LucidMedia developed its self-service DSP to improve efficiency and profitability by eliminating many of the cost structures and layers traditionally associated with online ad network buys while improving the levels of targeting, transparency and control available. It provides agencies and advertisers with the ability to easily audit the networks and exchanges on their media plans, efficiently acquire page-level contextually and demographically targeted inventory, ensure brand safety across all sources and, most importantly, enforce a universal frequency cap.

The self-service DSP provides:

Real-time Assessment (RTA): LucidMedia’s RTA provides immediate insights into real-time bidding availability involving traffic from the Internet’s leading traffic sources, covering up to 95% reach potential in the US. RTA at scale also provides branded advertisers with true preemptive brand safety and campaign optimization at the impression-level;
Real-time bid (RTB) inventory availability: Agencies and advertisers can get real-time insights by channel and by demographics, delivering the most flexible optimization available. LucidMedia’s optimization engine can evaluate thousands of campaign facets in real-time, project performance trends, and govern campaign targeting based on advertiser goals;
Dynamic inventory allocation: Inventory from all real-time bid sources, as well as spot buys, is automatically allocated to campaigns, enabling more efficient ad operations teams and higher returns;
Page-level semantic transparency: Provides deep insights into what drives the desired campaign outcomes and maximum campaign performance;
Proprietary content and audience targeting technologies: A universal frequency cap (UFC) and server-side database provide maximum control and leverage LucidMedia’s patented and proprietary content targeting and recently released audience targeting technologies;
Training: To support its self-service offering, LucidMedia offers direct training at no cost;
Custom data integrations: Integrations with all third-party data providers, as well as the ability to include advertiser-specific data, allows advertisers to easily reach the right audiences at the right time with their messages.
To learn more, interested agencies and advertisers can visit www.LucidMediaDSP.com.

“We developed LucidMedia’s self-service DSP based on the direct experience we’ve had in deploying our managed DSP service for hundreds of brand advertisers throughout the past 18 months, with continued focus on the ideals of a buy-side network paradigm that is more nimble, economical and in-touch with advertiser goals,” said Ajay Sravanapudi, Founder and CEO of LucidMedia Networks, Inc. “As industry-wide preference for agency-administered ad-buying and ad-trafficking platforms continues to grow, control is moving closer to the advertiser, intermediation is being reduced and prices are arriving at a true market-driven equilibrium. With an offering like our self-service DSP, advertisers can have more control over targeting, performance and safety.”

LucidMedia’s self-service DSP with integrated RTB gives agencies pre-impression filtering, post-impression auditing, and allows agencies to select the most effective impressions in real-time and then feed their campaigns with an optimization engine that automatically maximizes return on spend.

About LucidMedia

LucidMedia Networks, Inc. (www.lucidmedia.com) is a demand-side online display advertising management and targeting platform that delivers optimized, direct response and brand advertising campaigns to interactive agencies. LucidMedia DSP™ with ClickSense® page-level analysis and intelligent real-time bidding (RTB) is available as a managed service to interactive agencies and their brand advertisers. LucidMedia DSP employs an easy-to-use and secure agency interface to deliver proprietary campaign optimization, consolidated buying across the Internet’s largest repositories, unique insight into real-time inventory availability, universal frequency capping, and reach into 95% of the online population. Founded in 1999, LucidMedia processes 25 billion ad impressions every month for hundreds of major brand advertisers.

NEW YORK, Oct. 9, 2007 — Collective Media, a leading online advertising network, today announced that it successfully leveraged DoubleClick’s DART(R) Adapt automated optimization solution to deliver campaign optimization beyond standard direct marketing metrics. Collective engaged DoubleClick Inc., the premier provider of digital marketing technology and services, seeking to optimize a DoubleClick Rich Media campaign for a leading consumer products client.

DoubleClick’s DART Adapt solution uses a sophisticated algorithm to match ads to the users most likely to respond. By leveraging DART Adapt, Collective Media was able to automatically optimize the Rich Media ad interaction rate of the campaign, resulting in an 87% lift in consumer interactions over a single quarter.

