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.

NexTargeting Summit 2011
NEW YORK – Online targeting leader [x+1], www.xplusone.com, announced [x+1] Origin, a transformative solution for integrating digital marketing activities across consumer touchpoints. [x+1] Origin is the next evolution of the company’s Digital Marketing Hub.

[x+1] Origin was officially introduced at NexTargeting Summit 2011, sponsored by [x+1], and is scheduled for a market release this summer.

[x+1] Origin for the first time allows marketers to optimize and manage all inbound interactions on websites; connect and synchronize all outbound communications across display, email and mobile; and centralize data from all sources, allowing data-driven insights from each channel to easily inform other channels.

The only hub architected from the ground up to be an end-to-end digital solution, [x+1] Origin provides cross-channel targeting, multi-source data integration and robust analytics and reporting. It’s all centered on [x+1]’s patented Predictive Optimization Engine (POE™), which drives intelligent, real-time decisions, adapting and learning on the fly.

[x+1] Origin also provides complete transparency into digital media transactions, along with ease of integration with customer data management and CRM systems.

“All the different capabilities that make up [x+1] Origin have been in the realm of the possible in digital marketing, but it’s never been easy to combine them into a unified solution that works in harmony – until now,” said John Nardone, Chairman and CEO of [x+1]. “[x+1] Origin will enable coordinated multi-touchpoint marketing as never before, creating a multiplier effect across channels while delivering unmatched flexibility, transparency and efficiency.”

Four core capabilities of [x+1] Origin include:

Syndication of audience profiles across touchpoints and partners: [x+1] Origin integrates data from all consumer touchpoints so that actions in any one channel inform the others. For instance, data gathered from interactions on a website can enable more targeted, coordinated messaging and offers in display, email and mobile. Importantly, the data can also be integrated with a partner’s digital marketing activities.

Better organization of your targetable audiences: The user interface (UI) of [x+1] Origin has been redesigned and streamlined to put all targeting information in one place for easier, more intuitive campaign management.

A flexible rules engine: [x+1] Origin is flexible, with the ability to create targetable lists with complex audience definitions and cascading interaction rules based on customer, media, interaction, third party and multivariate combinations of data.

Tagless integration option: Clients will have the option of a tagless implementation that also allows [x+1] Origin to function based on a first-party cookie.

For more information on [x+1] Origin, contact sales@xplusone.com. To learn more about [x+1], visit www.xplusone.com; follow us on twitter @xplusone.

RESTON, VA – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, announced entry into a definitive agreement for the acquisition of Certifica, a leader in web measurement in Latin America. The acquisition helps enhance comScore’s presence and brand in the rapidly-developing Latin American market and positions the company for further expansion in the region.

Based in Santiago, Chile, Certifica has offices throughout Latin America, including Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia and Peru. The company was founded in 2000 with the goal of becoming the leading analyst and auditor of Internet traffic measurement and has won the endorsement of the IAB in several Latin American countries to publish cross site statistics on Internet usage. The sites measured by Certifica will be available for inclusion (on an opt-in basis) in comScore’s Media Metrix 360 hybrid measurement solution, which combines panel-based audience measurement data and Web site analytics data to provide a more comprehensive view of activity, beginning in early 2010. The enhanced methodology will account for the full universe of Internet usage, including traffic from Internet cafes and mobile devices.

Under the direction of Alejandro Fosk, founder and former CEO of Certifica and now SVP and General Manager of comScore Latin America, comScore plans to sell and service the full suite of comScore products in the region.

“We are very excited to be joining forces with Certifica. Alejandro and his team have established a strong local presence, a high quality portfolio of services, and an excellent reputation for client service,” said Linda Abraham, comScore CMO and EVP of Global Product Management. “Latin America currently represents 9 percent of the world’s population, and although the Internet penetration there is relatively low compared to some other parts of the world, it is growing at a rapid pace, presenting growth opportunities for many advertisers and publishers. With 57 percent of the population under the age of 25, Latin America also owns the title of ‘the youngest continent’ and represents a sophisticated, engaged and connected Internet user base. This acquisition will strengthen our presence in the region and enable us to offer hybrid measurement as part of our Media Metrix 360 initiative using the same state-of-the-art measurement technologies we use elsewhere in the world. We warmly welcome our Certifica colleagues into the comScore team.”

