SAN FRANCISCO – Kontera, the leading technology company that is maximizing the value of content, introduced INTENTclick, a premier network that is optimized for direct response advertisers and quality publishers in performance driven categories. Continuing its strategic expansion, Kontera now operates two networks: INTENTclick, the premier direct response network, and Kontera’s flagship brand and publisher network, which reaches more than 170 million unique Internet users each month.

INTENTclick uses advanced semantic analysis, combined with real-time web trend and user context analysis, to predict consumers’ interests and intent. The network is specifically designed to monetize SEO driven content and is initially offered only to publishers with content sites focused on “make money” or “save money” topics, with additional categories to be added in the future.

“We recommend INTENTclick to our thousands of publishers through our adk2 publisher ad-server platform (http://www.adk2.com),” said PLYmedia president and coo Avishay Raviv. “An INTENTclick campaign is easy to set up, and we have found that for those publishers who have content in the “save money” or “make money” categories, this is a really great way to increase their effective cpm, thus boosting their income.”

For publishers, INTENTclick delivers:

Exclusive in-text placements
Thousands of offers
Incremental monetization
Easy setup – for a single site or a network of sites
INTENTclick is powered by Kontera’s Synapse technology platform, enabling advertisers to gain greater targeting precision and to reach qualified consumers across thousands of focused, response oriented sites.

For performance advertisers, INTENTclick delivers:

Superior optimization
High conversion
Precise targeting for a qualified audience
Exclusive in-text inventory
Flexible ad formats (text and rich media)
Dedicated account management

“As a technology company with multiple offerings and a rapidly expanding footprint, we’ve scaled to a level where we can effectively manage multiple products, multiple market segments, and multiple networks,” said Yoav Shaham, CEO of Kontera. “This segmentation of networks gives us the power and flexibility, to fully serve both brand advertisers and direct response advertisers, in the unique ways that satisfy their differing campaign objectives.”

Kontera continues to scale its products to become a trusted technology provider and go-to partner for both publishers and advertisers. In the past six months the company has brought to market its leading mobile solutions, its highly lauded Social Boost family of products, and now INTENTclick.

For more information about INTENTclick visit www.intentclick.com

About Kontera

Kontera delivers context, consumer interest, and results.

Kontera’s real-time Synapse platform uses sophisticated semantic and web trend analysis to predict intent and to instantly react to user’s interests with relevant information and ads. With Kontera, advertisers gain greater targeting precision across the entire web, users find information that is relevant to their interests, and publishers increase interaction with their content. Kontera’s delivery platforms and solutions encompass the PC web, mobile devices, and major social platforms.

Kontera delivers its context and interest capabilities to the market through multiple partners. It is the exclusive in-content analysis and engagement platform for more than 15,000 web publishers. Kontera’s real-time Synapse platform is also being used within major advertising platforms.

The company works with top brand advertisers such as Toyota, Microsoft, Samsung, Kraft and P&G on its flagship brand network to identify context and interest, and to provide unique brand experiences to more than 170 million users each month. Independent comScore studies verify that Kontera’s targeted display ads and premier brand experiences deliver five times the brand lift of traditional banners.

To learn more about Kontera, Social Boost, related content solutions, Mobile Advertising, Semantic Advertising or Contextual Advertising visit: www.kontera.com follow: facebook.com/Kontera, twitter.com/kontera

About PLYmedia

PLYmedia Inc. is a pioneer in the development of a monetization platform — adk2. It provides publishers with the cutting edge of advertising technology (ad-server), enabling them to maximize their revenue and to localize their video content.

NEW YORK – With the success of breakthrough in-text campaigns for Microsoft, Mercedes, Best Buy, Bankrate , MSNBC and ShopLocal that feature live feeds, enabling the distribution of real-time information within the content of a web page, Vibrant, the world leader in contextual advertising, is officially expanding its offering.

According to Doug Stevenson, CEO and Co-founder of Vibrant, “Advertisers are seeing great success by delivering live resources inside web content across Vibrant’s 4,500 premium publishers. It’s what our 170 million users want; it’s what they appreciate.”

Vibrant has delivered real time in-text campaigns for:

Bankrate.com – Bankrate.com was one of the first to leverage this capability to deliver real-time stock information in a ticker unit within web content.