“We’ve worked with Collective on a number of advertising initiatives for our clients, and in each case, DART Adapt has provided significant lift in a variety of key metrics, including interaction-rate,” says Sara Hall, OMD San Francisco. “It’s great to see how optimization tools can make sense for brand advertising, not only direct marketing.”

“Collective and DoubleClick worked together to customize DART Adapt to capitalize on the unique audience and inventory characteristics of the Collective Network,” said Joe Apprendi, chief executive officer of Collective Media. “In addition to the work we did for this particular client, the lift we’ve seen using DART Adapt has been measurable and actionable, giving our customers greater insight on campaign performance beyond click and conversion rates, including the audience engagement metrics that matters most to our brand advertisers.”

Since implementing DoubleClick’s automatic optimization tool, Collective Media has delivered significant lift in all key return on investment (ROI) metrics: click-rate, conversion-rate (post-impression and post-click) and interaction-rate for its advertisers. “In the most recent quarter, DART Adapt drove an average click-through lift of more than 30% with many advertisers experiencing a lift greater than 100%.”

“When we launched DART Adapt a year ago we wanted to enable publishers to improve campaign performance while generating more revenue from their ad inventory,” said Brad Bender, vice president of optimization solutions for DoubleClick. “This particular implementation demonstrates DART Adapt’s flexibility in optimizing against a variety of user actions, enabling clients to partner with advertisers to help drive ROI based on specific campaign objectives.”

About Collective Media
Collective Media is a leading online advertising network specializing in audience targeting and optimization solutions to increase relevancy and yield for both publishers and advertisers, reaching 120 million unique users monthly. Collective is comprised exclusively of high quality, brand-name publishers offering the largest network of online news sites in addition to a wide selection of entertainment, sports and health sites. Collective’s innovative approach enables both brand and direct marketers to achieve superior results through sophisticated audience targeting technology, including context, behavior, geographic and re-targeting. Founded in 2005, Collective Media is headquartered in New York City with offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, Chicago and Detroit. Learn more at http://www.collective-media.com.

About DoubleClick Inc.
DoubleClick is a provider of digital marketing technology and services. The world’s top marketers, publishers and agencies utilize DoubleClick’s expertise in ad serving, rich media, video, search and affiliate marketing to help them make the most of the digital medium. From its position at the nerve center of digital marketing, DoubleClick provides superior insights and insider knowledge to its customers. Headquartered in New York, and with 17 offices and development hubs and 14 data centers worldwide, the company employs more than 1300 people and delivers billions of digital communications every day. Learn more at http://www.doubleclick.com.

Finally, somebody shows initiative in regard to in-stream advertising, and gets the ball rolling towards some degree of organization. Setting best practices and industry standards is still somewhere far, far, away – even though the IAB did kickstart the process when they formulated the in-stream ad metrics definitions.

New York, NY – July 29, 2008 – As growing numbers of advertisers look to video as a powerful channel for connecting with consumers online, leading online advertising network and technology provider, Collective Media, today unveiled the Collective Video Network.

The new video network – which builds on the company’s experience in delivering and managing targeted video campaigns – is supported by Collective Media’s proprietary AMP™ platform. It allows advertisers to leverage high-quality video content from the premium publishers that comprise the Collective Network, offering a suite of in-stream ad units, including pre-roll and overlay video formats.

According to data from eMarketer, U.S. spending on Internet video advertising is expected to grow to $4.3 billion by 2011 – and is currently the fastest growing segment of online display advertising. Yet advertisers are often frustrated by the manual processes that still surround many in-stream video network offerings. Collective Media has designed the Collective Video Network as a centralized and automated solution with ‘an encode once and play everywhere’ capability.

Collective Video also provides advertisers with the same audience targeting, optimizing and reporting technology normally reserved for in-page ad units only. Advertisers can take advantage of Collective’s contextual and behavioral targeting platform when running an in-stream video campaign.