“comScore is an ideal partner to leverage Certifica’s existing expertise in Latin America and provide the market with a more comprehensive digital measurement platform that will promote the growth of the online advertising market,” said Alejandro Fosk, founder and former CEO of Certifica. “We are excited that Certifica’s clients will have access to comScore’s robust reporting platform, which will enable them to understand the complete digital landscape and lead to new ways to optimize their digital marketing strategies.”

comScore does not expect the acquisition to have a material impact on 2009 financial results.

Latin America Digital Media Industry Voices Support for Acquisition

“At a moment where the Latin American market is experiencing an inflection point far beyond other markets of the world, we are very pleased to see the entrance of comScore sided with a local player such as Certifica. Terra has a local presence in 18 markets in Latam and US Hispanics and understands the importance of ‘glocal’,” said Paulo Castro General Manager of Terra Brazil and former Chairman of IAB Brazil.

“The union of Certifica and comScore is certainly a positive development for the Latin American digital marketplace,” said Nicolas Berman, Marketing Director of MercadoLibre (NASDAQ:MELI). “Bringing together these leading companies to provide Latin America with a unified digital measurement capability will give the industry the comprehensive view of consumer behavior that will facilitate the allocation of marketing and advertising budgets online.”

“The comScore-Certifica merger represents a natural fit in bringing together leaders in panel-based audience measurement data and website analytics data,” said Rodrigo Donoso, Head of Digital Media at El Mercurio Publishing Group, part of GDA. “Their combined offering will give the Latin American marketplace the premier digital measurement platform that will bring us closer to having a true measurement currency in the market.”

“I believe that this alliance represents a big progress for Latin America´s digital industry.  For the development of the online advertisement market, it is fundamental to rely on trusted metrics that will allow us to prove our clients the effectiveness of their campaigns, and this is what Certifica and comscore are bringing to the market with this alliance,” said Fernando Campos, General Director of New Media at TV Azteca.

About comScore
comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) is a global leader in measuring the digital world and preferred source of digital marketing intelligence. In an independent survey of 800 of the most influential publishers, advertising agencies and advertisers conducted by William Blair & Company in January 2009, comScore was rated the “most preferred online audience measurement service” by 50% of respondents, a full 25 points ahead of its nearest competitor. comScore’s capabilities are based on a massive, global cross-section of approximately 2 million Internet users who have given comScore permission to confidentially capture their browsing and transaction behavior, including online and offline purchasing. comScore panelists also participate in survey research that gathers and integrates their attitudes and intentions. Using its proprietary technology, comScore measures what matters across a broad spectrum of digital behavior and attitudes, helping clients design more powerful marketing strategies that deliver superior ROI. With its recent acquisition of M:Metrics, comScore is also a leading source of data on mobile usage. comScore services are used by more than 1,200 clients, including global leaders such as AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo!, BBC, Carat, Cyworld, Deutsche Bank, France Telecom, Best Buy, The Newspaper Association of America, Financial Times, ESPN, Fox Sports, Nestle, Starcom, Universal McCann, the United States Postal Service, the University of Chicago, Verizon Services Group and ViaMichelin.

“Our mission at Gotuit is to transform publishers’ ability to monetize their content by harnessing the power of the individual scene,” said Gotuit CEO Mark Pascarella. “Combining our world-class advertising insertion capability with the world-class advertising services of DoubleClick is an ideal match for publishers to unleash the full value of their video libraries.”

Gotuit empowers video publishers to greatly improve how they monetize their video libraries by creating structured metadata describing each meaningful scene within the original source videos. This metadata defines the optimal in-stream video ad insertion points, allowing publishers greater advertising control and flexibility. For example, Gotuit customers can set ad request logic based on a viewer’s session time and/or the number of scenes watched, across the entire library. As a result of the new mid-roll ad opportunities, Gotuit-enabled publishers have far greater ad inventories than those limited to pre- and post-roll options. The scene definitions also allow the viewer to easily personalize their viewing experience and get directly to what is most interesting.

