visual illustration of the complex European online display advertising eco-system.

The map was released today at ExchangeWire’s Ad Trading Summit in Paris http://www.exchangewire.com/atsparis and is available to download for free from: http://www.improvedigital.com/knowledge

Comparing the new map to last year’s version shows a huge increase in the number of audience targeting networks (200% growth), trading desks (337% growth), and agency trading desks (166% growth) as the industry moves towards audience buying and automation. New players have entered the market, but much of this activity is also undertaken by ad networks expanding their business remit.

As the buy-side rapidly adopts buying and bidding technologies, European premium publishers are also embracing new strategies. They are keen to benefit from Real Time Bidding (RTB) as long as they have full control of how their advertising inventory is being traded and to whom. On a more strategic level they are building and managing their own private ad exchanges, powered by SSP technologies.

“We launched the initial market map to guide our customers through the maze of the rapidly changing online display advertising system,” explains Joëlle Frijters, CEO of Improve Digital. “This year it also acts as a useful industry gauge, for example showing that audience buying is now a reality. But these shifts are not just connected to RTB, they are about creating huge efficiencies through automation, thereby making digital media more attractive overall for advertisers.”

To prepare this edition of the European online display advertising industry as it currently stands, Improve Digital followed the same strategy as for 2010, gathering information from its offices and various partners in the UK and Europe.

About Improve Digital
Improve Digital is the European Sell Side Platform. Founded in Amsterdam, the company provides advertising technology to large publishers that want to build their own Private Ad Exchange and / or Private Ad Market. The company’s mission is to automate the selling of digital media and maximise revenues for publishers through unlocking the value of their content and audiences. Headquartered in Amsterdam, where it was founded in 2008, Improve Digital has sales offices in London, Madrid, Munich and Paris.

NEW YORK – AOL announced that Janet Balis has been named Head of Sales Strategy, Marketing and Partnerships for AOL Advertising. In this role, Janet will be primarily responsible for the go-to-market strategy for AOL Advertising’s products and services, driving marketing and sales strategy across the full sales offering including video, social, premium display and mobile formats as well as playing a critical front-line role with top clients and agencies. She will also be responsible for contributing to advertising partnerships that bring forward new, innovative opportunities for brand marketers, with a focus on integrated, cross-platform solutions. She will report to Ned Brody, Chief Revenue Officer. Her first day will be October 24.

“We are thrilled to welcome Janet back to AOL to become a part of the advertising leadership team as we continue to partner with our clients and agencies to create cutting-edge strategic marketing solutions,” said Brody, Chief Revenue Officer, AOL. “Known for driving creative large scale ideas, Janet is an award-winning professional in the industry and has been a strategic partner to many world-class brands. Janet has years of experience not only in marketing and sales strategy, but also sales management and creative development.”

He added, “Her expertise is a strong complement to our advertising leadership team and will undoubtedly be an asset for our business.”

“I cannot imagine a better moment to be rejoining AOL,” said Balis. “AOL’s commitment to best-in-class, original content and highly innovative technology offers tremendous opportunity in the advertising marketplace. I am excited to work with the team to capitalize on the full potential of AOL’s offering on behalf of leading brand marketers, developing high impact ideas and solutions.”

Balis was most recently Executive Vice President, Media Sales & Marketing at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSLO), where she led a team of over 100 in sales, marketing and ad operations for all MSLO print, broadcast, and digital media assets. She was responsible for ad sales revenue across television, four magazines, radio, digital and mobile experiences and also led key consumer marketing initiatives on behalf of the company. Prior to that role, she was President of Digital Media Strategies – a boutique advisory firm, guiding premier media companies and brands, such as Turner Broadcasting, Discovery Communications and Warner Bros. Television, on digital strategy.

From 2004 to 2007, Balis was Senior Vice President, Sales Development for AOL, LLC, where she led the national team responsible for developing idea-driven marketing solutions for advertising clients. She spent over five years at Time Inc., where she led digital sales and marketing across the division’s web sites. Earlier in her career, she spent time at both Goldman Sachs and A.T. Kearney.

Balis holds a BA from Columbia College and an MBA from Harvard Business School. She was named a 2010 Women to Watch by Advertising Age and a 2006 Crains Top 40 Under 40.

About AOL

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

About 24/7 Real Media, Inc.

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

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

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – SumTotal® Systems, Inc., the innovator in strategic Human Capital Management (HCM) solutions, today announced that Young & Rubicam Brands (Y&R) has selected SumTotal to build core business disciplines and drive learning strategy at Y&R Advertising and Wunderman, two of Young & Rubicam Brands’ preeminent global marketing communications companies. Leveraging SumTotal’s HR software platform, Young & Rubicam can now better support their diverse employees across the globe and improve customer achievement with a centralized approach to managing their talent.

Young & Rubicam Brands earned their elite reputation for building the world’s largest brand database and management tool. This year the organization earned numerous global accolades. In 2011 Young & Rubicam was named Network of the Year by the Art Directors Club, and also Agency and Network of the Year at Dubai Lynx. They also won numerous Cannes Lions across all regions, including Y&R Thailand’s first gold lion. Additionally at Cannes, Y&R Santiago was the number one awarded agency in Chile and Y&R Dubai was the number one awarded agency in the Middle East.

With a corporate spirit of excellence, the company had a long “wish list” of requirements for their HR technology solution, according to Cindy Zimmerer, Senior Vice President & Director of Learning at Y&R Brands. “We wanted strong core functionality to house, manage, assign, track and measure learning. But, the front end was just as important, particularly because of the creative nature of our business,” Zimmerer said. “We needed a positive user experience, as well as the flexibility to organize and design the site that would reflect our companies’ values, belief and branding. SumTotal met all of these needs.”

With over 13,000 employees at more than 360 offices globally between the two subsidiaries, SumTotal will enable Y&R Brands to provide streamlined learning opportunities to targeted groups by region, office, company and discipline.

“By standardizing employee orientation, building knowledge and experience in core business disciplines, and supporting global client teams, we envision this solution as integral to driving, promoting and supporting each company’s learning and development strategy,” Zimmerer added.

SumTotal provides the industry’s most comprehensive strategic Human Capital Management solution for managing an organization’s learning, performance, compensation, succession, career development, 360 feedback, recruiting & hiring, social collaboration, workforce management, expense management, payroll & benefits, planning & analytics, and core HR management (HRMS) – all from a single vendor.

For more information about SumTotal, visit the company’s website at www.sumtotalsystems.com.

About SumTotal Systems

SumTotal Systems, Inc. is the global leader in strategic Human Capital Management (HCM) solutions that provides organizations with a new level of visibility to help make more informed business decisions and accelerate growth. Recognized by industry analysts as the most complete solution, SumTotal provides full employee lifecycle management, including a core system of record, from a single provider for improved business intelligence. The company offers customers of all sizes and industries the most flexibility and choice with multiple purchase, configuration, and deployment options. We have increased the performance of the world’s largest organizations including Sony Electronics (NYSE: SNE), AstraZeneca (NYSE: AZN [ADR]; London: AZN), Amway (KUL:AMWAY), Seagate (NYSE: STX), Dell (NASDAQ:DELL), and Google (NASDAQ:GOOG).

For more information, or to request a demo, please call +1 (866) 768-6825 (US / Canada), +1 (352) 264-2800 (international) or visit www.sumtotalsystems.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

RALEIGH, N.C. – aiMatch announced that its comprehensive ad-delivery platform, which includes Sales Order Management, Simulation-Based Forecasting, Business Intelligence and Data Visualization, now also includes Audience Targeting.

Audience Targeting is a powerful tool that enables publishers to make use of their unique audience data. Using aiMatch’s Audience Targeting, publishers can seamlessly create behavioral audience products and easily match users to these products. This enables the publisher to extend its high-value inventory by engaging and targeting the audience that their advertising clients desire across a site.

“Publishers have repeatedly told us that audience targeting ought to be a core targeting capability of their advertising platform,” said Jeff Wood, aiMatch CEO. “Behavioral data and declared user registration data is extremely valuable information that is part of the definition of the uniqueness of a publisher’s inventory.”

Publisher ad servers have been focused on content management driven and geo-targeted data constructed into packages to predict, sell and deliver. These are important, unique attributes for publishers as well and aiMatch was created to ensure that premium publishers have a complete view of all their ad sales and delivery data. Online advertising buyers are demanding audience products from sellers.

“While Audience Targeting is not ‘new’ to our industry,” concludes Wood, “when you add the ability to better understand, categorize, forecast, sell and accurately deliver a product that includes audience targeting as part of the publisher’s product mix in a single comprehensive platform, it’s new. Publishers demand rapid development so that they can meet changing demands and we’re happy to deliver.”

About aiMatch

aiMatch is an intelligent mobile, video and display ad delivery platform designed to help digital publishers manage inventory and maximize yield across all sales channels. Founded by experts in the field of advertising intelligence (ai), aiMatch takes a new approach by providing a comprehensive ad serving and data management platform delivered via the cloud as Software-as-as-Service (SaaS). aiMatch’s growing diversified global client portfolio includes DigitalSpy, a Hearst Corporation, Popcornflix.com, AdHub, APN News & Media of Australia, Digital Network Sales (DNS), Christianity Today International (CTI) and Photobucket. The company is headquartered in Raleigh, NC and has offices in London, UK. To learn more, visit www.aimatch.com.