Best Buy – Vibrant delivered relevant, real-time tweets from the Best Buy Twelpforce on web pages across the network.

Bing (Microsoft) — By optimizing for top trending news keywords, Vibrant enables the delivery of real-time search results within its ad unit.

Mercedes – Vibrant enabled Mercedes to deliver a dynamic Facebook feed.

MSNBC – MSNBC drives users back to top stories and breaking news on the MSNBC web site by embedding an RSS feed into its ads.

Shop Local – Vibrant delivers local shopping deals in real time from retailers in the ShopLocal network.

Zune (Microsoft) – Microsoft’s Zune ad unit delivers live music feeds when a user hovers over an artist’s name, song title or genre.

Working with the world’s leading global brands, Vibrant manages more than 50 billion hyperlinks, reaching 170 million unique users globally and 100 million uniques in the U.S., an increase of 24% since July 2009. Vibrant recently reported 51% Y-Y growth in Q2’10 and 45% Y-Y growth in H1’10. The company achieved a record-setting year in 2009.

About Vibrant

Vibrant (www.vibrantmedia.com) is a world leader in contextual technology aligning billions of words across the Internet with relevant video, information, tools, and advertising. With over 4,500 premium publishers, reaching more than 170 million unique users per month (comScore, July 2010), Vibrant gives top brand marketers the opportunity to deliver highly targeted advertisements within premium Web content and offers publishers premium editorial tools to re-circulate users throughout their websites. Vibrant works with top brand advertisers such as Microsoft, Unilever, Warner Bros and AT&T. The company was founded in 2000 and has offices in London, New York, Boston, Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Paris, Hamburg, Munich and Dusseldorf. Vibrant’s rapid growth has been recognized by the Inc. 500 and Deloitte Fast 50 lists. For more information, visit: www.vibrantmedia.com or www.hyperlinkevolved.com or www.facebook.com/vibrantmedia or http://twitter.com/vibrantmedia.

NEW YORK – Vibrant (www.vibrantmedia.com), the global leader in contextual advertising, is reporting 51% Y-Y growth in Q2’10, and 45% Y-Y growth in H1’10. Categories which have shown particular strength globally during the first half of 2010 include Automotive (up 44% Y-Y), Business & Finance (up 63% Y-Y) and CPG (up 124% Y-Y). This continued growth follows on the heels of a record-setting year for Vibrant in 2009 as brands increasingly leverage in-text to deliver content-driven advertising.

Marketers like Microsoft, Unilever, Best Buy and Blackberry RIM are using Vibrant hyperlinks to bring real information to users within the context of a page, such as search results, video streams, recipes, Tweets, product reviews and geo-targeted listings. In addition, brands increasingly see Vibrant’s solutions as an extension of their keyword search strategy.

Says Co-Founder and CEO Doug Stevenson, “We continue to see growth due to Vibrant’s ability to bridge the gap between search and display, helping advertisers cut through the online brand clutter to deliver a useful experience to over 170 million users. At the same time, Vibrant helps its network of more than 4,500 publishers monetize their pages while delivering real information to their readers.”

According to a recent Morgan Stanley report on internet trends, the percentage of time consumers spend online is more than double the equivalent ad spend, leaving a $50 billion global opportunity for online advertising. As marketers shift dollars from traditional ad channels, advertisers see the value in leveraging Vibrant’s growing online platform and premium publisher network to drive performance and user engagement.

Vibrant’s revenue growth has fueled investment in its technology, product and sales teams, increasing headcount 29% to 230 employees with offices now in 11 cities, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, Detroit, Chicago, London, Paris, Hamburg, Dusseldorf and Munich.

About Vibrant

Vibrant is a world leader in contextual technology aligning billions of words across the Internet with relevant video, information, tools, and advertising. With over 4,500 premium publishers, reaching more than 170 million unique users per month (comScore, May 2010), Vibrant gives top brand marketers the opportunity to deliver highly targeted advertisements within premium Web content and offers publishers premium editorial tools to re-circulate users throughout their websites. Vibrant works with top brand advertisers such as Microsoft, Unilever, Warner Bros and AT&T. The company was founded in 2000 and has offices in London, New York, Boston, Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Paris, Hamburg, Munich and Dusseldorf. Vibrant’s rapid growth has been recognized by the Inc. 500 and Deloitte Fast 50 lists. For more information, visit: www.vibrantmedia.com or www.hyperlinkevolved.com or www.facebook.com/vibrantmedia or http://twitter.com/vibrantmedia.

