SES Accelerator San Diego 2012; Online Marketing Summit 2012
SAN DIEGO – The SES Conference & Expo has announced a one-day event in San Diego, the SES Search and Social Accelerator. This event is being held in collaboration with the Online Marketing Summit (OMS) and will take place from 8:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, February 9, 2012. The SES Accelerator is aimed at experienced marketing and advertising professionals who have been in the industry for 3 to 5 years. For more information or to register to attend SES Search and Social Accelerator or Online Marketing Summit, visit: http://sesconference.com/accelerator/.

The sessions at the SES Accelerator will consist of three concurrent tracks beginning after the keynote on Thursday and continuing through to 5:30 p.m., and then followed by SES’ traditional Black Hat/White Hat Unconferenced session. Topics will focus on search, social and analytics and sessions will feature the top experts in these fields.

The event’s opening Spotlight Session, “Optimizing Humans! The Art of Data-Driven Social Marketing,” will be given by Marty Weintraub, the CEO of aimClear. The online marketing agency has managed Facebook ad campaigns generating over 10 billion impressions internationally for clients including MarthaStewart.com, Siemens, Second Life and Budget Direct. Weintraub has written extensively for respected Internet marketing trade publications and is the author of the book Killer Facebook Ads.

When asked about his Spotlight Session, Weintraub remarked, “Wondering how to explode your social media strategy? This keynote presentation focuses on immediately actionable paid and organic social tactics marketers can use for enhanced demographic research and data-driven community outreach.”

“We’re thrilled to be working with OMS to deliver a highly compelling day of online marketing best practices,” said Mike Grehan, the Global VP of Content for SES parent company Incisive Media. Grehan, who will be delivering the day’s opening remarks prior to Weintraub’s keynote speech, continued, “We anticipate our attendees will embrace a day of free idea exchanges on the subject of internet marketing but, unlike our other events, there will be no exhibitor floor or vendor sales. The focus will be strictly on actionable education for today’s experienced marketing and advertising professionals.”

To register for SES Accelerator, complete the registration form.

About SES

Incisive Media’s SES Conference & Expo is a leading global conference and training series focused on search engine marketing. Other Incisive resources include ClickZ, which provides digital marketing news, information, commentary, advice, opinion, and research and Search Engine Watch, which covers news and information about search, analysis of the search engine industry, and offers tools for improving search marketing effectiveness. For more news and event updates visit the SES press room.

Incisive Media is a leading global provider of specialized business news and information in print, online, and in person. The company’s principal markets include financial services, legal services, commercial real estate, marketing services, and risk management. Incisive Media’s market-leading brands include Accountancy Age, Computing, Investment Week, Legal Week, Post, Risk, and SES Conference and Expo. For more information, visit www.incisivemedia.com.

About Online Marketing Summit

Online Marketing Summit (OMS) offers an educational environment that facilitates incredible learning, networking and collaboration opportunities amongst marketers, executives and digital professionals. OMS is singularly committed to its mission to educate marketers on the emerging best practices of online marketing through a professional development conference and exhibition. More than 12,000 marketers have learned, collaborated and networked at OMS events over the years. For more information, visit www.onlinemarketingsummit.com.

San Mateo, Calif – BrightEdge, the leading global SEO platform, today released analysis showing that brands in the Retail, Financial Services and Technology verticals are leaving upwards of $112 Million in unrealized sales on the table, that could be secured by more aggressive or effective search optimization activities.

BrightEdge analyzed terabytes of page rank, social signals, keyword, backlinks, ranking and CPC data from their cloud database to identify the real dollar opportunity available to specific vertical market segments. BrightEdge found that on average, Retail companies could drive more than $51 Million in potential revenue, followed by Financial Services at $51 Million. Hardware and software solutions are coming closer to the mark with leaving more than $5.4 Million in potential annual revenue.

“Search marketers are a part of the revenue generating organization, but they have lacked a forecasting tool to define the revenue opportunity for their company. Our research shows that there is a tremendous opportunity for brands to grow their revenue through search engine optimization,” said Jim Yu, CEO of BrightEdge. “With the unveiling of these findings BrightEdge is excited to announce that we are also introducing the ability to accurately forecast the business opportunity for SEO as part of our S3 platform.”

BrightEdge’s search opportunity forecasting, which is currently available in limited release to BrightEdge clients and agency partners provides a complete solution to allow search marketers to build a solid forecast for themselves.

To join the discussion about BrightEdge’s data, please visit www.facebook.com/seoplatform, or follow BrightEdge on Twitter at www.twitter.com/brightedge.

About BrightEdge
BrightEdge is the leading global SEO platform helping more than 1,100 of the world’s largest brands stay ahead in the rapidly evolving Internet landscape. BrightEdge S3 drives more than $4 billion in organic search across industries, harnessing the power of analytics to drive revenue from web sites, search engines and social networks across the globe in a measurable, predictable way. BrightEdge is based in San Mateo, CA and is privately held with financing from Battery Ventures, Altos Ventures and Illuminate Ventures.

For more information, please visit www.brightedge.com, friend BrightEdge on Facebook at www.facebook.com/seoplatform or follow them on Twitter at www.twitter.com/brightedge.

SES New York 2012
NEW YORK – SES New York 2012 announced today that Avinash Kaushik, Digital Marketing Evangelist for Google and Author of Web Analytics 2.0, will present the keynote address at the conference to be held at the Hilton New York on March 19-23, 2012. At SES New York Kaushik, whose keynote is entitled “Business Optimization in a Digital Age,” will present his latest insights on designing multi-channel digital marketing programs to achieve maximum economic value.

The largest search and social media event of its kind, SES New York attracts 3,500 to 4,000 online marketers. Incisive Media is offering a pre-agenda savings of up to $800 for those who register by January 20, 2012.

“We promise our attendees they will hear from the most innovative experts – the most creative minds in the industry – and who could personify this better than Avinash Kaushik,” said Matt McGowan, Managing Director of Americas at Incisive Media. “Even though the surge of social media has caused search marketing to become much more complicated, he’s promised to convince us that the right integrated digital marketing strategy can pay off with big returns on investments.”

“SES New York is always a high point in my conference year, and I’m preparing to add to the excitement with my keynote on balancing the many digital marketing channels across the four most important business drivers,” said Kaushik. “Metrics play a significant role in multi-channel digital strategies and I will, as usual, be discussing how to leverage key metrics for optimal campaign results. I’m really looking forward to meeting old friends and meeting new colleagues at the show.”

About SES New York

The five-day SES New York conference includes informative presentations and panels, intensive training workshops and a large exhibit hall. Each day is choreographed to leave plenty of time for networking opportunities with industry peers. Its real-time case studies provide attendees with best-practice knowledge that can be immediately applied to their marketing programs, and its classroom-style learning offers a high degree of interactivity.

The SES New York agenda, programmed by the SES Advisory Board, is designed to help online professionals do their jobs better. This year, specific consideration has been given to Demand Gen, SEO, PPC, RTB, mobile, local, as well as both earned and paid social media.

Until end of day January 20, 2012, Incisive Media is offering a pre-agenda registration savings of up to $800.

About Avinash Kaushik

Avinash Kaushik is the Digital Marketing Evangelist for Google and the co-founder of Market Motive Inc. Through his blog, Occam’s Razor, and his best-selling books, Web Analytics: An Hour A Day and Web Analytics 2.0, Kaushik has become recognized as an authoritative voice on how marketers, executive teams and industry leaders can leverage data to fundamentally reinvent their digital existence. Kaushik puts a common sense framework around the often frenetic world of web analytics and combines that with the philosophy that investing in talented analysts is the key to long-term success. He passionately advocates customer centricity and leveraging bleeding-edge competitive intelligence techniques.

Kaushik brings practical insights to companies like Unilever, Dell, Time Warner, Vanguard, Porsche, and IBM. He has delivered keynotes at a variety of global conferences, including SES Conference & Expo, Monaco Media Forum, iCitizen, JMP Innovators’ Summit, The Art of Marketing and Web 2.0.

Kaushik has lectured at major universities such as Stanford University, University of Virginia, University of California – Los Angeles and University of Utah. Avinash received the 2009 Statistical Advocate of the Year award from the American Statistical Association, and the 2011 Most Influential Industry Contributor award from the Web Analytics Association.

About Incisive Media

Incisive Media’s SES Conference & Expo is a leading global conference and training series focused on search engine marketing. Other Incisive resources include ClickZ, which provides digital marketing news, information, commentary, advice, opinion, and research and Search Engine Watch, which covers news and information about search and analysis of the search engine industry, and offers tools for improving search marketing effectiveness.

Incisive Media is a leading global provider of specialized business news and information in print, online, and in person. The company’s principal markets include financial services, legal services, commercial real estate, marketing services, and risk management. Incisive Media’s market-leading brands include Accountancy Age, Computing, Investment Week, Legal Week, Post, Risk, and SES Conference and Expo. For more information, visit www.incisivemedia.com.

For more news and event updates visit the SES press room.

U.S. Explicit Core Search

Google Sites led the U.S. explicit core search market in December with 65.9 percent market share (up 0.5 percentage points), followed by Microsoft Sites with 15.1 percent (up 0.1 percentage points) and Yahoo! Sites with 14.5 percent. Ask Network accounted for 2.9 percent of explicit core searches, followed by AOL, Inc. with 1.6 percent.

comScore Explicit Core Search Share Report*
December 2011 vs. November 2011
Total U.S. – Home & Work Locations
Source: comScore qSearch

*“Explicit Core Search” excludes contextually driven searches that do not reflect specific user intent to interact with the search results.

More than 18.2 billion explicit core searches were conducted in December (up 2 percent). Google Sites ranked first with 12 billion (up 3 percent), followed by Microsoft Sites with 2.7 billion (up 2 percent) and Yahoo! Sites with 2.6 billion. Ask Network delivered 531 million searches (up 3 percent), while AOL, Inc. rounded out the top five with 287 million.

comScore Explicit Core Search Query Report
December 2011 vs. November 2011
Total U.S. – Home & Work Locations
Source: comScore qSearch

U.S. Total Core Search

Google Sites accounted for 66.1 percent of total core search queries conducted (up 0.4 percentage points), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 16.2 percent and Microsoft Sites with 13.8 percent. Ask Network comprised 2.6 percent of total search queries, followed by AOL, Inc. with 1.4 percent.

comScore Total Core Search Share Report*
December 2011 vs. November 2011
Total U.S. – Home & Work Locations
Source: comScore qSearch

* “Total Core Search” is based on the five major search engines, including partner searches, cross-channel searches and contextual searches. Searches for mapping, local directory, and user-generated video sites that are not on the core domain of the five search engines are not included in these numbers.

Americans conducted 20.5 billion total core search queries in December (up 3 percent). Google Sites ranked first with 13.6 billion searches (up 4 percent), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 3.3 billion (up 2 percent) and Microsoft Sites with 2.8 billion (up 2 percent).

comScore Total Core Search Query Report
December 2011 vs. November 2011
Total U.S. – Home & Work Locations
Source: comScore qSearch

“Powered By” Reporting

In December, 68.1 percent of searches carried organic search results from Google (vs. 67.6 percent in November) while 26.5 percent of searches were powered by Bing (vs. 26.7 percent in November).

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

When it comes to top SEO priorities, digital brand executives are making sure that they understand the impact on search marketing and optimize for social signals including Likes, tweets and Google +1s, indicating that they have an increasing need for tools to leverage these insights in the coming year. In the past year it has become widely recognized that social signals are a new form of backlinks that drive search rankings, and leaders are committed to succeeding in this new arena.

The report also uncovered that brands are expecting their search marketing systems to have the enterprise-grade technology championed by cloud pioneers like salesforce.com. This includes security and associated certifications like ISO 27001, reliability and proven strategies for disaster recovery, and scalability to support customer needs.

The need for global support increased by more than 55 percent, with more than 70 percent indicating that their search programs are being run in multiple countries.

“The fact that so many executives are looking for things like enterprise-grade infrastructure, social signal measurement and global reach means that brands are focused on leveraging this technology for mission critical operations,” said Jim Yu, CEO of BrightEdge. “At BrightEdge we have focused our technology team to be sure that we have what leading search marketers need in 2012.”

For more on BrightEdge’s annual search marketers survey, please visit www.brightedge.com/2012-search-marketers-survey-results. To join the discussion about the findings, please visit us at www.facebook.com/seoplatform, or follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/brightedge.

About BrightEdge
BrightEdge is the leading site, search, and social management solution for global enterprises, helping more than 1,100 of the world’s largest brands stay ahead in the rapidly evolving Internet landscape. BrightEdge S3 drives more than $4 billion in organic search across industries, harnessing the power of analytics to drive revenue from web sites, search engines and social networks across the globe in a measurable, predictable way. BrightEdge is based in San Mateo, CA and is privately held with financing from Battery Ventures, Altos Ventures and Illuminate Ventures.

SES Chicago 2011
CHICAGO – Incisive Media announced the addition of two mobile marketing panels at SES Chicago, taking place November 14-18, 2011 at the Hyatt Regency Chicago. Scheduled for Thursday, November 17, “Smart Mobile Marketing” and “Search on Mobile Devices: The Next Frontier” go beyond current mobile marketing strategies being implemented by search and social media marketers, and inspire new tactics to gain the competitive advantage.

“Smart Mobile Marketing” will focus on actionable mobile best practices that convert to leads and sales. Speakers will cover how to incorporate the latest local and universal SEO tactics into a company’s online marketing mix and how to measure results.

“Search on Mobile Devices” addresses the lack of good search capabilities in mobile, particularly the problems with desktop search. The most pressing question will be tackled: Who will step up to the plate and develop a truly sophisticated user interface for mobile search?

Incisive Media is offering a special savings of up to $400 for those who register for SES Chicago prior to October 21.

Joining the mobile revolution, SES launched its free mobile app at SES San Francisco in August with much success. With more than 5,000 people in attendance, there were 6,000 downloads with an average of each download being accessed five times per day. Using the SES mobile app, conference attendees could review the conference agenda and events calendar to create their own personal schedule. It also provided up-to-the-minute news from ClickZ and Search Engine Watch. It can be downloaded through Apple iTunes at http://bit.ly/raxPxg. It is also available for Blackberry and Android devices at http://bit.ly/omc4zC.

“Like everyone these days, we are on the mobile bandwagon, but we wanted to take it a bit further with our mobile marketing curriculum at SES Chicago,” said Matt McGowan, Managing Director of Americas at Incisive Media. “I’m sure attendees will agree with our selection of the two – one to fully integrate mobile into their marketing strategies and one to put a little pressure on the industry to come up with more streamlined mobile search capabilities.”

“We’re really excited that we got the SES mobile app up and running, too. It’s a great vehicle for expanding the reach of our conferences. Attendees can connect with each other, find out what companies are exhibiting, determine which speakers they don’t want to miss, and decide which special events to attend,” continued McGowan.

Incisive Media is offering a special savings of up to $400 for those who register for SES Chicago prior to October 21.

About SES

Incisive Media’s SES Conference & Expo is a leading global conference and training series focused on search engine marketing. Other Incisive resources include ClickZ, which provides digital marketing news, information, commentary, advice, opinion, and research and Search Engine Watch, which covers news and information about search, analysis of the search engine industry, and offers tools for improving search marketing effectiveness.

Incisive Media is a leading global provider of specialized business news and information in print, online, and in person. The company’s principal markets include financial services, legal services, commercial real estate, marketing services, and risk management. Incisive Media’s market-leading brands include Accountancy Age, Computing, Investment Week, Legal Week, Post, Risk, and SES Conference and Expo. For more information, visit www.incisivemedia.com.

SAN FRANCISCO – Marin Software, provider of the leading online advertising management platform for advertisers and agencies, today released the findings of its Paid Search Quarterly Benchmarking Report, which finds iPad and other tablet users tend to click on paid search ads at a higher rate than desktop or smartphone users. According to the report, although paid search ads directly targeted at tablets only comprises 2 percent of overall paid search spend, the click through rate (CTR) on tablets is 37 percent higher compared to desktops. Furthermore, advertisers targeting tablets like the iPad enjoy a lower average cost per click (CPC) compared to both desktops and mobile devices.

Marin Software’s Paid Search Quarterly Benchmarking Report consists of key trends and statistics uncovered through an examination of the Marin Global Search Index. The Marin Global Search Index is comprised of data from more than 800 large-scale advertisers and agencies that collectively spend in excess of $2 billion annually on paid-search through the Marin platform.

Paid Search Key Findings:

- During Q3, paid search spend targeted to desktops comprised 93 percent of total spend while smartphones earned 5 percent and tablets 2 percent of spend. Ads served to tablet devices provided a 37 percent higher CTR than ads on desktops. The average CPC for ads served to tablets was 29 percent lower than desktops.

