- ADRevolution Wins Prestigious Software Award
ADRevolution, the Austin-based digital advertising software company, has been awarded the Austin Business Journal’s annual prize for the most innovative software solution. The award, which is highly competitive, recognizes the most creative solution that will transform society.
Andrew Westmoreland, the 24-year-old Founder and CEO of ADRevolution created the software solution called The Natural Intelligence Marketing Engine or NIME, which is transforming the way advertisers and publishers relate to consumer in the digital age.

- Gannett Names Sally Clurman Vice President, Taxes
Sally Clurman has been named vice president, taxes for Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE:GCI) succeeding Christopher W. Baldwin, who will retire in April after 30 years at the company. Clurman, whose appointment takes effect Jan. 1, has been director/taxes since 2002.
“Sally’s quiet competence, hard work and dedication make her the ideal person to lead the Tax Department. After nearly 20 years with Gannett, she is well prepared and more than ready for this new challenge,” said Gracia Martore, executive vice president and chief financial officer.
“We are sorry to see Chris leave. He has been the driving force behind our tax program and provided invaluable service to Gannett with his background, knowledge and understanding of the tax world. We are grateful for his tireless efforts and all he has done,” Martore said.

Worldwide iPhone Requests Grew 52 Percent From October to November

SAN MATEO, Calif. & LONDON - AdMob, the world’s largest mobile advertising marketplace, highlighted growing WiFi usage in the US and the UK in its November 2008 Mobile Metrics Report. Worldwide iPhone requests grew 52 percent month over month to 359 million in November, giving the iPhone 6.3 percent of total requests. In the US the iPhone is now the #1 device with 9.9 percent of requests.

The iPhone has by far the most WiFi usage, with 42 percent of US requests coming in over WiFi instead of a mobile operator network. The inclusion of WiFi on popular new smartphones such as the G1 and BlackBerry Bold indicates WiFi usage will continue to grow in the coming months. WiFi only devices such as the iPod Touch and Sony PlayStation Portable also generated significant traffic.

Other highlights from the November 2008 report:
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New Widget Delivery Platform Extends the Reach of MIVA’s Expanding ALOT Brand

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

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

The ALOT brand was launched by MIVA Direct in Q4 2007 and is designed to ‘Make the Internet Easy’ by aggregating ‘best of the web’ content within widgets that can be displayed across toolbars, homepages and now desktops. ALOT’s toolbar and homepage products come pre-configured across 40 different categories, enabling MIVA Direct to build up niche vertical audiences. The ALOT music and recipe toolbars, for example, currently have over 900,000 and 500,000 users respectively.
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Content Sites Saw Double-Digit Advertiser Growth; AOL Launched More Than 20 New Sites in 2008

NEW YORK- AOL’s programming sites continued to see strong growth in November, extending year-over-year growth in unique visitors to 22 consecutive months, according to the November 2008 comScore Media Metrix report. The announcement culminates a year of aggressive expansion and investment in AOL’s programming group, which included the launch in 2008 of more than 20 new sites in key areas such as finance, entertainment, women’s lifestyle and men’s interests.

Unique visitors to AOL’s programming content sites grew 3% year-over-year to 54 million in November. In addition, page views climbed 66% year-over-year to 3.8 billion and engagement (total minutes) grew 33% year-over-year in November, showing AOL consumers are actively engaging with the sites. Advertising revenues on AOL’s programming sites have had double-digit growth year-over-year in Q3 2008.
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15-Year Internet Media & Technology Executive Joins Deep Veteran Team