In addition, the ads served can be targeted based on the scene metadata such as Character, Player, Topic, Keyword, etc. When making the ad request, the Gotuit scene metadata can be sent to DoubleClick for delivery of the most appropriate and valuable advertisement.

The solution is currently live with Sports Illustrated’s 2008 Heisman Watch video portal, powered by Gotuit, with advertising served by DoubleClick.

For more info

Gotuit – www.gotuit.com

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.

The new feature doesn’t seem to have propagated in all DFP accounts yet, and the knowledge base doesn’t seem to include any new entries about streaming Silverlight. I’ll let you enjoy the feature announcement in full, below.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (August 05, 2008) –Today, DoubleClick, a premier provider of digital marketing technology and services, announced the new capability to serve video ads into Microsoft Silverlight 2 video environments. The move is part of DoubleClick’s ongoing effort to help clients maximize the yield on their advertising inventory as they deliver content into emergent online, video and mobile channels.

With this new feature of DoubleClick In-Stream, DoubleClick clients such as NBC Universal Digital Media are able to monetize video content played within the Silverlight 2 player. NBCOlympics.com, a division of NBC Universal, will be one of the first sites to open Silverlight 2 content up to advertisers with DoubleClick In-Stream. The solution carves out new video inventory across 2,500 hours of video content running as part of NBC’s Olympics coverage.

“Microsoft has always had a strong commitment to working closely with partners and the industry to enable them to leverage our tools and platform to deliver great user experiences. With Silverlight, we’ve extended that commitment to the advertising space,” said Scott Guthrie, Corporate Vice President, .NET Developer Division. “We’re pleased to see the investment DoubleClick has made to enable customers such as NBCOlympics.com to take advantage of Silverlight to offer compelling packages to their advertisers.”

DoubleClick In-Stream is a video ad serving solution used by online publishers to deliver exciting new advertising experiences into Flash, Real Media, Windows Media and now Silverlight 2 video players. As part of the DoubleClick Revenue Center, the product is completely integrated into DoubleClick’s core ad serving platform, DART for Publishers. The combined DoubleClick solution enables trafficking, targeting forecasting and reporting for video advertising. By working with DoubleClick to serve ads into Silverlight 2, NBCOlympics.com is able to leverage their existing ad operations workflow and staff to package video ads with other opportunities, such as online display and mobile ads. One platform for online display, video and mobile has made it possible for NBC to create compelling cross-channel packages for advertisers who want to reach the Olympics-viewing audience.

“With hundreds of advertisers, multiple platforms and large site traffic spikes, we needed to work with a partner that could provide an integrated, scalable, robust solution,” said Steven Gold, Vice President, Sales Planning and Operations, NBC Universal Digital Media. “Thanks to DoubleClick In-Stream’s new support for Silverlight 2, we are able to monetize our groundbreaking online video coverage on the same platform we already use for display and mobile advertising. This lets our sales and operations teams work together really efficiently.”

“DoubleClick’s vision is to help publishers grow their revenues by creating great user experiences and providing compelling value to advertisers,” said Google Group Product Manager Ari Paparo. “By expanding the capabilities of DoubleClick In-Stream to work with Silverlight 2, we can make it possible for clients to create unique entertainment and advertising experiences without increasing their workload or creating new complex processes.”

For more information on DoubleClick In-Stream, please visit http://www.doubleclick.com/instream

To learn more about the entire DoubleClick Revenue Center, please visit http://www.doubleclick.com/revenuecenter

About DoubleClick
DoubleClick is a premier 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, mobile, 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. DoubleClick is a division of Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG). Learn more at www.doubleclick.com.

DoubleClick’s new proposal exchange platform is built upon application agnostic standards, which will ultimately allow for broader integration with other advertising technology solutions. The company has worked closely with the IAB in their efforts to establish a consistent standard for electronic order exchange across the online advertising industry. Establishing a common proposal exchange standard will also allow for better automation of discrepancy reconciliation – another key challenge for buyers and sellers of digital media.

In a 2007 survey of its ad agency clients, DoubleClick confirmed that the majority of the media RFP and contract process is still handled manually—via the exchange of emails, spreadsheets and faxes. Respondents also named lack of internal coordination at publishers and inaccurate proposal responses as top concerns. More than 70% of agencies responding said that a publisher’s use of an automated proposal tool would positively influence their decision to send that publisher an RFP. By digitizing and standardizing the RFP process, publishers are also expected to benefit from increased operational efficiency and accuracy, while advertisers will enjoy faster response times and more accurate proposals.