- Compared to last year, search advertisers on Google saw a 19 percent increase in clicks and a 24 percent drop in impressions during the quarter. During the same time, CTR on Google increased 57 percent while CPC decreased 18 percent, suggesting large-scale advertisers realized efficiency gains through improved matching and more effective bidding.

- Continual refinement of match types from Broad to Phrase to Exact was a significant contributor to improved efficiencies for advertisers. Over the last year, search marketers have increased their use of Exact Match, growing their click-share of the match type by 6 percent while increasing share of spend by 2 percent.

- On Yahoo and Bing, advertisers saw a 43 percent higher click volume at a 10 percent lower CPC over the year. Despite CTR declining on a year over year basis, CTR increased 9 percent compared to Q2, implying improved ad matching or traffic characteristics by advertisers.

The full report, including trends within vertical markets can be downloaded at: http://www.marinsoftware.com/resources/whitepapers/q3-2011-benchmark-report.

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 $100,000 per month on biddable media. Marin Professional delivers the same power and ease of use as Marin Enterprise, through an application designed for marketers spending less than $100,000 per month. Headquartered in San Francisco, with offices worldwide, Marin’s technology powers marketing campaigns for over 800 customers managing more than $2 billion of annualized ad spend in more than 160 countries. For more information, please visit: http://www.marinsoftware.com.

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.

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.

AUSTIN, Texas – Adometry™, Inc., the leader in cross channel attribution, verification and optimization solutions for online advertisers, today announced the release of new campaign optimization features of the Adometry Ad Analytics SaaS Solution Suite. The optimization capabilities are the first to help online marketers improve advertising campaign performance by identifying how specific interactions between display and search channels impact conversions. In addition, the new features dynamically recommend ways advertisers and agencies can adjust campaign investments across channels in order to maximize future budget allocation and improve Return-On-Ad-Spend (ROAS) by 20-50 percent.

Unlike current optimization methods, which rely on manual methods to derive insights from attribution reports, the Adometry solution automates the advertising campaign analysis and optimization process for thousands of different attribution and campaign variables. This ensures marketers are leveraging the most accurate optimization recommendations to drive higher overall conversions and boost campaign performance.

Additional details on the new campaign optimization features from Adometry include:

- Automated Cross Channel Optimization and Media Mix Allocation – Leverages Adometry’s unique fractional attribution methodology to dynamically recommend specific campaign adjustments, including identifying the ideal mix of search and display advertising investments that will maximize overall conversions. These recommendations provide for significant and measurable improvement in overall campaign effectiveness and ROAS.
- Campaign-Oriented Customization – Allows agencies and advertisers to customize optimization recommendations based on specific advertising campaign goals, such as increasing brand awareness, improving reach, and driving conversions. In addition, it utilizes campaign constraints to ensure that resulting optimization recommendations are actionable. The interface provides advertisers with built-in campaign goal criteria and allows them to design their own.
- Actionable UI Dashboard – Provides graphical representations and views of campaign performance that make it easier for advertisers to review data and recommendations in order to take action on future campaign investments.

“Today’s manual approach to campaign optimization does not provide advertisers with the accurate intelligence they need to understand how campaigns are performing or where they can be improved,” said Paul Pellman, CEO of Adometry. “Our new optimization capabilities allow advertisers to automate the entire process so they make the right decisions on future ad investments and improve results.”

To learn more about the Adometry actionable campaign optimization features, visit Adometry’s Ad Analytics SaaS Solution Suite. For more information on Adometry, visit www.adometry.com or follow us on Twitter: @Adometry.

About Adometry

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

SAN FRANCISCO – Chomp, the leading app search engine is pioneering app search advertising with the availability of Chomp Search Ads. The new program, which launches in private beta today, allows developers for the first time, to bid on keywords or phrases which will deliver their ads when users search on those terms within an app search engine. Chomp Search Ads matches app ads to the most relevant potential customer, resulting in quality ad matching for both the advertiser and the consumer. Chomp is opening up Chomp Search Ads to a limited amount of advertisers during this first stage of private beta. The company announced that Milk and Zaarly are two of the first companies participating.

“Being able to advertise the Oink app to people that are in the process of looking for something just like it is a form of targeting we haven’t seen before,” said Kevin Rose, founder of app development company, Milk. “Chomp’s ability to give Milk keyword ad delivery as a result of relevant user search is as ground-breaking as when Google first offered keyword advertising for the web.”

According to Gartner Group, $893 million was spent on app advertising in 2010. With over 200 million iOS and Android users looking for apps each month, developers are spending 20-30% of total app revenue they generate on trying to acquire new users through various advertising and marketing initiatives. Gartner expects total app revenue to be $50 billion by 2014, and as a result, is forecasting a $15-20 billion spend on app advertising.¹

Chomp Search Ads is an auction-based advertising service. Advertisers will first set up an account and pre-load it with ad dollars. Chomp will recommend search terms based on the developer’s app. The developer can also request terms. They can then bid for the rights to a keyword by setting a daily maximum spend as well as a maximum bid price for a given keyword or phrase. Chomp will show ads for apps based on a number of factors, such as bid price, as well as relevancy to the search term. Increasing the bid price will help improve the chances of an ad showing, but it is not the only factor. Chomp users will always receive the most relevant search results, irrespective of advertising buys. Advertisers will have their pre-paid ad accounts charged when users click through via the “Get It” button on the ad. Chomp will provide detailed campaign reporting to advertisers allowing them to measure the performance of Chomp Search Ads.

“Search advertising has the most value when users see an ad for an app that parallels the kind of app they’re trying to find,” said Ben Keighran, CEO and co-founder of Chomp. “Chomp Search Ads is the first product that matches app ads to the most relevant potential customer, helping both the developer and the consumer. Our goal is to make advertising accessible for the bulk of developers — companies that don’t have hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend on advertising, yet they rely on search ads to drive discovery and sales.”

Prior to Chomp Search Ads, advertisers could only buy app display or performance advertising, however under these models, ad placement is disconnected from the user’s desire to find an app. Even on app store sites ad delivery is not based on user search relevance.

“With over a million iOS and Android apps out there, it’s essential to Zaarly that we connect with people looking for a local marketplace,” said Bo Fishback, co-founder and CEO of Zaarly. “The first step to an app download is awareness, and that’s what Chomp delivers. Before this program we wouldn’t even buy advertising because it never delivered meaningful results. We see that completely changing with Chomp Search Ads because we’re confident that it will deliver the highest quality users. We’re making it an essential component of our outbound marketing.”

Chomp Search Ads is available in private beta at ads.chomp.com or by clicking the link at the bottom of the Chomp.com home page.

About Chomp

Founded in 2009 by Ben Keighran and Cathy Edwards, Chomp, Inc. is the only company to enable app search based on what an app actually does. One billion apps are being downloaded every month. As the number of apps explodes, it’s become difficult for users to find the perfect app for what they want to do. Chomp’s patent-pending algorithm is able to understand what an app does and what a user wants and then makes the best match. Chomp also allows developers to effectively integrate app search into their content. Chomp powers search for a wide range of partners including Verizon, Carphone Warehouse, Blekko, 148Apps.com and @aplusk. The company is funded by leading Silicon Valley investors, including Ron Conway, BlueRun Ventures as well as a number of ex-Google angel investors. Advisors include Kevin Rose, Ashton Kutcher, David Blei and Don Metzler. The company is based in San Francisco, CA and can be found at www.chomp.com

U.S. Explicit Core Search

Google Sites led the U.S. explicit core search market in August with 64.8 percent market share, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 16.3 percent (up 0.2 percentage points) and Microsoft Sites with 14.7 percent (up 0.3 percentage points). Ask Network accounted for 3.0 percent of explicit core searches (up 0.1 percentage points), followed by AOL, Inc. with 1.3 percent.

*“Explicit Core Search” excludes contextually driven searches that do not reflect specific user intent to interact with the search results.

More than 17.1 billion explicit core searches were conducted in August, with Google Sites ranking first with 11.1 billion searches. Yahoo! Sites came in second with 2.8 billion (up 1 percent), followed by Microsoft Sites with 2.5 billion (up 1 percent). Ask Network delivered 510 million searches (up 3 percent), followed by AOL, Inc. with 229 million.

U.S. Total Core Search

Google Sites accounted for 64.4 percent of total core search queries conducted, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 18.5 percent (up 0.6 percentage points) and Microsoft Sites with 13.3 percent. Ask Network comprised 2.6 percent of total search queries, followed by AOL, Inc. with 1.2 percent.

* “Total Core Search” is based on the five major search engines, including partner searches, cross-channel searches and contextual searches. Searches for mapping, local directory, and user-generated video sites that are not on the core domain of the five search engines are not included in these numbers.

Americans conducted 19.5 billion total core search queries in August (up 1 percent). Google Sites ranked first with 12.5 billion searches (up 1 percent), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 3.6 billion (up 5 percent) and Microsoft Sites with 2.6 billion (up 1 percent).

“Powered By” Reporting

As a part of comScore’s commitment to accurately represent the continued evolution of the search landscape, comScore is providing insight into the share of organic Core Explicit searches that are powered by Google and Bing.

In August, 66.8 percent of searches carried organic search results from Google (vs. 67.2 percent in July) while 27.1 percent of searches were powered by Bing (vs. 26.8 percent in July).

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

For the first time, this quarterly report from Kantar Media includes paid search advertising expenditures. Search advertising has been incorporated on a like-for-like basis for 2011 and 2010 time periods.

“Advertising grew at a slower rate in the second quarter, contributing to speculation about the durability of an advertising recovery that is into its second year,” said Jon Swallen, SVP Research at Kantar Media North America. “Key ad spend indicators are painting a mixed picture. On one hand, a majority of media types actually improved their performance from Q1 to Q2. On the other, spending growth for the Top 100 advertisers stalled in Q2 and the ad market became more dependent on the comparatively smaller budgets of mid-sized advertisers as the main source of growth.”

Measured Ad Spending By Media

Internet media accounted for more than one-half of the dollar gain in total ad expenditures during the first six months of the year. Display spending jumped 12.9 percent and search investments rose 8.6 percent as each benefitted from a surge of money from the travel, local service and insurance categories.

Within the television sector, expenditures on cable networks increased 11.8 percent during the first half of the year while network TV spending fell 7.6 percent. One factor shaping these results was the shift of BCS college football bowl games and NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament programming from broadcast networks to cable, producing a large, one-time transfer of ad dollars. Supplementing this was a reallocation of TV budgets from network to cable within the prescription drug, financial service and consumer package goods categories.

Syndication TV expenditures surged 18.5 percent, reflecting more hours of monitored programming and larger budgets from auto insurers and consumer package goods marketers. Spanish Language TV had a 1.7 percent increase in first-half spending as declines from bellwether telecom advertisers were offset by expanded budgets from a few financial service providers. Outlays on Spot TV fell by 0.9 percent, reflecting weakness from the telecom category and a slowdown in Q2 spending by auto manufacturers.

Outdoor (+11.8 percent) was paced by healthy increases from local service businesses, banks and TV media outlets. Consumer Magazine ad spending pulled back in Q2 and finished the half year period up 4.0 percent. Prescription drug advertising in magazines picked up during the spring months but these gains were neutralized by cutbacks from auto manufacturers.

The pace of spending in Radio media remained soft throughout the first six months of 2011. Local Radio was up 2.4 percent compared to a year ago and National Spot Radio fell by 1.6 percent.

Newspaper media continued to lag the overall market, dragged down by National Newspapers (-4.9 percent) and Spanish Language Newspapers (-5.9 percent). However, the Local Newspaper segment ended its streak of 22 consecutive quarters of spending declines and eked out a 2.5 percent increase in Q2 and a 0.6 percent gain for the half year.

Percent Change in Measured Ad Spending¹

Source: Kantar Media

1. Figures are based on the Kantar Media Stradegy™ multimedia ad expenditure database across all measured media, including: Network TV (5 networks); Spot TV (125 DMAs); Cable TV (71 networks); Syndication TV; Hispanic Network TV (4 networks); Consumer Magazines (204 publications); Sunday Magazines (8 publications); Local Magazines (29 publications); Hispanic Magazines (18 publications); Business-to-Business Magazines (332 publications); Local Newspapers (142 publications); National Newspapers (3 publications); Hispanic Newspapers (46 publications); Network Radio (5 networks); National Spot Radio (205 markets); Local Radio (32 markets);Internet search (Google search engine); Internet display (2,087 sites monitored at least one year); and Outdoor. Figures do not include public service announcements (PSA) or house advertising

2. Cable TV figures based on 67 English language networks and do not include any Hispanic cable networks

3. Spot TV figures based on 662 English language stations and do not include any Hispanic stations

4. Spanish Language TV includes 4 Hispanic broadcast networks, 4 Hispanic cable network and 71 local Hispanic TV stations

5. Internet search figures reflect paid activity on Google

6. Magazine media includes Publishers Information Bureau (PIB) data and reflect print editions of publications

7. Newspaper media figures reflect print editions of publications

8. Local Radio includes expenditures for 32 markets in the U.S.

9. FSI data represents distribution costs only

Measured Ad Spending By Advertiser

Spending among the ten largest advertisers in the first six months of 2011 was $8,218.4 million, a 0.5 percent decrease compared to a year ago. Among the Top 100 marketers, a diversified group accounting for more than two-fifths of all measured ad expenditures, budgets rose a miniscule 0.8 percent.

Procter & Gamble maintained its top-ranked position with spending of $1,382.8 million, down 7.8 percent. The company has been shifting budgets into Spanish language media and Internet display at the expense of Consumer Magazines, Network TV and Cable TV.

AT&T was the second largest advertiser for the half year period with expenditures of $1,129.5 million, a decline of 2.6 percent. Since the March 2011 announcement of its agreement to purchase T-Mobile, AT&T ad spending has slowed sharply. At competitor Verizon Communications, first-half ad budgets were $808.7 million, a decrease of 22.5 percent and the biggest percentage decline among the Top Ten marketers.

Whereas four automotive manufacturers landed in the Top Ten for the first quarter, only two accomplished that feat for the half year interval. Chrysler Group hiked ad budgets by 58.7 percent to $621.1 million, the largest rate of increase among the Top Ten. Spending was bolstered by several marketing introductions for new and redesigned models. General Motors reduced its six-month expenditures by 13.3 percent, to $924.6 million. The proportion of GM’s ad budget earmarked towards passenger cars, as opposed to SUVs and pickups trucks, continues to expand and is now at its highest level in more than four years.

L’Oreal investments rose 25.0 percent to $626.3 million. Comcast (+35.1 percent to $884.5 million) and Time Warner (+6.7 percent to $618.2 million) also upped their ad budgets. Results for both companies were driven by their movie studio divisions.

Top Ten Advertisers Of Jan-June 2011¹

Source: Kantar Media

1. Figures do not include FSI, House Ads or PSA activity

2. The sum of the individual companies can differ from the total shown due to rounding

Measured Ad Spending By Category

Expenditures for the ten largest categories grew 4.8 percent in the first half of 2011 to $40,982.7 million.

Automotive was the top category with $6,870.2 million of spending in the six month period, up 9.3 percent. However, after a torrid first quarter auto marketers hit the brakes and Q2 expenditures inched forward by only 0.8 percent. It was a complex environment with Toyota and Honda suffering post-earthquake inventory disruptions; wavering consumer confidence; reduced marketing incentives from manufacturers; and a slowing rate of new vehicle sales across the industry.

The Local Services category had the strongest rate of growth among the Top Ten with a 10.0 percent increase to $4,876.6 million. This performance is consistent with the category’s weighting towards mid-sized advertisers, a segment that has been spending robustly.

Escalating competition among credit card marketers was the catalyst for a 5.6 percent jump in Financial Services expenditures, to $4,647.7 billion. The Travel & Tourism category entered the Top Ten with outlays of $2,927.1 million (+6.0 percent) as marketers launched campaigns targeting the peak spring and summer travel seasons.

After an extended run-up, expenditure growth rates for package goods categories are falling back. Food & Candy was down 1.1 percent to $3,268.7 million. Ad spending for Personal Care Products slowed in Q2 but still finished the half year up 9.9 percent to $3,253.1 million.

Top Ten Advertising Categories Of Jan-June 2011¹

Source: Kantar Media

1. Figures do not include FSI or PSA activity

2. Miscellaneous Retail excludes these retail segments: Department Stores, Home Furnishing & Building Supply Stores

3. The sum of the individual categories can differ from the total shown due to rounding

Finishing just outside the Top Ten in dollar volume but with the largest gain of any category was Insurance. Its spending leaped 25.2 percent, propelled by a select group of auto insurers intensifying their battle for market share. Their need for differentiated and winning messages led to a variety of brand positions around the selling points of price, policy features and customer service. A special report from Kantar Media’s creative monitoring service analyzing auto insurers’ message strategies is available here.