- 16 companies look ripe for takeover with sales increasing but profits down meaning a more prudent management is necessary.

- 49 of the Top 300 achieved greater than 20% increase in sales last year.

- Last year 41 of the industry made a pre-tax loss. 178 companies saw sales fall.
- 111 of your competitors have seen a fall in their overall financial strength.

The report delivers an instant, unbiased verdict on each company using an uncomplicated graphical analysis and written summary. Imagine the convenience of having the companies crucial to your market in a clearly presented analysis in one monetary currency and language.

Along with individual company information, this report also contains an assessment of the market, based on the companies analysed. This key information identifies best trading partners, sales growth, profitability, and fastest growing companies.

Companies Mentioned:

Annons & Reklambyrn A. Hellevik Ab
Tradedoubler Ab
Carat Sverige Ab
Mediacommunications Services Sverige Ab
Mindshare Sweden Ab
Pmi Initiative/Universal Media Ab
Forsman & Bodenfors Hisingen Ab
Forsman & Bodenfors Ab
Lmk Industri Ab
Go.Group Nordic Ab
Mccann Nordic Ab
Svenska Hockeyligan Ab
Zibog Ab
Direktmedia Bonnier Dm Ab
Lowe-Brindfors Annonsbyr Ab
Ad-On Media Nordic Ab
Megameios-Publicidade E Meios, Ace.
Mpg-Publicidade, S.A.
Easy Mdia-Central De Meios De Publicidade, S.A
Carat Portugal-Comunicaao, Lda
Magna Global Polska Sp. Z O.O.
Leo Burnett Sp. Z O.O.
Starcom Sp. Z O.O.
Mediaedge: Cia Sp. Z O.O.
Aegis Media Norge As
And many more…

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/d240a6/top_300_advertisin

The Marin Software Certified Agency Program is the first of its kind to pair advertisers with online marketing agencies fully trained on Marin Software’s innovative ad management platform. Marin Software certified agencies provide clients with improved financial performance and responsiveness as a result of the reporting, workflow, and optimization efficiencies available from the Marin platform.
Participating online marketing agencies undergo a rigorous training and certification process to join the Marin Software Certified Agency Program. Advertisers looking to use Marin Software with an agency can search for agencies based on vertical market, expertise and geographic location.

More than 80 online marketing agencies leverage Marin Software. Agencies already a part of the Marin Software Certified Agency Program include Acquirgy, BKV, Booyah Online Advertising, Clearsearch Media, DraftFCB, Elite SEM, Fathom Delivers, Harvest Digital, IKON Internactive, iProspect, Milestone Internet Marketing, OMD UK, Partner Fusion, RAPP UK, Razorfish, and ZenithOptimedia.

As a Marin Software Certified Agency Program member, agencies receive exclusive benefits including joint sales and marketing collateral, opportunities for speaking engagements, and a company profile on the certified agency website.

To become a member of the program, marketing agencies can speak with their Marin Software Account Manager or fill out an online form on the Certified Agency Program site.

“The Marin Software Certified Agency Program represents a unique opportunity for both brands and digital marketing agencies,” said Matt Lawson, vice president of marketing and partnerships at Marin Software. “Through the program, agencies become expert users of Marin, capable of providing even more financial lift for their clients. Direct advertisers gain access to a directory of highly skilled agencies. It’s a win for both.”

McLEAN, VA – Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE: GCI) today announced that Craig A. Dubow, chairman and chief executive officer, has resigned due to disability. Dubow had taken a leave of absence on September 15 to address continuing issues relating to prior medical conditions.

Marjorie Magner, an independent director since 2006 who has been chairman of the audit committee, has been named non-executive chairman of the board. Gracia C. Martore, president and chief operating officer, who has been serving as principal executive officer while Mr. Dubow was on medical leave, has been named president and chief executive officer and joined Gannett’s Board of Directors.

“I’ve been with Gannett for 30 amazing years,” said Dubow. “I am extremely proud of where we are today as a company. We have always maintained an unwavering focus on the consumer. As a result, we have evolved into a digitally led media and marketing solutions company committed to delivering trusted news and information anywhere, anytime. For me, the decision to step down was difficult, but I must now focus on my health and my family. I will miss working with the talented team at Gannett and firmly believe the company’s best days lie ahead. Gannett is in good hands under Gracia’s leadership and well positioned to succeed going forward.”

“During the past six years, Craig has repositioned Gannett as a leading media and marketing solutions company during an extremely challenging time for our industry,” said Magner. “Craig championed our consumers and their ever-changing needs for news and information. He was instrumental in building a strong management team combining talent from within the company as well as from the outside — a team that shares a common passion and vision for Gannett’s future. We thank Craig for his dedication and for the solid foundation he has laid for the company going forward.”

Magner continued, “We are very fortunate to have an executive of Gracia’s tenure and caliber in place and ready to lead the ongoing transformation of the company for long-term growth. She is smart, straightforward and committed to Gannett’s mission to provide trusted news and information and serve our many communities. Gracia has a proven track record and has demonstrated effective leadership over 26 years at the company. Most importantly she has an incredible sense of responsibility for ensuring Gannett’s continued success.”

“I have great admiration for what Craig has achieved in building our business to meet the changing needs of consumers and businesses today. We will miss him and wish him and his family the very best,” said Martore. “I am honored to be assuming the lead at Gannett at this time. We will continue our relentless quest to provide trusted news and information and will actively support the people and businesses in the communities we serve. We have the strategy, brands and talent to ensure that we fulfill our purpose for a long time to come.”

Magner is Managing Partner of Brysam Global Partners, a private equity firm investing in financial services firms with a focus on consumer opportunities in emerging markets. Magner left Citigroup in 2005 after 18 years, most recently as Chairman and CEO of the Global Consumer Group. She is also a director of Accenture Ltd. and Ally Financial Inc.

Martore joined Gannett in 1985 after 12 years in banking and became chief financial officer in 2003, executive vice president in 2006, and president and chief operating officer in 2010. She serves on the Board of Directors of FM Global and holds a BA degree in History and Political Science from Wellesley College where she was a Wellesley Scholar.

About Gannett
Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE: GCI) is an international media and marketing solutions company that informs and engages more than 100 million people every month through its powerful network of broadcast, digital, mobile and publishing properties. Our portfolio of trusted brands offers marketers unmatched local-to-national reach and customizable, innovative marketing solutions across any platform. Gannett is committed to connecting people – and the companies who want to reach them – with their interests and communities. For more information, visit www.gannett.com.

IAB MIXX Conference & Expo 2011
NEW YORK – Launching its groundbreaking Rising Stars Display ad units this past February, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) pledged that it would drive a creative transformation of the interactive advertising space and boost marketers’ confidence that they could successfully build brands online. This morning, the early results from the Rising Stars, announced at the IAB MIXX Conference & Expo, prove that these brand canvases propel new heights of consumer interaction and engagement.

Built to allow creatives the freedom to take advantage of interactive’s full scope of benefits, these ad formats have already garnered strong payoffs for top-tier marketers such as BMW, Procter & Gamble, Levi’s, Ford, and HBO, taking the evaluation of online advertising campaigns beyond click-through rates.

“Rising Stars was designed to unlock all the unique and creative assets that the interactive advertising arena has to offer, giving marketers a dynamic and vibrant canvas on which to tell their brand stories,” said Peter Minnium, Consulting Director, IAB, and lead of the Rising Stars initiative. “We are only scratching the surface of what these new ad formats can bring to bear, rousing the next wave of evolution in our industry.”

Both the Billboard from Google and YouTube, and the Filmstrip submitted by Microsoft, brought in impressive returns. Consumers who saw the IAB Billboard on YouTube were four times more likely to watch the company’s videos, search for the brand, or visit the advertiser’s site, than those who were not exposed to the ad. Also striking high marks, the IAB Filmstrip has increased both exposure time and interaction rates by over 90 percent compared to other rich media ads on the MSN homepage.

“In marketing our new Giulietta, we needed to engage and connect with our target consumer. A car purchase is a complex and emotional process. Each panel of the Filmstrip invited the user to explore a different aspect of our new car—the sleek exterior, the details of the interior, the engine designed for performance,” said Maurizio Spagnulo, Digital Marketing Director, Alfa Romeo and Fiat Group Automobiles. “We were thrilled with the engagement that the Filmstrip delivered. Sixty percent of users who interacted with the Giulietta Filmstrip watched the video on the last panel through to completion, and the average exposure time for a user on MSN Italy was over seven minutes!”

Adding more fuel to the Rising Stars fire, the IAB Sidekick, submitted by Unicast, has already seen ad engagement time soar to seven times the industry average. Similarly, the AOL/Pictela-developed Pushdown has upped ad engagement to more than three times the norm. Meanwhile, AOL’s Portrait unit also shines, with engagement rates averaging 7 percent and regularly climbing into the double digits in certain categories.

“Today, effective online communication with consumers can’t just be calculated based on standard click-through rates. Digital has other unique capabilities that can help us capture mindshare,” said David Levin, President, Creative & Technology, 360i. “And, with the help of the new IAB ad formats like the Sidekick and the Pushdown, we are able to deliver more engaging experiences that strengthen our brand messages and the stories we tell online.”