With DoubleClick’s new electronic order exchange feature, agencies can select DSM-enabled publishers directly from the MediaVisor planning tool. Selected publishers receive an electronic request for proposal directly within the DSM interface and can check inventory, build a proposal, and respond electronically. Once approved, the proposed media package can be trafficked by the publisher directly into DART for Publishers. Previously, publishers had to manually enter their proposals within MediaVisor for each advertiser in addition to their own system, often a time consuming and error-prone process. Currently, more than 20 publishers are testing the new order exchange platform including BabyCenter.com and Mansueto Ventures.

Also announced today was the release of a Salesforce.com adapter that allows DART Sales Manager to exchange data with this leading customer relationship management solution to deliver increased transparency throughout the ad sales cycle. The new adapter synchronizes opportunities and proposal information as well as sales data between the two systems, creating a more seamless end-to-end media sales solution.

“DoubleClick’s vision is to help digital advertising scale by developing platforms that bring advertisers and publishers together,” said Group Product Manager Jonathan Bellack. “Our new proposal exchange platform reduces operational friction by eliminating error-prone manual data entry. In addition, our tight integration with Salesforce.com continues to develop DART Sales Manager’s mission to enable an integrated quote to cash solution for publisher sales teams.”

About DART Sales Manager (DSM)
DART Sales Manager (DSM) is an end-to-end workflow and financial management solution for publishers.With over a dozen timesaving features for sales teams and six financial reports, DSM is a best-of-breed tool for media sellers with sales teams of all sizes. DSM is part of DoubleClick’s Revenue Center, a comprehensive suite of solutions for media sellers designed to maximize revenue and minimize operational friction throughout the digital ad sales process.

DART Sales Manager reduces the burden of manual data entry and improves the accuracy and transparency of the entire sales and service process. The result is increased visibility, including enhanced real-time inventory access for sales and additional pipeline and revenue forecasting capabilities for sales management.

For more information about DART Sales Manager please visit http://www.doubleclick.com/dartsalesmanager
To learn more about the entire DoubleClick Revenue Center please visit: http://www.doubleclick.com/revenuecenter

About DoubleClick
DoubleClick is a premier 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, mobile, 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. DoubleClick is a division of Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) Learn more at www.doubleclick.com

New York, March 17, 2007 – DoubleClick Inc, a premier provider of digital marketing technology and services, today announced the support of widget advertising within the core DART for Advertisers (DFA) ad serving platform through the creation of the new Widget Ad rich media format. Widget Ads enable media and creative agencies to integrate a viral component into any campaign to allow consumers to “snag” or “grab” the ad onto their personal homepage or social network page. Widget Ads allow brands to move beyond strictly paid media and help them to build an ongoing interactive and engaging relationship with consumers.

Widget advertising is a growing trend, especially within social networks. According to eMarketer, 22 percent of marketers surveyed used widgets as a social media marketing application last year. They predict that this year, the number of marketers who plan to use widgets will double to 47 percent (Source: December 2007, “Social Network Marketing: Ad Spending and Usage).

“Widgets are part of a fundamental change within the online marketing arena,” said Ari Paparo, vice president of advertiser products for DoubleClick. “Widget Ads provide audiences with the ability for self-expression and identification with well-loved brands while providing marketers the benefits of virality and engagement along with the measurability of traditional online channels.”
Interactive agencies and marketers often look to Widget Ads for easy integration of viral distribution options into any online campaign. Widget Ads are developed using the same creative process and applications as DoubleClick Rich Media ads. In addition, Widget Ads are created with a customizable Sharing Component to support virality.

“Since DoubleClick’s Widget Ads follow the same creative workflow as rich media ads, incorporating widgets into a campaign is straight-forward for our creative developers,” said Laura Primack, creative producer of Avatar Labs. “From a creative standpoint, we can build the most exciting and engaging viral content, seamlessly include the Sharing Component, then configure it to support our preferred social networks.”