Top Spending Advertisers Within Select Media

The top ten TV advertisers spent $5,165.5 million in the medium during the first half of 2011, down 1.7 percent from a year ago. This group accounted for 15.7 percent of total TV expenditures by all advertisers.

Top Ten Television Advertisers¹ Of Jan-June 2011

Source: Kantar Media

1 Figures do not include PSA activity

2 The sum of the individual companies can differ from the total shown due to rounding

The ten largest Internet advertisers invested a total of $1,323.5 million in search and display campaigns, up 24.9 percent versus a year ago. Despite fragmentation on the web, the group accounted for 11.1 percent share of all Internet ad dollars. The three leading wireless telecom providers each made the list along with a pair of financial advertisers.

Top Ten Internet Advertisers Of Jan-June 2011
(Display + Search)

Source: Kantar Media

1. The sum of the individual companies can differ from the total shown due to rounding

The top ten newspaper advertisers of January-June 2011 invested $1,254.1 million in the medium, a decrease of 4.2 percent. As a proportion of total newspaper ad spending by all advertisers, the top ten accounted for 14.9 percent. Auto dealerships were represented in the ranking with four spots and their increased spending amounts are contrary to the overall trend of declining newspaper expenditures.

Top Ten Newspaper Advertisers Of Jan-June 2011

Source: Kantar Media

1. The sum of the individual companies can differ from the total shown due to rounding

About Kantar Media

Established in more than in 50 countries, Kantar Media enables exploration of multimedia momentum through analysis of print, radio, TV, internet, social media, and outdoors worldwide. Kantar Media offers a full range of media insights and audience measurement services through its global business sectors – Intelligence, Audiences and TGI & Custom. Combining the deepest expertise in the industry, Kantar Media tracks more than 3 million brands and delivers insights to more than 22,000 customers around the world. (www.KantarMediaNA.com).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

About IgnitionOne

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

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

About DataPop

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

SAN JOSE, Calif. – Adobe Systems Incorporated (NASDAQ:ADBE) today announced that Adobe® SearchCenter+, a comprehensive search marketing management system within the Adobe Online Marketing Suite, has added keyword performance predictive analytics through a partnering agreement with OptiMine Software, Inc. This agreement will enable search marketers to achieve significant increases in paid search performance (i.e. higher return on ad spend, increased leads, higher conversion rates, increased revenue, greater profit per keyword, etc.). Tests done with search marketers using OptiMine’s keyword modeling have shown improved performance of 25 percent or more.

“Digital marketers are examining their paid search spend in the context of many other digital channels, like social, display and email,” said John Mellor, vice president of business development, Omniture Business Unit, Adobe. “Having the ability to predict the return on paid search becomes critically important when deciding on marketing mix and budget allocation. SearchCenter+ helps our customers spend their paid search budget on keywords that will impact the metrics most important to their business.”

The addition of OptiMine predictive keyword analytics to SearchCenter+ is particularly powerful for Adobe customers because SearchCenter+ captures the actual performance of each keyword in every one of the customer’s paid search campaigns. The OptiMine algorithms will now leverage SearchCenter+ keyword performance data, giving these algorithms a highly valuable data source to more accurately predict keyword performance and automatically generate optimal bids accordingly. Adobe customers can begin adding this new feature to their SearchCenter+ contracts immediately.

“We are delighted to partner with Adobe SearchCenter+ and believe the relationship validates the significant customer returns generated through our unique ability to automatically model every keyword,” said Jim Moar, chief executive officer, OptiMine. “The integration of our automated bid optimization coupled with SearchCenter+’s robust data will enable Adobe’s Online Marketing Suite customers to be even more successful.”

About the Adobe Online Marketing Suite

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

About Adobe Systems Incorporated

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

Google Sites led the U.S. explicit core search market in July with 65.1 percent market share, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 16.1 percent (up 0.2 percentage points) and Microsoft Sites with 14.4 percent. Ask Network accounted for 2.9 percent of explicit core searches, followed by AOL, Inc. with 1.5 percent (up 0.1 percentage points).

*“Explicit Core Search” excludes contextually driven searches that do not reflect specific user intent to interact with the search results.

More than 17.1 billion explicit core searches were conducted in July, up 3 percent versus the prior month. Google Sites ranked first with 11.2 billion searches (up 2 percent), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 2.8 billion (up 4 percent) and Microsoft Sites with 2.5 billion (up 3 percent). Ask Network delivered 494 million searches (up 3 percent), followed by AOL, Inc. with 251 million (up 5 percent).

U.S. Total Core Search

Google Sites accounted for 64.8 percent of total core search queries conducted (up 0.3 percentage points), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 17.9 percent (up 0.4 percentage points) and Microsoft Sites with 13.4 percent. Ask Network comprised 2.6 percent of total search queries, followed by AOL, Inc. with 1.3 percent.

* “Total Core Search” is based on the five major search engines, including partner searches, cross-channel searches and contextual searches. Searches for mapping, local directory, and user-generated video sites that are not on the core domain of the five search engines are not included in these numbers.

Americans conducted 19.2 billion total core search queries in July (up 3 percent). Google Sites ranked first with 12.5 billion searches (up 3 percent), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 3.4 billion (up 5 percent) and Microsoft Sites with 2.6 billion.

“Powered By” Reporting

As a part of comScore’s commitment to accurately represent the continued evolution of the search landscape, comScore is providing insight into the share of organic Core Explicit searches that are powered by Google and Bing.

In July, 67.2 percent of searches carried organic search results from Google (vs. 67.6 percent in June) while 26.8 percent of searches were powered by Bing (vs. 26.6 percent in June).

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

CHICAGO – Global digital performance agency iProspect (www.iprospect.com) and digital marketing intelligence provider AdGooroo (www.adgooroo.com) announced a non-exclusive partnership that makes AdGooroo’s suite of digital competitive intelligence tools available to iProspect’s 39 global offices in 27 countries. AdGooroo currently works with a range of iProspect agencies around the world, including offices in the UK, Italy, Poland, Brazil, Boston and San Francisco.

As part of the agreement, iProspect agencies will be able to take advantage of AdGooroo’s SEM Insight™, a powerful competitive intelligence tool that enables iProspect to monitor the paid search activity of its clients’ PPC competitors (including daily budgets, keywords, ad copy, landing pages and more) in order to benchmark and improve their clients’ own search campaigns. Additional tools available to iProspect include Link Insight™, which enables SEO marketers to quickly identify the most effective links to pursue as well as harmful links to avoid, Trademark Insight™, which enables detailed trademark monitoring, and Display Insight™, which allows marketers to monitor their competitors’ ad network campaigns in near real-time across the Internet’s top 100,000 sites.

“Understanding the markets in which our clients operate is of paramount importance in today’s results-focused climate,” said Ashwini Karandikar, Vice President Service Strategy and Development for iProspect. “AdGooroo tools and data enable our teams to comprehend some of the most intricate details of the digital marketing landscape for each of our clients’ industries and top competitors, and drive more efficient results.”

“We are very pleased to extend our relationship with iProspect and have the opportunity to help contribute to the success of its agencies around the globe,” said AdGooroo founder and CEO Richard Stokes. “Top brands expect their agencies to deliver immediate, impactful results. AdGooroo’s digital marketing intelligence tools enable iProspect to both better understand their clients’ competitive marketplace and utilize this information to enhance digital performance over the long term.”

About AdGooroo:

AdGooroo is a leading provider of Digital Marketing Intelligence that drives competitive advantage for Internet marketers. Through the company’s powerful suite of on-demand tools, online marketing professionals are able to tap into the world’s largest database of search and display marketing data—comprising 14 search engines and 14 advertising networks across 50 countries—to gain actionable intelligence on their top competitors’ keywords, ad creative, backlink data, campaign statistics, budgets and more. In addition, AdGooroo tools enable users to proactively monitor the advertising landscape of specific industries, providing marketers with unprecedented insight into their marketplace. Founded in 2004, AdGooroo helps more than 4,000 advertisers and agencies per year build long-term competitive advantage in the areas of paid and organic search, link building, display advertising, business-to-business lead generation and online trademark protection. For more information, visit AdGooroo.com.

About iProspect:

iProspect is a leading global digital performance agency. The company helps many of the world’s most successful brands maximize their online marketing ROI through paid search, social media strategy, search engine optimization, display media, comparison shopping engines, conversion optimization, mobile marketing and attribution modeling and management, research, and other related services. The agency, which is part of Aegis Media, has received numerous industry awards including: The 2010 ClickZ Connected Marketing Award for Best Use of Search Engine Marketing; The 2009 Search Engine Strategies Award for Best Social Media Marketing Campaign; The 2009 Search Engine Strategies Award for Best Use of Local Search. With offices in Boston, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Dallas-Fort Worth, and around the globe, iProspect can be contacted at 1-800-522-1152, or by visiting www.iprospect.com.

G+ has caught on swiftly, already reaching 18 million users purportedly with 8 million of those since the figure was announced as being 10m on July 14th 2011 and with an estimated 1 billion pieces of content having now been shared worldwide.

However, Google’s stated focus on consumers as opposed to brands and businesses, coupled with the fact that links used in G+ are denoted as ‘do follow’ links – the type of links which represent the greatest impact in search engine optimisation activity – indicate Google’s intention to favourably rank content from G+ users within search engine results pages (SERPs) in the future.

Pete Goold, Managing Director of Tech PR Agency, Punch, commented:

“Any open service which allows do follow links is ripe for abuse by spammers, which might indicate that the do follow functionality may be shut down at some point in the future, as with sites such as Digg in the past. However, in the short term, this is perhaps an incentive to encourage use of the service amongst influential SEOs.

“Whilst it’s still evolving of course, Google plus has done a great job of pulling functionality from other services – such as twitter and Instagram – whilst also integrating with other Google services, such as Gmail, to minimize the amount of effort required to get up and running. Unlike projects such as Google wave, which was much hyped but failed to deliver, the growth rate, even whilst in beta mode until July 21st, indicates that this particular service is going to be here to stay.”

For more information regarding Search, Social Media and PR Company Punch Communications, please contact +44 (0) 1858 411600 or info@punchcomms.com.

Google Sites led the U.S. explicit core search market in June with 65.5 percent market share, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 15.9 percent and Microsoft Sites with 14.4 percent (up 0.3 percentage points). Ask Network accounted for 2.9 percent of explicit core searches, followed by AOL, Inc. with 1.4 percent.

*“Explicit Core Search” excludes contextually driven searches that do not reflect specific user intent to interact with the search results.

More than 16.7 billion explicit core searches were conducted in June. Google Sites ranked first with 10.9 billion searches, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 2.7 billion and Microsoft Sites with 2.4 billion. Ask Network delivered 478 million searches, followed by AOL, Inc. with 239 million.

U.S. Total Core Search

Google Sites accounted for 64.5 percent of total core search queries conducted (up 1.2 percentage points), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 17.5 percent and Microsoft Sites with 14.1 percent (up 1.0 percentage points). Ask Network comprised 2.6 percent of total search queries, followed by AOL, Inc. with 1.3 percent.

* “Total Core Search” is based on the five major search engines, including
partner searches, cross-channel searches and contextual searches. Searches
for mapping, local directory, and user-generated video sites that are not on the
core domain of the five search engines are not included in these numbers.

Americans conducted more than 18.7 billion total core search queries in June (down 3 percent). Google Sites ranked first with 12.1 billion searches, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 3.3 billion and Microsoft Sites with 2.6 billion (up 5 percent).

“Powered By” Reporting

As a part of comScore’s commitment to accurately represent the continued evolution of the search landscape, comScore is providing insight into the share of organic Core Explicit searches that are powered by Google and Bing.

In June, 67.6 percent of searches carried organic search results from Google (vs. 67.8 percent in May) while 26.6 percent of searches were powered by Bing (vs. 26.5 percent in May).

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

SUNNYVALE, Calif. – Advertising on Facebook continued to get more competitive in the second quarter of 2011, with Cost Per Clicks (CPCs) increasing by 22% from the first quarter of 2011. Brands that are actively acquiring fans on Facebook are on course to double their fan base Year on Year (YOY) by October, demonstrating an increasingly competitive marketplace for consumers’ attention. Meanwhile, search spend was up 8% in the second quarter of 2011, but down from 17% YoY in the first quarter, likely due to advertisers focusing on Return on Investment (ROI) instead of volume, as well as the continued slower-than-expected global economic recovery.

This is according to Efficient Frontier, a leading performance marketing company managing more than $1 billion in marketing spend annually on behalf of advertisers worldwide, and its subsidiary Context Optional, the leading provider of social marketing management for global brands and agencies. This data and specific industry trends were released today in the first joint Digital Marketing Performance Report for Q2 2011.

“Facebook advertising is moving from a ‘nice to have’ to a ‘must have’ for global brands, which is illustrated by their increasingly competitive marketplace,” said David Karnstedt, President and CEO, Efficient Frontier. “We believe that Facebook CPCs will continue to rise at a double-digit pace for the remainder of the year, so brands would be wise to add social media marketing to their overall digital marketing spend sooner rather than later.”

Additional Report Highlights

Facebook comments have a viral effect

An analysis of 10 million fans managed by Context Optional demonstrated that for every brand post, there was an average of 100 comments in response. However, brands with more fans received additional interactions. For every 17,000 additional fans generated, the brand received one more comment per post. This demonstrated that there is a viral effect to having more fans as this creates more direct responses (from existing fans) and also indirect responses (from friends of fans).

Facebook spend mostly incremental

Facebook constitutes approximately 5% of search budgets, though for some advertisers this can peak at 25% during time-sensitive, offer-led promotions. In the entertainment category there are some large advertisers who solely advertise on Facebook. This hints that there are new advertising budgets from the gaming and dating sectors going to Facebook, which would not have gone into Search otherwise.

Bing/Yahoo! gained 3.4% points of spend share from Google since Q4

Bing’s continued focus on higher quality and higher monetized traffic is paying off. Last quarter it was noted that the ROI on Bing/Yahoo! was better than Google. Bid management technology such as that used by Efficient Frontier has enabled advertisers to take advantage of that by moving budgets as appropriate. However, in international markets where the search alliance has not yet been implemented, Google’s dominance continues unabated, with the exception of Japan.

Broad-based search is up across most sectors

Retail: Spend was up 9% YoY, with 3% attributable to CPC increases.
Finance: Spend was up 22% YoY partially from CPC increase and partially from click volume increase.
Auto: Spend was down 2% YoY despite CPCs increasing 6%.

International SEM Analysis

United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, spend grew 7% YoY, reflecting advertisers’ confidence in the continued expansion of e-commerce. ROI fell slightly by 3% compared to last year but remains steady quarter-on-quarter. A more detailed look in the Q2 2011 data shows that the ROI was the highest in April in this quarter, being 3-4% higher than the other two months, corresponding to the Easter holiday season and the warm weather.

France, Germany, Australia, Japan

In France, Google has gained 1% market share from Bing and Yahoo! from the previous quarter. In Germany, Yahoo! is losing out to Google, down from 6.4% in Q1 2011 to 5.1% this quarter. This is also a significant quarter in Australia, where Google broke through the 92% share with an increase of almost 3%. However, their click share was only 90.6% and Yahoo!’s click share was 9.4%, making the cost efficiency on Yahoo! much greater than on Google. The Google/Yahoo! share trend has been the opposite in Japan, where Yahoo! gained an almost 4% share from Google in the last quarter.

Outlook for 2011

Facebook CPCs will continue to rise at double-digit pace

Even if CPCs increase at 20% per quarter for the remainder of the year, this will still result in an 80% growth in a year. This could reasonably equate to a doubling of Facebook’s revenue from marketplace ads. Also, with marketplace ad CPCs increasing and already-active brands exploiting the channel, advertisers should immediately focus their efforts on acquiring new Facebook fans, as well as exploiting new ad formats such as Sponsored Stories to find further efficiencies.

Advertisers will increase understanding of Facebook channel

Continued testing and investment in Facebook will see advertisers evaluate and likely increase their spend. Looking ahead, Efficient Frontier believes that advertising dollars will shift from offline media to search, Facebook and display. While we believe all online advertising channels will continue to grow, the Facebook channel will show the strongest growth in the months ahead.

Bing/Yahoo! will benefit if ROI improvements continue

The search marketplace is largely rational, so advertisers will move money towards Bing/Yahoo! to take advantage of ROI improvements. If the Search Alliance renews integration in international markets next year, non-U.S. advertisers should make the same budgeting decisions.

To download a copy of the full report, go to: http://www.efrontier.com/sites/default/files/EFCO_Q2GlobalReport_Final.pdf.