Promoting comparable innovation on mobile platforms, the IAB has also been calling for entries to the Rising Stars Mobile Contest. The winning ad units for mobile are expected to be unveiled at the IAB Annual Leadership Summit in February 2012.

“Early evidence of Rising Stars Display’s success only spurs us to work more closely with publishers, creatives and marketers to make sure that these units become industry standards, and that our upcoming mobile units deliver the same sort of brand-building results,” said David Doty, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, IAB.

About the IAB

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

“What Happens Here, Stays Here” and “What’s In Your Wallet” Win Favorite Slogan Category

NEW YORK – Today, beloved icons in the advertising world, Allstate’s “Mayhem” and the Coca Cola Polar Bears , along with fan favorite slogans “What Happens Here, Stays Here” from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Bureau and “What’s In Your Wallet” from Capital One, have been named the 2011 winners of the annual Madison Avenue Advertising Walk of Fame public vote. Additionally, the Kia Hamsters were named the Walk of Fame’s first ever “Rookie of the Year,” celebrating the newcomers’ quick rise into the hearts of consumers.

Both the icon and slogan winners will hold permanent positions on Madison Avenue Walk of Fame, the advertising industry’s version of Hollywood and Vine.

“As always, this year’s vote was an extremely close race and we’d like to recognize all of our nominees for their great work,” said Matt Scheckner, executive director of Advertising Week. “Advertising has become such a huge part of American culture and consumers really identify with these icons and taglines. It’s truly amazing the creativity and intelligence that goes into the creation of these icons and slogans that become the face of their respective brands.”

This year’s winners join the 2010 inductees including The Michelin Man and the Vlasic Stork, whose banners will be unveiled today on Madison Avenue. The Madison Avenue Advertising Walk of Fame (located between 42nd and 50th streets) was created by Advertising Week, the largest gathering of advertising, media and marketing professionals in North America. The Grand Central Partnership and Advertising Week organizers have brought the Walk of Fame to life with a combination of bronze plaques and permanent lamppost street banners on Madison Avenue.

Voting for the 2011 winners kicked off on September 9th, and ran through September 30th.Since the annual Madison Avenue Advertising Walk of Fame public vote began in 2004, nearly 4 million votes have been cast.

The 2011 Walk of Fame winners join past years inductees: The AOL Running Man, The Budweiser Clydesdales, The Geico Caveman, Serta Sheep, Juan Valdez, the AFLAC Duck, Mr. Peanut, Tony the Tiger, the Pillsbury Dough Boy, M&M’s, the Geico Gecko, Colonel Sanders, Orville Redenbacher, Chick-fil-A Cows, and the Kool-Aid Man.

Previous slogan winners include: “If You See Something, Say Something” (New York Metropolitan Transit Authority), “The Best a Man Can Get” (Gillette), “Virgina is For Lover” (The Virginia Bureau of Tourism), “Like a Good Neighbor, State Farm is There” (State Farm), “What Can Brown Do For You?” (UPS), “We Deliver for You” (The United States Postal Service),”Melts In Your Mouth, Not In Your Hand” (M&M’s), “Can you hear me now?” (Verizon), “When It Absolutely, Positively, Has to Be There Overnight” (FedEx), “Imagination at Work” (General Electric), “Don’t Mess With Texas” (State of Texas Department of Transportation), “Where’s the Beef?” (Wendy’s) “A mind is a terrible thing to waste” (United Negro College Fund) and “Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t” (Almond Joy/Mounds).

2011 Icon Nominees:

Energizer Bunny, Mayhem, Coca Cola Polar Bears, Snap, Crackle and Pop, McGruff the Crime Dog, Smokey the Bear, Sparky the Fire Dog, Jared from Subway, The California Raisins, Jolly Green Giant, The Most Interesting Man in the World, E-Trade Babies, The Man Your Man Could Smell Like, Crash Test Dummies, Mr. Mucas, Flo, Mr. Clean, French’s Mustard Man, Kia Hamsters, Keebler Elves.

2011 Slogan Nominees:

“What’s In Your Wallet” (Capital One), “I Heart NY” (NY Department of Economic Development), “Just Do It” (Nike), “Be All That You Can Be” (US Army), “Don’t Leave Home Without It” (American Express), “A Diamond is Forever” (DeBeers), “Made From the Best Stuff on Earth” (Snapple), “What Happens Here, Stays Here” (Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Bureau), “Is It In You?” (Gatorade), “Hungry? Grab a Snickers” (Snickers), “Ideas For Life” (Panasonic), “We Move People” (Bombardier), “Think Outside the Bun” (Taco Bell), “I Live for This” (Major League Baseball), “What Would You Do for a Klondike Bar?” (Klondike), “The Best Part of Waking Up Is Folger’s In Your Cup” (Folger’s), “Maybe She’s Born With It, Maybe It’s Maybelline” (Maybelline), “I Want My MTV” (MTV), “It’s Not TV, It’s HBO” (HBO), “Got Milk?” (The National Milk Processor Board).

About Advertising Week:

Since its creation in 2004, Advertising Week has drawn thousands of participants from around the world to New York City for a week long think-tank comprised of over 200 different events, panels and discussions that focus on the power of advertising and its neighboring industries. Above and beyond celebration, the mission of the Week is to inspire young people to join the craft; focus the industry and public at-large on the social impacts of advertising; address the most important issues facing the industry and shine a bright light on the business and economic influence of the advertising, media and marketing.

Best-in-Show Goes to American Express OPEN & CP+B and DIGITAS for “Small Business Saturday”

NEW YORK – A stellar collection of leading-edge brand marketers and agency creatives came together tonight at a sold-out gala to celebrate the winners of the seventh annual MIXX Awards, which recognize creativity and impact in interactive advertising. The campaigns and single execution winners in 25 categories were selected by a prestigious jury of senior agency, marketer, and publisher leaders, making the MIXX Awards the only competition judged by a cross-section of luminaries in the interactive advertising ecosystem. American Express OPEN & CP+B and DIGITAS took home Best-in-Show, the gala’s top prize, for “Small Business Saturday,” a campaign that in three short weeks was able to develop and launch a brand new shopping day that consumers had never heard of, driving retail sales for small business owners at the beginning of the crucial holiday shopping season.

Attesting to the enduring innovation of digital, this year’s MIXX Awards recognized two new categories—Tablet Marketing and Location-Based Advertising. All the winners were unveiled before a crowd of interactive’s movers and shakers, who were also entertained by host Baratunde Thurston, well-known humorist, Co-Founder of Jack & Jill Politics, and Director of Digital for The Onion.

“The art of building brands and connecting with consumers is at the center of each of these remarkable wins at tonight’s MIXX Awards,” said Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO, IAB. “As the culmination of the IAB’s two-day MIXX event, these awards highlight that engaging storytelling, combined with innovative technology, is a potent formula for brand marketers and agencies to take advertising and marketing to new heights.”

“All of the winners tonight attest to the ever-more powerful role that digital advertising is where brands and consumers come together in fresh dialogues, and interactive marketing is delivering both ingeniously creative engagements and real-world results,” said David Doty, Senior Vice President and CMO, IAB. “The two new categories this year—Tablet Marketing and Location-Based Advertising—and their winners—Microsoft Bing and Point Reach for ‘Bing for iPad,’ and Coke Zero and CP+B for ‘TRON LiveCycle’—reflect the incredible innovation happening within these emerging platforms.”

To view the complete gallery of the MIXX Winners please visit: http://www.iab.net/mixxawards/gallery

The Complete List of 2011 MIXX Award Winners:

Best-in-Show
American Express OPEN & CP+B and DIGITAS for “Small Business Saturday”

Brand Awareness & Positioning – Campaign
GOLD:                                         American Express OPEN & CP+B and DIGITAS for “Small Business Saturday”
SILVER:                             IBM & Ogilvy New York for “Watson”
BRONZE:
American Express & DIGITAS NY and MomentumWW for
“UNSTAGED: An Original Series From American Express”

Business-to-Business – Campaign
GOLD:                             IBM & Ogilvy New York for “The Smarter City”
SILVER:                             Google Display Advertising & Google Creative Lab for “WATCH THIS SPACE”
BRONZE:                             Xerox & Y&R and VML for “Ready for Real Business”

Cross-Media Integration – Campaign
GOLD:                             Diageo & BBH New York for “Johnnie Walker “Say It Without Saying It””
SILVER:                             Toyota Motor Sales & Saatchi & Saatchi LA for “Toyota Sienna Family”
BRONZE:                             Renault UK & Publicis London for “The Megane Experiment”

Digital Integration – Campaign
GOLD:                             IBM & Ogilvy New York for “The Smarter City”
SILVER:                             PepsiCo & AMV BBDO for “Doritos King of Ads”
BRONZE:                             Doritos & The Marketing Arm for “Doritos Unlock Xbox”

Direct Response and Lead Generation – Campaign
GOLD:                             Domino’s Pizza & CP+B for “Show Us Your Pizza”
SILVER:                             Diageo Ireland & DDB UK for “Bud Ice Cold Index”
BRONZE:                             Foot Locker & SapientNitro for “Sneakerpedia”

Experimental and Innovative – Campaign
GOLD:                             Google & BBH New York and Google Creative Lab for “Google Chrome Fast”
SILVER:                             Urban Ministries of Durham & McKinney for “SPENT”
BRONZE:                             Microsoft Bing & Point Reach for “Bing & Angry Birds Integration”