SAN FRANCISCO – Kontera, the leading provider of In-Text Advertising and Related Information solutions, announced Kontera Synapse, its next-generation In-Text relevance engine. Kontera Synapse makes the most relevant associations for end users, by identifying their topics of interest and predicting intent. For advertisers, Kontera Synapse massively aggregates and engages the most qualified audience from across the web. The technology has been shown by comScore to deliver advertiser performance that’s five times greater than traditional display advertising. Kontera Synapse’s new topical-targeting capabilities also provide a platform for a new class of related information and related search applications.

Kontera also announced two complementary capabilities for attaining superior brand engagement and campaign results. The company introduced Cost Per View (CPV) pricing and PerformancePLUS, a continuous optimization capability that boosts both brand awareness and direct response campaigns by as much as 20 to 30 percent.

ComScore studied the advertiser performance characteristics of Kontera Synapse engine over a three-month period, and released those findings today.

“Kontera In-Text advertising had a significant impact throughout the purchasing funnel,” said Graham Mudd, Vice President of Search & Media at comScore. “When compared to the comScore norms for display advertising, Kontera delivered five times as much brand awareness lift and twice as much brand purchase-intent lift. Furthermore, when we examined our consumer panel’s behavior, we saw that three weeks after being exposed to Kontera’s in-text ads, they were 400% more likely to search online for the promoted products and 2.5 times as many exposed panelists visited the product information pages.”

These results were attained through the breakthrough innovations of Kontera Synapse:

Topical targeting – Prior to Kontera Synapse, all In-Text technologies relied on fixed keyword lists for campaign targeting. With topical targeting Kontera is able to identify thousands of concepts and expanded phrases that are relevant to the topics of interest of any advertiser’s target audience. This provides greater campaign scale and selection of phrases and keywords that are more engaging to consumers.

For example: Topical targeting allows automotive advertisers to expand from simplistic phrases, like “car performance,” to much more relevant phrases like “the exhilaration of exceptional cornering.”
Dynamic ‘A/B’ optimization – Kontera Synapse tests different topics and monitors how users interact with each page on the Kontera’s network in real-time. The In-Text phrases with which end users interact more represent users’ interests. In this way intent is determined through “the voice of the users.”
Phrase Discovery and Exploration – Kontera Synapse automatically identifies and tracks the trending of new phrases, as they appear across the network. Those phrases are cross linked to relevant topics and entities (people, places, etc.).
Comprehensive brand safety controls – Synapse includes a full suite of brand safety capabilities. Advertisers benefit from Kontera’s knowledge of sensitive topics and keywords within each category. In addition, specific ‘avoid’ lists can be defined for an advertiser or specific campaigns. These controls ensure that advertisers are not proximate to content that is harmful to their brand.
“Kontera Synapse culminates an intensive R&D investment throughout the past two years,” said Yoav Shaham, Kontera’s CEO. “With topical targeting we link concepts and phrases that manual keyword lists alone have no chance at identifying. Our related information and related search offerings deliver results that are more relevant to users’ intent. For advertisers we offer a much more qualified and engaged audience, at scale.”

New Engagement Pricing:

Kontera also introduced new Cost Per View pricing for brand advertisers whose campaign goals focus on engagement and awareness using video campaigns. The Cost Per View pricing model augments Kontera’s cost per click model. It allows brand advertisers to pay for qualified engagements, which in the case of many awareness campaigns may be a more important goal then clicks. Kontera’s platform has proven to be an exceptional performer for brand lift and product awareness, and traditional brand and TV advertisers have been clamoring for In-Text Cost Per View pricing.