“Launching the Collective Video Network is a natural extension of our premium advertising network and the best-in-class technology we’ve developed in the AMP platform,” said Joe Apprendi, CEO of Collective Media. “Our work with brand advertisers in leveraging video inventory has given us a direct understanding of the pain points that still plague this area. The ease of use we’ve built into our video network, relative to implementing, targeting and optimizing a campaign, offers a scalable value proposition to the market.”

Apprendi added that the growing demand among advertisers to connect with relevant, high-quality video content matches the need of top-tier publishers to make smart and appropriate use of their online video assets. “Building on the strength of our publisher network and the inventory we provide, Collective will bring the expertise, quality and service for which we are known seamlessly to the video landscape,” he said.

The Collective Video Network is designed to provide a centralized and automated single-platform solution that is also highly-scalable. Advertisers that run video-based campaigns through the network will benefit from Collective’s comprehensive reporting which provides standardized video view and interaction metrics via the AMP platform.

The Collective Video Network is the latest offering in a growing suite of Collective Media products and services – which also includes the AMP platform as well as Personifi, its audience targeting system.

About Collective Media
Collective Media is a leading online advertising network and technology company. The Collective Network links high quality, brand-name publishers with Fortune 1000 advertisers. Collective Media’s AMP™ offers high end publishers an ad network management platform to create their own branded, vertical ad networks. Collective’s innovative approach enables both brand and direct advertisers to achieve superior results through sophisticated audience targeting technology, including contextual, behavioral, geographic and re-targeting. Founded in 2005, Collective Media is headquartered in New York City with offices in Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Visit Collective Media at www.collective-media.com.

Santa Monica, Calif. – July 22, 2008 – Adconion Media Group, the only independent global advertising network, today announced it nearly doubled its U.S. audience reach year over year, posting 94 percent growth for a rate outpacing every top 10 network for which comScore data are available including Google, Specific Media, ValueClick Networks and Tribal Fusion. According to the same data, Adconion’s reach grew 27.4 percent from January-June 2008.

Adconion is now the eighth largest network in the United States reaching over 125 million unique Internet users in June 2008, or 66 percent of the market, according to comScore. Globally, Adconion reaches over 244 million unique users.

“Expanding our audience network’s reach is a crucial piece of our mission to be a true partner to agencies and marketers by offering both an independent, global perspective and tailored services to protect their brands and reach the right consumer across platforms” said Tyler Moebius, founder and chief executive officer of Adconion, based in Santa Monica.
“Adconion’s vastly increased reach both in the U.S. and globally contributed to revenue growth of 35 percent from Q1 to Q2 this year.”

Since completing a record $80 million Series C round of funding in February 2008 and subsequently acquiring leading direct marketer Frontline Direct in March, Adconion has invested heavily in the North American market, opening offices in Santa Monica, New York, Toronto, San Diego, Chicago and Detroit, in addition to steadily growing its dedicated global sales team. Adconion now employs nearly 250 people in 12 offices worldwide. “We are committed to closely collaborating with agencies and marketers to build lasting relationships with them and their brands,” said Keith Kaplan, Adconion’s President of North America, based in New York. “Our focus continues to be on growing our audience network by working with high quality publishers, developing proprietary audience targeting technology and further broadening our global footprint to enable our clients to reach their audience in the U.S. and around the world.”

About Adconion
Adconion Media Group is the only independent global advertising network. The company completed a record $80 million Series C round of funding led by Index Ventures in February 2008. Since its founding in 2005 Adconion has focused on the realization of performance-driven branding campaigns that deliver massive global reach. Adconion’s clients consist of advertising agencies and direct advertisers as well as its partner base of premium websites from a wide range of sectors. Adconion combines its in-house technology and high touch client service with quality media to exceed its partners’ campaign objectives. The company has offices around the world in London, Munich, Hamburg, Paris, Melbourne, Sydney, New York, Toronto, Santa Monica, San Diego, Chicago and Detroit. Adconion is member of the International Advertising Bureau (IAB) and a founding member of IASH Europe. Visit Adconion at www.adconion.com.