Games – Campaign
GOLD:                             Doritos & The Marketing Arm for “Doritos Unlock Xbox”
SILVER:                             Microsoft Bing & Point Research for “Bing & Angry Birds Integration”
BRONZE:                             Mountain Dew & OMD for ““DEWmocracy” on Xbox LIVE”

Interactive Video – Campaign
GOLD:                             American Express & DIGITAS NY and MomentumWW for “UNSTAGED:
An Original Series From American Express”
SILVER:                             Old Navy & CP+B for “Old Navy Records”
BRONZE:                             Xerox & Y&R and VML for “Ready for Real Business”

Mobile Platforms and Apps – Campaign
GOLD:                             Diageo Ireland & DDB UK for “Bud Ice Cold Index”
SILVER:                             Microsoft Bing & Point Reach for “Bing for Mobile”
BRONZE:                             Macy’s & JWT New York for “Macy’s Backstage Pass”

Multicultural – Campaign
GOLD:                             Allstate Insurance Company & Tapestry for “Allstate Latin Grammy Takeover”
SILVER:                             McDonald’s & iNSPIRE! For “Latinos Are One/LR1”
BRONZE:
Dove Deodorant & BrightLine for “Dove Deodorant Hermosamente Cantado”

Product Launch – Campaign
GOLD:                             Google & BBH New York and Google Creative Lab for “Google Chrome Fast”
SILVER:                             Volkswagen Group of America & AKQA for “Great. For the Price of Good”
BRONZE:                             HSN & HSN for “Exclusive Launch of Mary J. Blige’s My Life Fragrance”

Public Service / Not for Profit – Campaign
GOLD:                             Urban Ministries of Durham & McKinney for “SPENT”
SILVER:                             Depaul UK & Publicis London for “iHobo 1.1”
BRONZE:                             Office of Road Safety Western Australia & 303 Group for “Enjoy The Ride”

Search Marketing – Campaign
GOLD:                             General Motors/Chevrolet & SMG Search, DIGITAS and Starcom
for “2011 Chevrolet Super Bowl”
SILVER:                             Volkswagen & MediaCom for “Super Bowl Search Campaign”
BRONZE:                             ADT Security & Razorfish for “ADT Security Launches ADT Pulse
Using Integrated Search Engine Marketing Techniques”

Social Marketing – Campaign
GOLD:                             American Express OPEN & CP+B and DIGITAS for “Small Business Saturday”
SILVER:                             Urban Ministries of Durham & McKinney for “SPENT”
BRONZE:                             Stanfield’s Underwear & john st. for “The Guy at Home in His Underwear”

Brand Destination Site – Single
GOLD:                             Google & Possible Worldwide for “Art Project”
SILVER:                             Skittles & Big Spaceship for “Experience the Rainbow”
BRONZE:                             Liberty Mutual & Hill Holliday for “The Responsibility Project”

Branded Content – Single
GOLD:                             Doritos USA & Goodby, Silverstein & Partners for “Late Night Global featuring Rihanna”
SILVER:                             Abbott Laboratories & McKinney for “Unstoppable Tour ‘Boxing’”
BRONZE:                             Stanfield’s Underwear & john st. for “The Guy at Home in His Underwear”

Digital Out-of-Home Advertising – Single
GOLD:                             Yahoo! & Goodby, Silverstein & Partners for “Yahoo! Bus Stop Derby”
SILVER:                             Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment/Avatar Blue-ray DVD & Inwindow
Outdoor and Zenith Media for “Avatar Digital Face Morphing Exhibit”
BRONZE:                             The Coca-Cola Company & Publicis E-dologic for “Coca-Cola Village Real Life “like”

Games – Single
GOLD:
Urban Ministries of Durham & McKinney for “SPENT”
SILVER:
Toyota Motor Sales & Saatchi & Saatchi LA for “Prius Plural – CarTown”
BRONZE:
Bolthouse Farms & CP+B for “Xtreme Xrunch Kart

Interactive Video – Single
GOLD:                             BIC/Tipp-ex & Buzzman for “A Hunter Shoots A Bear”
SILVER:                             FEMEN & Grape, Ailove, and VGNC for “Do You Want Me”
BRONZE:                             Snapple & Neo-Pangea, Deutsch LA, and Campfire for “Snapple Lunch-Break
Beats: Hot on the Hidden Links”

Location-Based Advertising – Single
GOLD:                             Coke Zero & CP+B for “TRON LiveCycle”
SILVER:                             Bing & Deep Focus for “Home Turf Finder”
BRONZE:                             Gandhi Bookstores & Ogilvy Mexico for “Authors’ Streets”

Mobile Platform or App – Single
GOLD:                             Depaul UK & Publicis London for “iHobo 1.1”
SILVER:                             Diageo Ireland & DDB UK for “Bud Ice Cold Index”
BRONZE:                             ABBA Seafood & CP+B for “Kalles Egg Timer”

Online Commercial – Single
GOLD:                             Unilever & BBH New York for “Cleans Your Balls”
SILVER:                             john st. & john st. for “Pink Ponies”
BRONZE:                             Microsoft & CP+B for “Online Scams Taken Offline/DotCons”

Rich Media Display Ad – Single
GOLD:                             Google – Display Advertising & Google Creative Lab and Grow Interactive
for “WATCH THIS SPACE – Twitter Response Ad”
SILVER:                             Rogers Communications & Publicis Toronto for “Tron Trailer (Wireless Ultimate HD)”
BRONZE:                             Volkswagen & Mediacom Interaction, Grabarz & Partner, and Yahoo!
for “May the Force Be with You”

Tablet Marketing – Single
GOLD:                             Microsoft Bing & Point Reach for “Bing for iPad”
SILVER:                             McKinney & McKinney for “mckinney.com”
BRONZE:
American Honda Motor Company & RPA for “Honda CR-Z Experience App”

Viral – Single
GOLD:                             BIC/Tipp-ex & Buzzman for “A Hunter Shoots a Bear”
SILVER:                             Unilever & Mindshare and BBH New York for “Cleans Your Balls”
BRONZE:                             Urban Ministries of Durham & McKinney for “SPENT”

MIXX 2011 Judges:

Jeff Benjamin – Partner, Chief Creative Officer, CP+B
Lincoln Bjorkman – Chief Creative Officer, North America, DIGITAS
Brad Brinegar – Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, McKinney
Ed Brojerdi – Co-Chief Creative Officer, kirshenbaum bond senecal + partners
Tim Castelli – Senior Vice President, Eastern Sales, AOL
Andreas Combuechen – Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, Chief Creative Officer, Atmosphere Proximity
Emma Cookson – Chairman, BBH New York
Mark D’Arcy – Director, Global Creative Solutions, Facebook
Brian DiLorenzo – Executive Vice President, Chief of Production, McCann New York
Marjorie Dufek – Interactive Marketing Director, Brown-Forman Corporation
Brad Feldman –Senior Director, Creative Strategy and Development, Yahoo!
Alberto Ferrer – Managing Partner, The Vidal Partnership
Marc Fonzetti – Director, Media Services/Marketing Communications, Verizon Wireless
Theresa Gaffney – Creative Director, Digital Media, Meredith Women’s Network
Quentin George – Chief Digital Officer, Mediabrands
Jane Grenier – Vice President, Integrated Strategy, Condé Nast Media Group
Trevor Kaufman – Chief Executive Officer, Possible
Scott Kinzie – Chief Marketing Officer, BabyCenter
Nick Law – Executive Vice President, Chief Creative Officer, R/GA
Jean-Philippe Maheu – Worldwide Chief Executive Officer, Publicis Modem
Andy Markowitz – Director, Global Digital Strategy, GE, Corporate Commercial and Communications, General Electric Company
DyShaun Muhammad – Senior Marketing Manager – Bisquick and Wal-Mart, General Mills
Benjamin Palmer – Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, The Barbarian Group
Suzie Reider – Head of Video Advertising, YouTube
David Roman – Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Lenovo
Alan Schulman – Founder and Chief Creative Officer, U . D I G > The Digital Innovations Group
Baba Shetty – Chief Strategy Officer, Hill Holliday
Rick Song – Senior Director, Eastern U.S. Sales, Microsoft Advertising
Steve Wax – Partner, Campfire, Ladies and Gentlemen, and ThirtySix LLC

MIXX Awards Sponsors:

24/7 Real Media
AdKeeper
Buddy Media
Facebook
Google
Horn Group
IDG
Martini Media
Microsoft Advertising
NBC Universal Digital Media
NHL.com
Specific Media
Terra Networks Operations
WildTangent Media
Yahoo!

Official Creative Production Partner

Beehive Communications

About the IAB

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

IAB MIXX Conference & Expo 2011
NEW YORK – Michael Lebowitz, Founder and CEO of Big Spaceship, is the new chairman of the IAB Agency Advisory Board, a consultative body formed by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) to focus close attention on the frontiers of creativity and brand marketing, and to improve the vital relationships between publishers and creative, media, and public relations agencies. Lebowitz succeeds Brad Brinegar, Chairman and CEO of McKinney, who has helmed the esteemed group of agency leaders since its establishment in 2009. The IAB also announced today that seven other advertising thought leaders have accepted invitations to become new members of this distinguished assembly of industry advisors. The announcements were made at the IAB MIXX Conference & Expo in New York City.