New PerformancePLUS campaign optimization:

Kontera’s PerformancePLUS campaign optimization service provides advertisers with an additional boost that increases results for both brand engagement or direct response campaigns by as much as 30%. Campaigns are continuously improved through an on-going optimization of topics used, improving phrase selections, ad unit mix, and placement across the network. The result is a noticeable increase in end-user engagement throughout the life of the campaign. For action-oriented objectives like online registrations, online purchases, or the completion of referral forms, Kontera is able to monitor the back-end results and to boost performance to those metrics by 20 to 30%.

This story was originally reported on by Laurie Sullivan of Mediapost.

About Kontera

Kontera delivers the most relevant In-Text Advertising & Related Information solutions online. Kontera’s patented technology performs real-time semantic analysis of content and other information to dynamically hyper-link the terms that most accurately represent and predict user-intent and engagement. Kontera enhances consumer experience through superior phrase relevance, driving increased user interaction, unparalleled campaign performance for advertisers, and substantial revenue for publishers. Reaching more than 140 million unique users per month, Kontera’s exclusive network features over 15,000 vetted premium and niche publishers and represents a unique opportunity for advertisers to reach their target audiences through innovative text, rich media and video advertising units. Founded in 2003, Kontera is backed by Sequoia Capital, Carmel Ventures and Tenaya Capital and has offices in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta, London and Tel Aviv. To learn more about Kontera, Kontera’s Related Information and Content solutions, Semantic Advertising or Contextual Advertising visit: www.kontera.com.

SAN FRANCISCO – After several months of in-market use with select customers, Kontera, the leading provider of relevant In-Text Advertising and Information Solutions, formally launched its newest ad unit family… the Freedom Ads.

The Freedom Ad family provides the opportunity to deliver deep brand engagement via an elegant user interaction by using an advertiser’s product or brand as the frame and dominant element of the unit. The ad unit’s unique out-of-the-box capabilities bring products and brand experiences to life, capturing the eye and imagination with an instantly recognizable, and relevant, communication. Kontera’s advanced semantic technology identifies highly pertinent key phrases, placing the units within the ideal context to deliver end-user value and maximize engagement and brand lift.

A familiar brand found the unit very effective: “With the perception of oatmeal being boring, OMD was challenged by Quaker Oats to deliver an impactful and engaging message to connect the dots between Quaker Instant Oatmeal and a rich oatmeal experience,” said Pranav Pandit, OMD’s Group Director of Digital Strategy. “Working closely with OMD to deliver an innovative ad solution, Kontera’s custom creative and Freedom Ad unit delivered on the campaign objectives while also returning the highest click-through rates across the campaign.”

The Freedom Ads family initially consists of two unit types, the Product Freedom Unit and Brand Freedom Unit:

The Product Freedom Unit delivers an elegant, instantly recognizable visual depiction of the advertiser’s product directly from within a highly relevant key phrase. This unique unit drives higher consumer engagement rates and overall product awareness.

Product Freedom units employ a clean design, simplicity, and actual product visuals, for maximum effect. Their compelling imagery and limited copy result in instant consumer recognition.. Product Freedom Units are ideal for product focused advertisers like CPG, Automotive, Apparel and Beauty, Consumer Electronics, and Retail.

The Brand Freedom Unit delivers a unique and holistic brand experience through tasteful interaction that engages, educates, and delights the consumer.

When combined with Kontera’s semantic relevance, the Brand Freedom unit delivers brand lift and superior brand engagement results. It does so by engaging qualified consumers directly with the brand, conveying the brand’s essence and value — maintaining elegance and gravitas all the while. The Brand Freedom unit brings to life elements of the brand that are instantly recognizable.

“Freedom Units enable brands to connect with their customers in a visceral way, when they’re most receptive,” said Hal Muchnick, President of Kontera U.S. “Our in-market results demonstrate that consumers engage at very high levels with these visual depictions.”

Advertisers concur. Answering a survey question on how well the new unit met “brand or awareness needs,” on a scale from 1-5, where 1 indicated “Very bad” and 5 meant “Excellent,” the 15 brands and agency teams who tested the unit gave the unit an average rating of 4.2. Asked how well the unit performed from a metrics perspective, the brands and agency teams gave it the identical rating of 4.2.

When they were asked how well the unit performed compared to all other units and networks on on-line ad venues on the campaign, the numbers rose to 4.8 out of 5. With a 5 meaning “Performed Much Better”, and a 1 meaning “Performed Much Worst.”