Collective Media has been working with Personifi since October 2007 and acquired the company because of its unique and highly effective approach to content classification and audience targeting. Today, more that 50% of the campaigns run by Collective include the Personifi targeting solutions which use mathematical algorithms to intelligently evaluate all of the content on a Web page to create more accurate contextual and behavioral segments. Collective Media leverages this rich content data to offer its clients advertising options across 26 standard audience segments and thousands more custom categories.

As the demand for audience targeting services continues to rise dramatically – eMarketer reports that spending on behavioral targeting will reach $3.8 Billion by 2011 – Personifi’s audience detection and targeting technology has established itself as one of the most advanced and accurate solutions in the industry by mathematically and semantically analyzing all of the content on a Web page, not just keywords. Personifi’s approach yields only the most relevant and actionable targeting data for advertisers, ensuring pinpoint accuracy for every campaign.

“The acquisition of Personifi gives Collective a unified audience targeting solution for both contextual and behavioral targeting,” said Joe Apprendi, CEO of Collective Media. “While other ad networks specialize in one form of targeting, we now have best-of-breed capabilities to offer the most comprehensive solution on the market.”

Personifi is the integrated audience targeting solution within AMP™, Collective’s ad network management platform for vertical ad networks. Publishers and advertisers can benefit from Personifi’s targeting capabilities from one single platform across all their Collective Media ad initiatives. Whether within their own branded, vertical networks or in the Collective Media network of publishers, AMP™ gives Collective customers simple and easy access to the industry’s most advanced targeting technology.

“Targeting has emerged as one of the most important factors in the effectiveness of an ad campaign,” said Frost Prioleau, CEO of Personifi. “Together, Collective Media and Personifi are committed to staying at the forefront of targeting services and offering the most innovative and accurate solutions in the industry.”

About Collective Media

Collective Media is a leading online advertising network and technology company. The Collective Network links high quality, brand-name publishers with Fortune 1000 advertisers. Collective Media’s AMP™ offers high end publishers an ad network management platform to create their own branded, vertical ad networks. Collective’s innovative approach enables both brand and direct advertisers to achieve superior results through sophisticated audience targeting technology, including contextual, behavioral, geographic and re-targeting. Founded in 2005, Collective Media is headquartered in New York City with offices in Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Visit Collective Media at www.collective-media.com.

About Personifi

Personifi provides powerful page classification and ad targeting solutions that allow ad networks and web publishers to deliver more relevant ads to their users. Leveraging a unique mathematical approach, Personifi’s solutions deliver an unparalleled combination of precision and scalability. Applications for Personifi’s solutions include content classification, contextual targeting, behavioral targeting, and ad optimization. Personifi is privately funded and headquartered in Fort Worth, TX.

NEW YORK – APRIL 8, 2008 – Collective Media, a leading online advertising network specializing in premium publishers and advertisers, today released the results of its 2nd annual Ad Network Study. The study was designed and executed to better understand the role and value of online advertising networks for both interactive agencies and advertisers while illustrating the change in industry trends from 2007 to 2008.

Key findings from the 2008 Ad Network Study include:

* All Ad Networks Are Not Created Equal. 89.2% of respondents do not believe all ad networks are alike and the leading differentiators are inventory quality, targeting abilities and site transparency; leading one to suppose that even in a crowded marketplace, agencies and advertisers believe that there is room for innovation and differentiation.
* Image and Perception. 96% of study respondents have either maintained or improved their perspective on ad networks since last year’s study.
* Vertical ad networks. Nearly 50% of respondents would be likely/very likely to buy a brand-name vertical ad network vs. a generic vertical ad network. Vertical ad networks backed by recognized, brand-name publishers prove to be even more desirable. 82% of respondents plan to use a vertical ad network in 2008.
* Increase in ad network spending. Agencies and advertisers will spend more on ad networks in 2008 vs. 2007. 75% of respondents will spend 5% or more of their overall online advertising budget on ad networks in 2008. More than 25% of agencies and advertisers will spend 15% or more on ad networks in 2008.