Over the course of the past two years, the IAB AAB has come together on a quarterly basis to drive new ways of thinking about how to make the web as creative and compelling a medium as possible for brand marketers in the interactive era of paid, owned and earned media. The AAB has contributed such tangible results for the industry as helping shape IAB work on the Rising Stars program, which introduced cutting-edge display ad formats built to inspire creativity in digital brand advertising, and on digital ad measurement standards.

“We’re thrilled to welcome Michael Lebowitz as the new chair of this influential company of interactive thought leaders, and we salute Brad Brinegar for his leadership over the past two years harnessing this incredible resource for the industry and for our members,” said Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO, IAB. “Michael’s breadth of knowledge and practice in creating award-winning, cutting-edge digital experiences will help agencies and interactive media work fruitfully together to drive client benefit and mutual growth. Since the IAB Agency Advisory Board’s inception, this group of dynamic senior voices has become a partner in our conspiracy to reinvent advertising and marketing.”

“Big Spaceship has always embraced cross-disciplinary efforts that result in innovative, actionable solutions, which is why I’m particularly honored to serve as chair of the IAB Agency Advisory Board,” said Lebowitz. “The level of collaboration that this board represents is a strong acknowledgment that nobody can flourish in the digital arena today when working in a vacuum. I’m looking forward to driving substantive initiatives with the IAB to support our collaborative efforts.”

“When I started talking with the IAB about the formation of the Agency Advisory Board, we knew that our ultimate goal was to ensure that interactive publishers were working as effectively as possible with agencies like ours,” said Brinegar. “And once we got all of these creative trailblazers to the table together, we had an incredible opportunity to exchange our ideas and best practices and to encourage more brand marketing in interactive media.”

The seven additions to the roster boast equally compelling credentials:

Current members feature luminaries in the interactive advertising world:

For more information about the IAB Agency Advisory Board, please visit: http://www.iab.net/agencyadvisoryboard

About the IAB

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

PARIS – Marin Software, the leading online advertising management platform, has today announced that NetBooster, a leading European digital marketing agency, has chosen Marin Software’s Enterprise Edition platform for their search campaigns across Europe. The French campaigns for lastminute.com and Easy Voyage are already on the platform and over the coming months NetBooster will move their client portfolio onto Marin.

NetBooster adopted Marin Software to help better manage clients’ search, social and display campaigns across publishers, including Google, Yahoo, Bing, Facebook, Criteo and YouTube. NetBooster will also use Marin to deliver deeper insight to clients’ click-path attribution across online channels as well as optimise clients’ spend. Marin’s automated bidding algorithm, which delivers on average a 20% financial uplift, will be key in improving clients’ financial performance across biddable media.

Raphaël Zier, CEO of NetBooster, said of the move: “We are constantly looking for ways to squeeze more out of our clients’ online advertising campaigns through the use of technology, and Marin Software is the perfect solution for this. We will now be able to deliver deeper insight for our clients across their digital channels, as well as help them outpace the performance of their competitors’ campaigns using a proven bidding algorithm across Google, Yahoo, Bing, Facebook, Criteo and YouTube. The other advantage with Marin is that they provide local support for our clients in France and other European territories, which is what sets them apart from other tool providers.”

David Bianovici, Sales Director – Southern Europe at Marin Software, added: “NetBooster commands a lot of respect in the European search industry as they hire some of the best staff and equip them with the best tools to do their jobs. They are also a leader in the territory in terms of improving the ROI of their customers and helping them understand the click-path attribution across all online channels. I’m looking forward to deepening our relationship with NetBooster across Europe alongside Raphael, in order to enhance the performance of their client campaigns.”

This news comes after Marin Software recently announced the hire of David Bianovici who will head up the Paris office Marin has just opened.

About NetBooster Group

Established in 1998, NetBooster, an independent interactive communications group, makes its expertise available to its clients for Internet marketing: search engine optimisation, search engine marketing, affiliation, online media, creation, CRM and social networks. The agency invests significantly in R&D and also offers tomorrow’s digital marketing expertise and technologies to provide the best return on investment to its clients. The Group is established in France, Italy, the UK, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, South-East Asia, China and Brazil and is managed by Raphaël Zier. NetBooster employs a workforce of almost 530 people. For the 2010 financial year, NetBooster Group reported consolidated sales of € 45 million. It carries the OSEO-ANVAR seal of approval as an “Innovative Business” and thus its shares are eligible for FCPIs (French Mutual funds). Shares in NETBOOSTER trade on the Alternext Paris market of NYSE Euronext.

For further information, please visit our website: http://www.netbooster.com

About Marin Software

Marin Software is a leading provider of online advertising management solutions, offering an integrated platform for managing search, display, and social marketing. The company provides solutions for advertisers and agencies of all sizes, enabling them to improve financial performance, save time, and make better decisions. Marin Enterprise, the company’s flagship product, addresses the needs of online marketers spending at least 50,000 € per month on biddable media. Headquartered in San Francisco, with offices worldwide, Marin’s technology powers marketing campaigns for over 800 customers managing more than 1.5 billion € of annualised ad spend in more than 160 countries. For more information, please visit: http://www.marinsoftware.fr.

NEW YORK – Online advertising saw strong spend growth globally in the third quarter, with spend up 10% YOY, excluding Asia. This represents strong growth in spite of global economic challenges worldwide. Paid search advertising grew 7% and display grew 21% year-over-year. Retailers saw the largest growth in advertising expenditure, increasing search budgets by 22% compared with the third quarter 2010.

These figures are released quarterly by IgnitionOne, a leading provider of performance marketing technology and services managing more than $1 billion in online advertising.

Key findings in IgnitionOne’s Q3 report:

• Search advertising spend remains solid in Q3. In Q3, total search spend was up 7.2% YOY driven in part by more consumer search activity (impressions up 22%). Europe saw 20% spend growth YOY compared with 7% for the US. Growth in retail, finance and auto was partially offset by modestly lower YOY spends in travel. Retailer spend was particularly strong, growing 22% year-over-year.
• Performance-focused advertisers continue to increase their display advertising budgets (spend up 21% YOY), namely for inventory sold via real-time bidding (RTB). This form of display advertising is similar to search in that it is bought in an online auction marketplace, and therefore highly measurable with spend able to be quickly scaled up or down. CPMs on RTB display are also declining (-23% YOY) as more inventory floods the market, increasing its cost-effectiveness.
• Google’s online advertising dominance grows further. The company’s share of search advertising rose to 81.6%, and its display advertising platform experienced 184% growth year-over-year. Higher quality search inventory, the product enhancements in Google’s Ad Exchange and new highly effective ad formats form the basis of Google’s dominance and continued growth in market share.
• Yahoo/Bing alliance shows little impact on the search engine landscape at one year anniversary. On a year-over-year basis, Yahoo/Bing’s effective cost-per-impression has declined -22.8% mainly due to declining CPCs (-18%) and declining CTRs (-5.9%). While the Yahoo/Bing alliance has recently introduced ad format changes (Rich Ads in Search) and other innovations, these efforts have had little effect in attracting new advertiser dollars.

“Online advertising has stayed strong despite global economic challenges,” said Roger Barnette, President of IgnitionOne. “Marketers are looking for high ROI in this economy, and are increasingly turning to efficient advertising formats like performance display and search. This has resulted in strong advertising growth YOY; which, coupled with increased online activity from consumers, should yield a solid Q4 for publishers and marketers alike.”

IgnitionOne’s complete Q3 Digital Media Report can be downloaded here.

This report is the latest in a series of reports from IgnitionOne reviewing trends across the online advertising landscape. Previous quarterly reports can be downloaded at http://bit.ly/ignitiononeresearch

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 conversion optimization.

IgnitionOne 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.

Open Road Media announces the release of the E-riginal Madboy by Richard Kirshenbaum, who jumped into the ad business in the days when advertising meant fame and fortune, scandals, greed, and glory. He quickly made a name for himself and by the age of twenty-six had moved on to start his own company. He has created buzz for such brands as Target, Kenneth Cole, and Coach and was named one of Crain’s New York Business’s “40 Under 40.”

Madboy dives right into the inner workings of a wildly creative and fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants advertising business—an industry of big egos and big money—providing readers with a look at the ad world’s most recognized campaigns and characters plucked from the hyper-drive domain of NYC advertising in the past two decades. Profiling the entertaining clients, frenetic pace, and up-to-the-minute creativity of the advertising industry, Madboy brings readers into the room on Kirshenbaum’s contributions to the craft, from taking the advertising off the page by hiring attractive people to drink Hennessy at bars, to creating one of the most memorable and improbable pop culture icons, Wendy the Snapple Lady.

With tell-all flavor and self-deprecating humor, Kirshenbaum reveals hot tips and tidbits that are as dramatically compelling as the broad swathe of celebrities he has worked with—who range from Andy Warhol to Joan Rivers to Miss America—to name a few.  For instance, early in his career, Kirshenbaum sits down to a game-changing interview with then-agency creative director, now-bestselling author James Patterson. This must-read memoir reveals a remarkable combination of poise and humor, command and vulnerability—an alchemy that sets Kirshenbaum apart as a first among equals amidst some of the greatest ad minds of his time.

AVAILABLE 9/20/2011

Amazon.com, Apple iBookstore, Barnesandnoble.com, Kobo Books, Overdrive, and Sony Reader Store

Watch a Documentary-Quality Video of author Richard Kirshenbaum

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.