Research Methodology

This analysis was completed based on data from Efficient Frontier search engine marketing customers and the resulting Efficient Frontier’s Customer Index. The Efficient Frontier Customer Index represents a subset of Efficient Frontier clients who have spend data for six consecutive quarters or more whose resulting SEM metrics are then normalized to average industry category contributions established by multiple third-party data providers. The Efficient Frontier Customer Index consists of a fixed sample of large scale U.S. search engine advertisers across multiple sectors, including finance, travel, retail and automotive. The Efficient Frontier Customer Index sheds light on trends in search engine spending and performance on a year-over-year (YoY) and quarter-over-quarter (QoQ) basis.

Our analysis of Facebook performance was based on data from both the Efficient Frontier and Context Optional platforms. A client index representing more than 15 advertisers and 20 million fans from a multitude of verticals including retail, entertainment, CPG and Finance was built from a subset of advertisers, brands and fans managed through the platforms. Advertiser and user behavior was then analyzed for three quarters beginning Q4 2010.

About Efficient Frontier and Context Optional

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

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

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

SAN FRANCISCO – Marin Software, provider of the leading online advertising management platform for advertisers and agencies, today released the findings of its Paid Search Quarterly Benchmarking Report, which indicates a 20 percent year over year increase in paid search advertising spend. According to the report, which sampled data from more than 800 advertisers and agencies, click-through rates rose 12 percent compared to the same quarter a year ago, while overall costs-per-click remained the same. A closer look reveals this increase in efficiency is a result, in part, of an increase in clicks on Phrase and Exact match keywords.

Marin Software’s Paid Search Quarterly Benchmarking Report consists of key trends and statistics uncovered through an examination of the Marin Global Search Index. The Marin Global Search Index is comprised of data from more than 800 large-scale advertisers and agencies that collectively spend in excess of $2 billion annually on paid-search through the Marin platform.

Paid Search Key Findings:

- North American advertisers increased spend on paid search in the second quarter by 20 percent on a year over year basis, increasing click-through rates by 12 percent while holding overall cost-per-click in check.
- On Google, advertisers saw a dramatic decline in impression volumes in the second quarter, with the average marketer experiencing a 15 percent drop compared to last year. At the same time, however, advertisers increased click volumes on an annual basis, growing clicks by 8 percent for the time period. This data suggests that either search marketers took steps to improve efficiency or Google modified its algorithm for matching ads to queries.
- The share of paid clicks directed towards Exact and Phrase match keywords increased by 10 percentage points during the last year at the expense of Broad match clicks. Exact and Phrase keywords have higher click-through rates and lower costs than broad match terms, in part explaining the gains advertisers have realized in terms of efficiency.
- Spend on Yahoo and Bing increased by a median 52 percent on a year over year basis as advertisers built out their campaigns on the combined platform in earnest. Advertisers also experiencing a boost in effectiveness on the combined platform, indicated by a 6 percent increase in click through rates on Yahoo-Bing.

The full report, including trends within vertical markets can be downloaded at: http://www.marinsoftware.com/resources/whitepapers/q2-2011-benchmark-report.

Those interested in attending a webinar discussion of the results can register at: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/388828545.

CARY, N.C. – Dex One Corporation (NYSE: DEXO) and Google announced a strategic agreement that will elevate Dex One to a select group of companies around the world who serve as Google AdWords™ Certified Partners. This partnership is part of Dex One’s overall efforts to drive the company’s digital sales to 30 percent of total revenue by the end of 2012.

Through the partnership, Dex One customers will be better positioned to optimize their lead generation activities, leverage local search, enhance their digital presence and better compete in a changing marketplace.

As a certified partner, Dex One will receive integrated marketing support, training, engineering support, optimization services, and access to new products from Google. This will allow Dex One to strengthen customers’ marketing efforts by providing state-of-the-art technology and provides a strategic relationship where experienced Google consultants will provide technical training to Dex One marketing consultants who can create programs that provide a marked competitive edge.

“This powerful combination of technology and customer access leverages the Google AdWords platform and delivers it to local businesses through our network of 1,500 local marketing professionals and brings our ever-increasing suite of digital products to the next level,” said Dex One Chief Executive Officer Alfred Mockett. “Success in today’s marketplace requires a simple, yet highly effective way to navigate increasingly complex and fragmented digital possibilities. We fully expect this partnership will meet and exceed these needs.”

“Dex One has relationships with local businesses throughout the country, which is what made this partnership attractive to Google,” said Ben Wood, head of Google’s Americas channel sales partnerships. “This partnership will help local businesses benefit from the proven reach, relevance and return on investment of Google AdWords.”

Dex One continues to roll out best-in-class digital product offerings that optimize customers’ digital presence and drive more cost-effective leads to its local channels.

Google AdWords is a cost-effective, efficient way for businesses of all sizes to advertise online by delivering relevant ads when users search for specific products and services on Google properties and/or the Google Display Network. With Google AdWords, advertisers can find new customers online and better connect with them at the precise moment they are searching for specific products and services on their desktop or mobile devices. Google Display Network is comprised of hundreds of thousands of high quality websites and allows advertisers to choose how to communicate their marketing message using text, video and image ads.

About Dex One Corporation

Dex One Corporation (NYSE: DEXO) is a leading marketing solutions provider helping local businesses and their customers connect wherever and whenever they choose to search. Building on its heritage of delivering print-based solutions, the company provides integrated products and services to help its clients establish their digital presence and generate leads. Dex One’s locally based marketing experts offer a broad network of local marketing solutions including online, mobile and print search solutions, such as DexKnows.com. For more information, visit www.DexOne.com.

PALO ALTO, Calif. – Buysight, a leader in customer acquisition and retargeting performance advertising, announced new platform features that begin to create a marketplace for intent-based advertising where advertisers can bid on real-time, in-market shopping behaviors the way they bid on keywords in paid search. The new features include a completely revamped campaign analysis portal and category-level cost-per-click pricing, along with new product feed options and page tagging partnerships that greatly simplify campaign set up for new advertisers.

The new features come as Buysight continues to expand its Real-Time Shopper Marketplace™, where retailers and other advertisers can target advertising based on the real-time purchase intent of over 100 million shoppers. Building on successful retargeting programs, the Marketplace allows Buysight advertisers to use its proprietary Buyer Targeting system to reach new customers, bringing real scale without sacrificing the search-like performance of retargeting campaigns. Results from early adopters in the Marketplace show display ads with Buyer Targeting produced a 500-800% lift in click-through rates (CTRs).

The Marketplace delivers advertisers incremental customers and sales on a pay-for-performance basis. The new features announced today give advertisers insight into and control over their return on ad spend and campaign volume. “With this combination of performance and control, Buysight has created a platform that gives direct response advertisers a real alternative to paid search using the unmatched inventory volume available with display,” said Shaukat Shamim, CEO and Founder of Buysight. “Buysight’s mission is to make it as easy and efficient for our clients to boost sales and profit through display ads as it is through paid search, and today we’re a big step closer to that reality.”

About Buysight, Inc.: Buysight drives incremental sales for advertisers through performance-based campaigns using real-time user-intent targeting. Using its Buyer Intent Map and Buyer Targeting technologies, Buysight’s acquisition, remarketing, and branding programs connect consumers to companies that best meet their needs with instantly personalized, relevant offers for products they intend to buy.

Headquartered in Palo Alto, CA, Buysight was founded in 2008 by pioneers in display and search advertising. For more information, please visit www.buysight.com.

ORLANDO, Fla. – Channel Intelligence (CI) announced that it has acquired ClickEquations, a leading-edge paid search platform currently serving large advertisers and search agencies. CI enthusiastically welcomes all current ClickEquations clients.

The acquisition enables CI to deliver differentiated paid search marketing services along with its existing CI Product Search services. The CI Product Search service delivers rich product feeds that achieve greater relevancy and higher visibility of product images in search results on Google and other search engines. The marriage of ClickEquations’ keyword-based capabilities and CI’s product-centric features produces a unique and highly effective paid search advertising platform.

“Our vision is to provide clients with the complete spectrum of online marketing services, and paid search is clearly a very important addition to our product line and capabilities. The advanced paid search platform technology and talented people of ClickEquations help CI accelerate this strategy,” said Channel Intelligence CEO Rob Wight. “The powerful and unique technology in ClickEquations is a perfect extension to the CI Boost services suite. Today’s advertisers expect Paid Search, Product Search, Display Advertising, Shopping Engines and Marketplaces to be intelligently coordinated, and CI is in the rare position to deliver this kind of advanced platform. We are confident the acceleration of this strategy will allow us to provide our clients with even higher returns and better overall results from their entire online marketing budget.”

The acquisition has been completed as of 6/13/2011. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

About Channel Intelligence (CI)

Relied on by leading companies such as Best Buy, Target, Neiman Marcus, HP, Philips and Kimberly-Clark, CI is the marketing technology company that helps marketers, advertisers and agencies outperform online by leveraging CI Boost services to drive billions of sales annually. Founded in 1999, CI offers the most complete suite of performance-based e-commerce services in the industry. The CI Boost suite includes: Product Search, Display Advertising, Shopping Engines, Marketplaces, Where-to-Buy and Webstore. With offices in Orlando, Fla., Scottsdale, Ariz., Portland, Ore., London and Shanghai, the company drives $2B annually in referred sales online in computing, home improvement, appliances, consumer electronics, toys and a variety of other consumer packaged goods. CI is a partner company of ICG (Nasdaq: ICGE) and Aweida Capital Management. Learn more at www.channelintelligence.com.

About ClickEquations

ClickEquations offers the first intelligent pay-per-click software platform for large advertisers and agencies. It provides complete management, bidding, and reporting plus intelligent extras that save time and improve performance. Learn more at http://www.clickequations.com

NEW YORK – ClickZ, the largest resource of interactive marketing news, information and opinion, has teamed up with search engine industry news specialist Search Engine Watch to launch a new interactive marketing job board. ClickZJobs and SEWJobs helps connect jobseekers with the latest employment opportunities and provide recruiters access to more than 1 million unique interactive and search professionals throughout their network of brands.

With renewed confidence in the interactive marketing industry, digital media spend has been predicted to grow 14% and search by 10.5% in 2011, according to MediaPost. With many of the world’s leading social media and search companies based in the US, demand for the best talent is increasing rapidly. ClickZJobs and SEWJobs will bridge the gap between demand for social media and search engine marketing professionals and recruiters.

Matt McGowan, Managing Director of Americas for Incisive Media, commented: “We are always looking for ways to add value to members of our social media and search marketing community, and playing matchmaker between experienced professionals and the companies looking for talent is a service that benefits the entire interactive marketing industry. We picked Madgex as our partner in this effort because they have the successful track record to get quick, quality results for jobseekers.”

The user-friendly design and highly intuitive functionality makes it as easy as possible for jobseekers to search for their next career move. Jobseekers can search for jobs by a range of criteria including location, job type and salary expectations and create email alerts via the simple sign up process. Creating a user profile takes minutes with options to upload an existing resume, build one from scratch or import any public viewable resume from the web. Once published, recruiters can search the resume database to match the candidates they need to fill their vacancies.

With jobseekers increasingly turning to mobile devices to access the internet ClickZJobs and SEWJobs both have fully mobile enabled job sites. The mobile sites harness the full power of the full job board allowing jobseekers to search, browse and apply for jobs directly from the mobile site using their previously created profile and stored resume. This makes it possible for jobseekers to find their next career change on the move from any location.

Recruiters benefit from a dedicated customizable recruiter profile page featuring all the listed jobs you currently have available. Reach more potential candidates through dedicated branding opportunities throughout the jobs board. Gold members have even more ways to reach the right talent by building a custom program through a variety of premium features including video job listings, newsletter features, of-site banner placements and premium job posting.

ClickZ and Search Engine Watch have partnered with leading UK job board specialist Madgex to power and maintain each site. Madgex is providing their award-winning integrated job board and resume search and match platform. The partnership ensures that ClickZJobs and SEWJobs will benefit from continued innovation and enhancements giving job seekers and candidates the online tools they need.

About ClickZ – ClickZ is the largest resource of interactive marketing news, information, commentary, advice, opinion, research, and reference in the world, online or off. From search to social, technology to trends, our coverage is expert, exclusive, and in-depth.

About Search Engine Watch – Search Engine Watch provides tips and information about searching the web, analysis of the search engine industry and help to site owners trying to improve their ability to be found in search engines.

About Madgex – Madgex are the UK’s leading supplier for commercial outsourced job board and resume software and services. Madgex has successfully delivered digital recruitment solutions to the media, job board and recruitment sectors since 2000. The award winning Madgex job board platform powers over 250 sites across the world with clients including Incisive Media, The Washington Post, Minneapolis Star Tribune and Guardian Jobs.

NEW YORK  – Online advertising saw strong spend growth in the second quarter, according to a report released by IgnitionOne, a leading provider of performance marketing technology and services, managing more than $1 billion in online advertising for some of the world’s largest brands and their agencies, including Chico’s, Ann Taylor, La Quinta and more.

The second quarter saw year-over-year spend growth increases across all three major online media channels (Paid Search, Display and Facebook), despite continuing uncertainties from the economy and higher gasoline prices. US paid search spend grew a steady 12% year-over-year and Facebook advertising was particularly strong, up 22% on a same-client-basis and up 280% across all advertisers. However, paid search declined in June, painting an uncertain picture for the third quarter.

Key findings in the report:

Paid search advertising sees steady growth YOY, but dips in June US paid search spend grew a steady 12% year-over-year in Q2, and was flat compared with Q1 growth. The quarter began strong, but dipped in June to nearly flat growth on a YOY basis.

Google commands majority of market share in search, display
Google was again the standout performer showing gains in YOY search spend and significant market share traction for its AdEx display platform. Google grew to 81% share of all US search advertising spend and 51% share of US RTB display spend in Q2.

Facebook sees dramatic growth from new advertisers
Facebook advertising spend is up 22% YOY on a same-client-basis. However, Facebook has experienced high rates of growth from new marketer adoption in the past year, contributing a 280% increase in advertising spend across all clients. Spending patterns within an advertiser’s campaign lifecycle show marked growth declines after the first few months, suggesting advertisers are still in a “test and learn” phase with the new and immature ad platform.

“Overall it was a very good quarter for online advertising, but it wasn’t a slam dunk,” said Roger Barnette, President of IgnitionOne. “The paid search spending slowdown in June did not have a significant impact on the quarter overall, although it could be an indicator of future months’ performance, and we’re cautiously optimistic heading into Q3.”

IgnitionOne’s complete Q2 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.

Santiago, Chile – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, released the latest results from a study of the search market in Latin America based on data from the comScore qSearch service. The study found that in the past year searches in Latin America surged 21 percent to more than 18.5 billion queries in March 2011, with the typical searcher conducting 167 queries during the month. Google Sites held a strong lead as the top search destination, accounting for 90 percent of all searches conducted in the region.

Latin Americans Conducted 18.5 Billion Searches in March

In March 2011, Latin Americans conducted a total of 18.5 billion searches, an increase of 21 percent from the previous year. This gain was driven primarily by a 14-percent increase in the number of unique searchers, as well as a 6-percent gain in the number of searches per searcher. Each of the six countries included in this study experienced growth in search query volume. Brazil, which accounted for the largest volume of search queries at nearly 6 billion, also had the strongest growth rate of 34 percent. Mexico ranked as the second largest search market with nearly 3.2 billion queries conducted in March 2011 (up 23 percent), followed by Colombia with almost 2.9 billion searches (up 28 percent).

*Excludes visitation from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs

Google Sites Leads Search Market in Latin America

Analysis of the top search destinations in Latin America revealed that Google Sites captured the majority of the search market in Latin America with 90.5 percent market share. More than 16.7 billion searches were conducted on the property in March 2011, with the average searcher performing 153 queries during the month on Google Sites. Across each of the six markets studied, Colombia accounted for the highest share of searches at Google Sites at 92.2 percent, with Argentina accounting for the lowest share at 89.4 percent. Facebook.com ranked as the #2 search destination in Latin America with 525 million searches (2.8 percent share) followed by Microsoft Sites with 513 million searches (2.8 percent share).

*Search properties include all entities included in roll up, i.e. Google Sites includes searches at YouTube.com
**Excludes visitation from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs

About comScore

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

The April 2011 qSearch data reflect the impact of Yahoo! Search Direct, Yahoo!’s new feature that delivers search results in real-time while users type their query. Yahoo! Search Direct was available only on Yahoo! U.S. Web Search for the month of April.

U.S. Explicit Core Search

Google Sites led the U.S. explicit core search market in April with 65.4 percent market share, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 15.9 percent (up 0.2 percentage points) and Microsoft Sites with 14.1 percent (up 0.2 percentage points). Ask Network accounted for 3.0 percent of explicit core searches, followed by AOL, Inc. with 1.5 percent.