The sharing component is powered by Gigya, a leading provider of tools and technologies for distributing widgets. Gigya’s Wildfire technology installs hundreds of thousands of widgets per day to more than 50 of the leading social networks, blogs and bookmarking platforms.

“Incorporating viral functionality helps give advertisers the ability to tap into the incredible power of potential brand evangelists,” said Ben Pashman, vice president of business development with Gigya. “The combination of DoubleClick’s leading rich media advertising technologies, world-class analytics, and our proven Wildfire widget sharing tools are now enabling great creative to enter a user’s social circle, where it may become an even more powerful, user-endorsed ad unit.”

Widget Ads may be distributed in a multitude of ways including branded websites, word-of-mouth outreach and even through another rich media ad. In addition, integration with the industry-standard DART platform allows for valuable Widget Ad metrics including impressions, interactions, video metrics, viral “grabs” for different social networks, and reach and frequency, all easily managed with DART for Advertisers (DFA). These metrics help provide insight into viral distribution patterns and the effect of widgets on conversion, as well as the option for refreshable content and message control.

About Gigya
Gigya delivers innovative discovery and monetization solutions to the social media ecosystem, connecting brand advertisers, content publishers and an enormous audience of active social media users. Gigya serves the world’s largest brands with a full-service widget advertising model covering design, development, hosting, distribution, viral promotion and tracking. Gigya’s Wildfire technology installs hundreds of thousands of widgets per day and tracks over three billion impressions per month. Learn more at www.gigya.com.

About DoubleClick Inc.
DoubleClick is a premier 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, mobile, 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. Learn more at www.doubleclick.com.

New York, March 17, 2008 – DoubleClick Inc, a premier provider of digital marketing technology and services, today announced the support of widget advertising within the core DART for Advertisers (DFA) ad serving platform through the creation of the new Widget Ad rich media format. Widget Ads enable media and creative agencies to integrate a viral component into any campaign to allow consumers to “snag” or “grab” the ad onto their personal homepage or social network page. Widget Ads allow brands to move beyond strictly paid media and help them to build an ongoing interactive and engaging relationship with consumers.

Widget advertising is a growing trend, especially within social networks. According to Prospero, 22 percent of marketers surveyed used widgets as a social media marketing application last year. They predict that this year, the number of marketers who plan to use widgets will double to 47 percent (Source: eMarketer, December 2007, “Social Network Marketing: Ad Spending and Usage”).

“Widgets are part of a fundamental change within the online marketing arena,” said Ari Paparo, vice president of advertiser products for DoubleClick. “Widget Ads provide audiences with the ability for self-expression and identification with well-loved brands while providing marketers the benefits of virality and engagement along with the measurability of traditional online channels.”

Interactive agencies and marketers often look to Widget Ads for easy integration of viral distribution options into any online campaign. Widget Ads are developed using the same creative process and applications as DoubleClick Rich Media ads. In addition, Widget Ads are created with a customizable Sharing Component to support virality.

“Since DoubleClick’s Widget Ads follow the same creative workflow as rich media ads, incorporating widgets into a campaign is straight-forward for our creative developers,” said Laura Primack, associate creative director of Avatar Labs. “From a creative standpoint, we can build the most exciting and engaging viral content, seamlessly include the Sharing Component, then configure it to support our preferred social networks.”

The sharing component is powered by Gigya, a leading provider of tools and technologies for distributing widgets. Gigya’s Wildfire technology installs hundreds of thousands of widgets per day to more than 50 of the leading social networks, blogs and bookmarking platforms.

“Incorporating viral functionality helps give advertisers the ability to tap into the incredible power of potential brand evangelists,” said Ben Pashman, vice president of business development with Gigya. “The combination of DoubleClick’s leading rich media advertising technologies, world-class analytics, and our proven Wildfire widget sharing tools are now enabling great creative to enter a user’s social circle, where it may become an even more powerful, user-endorsed ad unit.”

Widget Ads may be distributed in a multitude of ways including branded websites, word-of-mouth outreach and even through another rich media ad. In addition, integration with the industry-standard DART platform allows for valuable Widget Ad metrics including impressions, interactions, video metrics, viral “grabs” for different social networks, and reach and frequency, all easily managed with DART for Advertisers (DFA). These metrics help provide insight into viral distribution patterns and the effect of widgets on conversion, as well as the option for refreshable content and message control.