With VideoHub for Advertisers, marketers and agencies can look at how their video campaigns are performing across all networks and publishers in real-time. For the first time, advertisers have access to unparalleled and sometimes surprising insight into brand performance metrics and the factors enhancing the brand, provoking viewer engagement and driving other key performance indicators.

VideoHub Marketplace provides early stage video advertisers with an easy-to-use, self-serve interface to buy video on the Tremor Video network and other inventory sources.

“In the absence of alternatives, the video advertising industry has focused almost exclusively on efficiency over effectiveness,” said Anthony Risicato, GM of VideoHub, a division of Tremor Video. “With VideoHub, we mine for answers to ‘why’ advertising performs the way it does. Our advertising partners are already uncovering surprising correlations between certain signals and brand performance, and that intelligence will grow exponentially as the platform evolves.”

VideoHub analyzes numerous video signals and determines which factors are the most important in delivering campaign success, with particular emphasis on the criteria that drive engagement and brand lift. In an effort to share the insights gathered from the nearly 1 billion streams running through the platform every month, the company recently launched a report that give marketers a snapshot of the video advertising industry.

The story was first reported in VideoNuze.

About Tremor Video

Founded in 2005, Tremor Video (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.

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

LOS ANGELES – Ace Metrix™, the authority in television advertising effectiveness, today announced the Ace Metrix Quarterly Top 10 national ads for the third quarter of 2011, a list led by September 11th tribute ads from Budweiser and State Farm, which garnered Ace Scores of 665 and 662, respectively (on a scale of 950). The list, which was also dominated by ads for food including Sonic, Bisquick, Subway and Red Lobster, also featured ads from auto makers Nissan and Mercedes-Benz, as well as MasterCard and Clorox.

“Much to the distaste of many in the advertising community, September 11th represented the largest TV advertising event of the quarter and possibly the year,” said Peter Daboll, CEO of Ace Metrix. “9/11 ads from Anheuser-Busch and State Farm broadly appealed to consumers, overshadowing a quarter that was otherwise dominated by food ads. It’s also notable that while they did not achieve overall Top 10 status, Chevrolet’s 9/11 ads represented four of the top 10 non-luxury automotive ads this quarter.”

Most Effective TV Ads of Q3 2011*

*Definition: Ace Score is the measure of ad creative effectiveness based on viewer reaction to national TV ads. Respondents are randomly selected and representative of the U.S. TV viewing audience. The results are presented on a scale of 0-950, which represents scoring on creative attributes such as relevance, persuasion, watchability, information, attention, etc.

American Consumers Were Hungry in Q3

The effectiveness of food ads in Q3 of this year was a departure from last year when Apple’s iPad ads and other tech ads dominated Ace Metrix’ most-effective list of Q3 2010. Indeed, Restaurant and food ads performed better than a year ago and represented four of the top 10 most effective ads this quarter verses only one (from Dominoes Pizza) for Q3 of last year.

“It is well-documented that people crave food during stressful economic periods, a potential driver of interest in creative food messages in a quarter when economic uncertainty was one of the greatest headlines,” Daboll commented. “The broad spectrum of food—from burgers to pancakes and then from healthy subs to grilled seafood—indicates a lack of consistency in consumer appetites—and a great opportunity for food advertisers in an economy that shows little sign of improvement.”

Sonic’s “Food Fantasy” ad was the most successful QSR ad this quarter and the most effective ad overall behind Budweiser and State Farm’s 9/11 ads. The ad, which touted Sonic’s focus on customized orders, scored an impressive 657 Ace Score, 79 points higher than the average fast food score of 578. Interestingly, it also performed particularly well among young women, driven by high attention and likeability scores.

Following Sonic was an ad from Nissan, which topped the list of most-effective automotive ads for the quarter. Nissan, which produced the 2nd-most effective ad in Q3 2010, represented three of the top 10 non-luxury automotive ads for the quarter, along with 5 ads from Chevrolet, four of which were September-11th themed.

Finally, Mastercard’s ad, which promoted its partnership with “Stand up to Cancer,” was the top-scoring financial services ad, and Clorox’s “Kitchen Volcano” ad was the top-scoring household product ad of the quarter.

About Ace Metrix

Ace Metrix is the industry authority in measuring and understanding the impact of advertising creative. Through patent-pending Ace ScoreTM measurement technology, Ace Metrix collects and measures the consumer impact of every nationally breaking TV ad in near real-time. Through its Creative Lifecycle Management TM suite of products, Ace Metrix provides actionable creative analysis, from ideation through real-time in-market performance optimization, to many of the world’s leading advertisers and agencies. Ace Metrix works with leading global advertisers. For more information, visit www.acemetrix.com

Follow Ace Metrix on Twitter for additional insight: Ace_Metrix.

SEATTLE, WA – Banyan Branch, a full-service social media agency that provides end-to-end marketing services for the world’s leading brands, today announced it has secured $1.7 million in growth funding from a group of private investors. The company plans to use the capital to accelerate growth into key verticals and continue investment in repeatable, scalable social media processes, media buying and technology for its clients. Over the past 12 months, Banyan Branch has experienced almost 100 percent revenue growth and has significantly expanded its Fortune 500 client base in the technology, consumer services, retail and pharmaceutical markets.

A group of elite investors and entrepreneurs participated in the Series A growth round, including Bob Gay, CEO and co-founder of Huntsman Gay Global Capital; Bill Bryant, venture partner at Draper Fisher Jurvetson;  Geoff Entress, venture partner at Voyager Capital; Neil Patel, founder of KISSmetrics; Chase Franklin, co-founder and former CEO of Qpass; Taft Price, co-founder of Oakley Networks;  Adam Gross, Chief Marketing Officer, The Jordan, Edmiston Group, Inc.; Andrew Garnock, private investor;  and John Morris, president of West Olympic Investments.  In conjunction with the financing round, Seattle angel investor Geoff Entress will join Banyan Branch’s Board of Directors.

As adoption of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube experience explosive growth and brands look to engage directly with consumers via these channels, demand for social marketing services has increased dramatically. Having focused on social media since its founding, Banyan Branch offers a unique mix of technology and services that were developed specifically for social environments. The agency has also invested in systematizing its processes, enabling it to rapidly scale to meet increased market demand – analyzing program successes, identifying best practices and developing methodologies and technology that facilitate repeatable success. Banyan Branch manages comprehensive social media programs for the some of the world’s biggest and most recognizable brands such as Disney, Porsche, FOX, Microsoft, Paramount, Hartz, Univision and Gilt Groupe.

“Social media has become pervasive within our culture, giving brands a way to create ongoing conversations and build lasting relationships with consumers,” said incoming board member Geoff Entress.  “By bringing a scientific, scalable approach to the massive social marketing opportunity, Banyan Branch has established itself as a leader in the agency landscape and a partner that big brands can rely on to create repeatable success with their social media initiatives.”

Banyan Branch is led by an executive team with a unique mix of social and technology experience. Banyan Branch Co-founder and Principal Dave Hanley helped establish Shelfari as a leading social book sharing site that was sold to Amazon in 2008, while President Blake Cahill was previously chief marketing officer at Visible Technologies, a social media monitoring technology platform. Chief Creative Director and Co-founder Alex Garcia helped develop the web strategy for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and was previously vice president of new media for Drive-Thru Records (Geffen). In 2010, Garcia was named to Puget Sound Business Journal’s list of “40 under 40.”

“As social becomes integrated into consumers’ daily activity online, brands are rethinking their marketing strategies and are looking for a partner that can deliver results in social channels time and time again,” said Blake Cahill, president and principal at Banyan Branch. “We’ve developed an innovative approach distinct from the conventional Madison Avenue model by building upon our experience as senior executives within the tech industry and focusing on making campaign success more than just a one-time occurrence.”

“This funding not only validates our unique methodology and positions us to expand into new verticals, it also allows us to continue helping brands meet their business objectives by delivering unprecedented consumer engagement within social platforms,” said Dave Hanley, co-founder and principal at Banyan Branch.

For more information on Banyan Branch’s thoughts and perspectives on the world of social media, please visit the agency’s blog at http://www.banyanbranch.com/social-blog/ or follow Banyan Branch on Twitter: http://twitter.com/banyanbranch.

About Banyan Branch
Banyan Branch, based in Seattle, WA, is a full-service social media agency that provides end-to-end marketing services including strategy, creative, execution and analytics. With a holistic approach that integrates Strategy, Social Media Creative, Engagement and Research & Analytics, Banyan Branch delivers social media programs unmatched by smaller agencies, while providing more personalized service and quicker response than large-scale digital firms. Dozens of the world’s leading brands, including FOX, Viacom, Paramount, Hartz, Univision, Gilt Groupe, Microsoft and Windstar Cruises have partnered with Banyan Branch to implement a wide variety of social media campaigns. Any company ready to connect with its customers where they live and breathe, can contact Banyan Branch via www.BanyanBranch.com

LOS ANGELES – Online advertising is growing around the world according to research conducted by Econsultancy. Sponsored by the Rubicon Project, the advertising technology company, two thirds of the advertisers and agencies polled in the US (68%) and 57% of those in Europe (including the UK) said they had increased their investment in online display advertising in the last year. Nearly a quarter (23%) of the advertisers say they have moved budgets from search to display advertising in the past year.