*“Explicit Core Search” excludes contextually driven searches that do not
reflect specific user intent to interact with the search results.

More than 16.2 billion explicit core searches were conducted in April. Google Sites ranked first with 10.7 billion searches, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 2.6 billion, Microsoft Sites with 2.3 billion, Ask Network with 491 million and AOL, Inc. with 248 million.

U.S. Total Core Search

Google Sites accounted for 64.2 percent of total core search queries conducted (up 0.1 percentage points), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 17.9 percent and Microsoft Sites with 13.8 percent (up 0.2 percentage points). Ask Network comprised 2.7 percent of total search queries, followed by AOL, Inc. with 1.4 percent.

* “Total Core Search” is based on the five major search engines, including
partner searches, cross-channel searches and contextual searches. Searches
for mapping, local directory, and user-generated video sites that are not on the
core domain of the five search engines are not included in these numbers.

Americans conducted more than 18.0 billion total core search queries in April. Google Sites ranked first with 11.6 billion searches, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 3.2 billion and Microsoft Sites with 2.5 billion.

comScore Total Core Search Query Report
April 2011 vs. March 2011
Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations
Source: comScore qSearch
Core Search Entity    Total Core Search Queries (MM)
Mar-11    Apr-11    Percent Change
Total Core Search    18,886    18,089    -4%
Google Sites     12,113     11,609     -4%
Yahoo! Sites     3,405     3,239     -5%
Microsoft Sites     2,576     2,501     -3%
Ask Network     520     491     -6%
AOL, Inc.     272     248     -9%
“Powered By” Reporting

In order to accurately represent the continued evolution of the search landscape, comScore is providing insight into the share of algorithmic explicit searches that are powered by Google and Bing, and branded as such to the consumer. Google’s “powered by” share is composed of searches conducted at Google entities, as well as branded searches at AOL and Ask. Bing’s “powered by” share is composed of searches conducted at Microsoft entities as well as branded Yahoo! entities.

In April, 67.8 percent of searches carried organic search results from Google, while 26.5 percent of searches were powered by Bing organic results.

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

NEW YORK – Yodle, a leader in local online marketing, announced the launch of its full-service Search Engine Optimization offering for the franchise industry, Yodle FranchiseSEO. Yodle FranchiseSEO was developed to deliver on a set of best practices for website development, maps optimization and custom content creation that are designed to drive prominent rankings for franchisees on top search engines. Yodle is also proud to announce that Meineke Car Care Centers has rolled out Yodle FranchiseSEO to 950 of its locations across the country.

“Yodle’s full service SEO solution has resulted in first page exposure for Meineke,” said Don Rauch, Director of Marketing for Meineke. “The type of results we continue to receive show great progress is being made in getting us ranked where we want to be and among the keywords we have targeted.”

Yodle FranchiseSEO, Yodle’s second custom solution for the Franchise community, optimizes for the most relevant local keywords at the Franchisee level while building on and reinforcing the ranking authority of the Franchisor web site. Features include:

- Franchisee Site Creation: Yodle creates professionally designed websites that showcase the franchise brand and are developed with SEO best practices.
- Link Building: Yodle builds links to franchisee sites from local, social, and video websites by creating and syndicating custom content tailored to the franchisee’s services.
- Maps Optimization: Yodle claims and builds out each franchisee’s map profiles on Google Place, Bing Maps and Yahoo! Local.
- Corporate Site Optimization: Yodle works with the Franchise corporate site to ensure it is optimized to pass along online ranking authority to franchisees.

These features, along with our advanced reporting and premium customer service, were designed to deliver relevant traffic to franchisee sites and generate new customers and positive ROI to the Franchise systems.

“The launch of Yodle FranchiseSEO represents yet another major investment in developing products that fulfill the unique needs of the Franchise community,” said Yodle CEO Court Cunningham. “We will continue to invest and build on our best-in-class suite of products to help Franchise systems solve complex marketing challenges in an ever-changing online marketing landscape.”

Yodle, a leader in local online advertising and named #35 on the INC 500 List of fastest growing private companies in the U.S., connects thousands of local businesses with consumers in a process so simple and cost-effective that business owners can’t imagine any other way to advertise. Yodle has developed an integrated approach to signing up and serving local businesses that are transitioning their marketing budgets online. Yodle is headquartered in New York, NY and serves a national customer base from six local offices across the United States.”

Meineke: Meineke Car Care Centers, based in Charlotte, N.C., is one of the nation’s largest car care franchise businesses, with approximately 950 locations in 146 markets.

New York, NY – Yodle, a leader in local online marketing, announced it has completed a transaction to acquire ProfitFuel, Inc.  ProfitFuel, based in Austin, TX, is the largest and fastest growing provider of local search engine optimization (SEO) services to small businesses across the United States.  With over 11,000 clients, ProfitFuel has achieved breakout growth serving small businesses that have a moderate marketing budget.  Outrank, the company’s main service, is designed to generate inbound phone calls and emails cost effectively by delivering prominent rankings on top search engines for clients.

Historically, Yodle has focused its local online marketing services on small business advertisers that typically spend larger budgets of $1,000+ monthly and national brand advertisers; Franchise, Multi-location, and Manufacturer/Dealer organizations that advertise locally across hundreds of locations.  With the acquisition of ProfitFuel, Yodle now adds a product and a sales force capable of serving a much broader set of clients who have smaller marketing budgets, but who still want the accountability of measuring their marketing performance.

“With ProfitFuel, Yodle is doubling down on its approach of providing a clear ROI to the local advertiser, delivered through a combined 450 person sales and client service team,” said Yodle CEO Court Cunningham.  “ProfitFuel’s dedication to customer results and sales excellence made it a natural fit with Yodle.  I look forward to bringing Yodle’s expanded suite of SEM, SEO, Social and Display marketing products to market more quickly in collaboration with ProfitFuel’s world class team.”

David Rubin, previously CEO of ProfitFuel, will join Yodle as SVP of Sales. Mr. Rubin has a proven 20 year track record as a successful CEO and sales leader in the technology space.   Prior to ProfitFuel, Mr. Rubin was founder and CEO of HomeCity, an online real estate brokerage that pioneered utilizing web-based content to acquire clients. Before founding HomeCity, David held leadership positions at various companies including Intraware as Vice President of New Services Development, BITSource as founder and CEO and Computize as National Sales Director.

“We felt Yodle was the perfect choice to maximize our future potential for our clients, employees and shareholders,” said Mr. Rubin.  “We spoke to many companies in the industry and felt that Yodle offered the best set of products, highest caliber talent and the most comprehensive vision to outperform the competition and transform this industry for many years to come.”

Founded in 2000, ProfitFuel has 220 employees and is consistently recognized as one of the best places to work by multiple sources, including Austin Business Journal and Texas Monthly.  Yodle will now boast a 300-person sales force and many more talented staffers across marketing operations, client services and corporate departments.

Yodle plans to grow ProfitFuel’s Austin, TX office, making it a major hub, and to fully integrate the company’s infrastructure and technology by year’s end.

About Yodle: Yodle, a leader in local online marketing and named #35 on the INC 500 List of fastest growing private companies in the U.S., connects thousands of local businesses with consumers in a process so simple and cost-effective that business owners can’t imagine any other way to advertise. Yodle has developed an integrated approach to signing up and serving local businesses that are transitioning their marketing budgets online. Yodle is headquartered in New York, NY.

SES Toronto 2011
TORONTO – During SES Toronto at the Hyatt Regency Toronto June 13-15, 2011, Canadian marketers will have the opportunity to hear from their peers on the latest trends in search engine optimization (SEO), social media, local, mobile, link building, video optimization, pay-per-click (PPC), usability and more.

“We know that our Canadian friends have many of the same social media and search marketing challenges and opportunities that we have in the U.S., but there are slight twists and variations,” said Matt McGowan, Managing Director of Americas for Incisive Media. “That’s why we programmed SES Toronto to include the leading voices in all aspects of Canadian marketing. This gives attendees the opportunity to mingle with their fellow-country marketers, share experiences, and go away briefed on the latest Canadian-specific trends that can immediately benefit their marketing programs.”

Now in its eighth year, the SES Toronto conference includes two days of search marketing sessions, vendor exhibitions, and networking events on June 13 and 14, and one day of training on June 15. Throughout the conference, there are informal opportunities for attendees to mingle, including a networking reception at the end of the day on June 13. From now through May 18, marketers can register for SES Toronto to receive an early-bird savings of up to $200.

The two Canadian keynote speakers are Amber Mac, technology journalist, best-selling author and columnist, and Tracy Smith, Vice President, Performance Marketing and Go-To-Market, Yellow Pages Group.

Canadian experts included in the SES Toronto program are:

Speakers:
Kerstin Baker-Ash, Head, Performics Canada
Guillaume Bouchard, Co-founder and CEO, NVI
Laura Callow, Senior Search Marketing Manager, Intuit Canada, Global Business Division
Dave Davies, CEO, Beanstalk SEO
June Li, Founder and Managing Director, ClickInsight
Steve Mast, President, Delvinia
Jeff Quipp, Founder and CEO, Search Engine People Inc.
Ezra Silverton, President and Founder, 9th sphere

Moderators:
Andrew Goodman, SES Advisory Board and President, Page Zero Media
Jim Hedger, writer and broadcaster
Robert Rock, Account Manager, Search Engine People

Register now to attend the SES Toronto conference, including all conference sessions, keynotes, the expo hall, training sessions and partnered events.

About SES

Incisive Media’s SES is a leading global conference and training series focused on search engine marketing. Other Incisive resources for interactive marketers include ClickZ for digital marketing news, information, commentary, advice, opinion and research and Search Engine Watch, which provides news and information about search, analysis of the search engine industry and tools for improving search marketing effectiveness.

Incisive Media is a leading global provider of specialized business news and information, in print, in person and online. The company’s principal markets include financial services, legal services, commercial real estate, marketing services and risk management. Incisive Media’s market-leading brands include Accountancy Age, Computing, Investment Week, Legal Week, Post, Risk, and SES Conference and Expo. For more information, visit www.incisivemedia.com

For more news and event updates visit the SES press room at http://media.searchenginestrategies.com.

WAKEFIELD, Mass. – SEMPO announced results of its 2011 State of Search Marketing Report. With over 900 companies and agencies participating in the global online survey conducted by Econsultancy, the report estimates that the North American search marketing industry will grow by 16% in 2011 to a value of $19.3B, up from $16.6B in 2010.

A significant percentage of companies are now using Facebook. Just under half of respondents say they use Facebook for pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns – 47% in North America and 45% outside the US and Canada. The rising popularity of Facebook is even more apparent within agencies. Nearly three quarters of North American agencies (74%) and two thirds of those outside the U.S. and Canada (69%) say their clients use Facebook.

The rise of the mobile internet is the trend which is having the most impact on search marketing, according to the survey. Local search is the next most significant trend, yet primarily from the perspective of agencies. Respondents also indicated the growing importance of behavioral targeting. The number of companies doing SEO, paid search and social media in-house, has decreased, with more marketers seeking help from service providers.

“The healthy growth reported for the industry in 2011—surpassing the 14% growth in 2010—is gratifying,” commented SEMPO president Chris Boggs. “The industry is evolving to encompass much more than the search engines. The increasing role of social media is re-shaping the industry in surprising ways.”

Other top findings include:

Mobile internet

* 40% of company respondents said that the growth of the mobile internet was “highly significant”, an increase from 26% last year. A further 39% said it was “significant”.
* Agencies are feeling the impact of the mobile internet even more strongly, with almost half of supply-side respondents (47%) describing its impact as highly significant.

Local search

* The next most important trend is local search, according to agencies. Forty-three percent (43%) of supply-side respondents said this was highly significant. A further 41% say that it is significant. According to agencies, 34% of client search budget is spent on local PPC advertising (i.e. at a regional, city or sub-market level).
* Client-side advertisers are not yet affected by local search as much as their agency counterparts. Only 26% of company respondents say that the impact of local search has been highly significant. Local, on average, represents just under a quarter (23%) of client-side search budget, which is significantly less than the agency average (34% of client budget).

Use of social networks, including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn

* Beyond PPC, the percentage of companies using Facebook more broadly for promoting themselves now stands at 84%, up from 73% last year.
* Three quarters of companies (75%) use Twitter to promote their companies or brands, while 52% use business networking site LinkedIn. More than a quarter of North American companies now run PPC campaigns on LinkedIn.

More companies outsourcing SEO, paid search and social media

* Only 44% of companies are now carrying out search engine optimization in-house, compared to 51% last year.
* Only 38% of companies are doing paid search marketing in-house compared to 47% last year.
* Only 55% are doing social media marketing in-house, compared to 62% last year.

Behavioral targeting

* The proportion of company respondents who say that behavioral targeting is highly significant or significant now stands at 78%, up from 68% last year.

This year’s annual SEMPO study – now in its seventh year – is an aggregation of information provided by organizations from 66 different countries, from marketers across a range of business sectors and types of agency.

“Once again the SEMPO survey has collected a rich set of data that provides valuable industry perspective and insights as seen through the eyes and dollar investments of both advertisers and agencies,” said Marc Engelsman, VP Client Programs and Services at Digital Brand Expressions and the lead for this SEMPO initiative. “All marketers, not just search marketers, should want to leverage this information as they look to improve the performance of their digital engagements.”

“A mature industry maintains a balance between today and tomorrow,” said Stefan Tornquist, U.S. Research Director at Econsultancy. “Search engine marketers have learned how to roll with algorithm shifts and price increases and are constantly improving their efficiency. At the same time, they’re taking the time to focus on the emerging opportunities where search, social and mobile meet.”

The report is based on an online survey, conducted in February and March 2011, which SEMPO and Econsultancy promoted to their respective members and to search marketing professionals. A complimentary copy of the report is provided to SEMPO members and those who participated in the survey. A total of 920 total respondents from 66 countries took part, including 325 advertisers and 595 agencies or consultants conducting search marketing on behalf of clients.

To obtain a copy of the SEMPO 2011 State of Search Marketing report, visit: http://econsultancy.com/reports/sempo-state-of-search

About Econsultancy

Econsultancy is a community where the world’s digital marketing and e-commerce professionals meet to sharpen their strategy, source suppliers, get quick answers, compare notes, help each other out and discover how to do everything better online. It was launched in 1999 and since then has grown to a dominant position in the digital marketing industry with more than 100,000 members worldwide. Its website and blog attracts more than 300,000 unique users per month and its range of training courses and conferences are attended by more than 5,000 marketers every year. For more information, visit http://econsultancy.com or follow @econsultancy on Twitter.

About SEMPO

SEMPO is a global non-profit organization serving the search marketing industry and marketing professionals engaged in it. Its purpose is to provide a foundation for industry growth through building stronger relationships, fostering awareness, providing education, promoting the industry, generating research and creating a better understanding of search and its role in marketing. SEMPO includes thousands of professionals across 50 countries. The organization’s mission is to represent the common interests of companies and consultants worldwide and provide them with a voice in the marketplace. SEMPO’s education and outreach initiatives are funded in part by Google, American Express Open SearchManager, and Baidu, and supported through partnerships with SMX, SES, OMS, and MediaPost. For more information or to join the organization, visit http://www.SEMPO.org.

U.S. Explicit Core Search

Google Sites led the U.S. explicit core search market in March with 65.7 percent market share (up 0.3 percentage points), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 15.7 percent and Microsoft sites with 13.9 percent (up 0.3 percentage points). Ask Network accounted for 3.1 percent of explicit core searches, followed by AOL, Inc. with 1.6 percent.

*“Explicit Core Search” excludes contextually driven searches that do not reflect specific user intent to interact with the search results.

More than 16.9 billion explicit core searches were conducted in March. Google Sites ranked first with 11.1 billion searches, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 2.7 billion, Microsoft Sites with 2.4 billion, Ask Network with 520 million and AOL, Inc. with 272 million.

U.S. Total Core Search

Google Sites accounted for 64.1 percent of total core search queries conducted, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 18.0 percent and Microsoft Sites with 13.6 percent. Ask Network comprised 2.8 percent of total search queries, followed by AOL, Inc. with 1.4 percent.

* “Total Core Search” is based on the five major search engines, including partner searches, cross-channel searches and contextual searches. Searches for mapping, local directory, and user-generated video sites that are not on the
core domain of the five search engines are not included in these numbers.

Americans conducted 18.9 billion total core search queries in March. Google Sites ranked first with 12.1 billion searches, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 3.4 billion and Microsoft Sites with 2.6 billion.