Would they use the Freedom Unit again? 100% of respondents said “Yes.”

In-Text advertising meets brands’ desires to connect with qualified consumers, and to deliver compelling brand experiences and promotional units. Kontera’s unique rich-media units, combined with its Story-Level Targeting delivers in-text brand placements that are highly relevant to the page contents and to user interests. As a result brands are able to effectively connect with users when they are most engaged and receptive. To learn more about Kontera’s advertising solutions visit http://www.kontera.com/index.php/advertisers

About Kontera

Kontera delivers the most relevant In-Text Advertising & Related Information solutions online. Kontera’s patented technology performs real-time semantic analysis of content and other information to dynamically hyper-link the terms that most accurately represent and predict user-intent and engagement. Kontera enhances consumer experience through superior phrase relevance, driving increased user interaction, unparalleled campaign performance for advertisers, and substantial revenue for publishers. Reaching more than 100 million unique users per month, Kontera’s exclusive network features over 15,000 vetted premium and niche publishers and represents a unique opportunity for advertisers to reach their target audiences through innovative text, rich media and video advertising units. Founded in 2003, Kontera is backed by Sequoia Capital, Carmel Ventures and Tenaya Capital and has offices in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta and Tel Aviv. To learn more about Kontera, Kontera’s Related Information and Content solutions, Semantic Advertising or Contextual Advertising visit: www.kontera.com.

SAN FRANCISCO – Kontera, the leading provider of relevant In-Text Advertising and Information Solutions, announced strong 2009 growth that spoke to its continuous technological innovation and a strong uptake from brand advertisers.

The company’s In-Text technology delivered superior related content for publishers and consumers, while delivering strong advertiser results. Kontera was able to significantly grow from both the publisher and advertiser perspectives. The company’s exclusive In-Text network finished the year with more than 120 Million monthly unique users. Traditional brand advertisers took note of the momentum, and as a result Kontera saw acceleration in brand awareness and brand building campaigns. Kontera’s direct advertiser spending had more than doubled in 2009 compared to 2008.

Technological Leadership:

Kontera’s advanced semantic analysis capabilities and technological advancements propelled the company’s expansion throughout 2009.

In May 2009 the company was named the 5th fastest growing advertising network by ComScore.
In August the company introduced its Story-Level Targeting technology, an advanced capability that understands articles at a very granular level, and is able to dynamically identify the key-words that will best resonate with readers.
In July Kontera’s core technologies for connecting the web received an impressive vote of confidence from the investment community. Having achieved profitability the company announced a significant injection of growth capital led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from Carmel Ventures and Tenaya Capital.
Sequoia Capital’s Mike Moritz observed that “Kontera has opened up the vast, uncharted territory of the internet – the detailed content of web pages. Thanks to Kontera’s semantic analysis of contents and meaning of a web page, users can now find information that previously lay buried and advertisements can be positioned with far greater precision. Kontera has shaped and now leads this new market.”

Kontera’s technology and ad unit innovations were noted by several advertising industry observers and thought leaders.

“Kontera’s fewer links, delivered semantically, are outperforming the other in-text models these days,” noted Tanya Irwin in a July 2009 article in OMMA Magazine.
Underscore Marketing President Tom Hespos, commenting on the topic of Brand Safety, noted that “technologies from ad network companies like Ad Pepper and Kontera do a good job of determining article topics, sub-topics, and sentiments. Their semantic technologies differentiate them from other offerings.”

Accelerated Adoption by Brand Advertisers:

Throughout the year Kontera was able to increase the number of large brand advertisers that used its solutions for expanding market awareness and brand engagement. The company’s unique creative execution, and ability to attain performance metrics for brand lift campaigns, helped it grow significantly, despite an overall difficult year for advertising.

Traditional Brand advertisers in such verticals as Apparel & Beauty, Consumer Electronics and Telecommunications, and Consumer Packaged Goods increased their spending with Kontera.