The growth of Real-Time Bidding and the rise of the Demand-Side Platform (DSP)

- The research, which questioned over 400 advertisers and agencies globally, reveals that over a fifth (23%) of the advertisers and agencies surveyed say they use a demand-side platform (DSP) which takes an average of 32% of the media plan.
- This is highest in the US, where 39% of the advertiser and agency respondents surveyed say they buy display advertising through DSPs.
- An average of 34% of trading desk spend goes to real-time bidding (RTB): 41% in US and 34% in Europe.
- However, the survey also reveals that 37% of responding companies say their trading desks spend less than 20% on RTB and that 17% of advertisers and agencies do not allocate any display advertising budget to their trading desks.

“The shift in dollars from search to display comes as no surprise; we’ve seen this trend rapidly increase over the last year with the increased availability of automated, easy-to-use buying tools that make spending in display as easy as search. The rise in RTB spend represents another milestone in this trend toward more programmatic buying, as the overall buying strategies of agencies and trading desk gravitate in that direction,” said Kara Weber, SVP of Marketing at the Rubicon Project. “Yet, it’s not all about RTB. The research also shows that ad networks play a predominant role – clearly illustrating that the buyers are using multiple channels to maximize ROI, not yet placing all bets on the RTB marketplace. We’ll be watching this trend carefully through 2011; we predict the shift to automated buying channels, including but not limited to RTB, will be dramatic in 2012.”

Performance and audience targeting remain key concerns

- Of those advertisers using demand-side platforms, 82% use more than one DSP and 15% say they use more than four.
- When rating a DSP ‘performance’ is viewed as one of the three most important criteria by 75% of the advertisers surveyed, followed by technology (51%), audience (46%) and reach (35%), and improved targeting is seen as a key benefit of working with a DSP by 64% of advertisers.
- This is followed by real time understanding of campaign performance at 60% and the ability to buy at impression level for 53% of advertisers, with liquidity (lack of available inventory), cited as a challenge for over half of those surveyed (54%) and service levels an issue for 51%.

Linus Gregoriadis, Research Director at Econsultancy, notes, “The survey results reflect the huge transformation of the online display advertising environment since we last carried out this research two years ago. Advertisers and agencies have more opportunities than ever to target the right audience. Ad networks and exchanges continue to prosper, while real-time bidding is having a major impact on the industry and is fueling the growth of demand-side and supply-side platforms.”

Online advertising networks continue to command significant spend

- The research also reveals online advertising networks are receiving an average of 55% of the average media plan, up from 31% in 2009, when Econsultancy conducted similar research.
- Evidently, online advertising networks are seen as an important part of the media mix. Of those advertisers working with ad networks, 43% say they work with at least five different ad networks compared to 30% two years ago.
- Over a third of advertisers (34%) buy from between five and ten online advertising networks – up from a quarter (23%) in 2009 – and 46% of advertisers say they are dealing with more networks than they were a year ago. This is particularly high in the US with 53% of advertisers and agencies dealing with more ad networks than they were a year ago.

The main advantages of RTB are listed as improved performance, reduced media wastage, better targeting capabilities, and lower cost per acquisition. Performance is also seen as the main advantage of ad networks with 79% of advertisers citing this as one of their top three criteria for rating an online ad network. The importance of reach has declined since 2009 however, when 67% of survey respondents highlighted it, which could be because of the growth of DSPs providing near total reach of the available inventory in key markets.

This is Econsultancy’s second Online Advertisers Survey Report, produced in association with the Rubicon Project. The study, supported by the IAB UK, IAB France, IAB Europe and AOP, follows a similar piece of research carried out in 2009 and is based on a survey of over 1,000 online advertising professionals carried out in August and September 2011. This report is specifically focused on results from more than 400 advertiser and agency respondents. A copy of the full report can be downloaded here.

About the Rubicon Project

the Rubicon Project launched in 2007 with a mission to automate buying and selling across the $65 billion global online advertising industry. Powered by data-driven algorithms and pricing intelligence data, REVV, the company’s yield optimization platform, has optimized nearly two trillion ad transactions for more than 450 of the largest properties on the Internet. REVV helps premium Web publishers like Time Inc., News International and CareerBuilder make more money by optimizing their ad space, eliminating unnecessary ad operations costs and protecting their brands. The platform powers the REVV Marketplace, the world’s largest premium display advertising marketplace. More than 650 ad networks, exchanges and DSPs access premium inventory and audiences through the REVV Marketplace and its unparalleled reach of more than 575 million unique users. Headquartered in Los Angeles, with offices in New York, Seattle, London, Paris, Hamburg and Sydney, the company is backed by $60 million in funding from Clearstone Venture Partners, Mayfield Fund, IDG Ventures Asia, Comcast Ventures and News Corporation.

NEW YORK – Internet ad revenues rose 23.2 percent — to a record $14.9 billion — in the first half of 2011, according to figures released today by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC US). The rate of growth more than doubled year-over-year, as last year’s first-half ad revenues of $12.1 billion had represented an 11.3 percent increase over 2009.

Internet ad revenues for the second quarter alone also reached new heights, increasing 24.1 percent to $7.7 billion. That performance compares to last year’s same-period revenues of $6.2 billion, up 13.9 percent from 2009.

Display-related advertising — which includes banner ads, rich media, digital video and sponsorships — totaled more than $5.5 billion in the first six months of 2011. Display increased 27.1 percent over the same period in 2010, substantially exceeding the previous year’s growth rate of 16 percent. Digital video once again commanded double-digit growth — up 42.1 percent over a year ago, and moved close to the $1 billion mark with $891 million in half year 2011 revenue.

Display accounted for 37 percent of all interactive spend in the first half of 2011, with search remaining the leading online category at 49 percent of the total — nearly $7.3 billion. Search and Display each grew about 27 percent year-over-year, with Search more than doubling its previous year’s growth rate of 11.6 percent.

In other online ad formats, dollars spent on lead generation increased 25.4 percent over the same period in 2010, but classified ad dollars were down 2 percent and email spend decreased 34.2 percent.

IAB and PwC US looked at revenue models supporting online ads. Ads using performance-based models increased faster than ads using impression-based models, rising to $9.6 billion. Impression-based ad spend did grow by 10.8 percent, though that pricing model accounted for only 31 percent of total ads, down from 35 percent year-over-year.

“The remarkably resilient performance of interactive advertising so far in 2011 demonstrates that more marketers are placing big bets on digital to tell their brand stories,” said Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO, IAB. “This welcome news, in light of the weakness in a large part of the rest of the U.S. economy, confirms that the innovations happening in interactive marketing deliver great value to the industry and to the consumer.”

“Strong online advertising growth has continued into the first half of 2011,” said David Silverman, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. “Fueling this growth is the ability of advertisers to correlate performance and results with the dollars they are investing.”

“These figures build upon the positive news we saw in the 2010 year-end revenue report,” said Sherrill Mane, Senior Vice President, Industry Services, IAB. “It’s a clear signal that all of us in the interactive advertising industry are delivering meaningful results to marketers — and that they are confident in investing in interactive.”

Annual Figures

The following chart highlights half-year Internet ad revenue since the IAB began measurements in 1996; dollar figures are rounded.

Ad Category Breakouts (in millions)

Revenue Pricing Models (in millions)

The IAB sponsors the IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report, which is conducted independently by the Internet Media Group of PwC US. The results are considered the most accurate measurement of interactive advertising revenues because the data is compiled directly from information supplied by companies selling advertising on the Internet. The survey includes data concerning online advertising revenues from Web sites, commercial online services, free e-mail providers, and all other companies selling online advertising.

The full report is issued twice yearly for full and half-year data, and top-line quarterly estimates are issued for the first and third quarters. PwC does not audit the information and provides no opinion or other form of assurance with respect to the information. Past reports are available at www.iab.net/AdRevenueReport.

About the IAB

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

About the PwC Network

PwC firms provide industry-focused assurance, tax and advisory services to enhance value for their clients. More than 161,000 people in 154 countries in firms across the PwC network share their thinking, experience and solutions to develop fresh perspectives and practical advice. See www.pwc.com for more information.

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.

The format for the Festival will be highly interactive and require attendee participation. Features include audience-driven speakers, hands-on workshops, Jay Chiat gold-winning case study presentations, five minute/20 slide Pecha Kucha-style persuasive arguments from up-and-coming thinkers and moderated table discussions.

For more information about the 4A’s “Strategy Festival,” please visit http://4asstrategyfestival.com (including press registration).

About the 4A’s
The 4A’s (American Association of Advertising Agencies) is the national trade association of the advertising agency business which provides leadership, advocacy and guidance to the industry. Its membership comprises virtually all of the large, multinational agencies and hundreds of small and mid-sized agencies from across the country. The 1,200 member agency offices served by the 4A’s employ 65,000 people; offer a wide range of marketing communications services, and place 80 percent of all national advertising. Themanagement-oriented association founded in 1917 helps its members build their businesses, and acts as the industry’s spokesperson with government, media, and the public sector. 4A’s Website: www.aaaa.org Twitter: @4As.

George Panopoulos has been promoted to SVP, General Manager of the Critical Mass Calgary headquarters. Prior to this role, he led the Budweiser, Autotrader and Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority accounts as Vice President, Client Partner, in addition to overseeing the Dell global business in Austin, Texas.