“Powered By” Reporting

In order to accurately represent the continued evolution of the search landscape, comScore is providing insight into the share of algorithmic explicit searches that are powered by Google and Bing, and branded as such to the consumer. Google’s “powered by” share is composed of searches conducted at Google entities, as well as branded searches at AOL and Ask. Bing’s “powered by” share is composed of searches conducted at Microsoft entities as well as branded Yahoo! entities.

In March, 68.2 percent of searches carried organic search results from Google, while 26.4 percent of searches were powered by Bing organic results.

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

SUNNYVALE, Calif. – The first quarter of 2011 started off strong in the U.S. for digital marketing, with search engine marketing growing by 17% Year on Year (YoY) due primarily to solid increases in the retail and finance categories. Facebook advertising is also getting more competitive, with Cost Per Clicks (CPCs) increasing by 40% Quarter on Quarter (QoQ). Display advertising also showed positive signs with a 300% increase in exchange ad inventory and a 30% Cost Per Thousand (CPM) decline, indicating greater gains in reach and efficiency within the ad exchanges.

This is according to Efficient Frontier, a leading performance marketing company managing more than $1 billion in marketing spend annually on behalf of advertisers worldwide. This data and specific industry trends were released in the company’s Q1 2011 Digital Marketing Performance Report.

“The strong showing for digital marketing in the first quarter of 2011 was in line with our prediction of a 15% to 20% increase in spend in 2011,” said David Karnstedt, President and CEO, Efficient Frontier. “We’re also seeing great demand for Facebook’s ad products as the social networking giant’s ad offerings continue to evolve. This is all solid evidence of an economic recovery, and that marketers are seeing tremendous results when they intelligently allocate their marketing spend and optimize across channels.”

Report Highlights

Digital marketing continues to show strength in the first quarter of 2011. While search marketing decelerated as expected off of a big Q4 2010, YoY growth remains robust at 17%. Advertiser demand for Facebook’s ad products increased significantly with spend rising sharply on 40% QoQ CPC growth. The display ad exchanges also rapidly expanded with Efficient Frontier’s advertisers accessing more than 300% more inventory than a year ago at 30% lower Cost Per Thousand (CPMs). This means that display advertisers are gaining both reach and efficiency as new technologies like Real Time Bidding (RTB) become more prevalent.

Broad-Based Search Growth Across Nearly All Sectors

The retail sector was the big winner this past quarter, as retail impressions grew by 30% YoY, showing higher consumer interest in retail products. The Finance sector also fared well, growing at 18% YoY. The travel sector was the only sector that saw a decline in spend as CPCs remained flat.

Retail: Spend was up 22% YoY on increased consumer demand
Travel: Spend is down 13% YoY as CPCs are flat
Finance: Spend was up 18% YoY on CTR gains
Auto: Spend was up 10% YoY on CPC gains as well as increased in consumer demand
Bing-Yahoo! ROI Increase

Google continues to have the majority of overall market share in SEM spend and clicks post the Bing-Yahoo! integration. However, Bing’s ROI is currently higher than Google’s ROI. Bing’s ROI has increased 10% YoY while Google’s ROI has decreased by 12% YoY. While the revenue per click (RPC) on Bing is 12% lower than Google, the CPCs on Bing are also lower than the CPCs on Google, which is driving Bing’s higher ROI.

Facebook Becomes More Competitive

Efficient Frontier saw tremendous momentum in Facebook advertising throughout the last several quarters. Advertisers are eager to take advantage of the full capabilities in the Facebook Marketplace to engage with their fans and promote their brands. Because of this, spend on Facebook is growing. Our analysis shows CPCs have grown by 44% QoQ, indicating that Facebook is becoming more competitive as advertisers realize its tremendous value.

International SEM Analysis

United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, spend grew 9% YoY, reflecting increased confidence in consumer consumption power. ROI in the U.K. increased by 6% YoY. Google dominates the SEM market with a 91% market share. Unlike the U.S., where the travel industry has declined, the overall demand for travel has increased in the U.K., with spend in the travel sector growing by 8% YoY due to impressions and click growth. ROI in travel has increased 14% YoY, indicating strong consumer buying intentions.

France, Germany, Australia

SEM market share is dominated by Google in France, Germany, and Australia with approximately 93% of the market. Yahoo! comes in second place in Germany and Australia while in France, Bing has a larger market share than Yahoo!.

Japan

Unlike the U.S. and Europe, Japan’s SEM market is more evenly divided between Google and Yahoo!, with Google taking a slight edge at 53% market share. Amidst the horrific crisis in Japan, SEM spend has grown by 13% YoY. The growth is due to a CPC increase of 7% YoY as well as click volume increase of 5% YoY.

Outlook for 2011

SEM Growth Continues

Efficient Frontier continues to be optimistic about SEM growth. Our prediction is that search will continue to grow 15% this year in the U.S. due to the strength in the finance and retail sectors. Our prediction for the U.K. is that search will continue to grow at 10%.

Bing-Yahoo! Market Share Increase

As Bing expands its network, it is likely that the traffic quality will drop. Having a 12% higher ROI puts Bing in a good position to expand its network while giving it a significant margin of error. The higher return on Bing-Yahoo! should cause rational advertisers to shift their advertising dollars from Google to Bing.

Cross-Channel Marketing

Advertisers should allocate their advertising spend across the various digital marketing channels including search, display, and Facebook. Each channel serves a significant yet different role in overall management of advertising campaigns. The ability to manage advertising in a transparent cross-channel manner will give advertisers a leg up in getting consumer attention in a market that is becoming increasingly competitive. Efficient Frontier’s prediction is that channels like display and Facebook will double over the next year.

Research Methodology

This analysis was completed based on data from Efficient Frontier search engine marketing customers and the resulting Efficient Frontier Customer Index. The Efficient Frontier Customer Index represents a subset of the company’s clients with spend data for six consecutive quarters or more, whose resulting SEM metrics are then normalized to average industry category contributions established by multiple third-party data providers. The Efficient Frontier Customer Index consists of a fixed sample of large-scale search engine advertisers across multiple sectors, including finance, travel, retail and automotive. The Efficient Frontier Customer Index sheds light on trends in search engine spending and performance on YoY and QoQ basis.

The complete U.S. Digital Performance Marketing Report: Q1 2011 is available for download from the Efficient Frontier website at: http://news.efrontier.com/Global-Q12011-Report.html

http://twitter.com/efrontier

http://www.facebook.com/efrontier

About Efficient Frontier

Efficient Frontier is a leader in online performance marketing managing search marketing, display and social media campaigns for advertisers and agencies around the world. Efficient Frontier currently manages more than $1 billion in annual marketing spend on behalf of their clients globally. Founded in 2002, Efficient Frontier pioneered the application of modern portfolio theory for search engine marketing and today combines its core predictive modeling algorithms and bidding technology with comprehensive strategic and tactical value-added services. The largest and most sophisticated advertisers and agencies partner with Efficient Frontier to achieve and sustain optimal campaign performance and growth in highly complex and competitive marketplaces. The company is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, with offices in New York, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and India, and technology licensing partnerships in Japan, Hong Kong and Australia. Efficient Frontier is a privately held company with funding from Redpoint Ventures and Cambrian Ventures. For more information, please visit http://www.efrontier.com and subscribe to the Efficient Frontier blog at blog.efrontier.com.

SES Toronto 2011
TORONTO – The Hyatt Regency Toronto will be the venue for Incisive Media’s SES Toronto, to be held June 13-15, 2011. From now through April 15, marketers can register to receive a pre-agenda savings of up to $400 for the Canadian-focused search and social marketing event. An attractively-priced All Access Passport, which includes access to all conference sessions, keynotes, the expo hall, training sessions and partnered events, is being offered.

“It should be a really exciting SES Toronto this year because we’ve got a slew of new content for attendees,” said Matthew McGowan, Managing Director of Americas for Incisive Media. “The social media and search arena has changed drastically in the last year, especially with the growing influence of smart mobile marketing. We’ve lined up all the experts to share their new practices and innovations with our Canadian colleagues.”

Along with SEO, SEM and PPC sessions aimed at the Canadian market, SES Toronto features sessions that have been popular with State-side conference attendees, but never presented in Canada. These sessions include:

Key Points in Launching a Global Website
Smart Mobile Marketing
Next Generation YouTube Marketing
Content Marketing Optimization
Managing Your Online Reputation
What Every Paid Search Advertiser Needs to Know about the Bing/Yahoo Alliance
Social Media Solutions on a Budget
Enterprise Level SEO
Local 2.0: the Evolution of Search

This is the 8th year Incisive Media has presented SES Toronto, which features sessions specifically geared towards beginners, intermediates and advanced marketers. The conference program runs all day June 13 and 14, as does the Expo Hall. June 15 is set aside for training workshops. Throughout the conference, there are informal opportunities for attendees to mingle, including a networking reception at the end of the day on June 13.

To attend SES Toronto, fill out the registration form here.

About SES

Incisive Media’s SES is a leading global conference and training series focused on search engine marketing. Other Incisive resources for interactive marketers include ClickZ for digital marketing news, information, commentary, advice, opinion and research and Search Engine Watch, which provides news and information about search, analysis of the search engine industry and tools for improving search marketing effectiveness.

Incisive Media is a leading global provider of specialized business news and information, in print, in person and online. The company’s principal markets include financial services, legal services, commercial real estate, marketing services and risk management. Incisive Media’s market-leading brands include Accountancy Age, Computing, Investment Week, Legal Week, Post, Risk, and SES Conference and Expo. For more information, visit www.incisivemedia.com.

COLUMBIA, Md. – Merkle (www.merkleinc.com), the nation’s fastest growing customer relationship marketing (CRM) agency, announced its acquisition of Pittsburgh-based IMPAQT, a recognized leader in search marketing. IMPAQT’s expertise in SEM, SEO, bid management and search analytics complements Merkle’s extensive analytics, database and digital marketing capabilities and expands its integrated customer marketing solutions. The combination of search with Merkle’s CRM assets is unique in the marketplace and will provide a lens into customer behavior that will allow brands to further optimize conversion, media measurement, keyword and bid strategy at the intersection of search and database marketing.

In February 2011, The Forrester Wave recognized IMPAQT as a market leader among search marketing agencies. Its roster of clients includes world-class brands such as Mercedes, Office Depot, Chase, Tiffany & Co. and Penske. IMPAQT is a formidable force in the search marketing arena and has experienced significant growth, now with over 80 employees and projected gross revenue in 2011 to exceed $90M. IMPAQT’s proficiency in search combined with Merkle’s longstanding expertise in CRM strategy, data management and analytics will give marketers the opportunity to enhance both customer acquisition and engagement.

“This acquisition brings together two standout companies,” said Merkle CEO David Williams. “This is an exciting time for us, and we are looking forward to putting this unique combination of competencies and capabilities that search and CRM bring together to work for our existing and future clients. The fusion of both organizations unites our mutual drive for innovation, entrepreneurialism, analytics and market leadership.”

Merkle’s acquisition of IMPAQT signals its ongoing commitment to accelerating its digital strategy to include investments in digital acquisition and engagement capabilities, focusing on e-mail, mobile, social, site optimization, performance display and search. In addition, Merkle continues to expand its staff and capabilities and is evaluating acquisitions in digital creative, analytics, technology and strategy. Through the integration of these existing competencies, new digital technologies and the skills of its industry experts, Merkle provides its customers access to best-in-class CRM across media and channels, both online and off.

“IMPAQT’s acquisition by Merkle will greatly expand our growth opportunities in the coming years,” says Richard Hagerty, IMPAQT’s CEO. “We look forward to our two companies working together on innovations within areas of marketing that have yet to be targeted by our competition, defining new relationships between CRM and Search and expanding our already extensive analytics capabilities.”

Merkle Inc.

Merkle is the nation’s largest and fastest growing customer relationship marketing 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. With more than 1,400 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, Seattle, Hagerstown, MD and Shanghai. For more information, contact Merkle at 1-877-9-Merkle or visit www.merkleinc.com.

IMPAQT

IMPAQT is a privately held Search Marketing agency helping Fortune 1000 marketers gain revenue, branding, awareness and top Internet rankings through Search-based Paid Placement campaigns and Organic Web site optimization, as well as social media marketing and data integration.

IMPAQT’s customized client consulting, coupled with powerful analytics tools and analysis, has catapulted it to the top tier of Search Marketing agencies worldwide. IMPAQT manages millions of keywords for more than 100 brands and has managed more than 500 campaigns since its launch in 1999. IMPAQT has doubled its annual growth rate over three years, ranking as one of Inc. Magazine’s fastest growing companies. Please visit www.IMPAQT.com to learn more.

U.S. Explicit Core Search

Google Sites led the U.S. explicit core search market in February with 65.4 percent market share, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 16.1 percent and Microsoft sites with 13.6 percent (up 0.5 percentage points). Ask Network accounted for 3.2 percent of explicit core searches, followed by AOL, Inc. with 1.7 percent.

*“Explicit Core Search” excludes contextually driven searches that do not reflect specific user intent to interact with the search results.

More than 15.4 billion explicit core searches were conducted in February. Google Sites ranked first with 10.1 billion searches, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 2.5 billion, Microsoft Sites with 2.1 billion, Ask Network with 491 million and AOL, Inc. with 267 million.

U.S. Total Core Search

Google Sites accounted for 64.9 percent of total core search queries conducted (up 0.3 percentage points), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 17.3 percent and Microsoft Sites with 13.4 percent (up 0.6 percentage points). Ask Network comprised 2.9 percent of total search queries, followed by AOL, Inc. with 1.6 percent.

* “Total Core Search” is based on the five major search engines, including partner searches, cross-channel searches and contextual searches. Searches for mapping, local directory, and user-generated video sites that are not on the core domain of the five search engines are not included in these numbers.

Americans conducted nearly 17.0 billion total core search queries in February. Google Sites ranked first with 11.0 billion searches, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 2.9 billion and Microsoft Sites with 2.3 billion.

“Powered By” Reporting

In order to accurately represent the continued evolution of the search landscape, comScore is providing insight into the share of algorithmic explicit searches that are powered by Google and Bing, and branded as such to the consumer. Google’s “powered by” share is composed of searches conducted at Google entities, as well as branded searches at AOL and Ask. Bing’s “powered by” share is composed of searches conducted at Microsoft entities as well as branded Yahoo! entities.

In February, 68.0 percent of searches carried organic search results from Google, while 26.2 percent of searches were powered by Bing organic results.

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

SES New York 2011
NEW YORK – The top three reasons people attend trade shows are to keep up-to-date with industry trends, to learn about new products and to network with their colleagues and competitors. SES New York, which takes place March 21-25, 2011 at the Hilton New York, meets those requirements with over 70 sessions, more than 60 exhibitors, and several networking events.

Search and social media marketing professionals can receive the pre-show discount of up to $200 if they register before March 21.

“In today’s economy, we’re very aware that our SES conference programming and activities have to produce significant ROI, so we incorporate the latest topics, trends and issues and invite the industry experts to present them,” said Matthew McGowan, Managing Director of Americas for Incisive Media. “After hearing our panelists’ and presenters’ case studies and best practice strategies, attendees will walk away with practical tips, tricks, and strategies they can implement as soon as they return to their offices.”

Keep up-to-date with industry trends

With five days of programming, March 21-25, attendees are bound to find more sessions that they will be able to squeeze into their days. Over 70 sessions—geared toward the beginner and very experienced marketer—cover PPC management, keyword research, SEO, social media, local, mobile, link building, duplicate content, multiple site issues, video optimization, site optimization, usability and more.

Learn about new products and services

For attendees who are primarily interested in checking out new products and services, they can drop by the exhibition spaces of American Express OPEN, Bing, Bruce Clay Inc., iContact, iProspect, Marin Software, SubmitEdge, Symantec’s VeriSign Authentication Division and more than 50 other companies.

Network with colleagues and competitors

SES conferences always provide plenty of networking opportunities and this year is no different. SES New York 2011 kicks off with an “SES New York Meet & Greet” at 7pm on Monday, March 21. During the day on Tuesday and Wednesday, March 22 and 23, there is a random-drawing contest: “Play Facebook Face-Off @ SES NY.” Also on Tuesday, SES will sponsor a cocktail reception in the Expo Hall at 5:15pm. The “Infamous SES Black Hat White Hat Unconferenced Session” regularly takes place at SES conferences. This open mic session is scheduled for Wednesday at 5pm.

Through March 21, marketers can register to receive the SES New York pre-show discount of up to $200. For the first time at SES New York, Incisive Media has designed an attractively-priced All Access Passport, which includes access to all conference sessions, keynotes, the expo hall, training sessions and partnered events.

About SES

Incisive Media’s SES is a leading global conference and training series focused on search and social media marketing. Other Incisive resources for interactive marketers include ClickZ for digital marketing news, information, commentary, advice, opinion and research and Search Engine Watch, which provides news and information about search, analysis of the search engine industry and tools for improving search marketing effectiveness.