Several findings are in contrast to last year’s results, which cited reach and efficiency as the key reasons to use ad networks as opposed to this year where targeting is the leading motivation. Furthermore, the study validates the vertical ad network trend and underscores the industry’s desire for vertical, branded networks backed by recognized, brand-name publishers.

“We’re excited about the results in this year’s study as it confirms for us a significant trend we have been seeing; that more and more advertisers are turning to ad networks for their branding campaigns,” said Joe Apprendi, CEO of Collective Media. “This along with the stated importance of inventory quality and targeting ability show the growing importance of ad networks in the online media plan.”

“The ad network model continues to evolve under a basic principle; the more information that we have on our audience and the more control and transparency we have of our operational systems will create greater efficiencies for the advertiser”, stated Steven Ustaris, Group Media Director at Carat. “It is good to see that networks that evolve in this manner and listen to what is important to advertisers are positioned to garner a larger a portion of advertising budgets.”

To obtain a copy of the study, visit www.collective-media.com

Approximately 200 completed surveys were received from online media decision makers at both agencies and advertisers in the United States, including marketing vice presidents and online marketing directors from Fortune 1000 brands, and media directors and media planners from leading interactive agencies. Surveys were completed from January 22 through February 18, 2008.

About Collective Media
Collective Media is a leading online advertising network specializing in audience targeting, optimization and reporting solutions to increase relevancy and yield for both publishers and advertisers, reaching more than 150 million unique users monthly. Collective is comprised exclusively of high quality, brand-name publishers offering the largest network of online news sites in addition to a wide selection of sites in every content category. Collective’s innovative approach enables both brand and direct advertisers to achieve superior results through sophisticated audience targeting technology, including contextual, behavioral, geographic and re-targeting. Founded in 2005, Collective Media is headquartered in New York City with offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, Boston, Chicago and Detroit. Visit Collective at www.collective-media.com.

NEW YORK – MARCH 24, 2008 – Collective Media, a leading online advertising network specializing in premium publishers and advertisers, today launched its white-label Ad Network Management Platform (AMP) enabling premium publishers to create their own branded, vertical ad networks. Collective developed the AMP technology to manage hundreds of audience segments, thousands of sites and billions of ad impressions across its own leading ad network each month. As more publishers establish their own branded ad networks to increase audience reach and share of online media spend, AMP is the first ad network management platform designed to support both behavioral targeting and affiliate site networks.
“By making AMP available to publishers, we are really bucking the trend of technology companies turning into ad networks. We’re an ad network releasing a technology platform that gives publishers everything they need to create and manage their own network,” said Joe Apprendi, CEO of Collective Media. “These newly formed networks can take advantage of the opportunities that exist to increase available inventory in any audience category with Collective’s network of affiliate sites and target audiences, and to monetize unsold inventory at a premium.”

AMP is fully integrated with DoubleClick’s DART for Publishers and is tightly integrated with salesforce.com’s Salesforce application for sales pipeline data. With built-in behavioral and contextual targeting, the system unifies audience targeting and ad network management through a single online technology platform. In addition, publishers with a wide diversity of wholly-owned sites can utilize the product to centralize audience targeting, revenue and yield management for both owned and affiliated sites.

About Collective Media
Collective Media is a leading online advertising network specializing in audience targeting, optimization and reporting solutions to increase relevancy and yield for both publishers and advertisers, reaching more than 150 million unique users monthly. Collective is comprised exclusively of high quality, brand-name publishers offering the largest network of online news sites in addition to a wide selection of sites in every content category. Collective’s innovative approach enables both brand and direct advertisers to achieve superior results through sophisticated audience targeting technology, including contextual, behavioral, geographic and re-targeting. Founded in 2005, Collective Media is headquartered in New York City with offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, Boston, Chicago and Detroit. Visit Collective at www.collective-media.com.