Mark Ashbaugh has been named Vice President, Client Partner, from his previous role as Senior Account Director for Critical Mass. With the agency for nine years, Ashbaugh is responsible for growing numerous marquis accounts including Best Buy, Adidas and Budweiser.

Critical Mass Chicago Appointments

Joe Scartz will serve as SVP General Manager for the agency’s largest US office in Chicago. Since 2006, Scartz has led digital programs for Hyatt Hotels, Citi, QVC, Supervalu and TE Connectivity, in addition to spearheading the growth of the Moen business, including a fully integrated enterprise site redesign, online marketing programs, webisode series and mobile initiatives.

Critical Mass New York Appointments

Erika Norman has joined Critical Mass as Vice President, Client Partner on the Citi business, from her previous role as Vice President/Director at Digitas in New York. There she managed multiple American Express co-brand relationships with a focus on relationship-building, program implementation and revenue generation. Prior to Digitas, Norman worked as an Account Director at Moxie Interactive leading site, social, mobile, digital out-of-home and branded entertainment initiatives for The Coca-Cola Company.

Critical Mass Nashville Appointments

Amanda Levy has been named SVP, Group Director, managing the Critical Mass Nashville office and the agency’s Nissan North America relationship. Prior to this role, she was the Director of Integration on the Dell account. Levy has also served as the West Coast Director for OMD Digital after spending five years client-side at Dell Computer, where she managed Dell Consumer’s online demand generation vehicles, was responsible for the site strategy and performance, and led global browse and application layer projects cross-functionally.

Finally Paulette Adams has been promoted to Vice President, Client Partner on the Infiniti US account, following roles as Group Director, Engagement Management at Organic working on the Chrysler and Bank of America accounts, as well as SVP, Management Supervisor at Campbell-Ewald Advertising.

“We’re excited to add these individuals to our executive leadership team. With growth comes opportunity, and each brings the right combination of leadership, experience and an intimate knowledge of the Critical Mass culture to their respective roles,” said Chris Gokiert, President, Critical Mass.

About Critical Mass

Critical Mass (www.criticalmass.com), an Omnicom digital marketing agency, helps the world’s leading companies use digital media to create extraordinary experiences—experiences that bring together creative thinking, smart ideas and emerging technologies to drive our clients’ businesses. An award-winning agency consistently recognized as a leader in the digital marketing arena, Critical Mass operates globally from offices in Calgary, Toronto, Chicago, New York, Nashville, London, Amsterdam and Costa Rica. Critical Mass is a unit of Star Marketing Group (www.starmsgroup.com). For additional information, visit our website: www.criticalmass.com, our blog: http://experiencematters.criticalmass.com, www.facebook.com/criticalmass.agency or follow us on twitter: @criticalmass.

NEW YORK – Mobile is shaking up New York’s Advertising Week. The third annual Mobile Media Summit, the premiere event for mobile media, brand and advertising executives, returns to the Big Apple on October 5th to crash the party and shine a light on mobile media and advertising.

The day-long program will be held at the famed, off-broadway New World Stages, and will feature top thought-leaders, creatives and media decision makers from across the mobile and advertising industries. The Mobile Media Summit will push the envelope, uncovering the allure of the mobile medium and how players are capitalizing on its success. The mobile ad industry crossed a great inflection point this year when it hit the $1B mark, and tablet and smartphone sales have outshined TVs in U.S. revenue. Bringing mobile to Madison Avenue, the Mobile Media Summit has the most advertisers of any mobile event in the U.S.

“The mobile industry is constantly evolving and the hyper growth is eclipsing all projections,” said Paran Johar, CMO of Jumptap and founder of the Mobile Media Summit. “This event gives attendees the opportunity to witness the future of mobile advertising as conveyed by the agencies, vendors and media that shape its every move. The feedback from our past two events was clear; this is a ‘must attend’ for anyone in the mobile or advertising industries.”

The program will include a mix of senior thought leaders bringing together, agencies, brands, app developers, publishers, and ad networks and platforms. Sessions will focus on creative, content, cross-platform brand initiatives, and the latest in targeting and measurement. Featured speakers at the Mobile Media Summit 2011 include:

Eric Bader, President & Chief Strategy Officer, Worldwide – Initiative
Michael Collins, CEO, Joule
Angela Steel, CEO, Ansible
Matt Freeman, Vice Chairman, Global Chief Innovation Officer, McCann Ericson
Paul Gunning, CEO, Tribal DDB Worldwide
Alexandre Mars, CEO, Head of Mobile, Publicis Groupe
Elizabeth Ross, CEO, North America, MediaBrands Ventures
Vik Kathuria, Managing Partner, MediaCom Interaction USA
George Bell, President & CEO, Jumptap
Devaraj Southworth, VP, Online & Mobile Product Strategy, American Express
Brian Anderson, SVP, Director of Digital & Direct Marketing, The Vidal Partnership
Ari Zlotoff, Director of Marketing & New Business Development, Polaroid
John Najarian, EVP of Digital Media & Business Development, Comcast Entertainment Group
Paran Johar, Chief Marketing Officer, Jumptap
Kunur Patel, Reporter, Mobile & Digital Agencies, Advertising Age
Paul Longo, SVP, Group Digital Director, MediaVest
Frederick Stallings, Associate Mobile Director, Airwave, OMD
Sal Candela, Mobile Director, PHD Media
Jonathan Anastas, VP, Global Brand Marketing, Digital, Activision
Phuc Throng, Managing Director, Mobext USA
Todd Anderman, Chief Revenue & Media Officer, Jumptap
Gene Keenan, VP of Mobile, Isobar
Michael Baker, CEO, DataXu
Ali Rana, SVP & Head Svientist, Emerging Media Labs, Dynamic Logic
Paul Gelb, Vice President, Mobile Practice Lead, Razorfish
Harry Dewhirst, VP of Media Strategy, Amobee Media Systems
Mort Greenberg, Head of Sales, Americas, NAVTEQ Media Solutions

“Brands need to be in mobile now and so long as the industry continues to innovate, that commitment to mobile will last for years to come,” said Eric Bader, President & Chief Strategy Officer, Worldwide – Initiative. “Smartphone penetration, consumer engagement and mobile social activity are all booming. The Mobile Media Summit will give brands and agencies a look into the latest mobile strategies and competitive tactics that will lead to advertising success.”

To view more on the 2011 Mobile Media Summit’s program or to register for the event, visit: http://www.mobilemediasummit.com or follow conference updates on Twitter at @MobileMedia2011. For media credentials email: christina@mobilemediasummit.com.

Ad Revenue 4: Controlling Your Brand’s Future will be Hosted by Industry Veteran Doug Weaver and will Include the First Ever Global Analysis on Real-Time Bidding from IDC

New York, NY – PubMatic (http://www.PubMatic.com), which provides digital publishers a comprehensive selling platform to increase ad revenue across multiple platforms, today announced details for its annual Ad Revenue Conference.  Hosted by online marketing strategist and Upstream Group Founder and CEO, Doug Weaver, Ad Revenue 4: Controlling Your Brand’s Future (http://www.AdRevenueConference.com) will be held at The TimesCenter in New York City on October 13th at 9AM EST and will bring together over 400 of the advertising industry’s cutting edge innovators to discuss the future of advertising for premium publishers.

“Publishers have more opportunity than ever before to capitalize on the latest advertising innovations, the challenge is understanding what opportunities are right for them and how to create the right strategy for their future success,” said Rajeev Goel, Co-Founder and CEO of PubMatic. “Obtaining a strong understanding of the opportunities that exist and how to utilize and align them properly for the publisher’s brand and future growth of that brand is the insight and instruction that Ad Revenue 4 will provide to publishers.”

Topics at Ad Revenue 4 Will Include:

Controlling Your Brand’s Future
Steering the Evolution of Media Selling
Global Trends & Expectations for Real-Time Bidding
Aligning Mobile & Online Revenue Strategies
Ad Operations at the Center of Future Revenue Generation
What Big Data Means for Premium Publishers
Brand Value vs. Audience Targeting
Agency Perspectives on Publishers
The Future of RTB & Private Marketplaces for Publishers

At this year’s conference PubMatic will release the first RTB Global Report—conducted by IDC, the premier global provider of market intelligence for technology, telecommunications and consumer technology markets—as well as its Ad Revenue 4 Report, which is a comprehensive guide to help publishers better understand and navigate the complexity of the online advertising ecosystem. The Ad Revenue 4 report will be available exclusively to conference attendees for a limited time before being released to the public.

Ad Revenue 4 is an invite-only event. While Ad Revenue 4 is focused on helping online publishers improve their advertising revenue by discussing the latest advertising mediums, technologies and strategies that can benefit them, the conference is open to select individuals not representing publishers that can request an invite.

Find out more at (http://www.AdRevenueConference.com).

About PubMatic
PubMatic’s (http://www.PubMatic.com) ad management and monetization technology combines an impression-level ad auction, the most comprehensive brand protection tools, and enterprise ad operations support to give the Web’s top publishers the most control over their revenue and brand. Some of the world’s most respected online publishers have chosen to work with PubMatic, including The Huffington Post, eBay, United Online, TV Guide, and the majority of the comScore Top 10.

PubMatic is privately held, backed by funding from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Nexus Venture Partners, and Helion Ventures, and has seven offices around the world in the US, Europe, and Asia.