Incisive Media is a leading global provider of specialized business news and information, in print, in person and online. The company’s principal markets include financial services, legal services, commercial real estate, marketing services and risk management. Incisive Media’s market-leading brands include Accountancy Age, Computing, Investment Week, Legal Week, Post, Risk, and SES Conference and Expo. For more information, visit www.incisivemedia.com

NEW YORK – The role of search and social media in a consumer’s path to purchase is a virtuous circle, where activity in one channel fuels engagement in the other, a study released by GroupM Search and comScore, Inc., (NASDAQ: SCOR) revealed.

The research, which included analysis of online consumer engagement and purchase for leading advertisers including Dell and others in the telecommunications and consumer packaged goods (CPG) categories, revealed that 40 percent of consumers who use search in their path to purchase are motivated to use social media to further their decision making process. Similarly, 46 percent of consumers who use social media in the purchase pathway are driven to use search to expand their knowledge about their likely purchase. These findings demonstrate the emergence of search and social media as essential channels in the online path to purchase for consumers today.

“Advertisers continue to make big bets in search and social media. The insights taken from this research help us go beyond just the consumer’s initial click to better understanding their purchase,” said Chris Copeland, CEO, GroupM Search. “When looking at the role these two channels play in conversion, we see a virtuous circle of interaction between search and social. Consumers are giving clear signals and the opportunity is greater than ever for brand marketers to shape the journey to purchase as a result of these new findings.”

The Path, Search, and Social Media

Where do consumers begin their navigation toward a purchase?

- Fifty-eight percent of consumers start with search, outpacing company websites (24 percent) and social media (18 percent).
- Quality and scale of information, ease of use, and the fact that they always use it are the top two reasons consumers start with search.
- In contrast to search, consumers who start with social media to conduct preliminary information gathering are more likely to include the referral authority exercised by their “friends” among social networks – a consistent and important element of the channel’s influence in the purchase pathway.
- When looking at the complete picture of the consumer’s path to purchase, the funnel is fragmenting and the process is lengthy. For advertisers studied in the telecommunications and consumer electronics categories, the path to purchase is 60 and 57 days respectively from the first touch point, with up to 11 measured digital steps from start to finish.

Search plays a role at different points in the path to purchase, from starting point to validation after visiting an advertiser site. Among consumers who utilize search in their purchase process:

- Search is seen as the “pricing” tool throughout the buying cycle.
- Consumers turn to search to conduct product research and select a purchase location.
- Forty-five percent of people use it throughout, while 26 percent say they only use search at the beginning of their research and shopping process.
- This statistical suggestion that a quarter of people only use search in the early stage of their purchases signifies the enormous opportunity for advertisers to create engagement versus focusing on a paid search strategy that centers around buying only direct response, brand-centric keywords to capture sales at the end stage.

Specific to social media, the research revealed social is search’s interlinked companion in the selection process and is vital in the awareness and consideration phases. In making their purchase decision, 28 percent of consumers said social media plays a valuable role in helping them become aware of new brands and products. Further, social media helps eliminate brands from consideration for 30 percent of consumers.

This is where the importance of a brand’s visibility in social media – and most notably the impact from earned social media (presence in social media forums by the natural community mentioning or engaging with your brand), becomes strikingly clear. Additional key findings are:

- The top motivation of consumers to use social media in their purchase process is to get other people’s opinion (31 percent).
- The role brand-controlled social media and earned social media play in this is varied.
- Category-specific blogs have a reach of 16 percent among consumers who use social media in making their purchase decisions. This earned social media vehicle stands out in that it plays a valuable role in influencing perception with most visits occurring early in the purchase funnel.
- Further illustrating the importance of a brand’s visibility in social media are the social networks consumers are using to find information.
- When it comes to purchasing, the top-performing social option for consumers is user reviews (30 percent), followed by social networking, such as Facebook (17 percent), video sharing, such as YouTube (14 percent) and Twitter (9 percent).
- Consumers show strong potential for brand loyalty through social media with 64 percent of consumers saying they are likely to follow a brand post-purchase, and in doing so, feel more connected to a product or company. Of note, 74 percent of consumers use a Facebook brand page as the desired format for following a brand for future engagement.

“Consumers continue to struggle with added steps in the digital purchase pathway. The ability to sequence messaging and put up digital signposts as understood via this research is a potential breakthrough for many brands,” added Copeland. “We now have an understanding of the virtuous circle that is happening between these two channels and the motivations for consumers throughout their path to purchase. The consumer environment has never been more prime with opportunities to utilize search and social to create connections that are meaningful not only to your brand, but also to your consumer.”

About the Research

GroupM Search developed the research to increase understanding of the online journey a consumer takes in the path to purchase, the role search and social media play in that path, and to gain an understanding of consumer intentions and motivations when utilizing search and/or social media in their purchase decisions. The study builds upon the 2009 research initiative from GroupM Search and comScore which revealed a strong correlation between social media engagement and increased search activity. A white paper providing methodology and comprehensive insights from the new study, titled The Virtuous Circle: Understanding Search and Social Media’s Role in the Purchase Pathway, can be found at www.groupmsearch.com/research.

About GroupM Search

GroupM Search is the search marketing specialist division of GroupM, the media buying and planning arm of WPP responsible for more than 1/3 of the world’s media buying. GroupM Search provides industry-leading search marketing strategies, technology development, research, staffing and training to GroupM communications planning agencies divisions including Maxus, MEC, MediaCom, and MindShare, as well as the direct-to-client brands, Catalyst Online, Outrider and Quisma. Honored by MediaPost’s OMMA Magazine as the 2008 Search Marketing Agency of the Year, GroupM Search has the largest global footprint of any other search organization with more than 700 search marketing strategists spanning 40 countries. Global search marketing perspective from experts across the organization can be found on the GroupM Search blog, SearchFuel (www.searchfuel.com).

URL: www.groupmsearch.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.

SES London 2011
IRVINE, Calif. & TOKYO – Providing a convenient, flexible way for Japanese businesses to increase their presence online, WebVisible announced its entry into the Japanese market through an agreement with Recruit Co., Ltd., Japan’s leading advertising media provider and publisher, and transcosmos Inc., a leading provider of marketing chain management services throughout Asia. Under the agreement, Recruit’s Local Promotion division will offer WebVisible’s online advertising solution to local business customers throughout Japan, and transcosmos will provide search advertising campaign operations and localization support services.

Recruit provides highly-recognized magazines and websites throughout Japan, with more than 80 successful brands and 5.6 million active consumers. The company serves more than 400,000 small- to mid-size businesses in Japan, with vertical specialties that include housing, education, bridal, fashion, travel and fine foods, putting Recruit in a strong strategic position to service and promote local business customers throughout the country.

WebVisible is providing Recruit’s customers with locally targeted search advertising campaigns across a range of Japanese media sources, including Yahoo! and Google. Recruit’s advertisers will have access to the full range of product offerings from WebVisible, including Landing Pages optimized to convert searchers into leads, driving foot traffic, Web site visits and phone calls. Recruit’s advertisers will also get detailed reporting on campaign activity and consumer connections so they know from where, when and how leads are coming in.

“This arrangement puts WebVisible technology within reach of businesses throughout Japan,” said Shin Nagakura, transcosmos Executive Managing Director. “Our partnership shows the global reach of our organizations to support enterprise customers with online advertising solutions to meet the growing needs of local businesses.”

“We are thrilled to join forces with transcosmos and Recruit to help local businesses enhance their online presence through targeted search advertising in Japan,” said Ron Burr, WebVisible CEO. “Recruit’s commitment to opening new opportunities for individuals and businesses through information media is well-established, and we’re proud that they have selected our platform and put their faith in our team to deliver a solution that is robust, flexible and proven to help Japanese small businesses thrive.”

About WebVisible, Inc.

WebVisible makes it easy for small and mid-size businesses (SMBs) to be found online, where and how customers are looking. The leading provider of local online marketing products and services since 2001, WebVisible was among the first to pioneer the use of search as a reliable, measurable avenue to connect directly with a buyer’s needs. The company has helped more than 100,000 SMB customers from more than 3,000 industries in 14 countries to create innovative and accountable Internet advertising campaigns. SMBs partner with WebVisible directly and through its many partner companies, including Intuit, AT&T, British Telecom and The New York Times Company. WebVisible is based in Irvine, Calif. For more information, visit www.webvisible.com or call 949-255-9677.

About Recruit

Recruit Co., Ltd. provides information services through magazines and Web sites in Japan. For more information, visit http://www.recruit.jp/corporate/english/.

About transcosmos Inc.

A pioneer in the information process outsourcing business, transcosmos brings together people and technology to enhance the competitive strength of our global customers’ enterprises by providing superior service. Recognizing this, the company has focused on “Marketing Chain Management” and endeavors to drive business by adopting the latest Internet technology and developing outsourcing services. Moving forward, transcosmos will make the most of our distinctive strengths, it is our intention to promote interactive marketing services that offer speed, increased sales, cost reduction and improved customer satisfaction to our customer’s enterprises.

SES London Conference & Expo 2011
LONDON – Incisive Media announced that delegate registrations for SES London have increased sharply compared to results from last year, confirming that Search and Social Media has become the top priority for UK marketers.

SES London is the leading UK event for education in interactive marketing. Following the announcement that sessions will focus on a range of topics that go beyond search, including social media marketing, there has been a 20% increase in registrations compared to last year.

Mike Grehan, Chair SES Advisory Board, Global VP Content, SES/Search Engine Watch/ClickZ says:

“We have made a number of changes to SES London, with the emergence of new areas in interactive marketing. SES London now includes education in social media marketing as well as search marketing and online advertising. Sessions will focus on a range of topics that go beyond search, including new ad formats, VoD and social media marketing. Search and social media are crucial areas for online marketers which is why we’ve seen a significant rise in registrations for this year’s event. Also, with over four weeks still to go, the exhibition hall has completely sold out so it’s going to be a very busy and exciting event this year.”

SES London will be held on 21-25 February 2011 at The Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, London. See www.SESLondon.com.

SES London is the leading UK event for education in interactive marketing. The SES Conference & Expo is designed to ensure that delegates are given the skills and knowledge to help them maximize search marketing for their business. It also provides a forum for delegates to communicate with the search engines themselves as well as connect with colleagues and friends.

SES London will feature sessions that will help marketers at all levels of understanding to maximize success online – whether they are new to online marketing or have advanced skills and experience. Intermediate workshops and panel debates cover key applications such as video, podcasts and blogs as well as design and writing for search engines. More advanced marketers can attend sessions on search advertising tools, web analytics and advanced paid search tactics.

All sessions are uniquely ranked according to content and degree of understanding, making SES a crucial event for anyone interested in online marketing.

About SES

Incisive Media’s SES Conference & Expo is a leading global conference and training series focused on search engine optimization and search engine marketing. Other Incisive resources for interactive marketers include the ClickZ network for digital marketing news, information, commentary, advice, opinion and research and Search Engine Watch which provides news and information about search, analysis of the search engine industry and tools for improving search marketing effectiveness.

Incisive Media is a leading global provider of specialized business news and information, in print, in person and online. The company’s principal markets include financial services, legal services, commercial real estate, marketing services and risk management. Incisive Media’s market-leading brands include Accountancy Age, Computing, Investment Week, Legal Week, Post, Risk, and Search Engine Strategies. For more information, visit www.incisivemedia.com.

AMERICAN FORK, Utah – OrangeSoda, a leader in localized online marketing (search, mobile, social), announced the official launch of CitrusBlast, a solution designed to help Internet users find small and multi-location businesses. CitrusBlast optimizes recent changes to Google Places, the feature set in Google that presents maps, listings, locations, addresses and contact information based on a user’s search.

CitrusBlast helps businesses increase their prominence in Google Search and supports similar feature sets in Bing and Yahoo! that organize search results by clustering around specific locations. CitrusBlast combines a customized website, mobile microsite and maps to quickly and effectively place businesses in front of potential customers looking online for their products and services.

“Google’s recent changes in displaying localized searches are having a profound impact on locally-focused businesses and CitrusBlast is helping them to leverage these changes to build their bottom line. This is especially significant as more Internet connections are coming from mobile devices”

“When you consider that 80% of consumers search online before buying within a 10-20 mile radius, it becomes clear that the Internet is the single most important avenue for every business to market themselves locally,” said Jay Bean, OrangeSoda founder and CEO. “Google’s recent changes in displaying localized searches are having a profound impact on locally-focused businesses and CitrusBlast is helping them to leverage these changes to build their bottom line. This is especially significant as more Internet connections are coming from mobile devices,” Bean continued.

OrangeSoda partners with many leading small business aggregators and large media companies which resell their services under their own brands. The San Diego Union-Tribune will be the first of their partners to launch CitrusBlast with rollout in February 2011.

“We have worked with OrangeSoda for a number of years on our SEM efforts, and they have proven to be one of our strongest partners. We believe that CitrusBlast will create new revenue streams for the San Diego Union-Tribune,” said Mike Hodges, Vice President Interactive, San Diego Union-Tribune.

About OrangeSoda

Founded in 2006, OrangeSoda offers online marketing to local businesses with a unique blend of intelligent service and simple technology. OrangeSoda provides the best return on marketing investment, by blending social, mobile and search with insider analytics on how consumers use the Internet to find local business offerings. With its proprietary advertising technology and service platform, OrangeSoda enables its partners including CityGrid Media, YPG, and Freedom Communications Inc., to provide the best social, mobile and search services to their customers.

IRVINE, Calif. – Small businesses achieved more in search in the fourth quarter of 2010 by increasing their keyword portfolios and diversifying ad spending across the major search engines, according to a report released by WebVisible (www.WebVisible.com), which tracks small business search advertising trends.

“Looking ahead, we believe successful campaigns will be those that combine the best creative, most dynamic media buying strategies, and smartest use of keyword targeting all working together, which is what WebVisible does best.”

The average small business advertiser spent $2,126 in the fourth quarter of 2010, while average keyword counts reached an all-time high of 87 root keywords, a 30 percent year-over-year increase from the last quarter of 2009. Small-business advertisers also took advantage of the slow migration in October of Yahoo advertisers to the new Bing adCenter platform and shifted their spending away from Google – a strategy that appears to have at least temporarily bolstered both click-through rates and clicks leading to phone calls.

Costs-per-click were 23 percent lower on Yahoo-Bing than on Google in November and 29 percent lower in December. At the same time, click-through rates for advertisers with ad programs on the Yahoo-Bing platform were 10 percent higher than those on Google during December, according to the report, while the percentage of clicks resulting in phone calls rose from 3.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009 to 6.1 percent in the final quarter of 2010 – a dramatic 56 percent increase.

“We’re pleased to see that our robust technology and years of experience are clearly helping small business advertisers achieve greater efficiency and conversion rates, and they’re achieving these results with manageable ad budgets,” said WebVisible CEO Ron Burr. “Looking ahead, we believe successful campaigns will be those that combine the best creative, most dynamic media buying strategies, and smartest use of keyword targeting all working together, which is what WebVisible does best.”

These results and others are included in The WebVisible Report: State of Small Business Online Advertising, which examines trends among WebVisible advertisers from Q4 2009 through Q4 2010 and represents more than $54 million in U.S. small business advertiser spending by more than 10,000 individual advertisers during that period.

The report, which each quarter provides the definitive snapshot of how small businesses are deploying search and online marketing tools, revealed that Google’s share of total search ad spending among WebVisible clients dropped from 56 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009 to less than 38 percent of total spending in November before climbing back to 52 percent in December.

Home Page Video Usage Continues to Grow

The fourth quarter results continued to show that small business advertisers consider video to be an important component of their online advertising presence. Twenty-six percent of advertisers used video on their landing pages in the fourth quarter, up from 19 percent in the previous year’s fourth quarter. Video views increased 85 percent year over year, rising from 3.7 percent of landing page actions a year ago to 6.7 percent in the final quarter of 2010.

The Q4 2010 report, as well as reports from previous quarters, is available by request here: http://www.webvisible.com/wvreport. Members of the media may also contact info@edgecommunications.com or call (818) 990-5001.

About WebVisible, Inc.

WebVisible has been the leading provider of local online marketing software and services since 2001. WebVisible was among the first to pioneer the use of search as a reliable, measurable avenue to connect directly with a buyer’s needs, providing solutions through some of the world’s largest Interactive Yellow Page companies, directories and other media vendors. The company has served over 100,000 customers from 4,000 industries in 14 countries. The company also delivers solutions directly to small businesses throughout the United States. WebVisible is based in Irvine, California with offices in Los Angeles, Charlotte and Mumbai. For more information, visit www.webvisible.com or call 949-255-9677.