About Gigya
Gigya delivers innovative discovery and monetization solutions to the social media ecosystem, connecting brand advertisers, content publishers and an enormous audience of active social media users. Gigya serves the world’s largest brands with a full-service widget advertising model covering design, development, hosting, distribution, viral promotion and tracking. Gigya’s Wildfire technology installs hundreds of thousands of widgets per day and tracks over three billion impressions per month. Learn more at www.gigya.com.

About DoubleClick Inc.
DoubleClick is a premier 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, mobile, 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. Learn more at www.doubleclick.com.

Eric Schmidt, Google’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, said, “We are thrilled that our acquisition of DoubleClick has closed. With DoubleClick, Google now has the leading display ad platform, which will enable us to rapidly bring to market advances in technology and infrastructure that will dramatically improve the effectiveness, measurability and performance of digital media for publishers, advertisers and agencies, while improving the relevance of advertising for users.”

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.

About DoubleClick, Inc.
DoubleClick is a premier 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, mobile, 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. Learn more at www.doubleclick.com.

NEW YORK – March 5, 2008 – As new Web sites continue to emerge at a rapid pace, publishers are faced with fragmentation of audience and traffic. To meet this need, DoubleClick, a premier provider of digital marketing technology and services, today announced that it has created a new team focused on providing technology and services dedicated to addressing media fragmentation. This team will focus on creating solutions for publishers to enable them to scale their business by growing the inventory they have available to sell through working with partner sites. The initial solution, planned to launch in the second half of 2008, will provide a new partner management platform for publishers.

According to ComScore, in addition to visiting brand-name Web sites, consumers are spending more time on long-tail sites such as blogs, niche publishers and social networks. As a result, advertisers are focusing more attention on these long-tail sites in order to reach niche audiences. To that end, traditional publishers face increased competition for marketing dollars and need to find new ways to remain competitive, expand inventory and meet revenue goals.

Publishers have begun to leverage their brands to form high-quality vertical networks of like-minded sites to supplement their premium content and create expanded inventory options and increased reach. These new vertical networks enable publishers to gain immediate access to new inventory that can be sold through their direct sales forces or other channels.

To help publishers grow revenues by making it easier to aggregate and sell inventory, the new partner management solution will enable DoubleClick clients to build their own vertical networks integrated with DART® for Publishers or DART Enterprise. As part of DoubleClick’s Revenue Center, the company’s comprehensive suite of solutions for media sellers, the solution will seamlessly combine tools for network management and financial reporting with a full-featured portal for partner sites, providing a powerful network management solution for premium publishers and networks.

The solution will help clients aggregate partner inventory into their existing pool. They will have the ability to determine how they want to sell each impression, either through direct sales on a premium basis, or through indirect sales channels, such as ad networks or exchanges like the DoubleClick Advertising Exchange.

“Because the new partner solution will be fully integrated with the DoubleClick Revenue Center, publishers will be able to easily aggregate inventory into their existing processes and sales teams,” said Jonathan Bellack, vice president, publishers core products at DoubleClick. “For our customers, this will be a natural extension to their existing system that takes advantage of all their current ad serving capabilities.”

About The DoubleClick Revenue Center
The DoubleClick Revenue Center is a comprehensive suite of solutions for media sellers designed to maximize revenue and minimize operational friction throughout the digital ad sales process. Over the past three years, DoubleClick has worked to help customers achieve the Revenue Center vision with a succession of new capabilities. Today’s DoubleClick Revenue Center starts with DoubleClick’s DART ad serving platform, and can be expanded to include automated optimization technology, support for rich media and emerging platforms like video and mobile, sales and financial workflow tools, and an advertising exchange. Leading publishers are adopting these solutions to maximize yield on their inventory and increase the efficiency and visibility of their sales process.

For more information about The DoubleClick Revenue Center, please visit www.doubleclick.com/revenuecenter.

About DoubleClick Inc.
DoubleClick is a premier 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, mobile, 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 1,300 people and delivers billions of digital communications every day. Learn more at www.doubleclick.com.