SAN MATEO, Calif. - Teracent Corporation, the leading Dynamic Ad Platform, announced Chip Hall as its Senior Vice President of Sales & Marketing. Mr. Hall had previously been with Yahoo! Inc. in various executive roles, including managing the company’s Global Strategic Partnerships team. His experience includes co-founding Release Software, the first Internet software distribution company, in 1995 after successfully promoting early Internet companies such as Yahoo! and Verisign as a public relations executive. Mr. Hall also sold dynamic e-commerce systems to the Fortune 500 while at Organic Online and later ran Fluid Inc. as Chief Executive Officer.
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- Hydra Bolsters In-House Creative Team with Addition of Johnny Talisman as Creative Director
Hydra, the largest and fastest growing affiliate advertising network distributing results-based campaigns through banners, social media, e-mail and search marketing today announced it has appointed industry veteran Johnny Talisman to the network’s newly formed position of Creative Director. In his new position, Talisman will head up Hydra’s in-house creative team and will be responsible for developing unique and important creative that will meet the network’s goal of delivering the highest possible conversions for their clients.
As the largest pure performance-based ad network, Hydra has set its primary focus on driving higher conversions to generate more revenue for its affiliated publishers, and more customers for its advertisers. As a result of that commitment, the network is investing in strengthening its creative department with industry veterans who can apply their direct experience to create higher-producing campaigns. Along with the appointment of Talisman, who previously worked for McCann-Erickson and Ogilvy & Mather and developed campaigns for Boeing, Cathay Pacific, AltaVista and Shell, Hydra has hired a Senior Designer who will start January 1st.

Company to Report 4Q08 Positive Adjusted EBITDA

NEW YORK - interCLICK, Inc. (the “Company”) (OTCBB: ICLK), one of the largest advertising networks in the U.S., provided an update on its business outlook for its fourth quarter ending December 31, 2008. The Company now expects revenue for the fourth quarter to exceed $7 million, compared to its previous forecast for revenue to exceed $6.5 million. The Company also anticipates that 4Q08 gross margin will exceed 35%. Previously, interCLICK estimated that gross margin would exceed 31%.

In addition, interCLICK announced that it expects for the fourth quarter to report its first quarter of positive Adjusted EBITDA* since becoming a public company.
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Company Continues Strong Quarter over Quarter Growth with more than 15 Major Publishers Now Panache-Enabled

LOS ANGELES - Panache, the ad-insertion platform for major media and entertainment companies, announced that its Media Maps have resulted in nearly one billion online video ads to date. The figure reflects more than an 850 percent increase from 2007, and underscores significant usage from major media and entertainment companies looking to drive ad-driven in-stream revenue. Panache expects its ASP platform, which enables unlimited video ad avails and performance of ad insertions with its patent-pending Media Map technology™, to process its billionth ad in January, 2009.

Panache is now working with more than 15 major publishers to productize their business, dynamically create ad avails, and provide in-stream ad insertion into a wide array of premium video content. Media and entertainment companies with multi-channel in-house ad sales need straightforward solutions that promote profitability from their online video operations. Panache’s open platform provides major networks the infrastructure to create unlimited ad avails, support both live and on-demand video ad insertion, report on video and advertising and drive greater efficiencies for ad operations, ad sales and technology groups.
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Click-through rate increases 30% since the AOL.com relaunch; November total unique visitors and average daily visitors up 13%, and total minutes online grew by 29%; all figures signal higher advertiser returns moving into 2009

NEW YORK - AOL’s Platform-A announced that the new AOL.com homepage is delivering advertisers record performance on their homepage advertising and is also driving increased consumer reach and engagement. Since the homepage redesign was launched in September 2008, advertising click-through rates on the primary 300 x 250 ad banner rose 30%, according to internal metrics, a double-digit increase that shows consumers are increasingly clicking on AOL.com homepage advertising. In addition, the redesign is driving stronger consumer usage: total unique visitors and average daily visitors each are up 13%, and total minutes grew by 29%, compared to one year ago, according to the November 2008 comScore Media Metrix Report.
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Cool mobile application for ad enabled calls convinced international jury
Mobile World Congress 2009

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. - Smaato Inc., a pioneering provider for mobile advertising solutions announced the winner of the Smaato Mobile Advertising Award 2008. San Diego based DialPlus won over the jury with its application that is showing visual information from the web for a phone number before, during and after a call.

“Congratulations to DialPlus for their outstanding product and thanks for the jury to select the winning companies. With more than 100 entrants in its first year we could not ask for more positive feedback. We think this is a clear indicator that there is a lot of creativity and positive energy in the mobile ecosystem. The best is yet to come!” stated Harald Neidhardt, CMO & Co-Founder of Smaato Inc.
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