“This is the third paid search spend modeler released by AdGooroo, following up on the 2009 release of Budget Analyzer U.S., now widely used by agencies, researchers and others to better understand the search advertising landscape,” said AdGooroo Founder and CEO Richard Stokes. “Now users can discover the same type of digital marketing insights in the U.K. paid search market and precisely pinpoint the brands, industries and budget figures needed to bolster their Digital Marketing Intelligence or target offers to appropriate advertisers.”

As a Digital Marketing Intelligence tool, Budget Analyzer U.K. tracks entire industries to report spending insights and trends. Users can model an entire industry’s search advertising spending activity, determine which advertisers have boosted or scaled back search spending, or track a wide range of variables by advertiser or industry.

As a prospecting tool, it uses filtering technology to pinpoint companies by estimated pay per click (PPC) spend, recent changes to paid search spending, changes in click volume, minimum/maximum monthly paid search click levels, organic traffic, industry vertical and other criteria. When used in conjunction with Industry Insight, Budget Analyzer U.K. also provides users with names and contact information that correspond with top advertisers in its database.

Budget Analyzer U.K. includes a currency converter, enabling analysis in dollars or pounds. Currently, AdGooroo has three Budget Analyzer patents pending.

About AdGooroo

AdGooroo provides online marketers and agencies actionable, on demand Digital Marketing Intelligence tools that proactively monitor an industry’s advertising landscape to help them build a long-term competitive advantage. Based in Chicago, AdGooroo provides Digital Marketing Intelligence to Internet marketers through its suite of products, including SEM Insight, Display Insight, Industry Insight, Trademark Insight and Link Insight. AdGooroo tools leverage access and automation to provide advertisers with lists of competitors’ top keywords, ad copy, campaign statistics and more. Top agencies, brand advertisers and researchers leverage AdGooroo Digital Marketing Intelligence tools. For more information, visit AdGooroo.com.

SAN JOSE, Calif. – Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today introduced Adobe® Search&Promote, powered by Omniture®, a new site search and merchandising application that helps marketers anticipate visitor search intent and promote the most relevant products and content across desktop and mobile website searches.

Online marketers face a common, industry-wide challenge – website abandonment. Since search is the primary form of navigation on many websites, it is often the first step a potential customer takes toward meeting his or her online goals – especially on mobile-optimized websites. When visitors cannot easily find what they are looking for early into their website visit, they may leave to search elsewhere for what they need. As a result, key metrics such as online engagement, conversion, average order value (AOV) and visitor retention can be negatively impacted.

“Every onsite search query is an opportunity. Each search is a customer telling you what they want, what they are interested in, or what they want to purchase or download,” said Brad Rencher, vice president and general manager, Omniture Business Unit, Adobe. “With Adobe Search&Promote, our customers can use search and navigation as a way to dynamically deliver the right content, products and offers to the right visitors. Each search becomes an opportunity to optimize how visitors browse, find, compare and select relevant products and content across screens and devices – driving visitors to convert at a higher rate and leave much more satisfied.”

Adobe Search&Promote is a highly scalable site search and merchandising application for businesses that require a high level of marketer control, metrics-based relevance and personalization. It is ideal for media and entertainment, retail, travel and hospitality and financial services websites that offer a large amount of content and products online. The solution can handle millions of pages, products and high search traffic volume, removing concerns of hardware procurement and provisioning, and offers real-time indexing to ensure visitors have access to the most up-to-date content. Built-in analytics provided by Adobe SiteCatalyst®, powered by Omniture, enables marketers to automate and fine-tune search and ranking results based on key metrics such as conversion rate, page views and customer ratings. This also enables businesses to monitor conversion rates from search terms and the paths visitors take to understand what visitors are finding and not finding in order to improve their site experience.

“The next-generation of site search technology will need to step into the role of helping businesses redefine what the experience of relevance is for their visitors,” said Hadley Reynolds, director, Search and Digital Marketplace Technologies, IDC. “Managers measure the health of their online businesses through specific KPIs. They need the emerging capabilities of data-driven search to refine and automate users’ search results and present content and suggestions that meet visitors’ demands and can process at scale the increasing volumes of website traffic. Driving advanced relevance through a combination of analytics, merchandising rules and visitor intent will differentiate a business’ Web presence from the competition and lead to improved results. The savviest marketers are moving fast to capture this advantage.”

Adobe Search&Promote also integrates with other applications within the Adobe® Online Marketing Suite, powered by Omniture:

Adobe® Test&Target™, powered by Omniture, allows Search&Promote users to test various search experiences or marketing or results pages against one another to determine the highest performers. The application also facilitates the targeting of search results or pages to visitors based on past purchase data or prior category affinity
Adobe® Recommendations, powered by Omniture, can be easily incorporated into search results to provide product or content recommendations related to visitors’ searches based on a “people who searched for this, bought that” algorithm
The Adobe® Scene7® cross media platform automates the delivery of richer product search results, offering shoppers the ability to closely examine products in more detail through interactive zoom, 360-degree spin, alternative image sizes from thumbnail to full-screen and multiple views. Enhancing visual search provides shoppers with more detailed product images and the confidence to help make purchase decisions faster
Supporting Quotes

Eric Myers, director, interactive media & marketing, Highlights for Children

“We need to be able to respond to changing visitor interests, activity and seasonal buying patterns on a whim. Search&Promote provides our team with an intuitive Web-based marketing console that offers many different levers for us to easily merchandise and refine our prime content, promotions and products.”
Michael McCamish, director of websites, Gaylord Hotels

“We are always measuring everything that happens on our website in order to continuously make it as relevant as possible for our visitors. Search&Promote will give us easy access to our SiteCatalyst metrics. It is important for us to take into account KPIs such as conversion and make use of the search application’s visual relevance tuner to influence search results based on a perfect combination of KPIs and natural relevance. This will ultimately help us deliver a better user experience by enabling our visitors to find what they are seeking, much quicker.”

About Adobe Systems Incorporated

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

© 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved. Adobe, the Adobe logo, Omniture, Search&Promote, SiteCatalyst, Test&Target and Scene7 are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

This agreement brings together Google’s expertise in search and advertising with Myspace’s strength in social entertainment. Specifically, the agreement provides Myspace with:

- Web search and search advertising
- Full display ad solutions (including participating in the Google Display Network and DoubleClick Ad Exchange)

“We’re thrilled about renewing our partnership with Google. Their best-in-class technology will continue to provide our consumers with a robust search experience,” said Nada Stirratt, Chief Revenue Officer of Myspace. “We look forward to participating in the Google Display Network and DoubleClick Ad Exchange to increase yield across our display ad inventory.”

“We’re excited to deepen our partnership with one of the largest social Web properties in the world, Myspace,” said Henrique de Castro, Vice President of Global Media and Platforms at Google. “We’re pleased that our technology will benefit Myspace’s users on its newly redesigned site, and that Myspace has chosen our display advertising solution to increase its returns.”

About Myspace

Myspace, Inc. is a leading social entertainment destination powered by the passions of fans. Aimed at a Gen Y audience, Myspace drives social interaction by providing a highly personalized experience around entertainment and connecting people to the music, celebrities, TV, movies and games that they love. These entertainment experiences are available through multiple platforms, including online, mobile devices and offline events. Myspace is also the home of Myspace Music, which offers an ever-growing catalog of freely streamable audio and video content to users and provides major, independent and unsigned artists alike with the tools to reach new audiences. The company is headquartered in Beverly Hills, CA and is a division of News Corporation. (NASDAQ: NWS, NWSA; ASX: NWS, NWSLV).

About Google, Inc.

Google’s innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google’s targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.

The U.S. mobile penetration levels are at the 90 percent mark. An increasing number of mobile subscribers are using various content services and applications on their devices, which opens up newer avenues for mobile advertising. Penetration of next-generation mobile handheld devices such as Smartphones and tablet PCs have opened up newer possibilities in mobile advertising. Adoption of mobile advertising by the nation’s largest mobile operators and innovative MVNOs as well as entry of the online advertising leaders is a testament to the perceived potential of the market opportunity.

This Frost & Sullivan research service titled U.S. Mobile Advertising and Search Markets provides market trends, forecasts, and predictions for 2010 and beyond. The study also provides value chain and revenue share analyses. In this research, Frost & Sullivan’s expert analysts thoroughly examine the following: smartphone and feature phone applications, next-generation devices, mobile advertising, mobile marketing, mobile banking, and mobile payments.

Market Overview

Next-generation Connected Mobile Devices with Rich Media Advertising Capabilities Stoke Growth in Mobile Advertising

Increasing penetration of advanced mobile devices is perhaps the biggest driver for mobile advertising, helping the industry on two important fronts. Firstly, greater uptake of mobile data services – including the mobile Web, mobile applications, mobile video, and others – opens up new forms of inventory on a per user basis and from an overall growth perspective. Secondly, and perhaps equally important, is the ability of these next-generation devices to support new technologies and user experience paradigms that helps in delivering an improved, interactive mobile advertising experience such as rich media advertising, HTML 5.0, location-based services, and others. In-application mobile advertising has emerged as a strong contender in the mobile advertising markets – mainly driven by smartphone in-application opportunity, notes the analyst of this research service. Apple’s App Store and Google’s Android market have already demonstrated the viability of smartphone in-application mobile advertising. The smartphone environment creates a superior mobile advertising experience that encompasses rich media support, location awareness, m-commerce capabilities, and others. Leading advertising platform vendors offer mobile advertising across multiple channels, with mobile Internet and in-application advertising emerging as the most common among holders of multiple types of inventory.

The ability to embed Web views within applications unleashes several innovative possibilities for rich media advertising in mobile applications. Within applications, advertising solution providers can also leverage on additional functionality/information such as location, accelerometer, and others that are exposed by the operating system software development kit (SDK). The strong performance of in-application advertising can be attributed to the high-quality experience it delivers when compared to that of a browser. Emergence of application analytics to measure the advertising and application performance helps advertisers and application developers improve the performance of their consumer offerings and optimizes the advertising and application performance. A large majority of applications are available free of cost to the end user and this has significantly generated newer types of advertising inventory in the U.S. mobile advertising markets.

The biggest challenge is to educate the brands and advertising about the possibilities in mobile advertising. Managing the expectation of the key stakeholders is also important to ensure sustainable growth. Prolific growth in the mobile data ecosystem, along with multiple specialized industry participants targeting different advertising services, has made it difficult to have standardized frameworks for mobile advertising. Specialized industry participants have been the early innovators in this space; however, this has also resulted in disparate processes and approaches to mobile advertising leading to greater demand for working together with the existing platforms to enable a unified, consistent advertising workflow. The online advertising industry benefitted significantly due to the third-party ad serving technologies and greater automation for campaign management, says the analyst. For example, industry solution providers are already integrating with the dominant online ad campaign planning and delivery platforms to incorporate a mobile advertising element. Additionally, all major mobile advertising networks work collaboratively to deliver the best advertising experience to advertisers and agencies as well as publishers and mobile operators.

Market Sectors

Expert Frost & Sullivan analysts thoroughly examine the following market sectors in this research:

Prepaid and postpaid mobile
SMS and MMS
Mobile Internet
Forecasts
iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile, Palm, and Symbian
Technologies

The following technologies are covered in this research:

Smartphone and feature phone applications
Next-generation devices
Mobile advertising and mobile marketing
Mobile banking and mobile payments

Key Topics Covered:

1. Introduction

2. Market Trends and Strategic Evaluation and Analysis

3. Total U.S. Mobile Advertising and Search Market

4. Messaging-based Mobile Advertising Market

5. Mobile Internet-based Display Advertising Market

6. Mobile Video Advertising Market

7. In-application Mobile Advertising Market

8. Mobile Search and Other Performance-based Mobile Advertising Market

9. Impact of Next-generation Connected Tablets on Mobile Advertising

10. Key Industry Participants

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/9a03fc/u_s_mobile_advert

In an advertising landscape where the cost effectiveness of search marketing is being challenged by ever increasing bid prices, and phone calls are emerging as an efficient and potent method of performance-based advertising, this white paper focuses on the following three reasons why call tracking and analytics is such an essential component of a digital marketer’s toolkit:

1. Without call tracking and analytics, it is impossible to manage search bids accurately.

2. Call tracking and analytics transforms an advertiser’s efforts to boost conversion rates.

3. Call tracking and analytics is cost effective and easy to implement.

“Most advertisers and agencies are finding their budgets under greater scrutiny than ever, and regularly dedicate significant resources in an attempt to boost conversion rates even a point or two,” said Leigh McMillan, Senior Vice President of Marchex Call Analytics. “Increasingly, digital marketers are realizing that by adding call tracking and analytics into the mix they are able to capture offline results from online campaigns, helping them understand the full impact of their advertising programs, and ultimately improve their Return-on-Investment.”

The “Re-Evolution of the Phone Call: Three Reasons Why Call Tracking Matters to Online Advertisers and Digital Agencies” whitepaper is available to view and download here.

Marchex, through its Call Analytics product, strives to help businesses achieve the highest ROI for their advertising dollars. Special call-tracking phone numbers and detailed reporting help Marchex’s advertisers easily identify campaign performance, while features such as Call Mining and Keyword-level Tracking provide granular insight into specific call and keyword performance. For more information about Marchex Call Analytics, visit www.marchex.com/callanalytics or call 1.800.914.7872.

About Marchex:

Marchex’s mission is to unlock local commerce globally by helping advertisers reach customers wherever they may be – in mobile, offline and online channels, including on our own local and category websites.

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

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

ATLANTA – SearchIgnite, a leading provider of performance marketing solutions, announced the launch of a new and transformative display solution that builds on the company’s search optimization and media attribution platform. SearchIgnite’s expanded platform will for the first time allow marketers to go beyond standard DSP integration to track and optimize all display buys, including inventory on exchanges, ad networks and direct sites. Display performance can now be tracked alongside paid search, SEO and social media metrics for complete digital media attribution.

Currently, most marketers manage search, display and other digital media in silos, without a centralized technology that appropriately attributes the impact each channel has on performance and conversions. As a result, most marketers are still attributing their performance to the last click, thereby over-allocating budgets to undeserving media and even overpaying for conversions. What’s more, current DSP technologies typically lack complete digital media measurement because they only attribute 20 to 30% of display inventory (i.e. display bought on ad exchanges using real-time bidding). This approach falls short in managing the bulk of marketers’ display advertising.

SearchIgnite’s new platform is the only technology available that allows advertisers to manage and properly attribute performance across all of their online media – including all display, paid search, SEO, social media, email and affiliate marketing – giving them a complete and accurate picture of their digital media performance. These capabilities fundamentally change the way brands measure and budget online advertising.

“In order to better understand what drives consumers to purchase, we need a holistic view of our entire digital spend that accurately tracks the performance of all media including search and display,” said Ted Schweitzer, vice president of E-Commerce at La Quinta Inns & Suites. “With SearchIgnite’s media optimization and attribution capabilities, we are better positioned to accurately review the performance of all online channels, and to allocate our budget to achieve the greatest return on investment for our business.”

SearchIgnite’s industry-leading performance marketing platform is centered around its predictive forecasting and advanced cross channel attribution technology. Key benefits include:

- Media buying optimization with predictive modeling: SearchIgnite automates the process of optimizing search and display with complete transparency, and lets marketers accurately forecast campaign performance based on budget.
- Full campaign management and media trafficking: Transparency across search and display media enables marketers to see what’s driving the best results in an easy, user-friendly interface.
- Cross-channel attribution and analysis: Enables marketers to quantify search and display performance including views, clicks and conversions in order to link advertising exposure to purchase. Social media, SEO, email and affiliate channels can also be attributed using SearchIgnite.
- User scoring for audience targeting and search optimization: Factors in past media performance, as well as audience intent data, to achieve better campaign results and return on ad spend.

“Media planners working with display today want to take advantage of the optimization efficiencies gained from innovations first pioneered by search marketers,” said Roger Barnette, CEO of SearchIgnite. “Advances in display such as real-time bidding and attribution allow advertisers to stay competitive and achieve maximum ROI. Our expanded platform harnesses these advancements to deliver better return and a more holistic view of media performance so marketers can easily see how and where to allocate their media dollars.”

About SearchIgnite

SearchIgnite is the industry’s leading provider of performance marketing technology and services, managing more than $1 billion in media annually for some of the world’s largest advertisers and agencies, including Chico’s, La Quinta, E*TRADE and more. SearchIgnite’s performance marketing platform offers tools to manage, optimize, report and attribute on paid search and display campaigns in one central dashboard, as well as gather insights into the relationship between media channels, including SEO, email, affiliate and social media. The company’s Advisor services are designed specifically for enterprise marketers to help them spend smarter, work easier and optimize most efficiently across digital media. For more information, please visit http://www.searchignite.com/ or follow the company on Twitter @searchignite.