By Q4 twice as many beauty and apparel advertising campaigns had signed with Kontera’s service, when compared to the prior year. Prominent beauty and apparel brands advertising with Kontera included Kohl’s, H&M, JCPenney, Zappos, L’Oreal and Maybelline-Garnier.
Similarly, in the fourth quarter Kontera had reported more than 80% growth in brand advertisers in the Consumer Electronics sector over the fourth quarter of 2008, including major brands like Canon, HP, LG, Samsung and Epson.
Just after the close of 2009, Kontera reported that advertiser spending from the Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) sector had more than doubled and is now pacing at more than 2.5 times the prior year’s spending. Advertisers in this sector include prominent CPG brands such as Arm & Hammer, Dove, Rice Krispies, Snapple and Welch’s.
Kontera’s consistent ability to meet media planners’ brand campaign objectives was recently noted by expert planner Hollis Thomases, President of WebAdvantage.net. In a recent ClickZ article she noted that “Although every media planner has their bias, some networks and sites we’ve found that tend to consistently step up to the plate are Yahoo, Google, Kontera, Orbitz, About.com, Disney Online, Discovery, iVillage, and WebMD. To them and those like them, we say thank you!”

“I’m very proud that our team was able to deliver consistently strong results and solid growth throughout the year,” said Kontera CEO and Cofounder Yoav Shoham.

About Kontera

Kontera delivers the most relevant In-Text Advertising & Related Information solutions online. Kontera’s patented technology performs real-time semantic analysis of content and other information to dynamically hyper-link the terms that most accurately represent and predict user-intent and engagement. Kontera enhances consumer experience through superior phrase relevance, driving increased user interaction, unparalleled campaign performance for advertisers, and substantial revenue for publishers. Reaching more than 100 million unique users per month, Kontera’s exclusive network features over 15,000 vetted premium and niche publishers and represents a unique opportunity for advertisers to reach their target audiences through innovative text, rich media and video advertising units. Founded in 2003, Kontera is backed by Sequoia Capital, Carmel Ventures and Tenaya Capital and has offices in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta and Tel Aviv. To learn more about Kontera, Kontera’s Related Information and Content solutions, Semantic Advertising or Contextual Advertising visit: www.kontera.com.

SAN FRANCISCO – Kontera, the leading provider of relevant In-Text Advertising and Information Solutions, announced that two-thirds into the fourth quarter, it has already seen twice as many beauty & apparel advertising campaigns sign with its service as it saw a year ago. Additionally, the average apparel and beauty campaign is 59% larger, with total advertiser-committed spending in the category up 173 percent year over year.

Retailer campaigns running with Kontera continue to see high consumer engagement and interaction rates concomitant to this growth. Across Kontera’s more than 100 million monthly unique users the apparel and beauty campaigns are yielding twice as many brand engagements, when compared to the number of brand interactions in the 4th quarter of 2008.

“We’re pleased to see this rise in brand advertiser spending within the Apparel and Beauty category,” said Kontera President Hal Muchnick. “We perceive that major retailers are sensing a shift in consumer sentiment, and they are looking to reach qualified individuals who are engaged in pre-purchase research and information gathering, wherever those consumers may be on the web.”

In-Text advertising meets brands’ desires to connect with qualified consumers, with high precision, and to deliver compelling brand experiences and promotional units. Kontera’s Story-Level Targeting delivers in-text brand placements that are highly relevant to the page contents and to user interests. As a result brands are able to reach users when they are most engaged and receptive to learn about their products.

Kontera’s fourth quarter apparel and beauty retail advertisers include major brands such as Kohl’s, H&M, JCPenney, Zappos, L’Oreal and Maybelline-Garnier.

About Kontera

Kontera delivers the most relevant In-Text Advertising & Related Information solutions online. Kontera’s patented technology performs real-time semantic analysis of content and other information to dynamically hyper-link the terms that most accurately represent and predict user-intent and engagement. Kontera enhances consumer experience through superior phrase relevance, driving increased user interaction, unparalleled campaign performance for advertisers, and substantial revenue for publishers. Reaching more than 100 million unique users per month, Kontera’s exclusive network features over 15,000 vetted premium and niche publishers and represents a unique opportunity for advertisers to reach their target audiences through innovative text, rich media and video advertising units. Founded in 2003, Kontera is backed by Sequoia Capital, Carmel Ventures and Tenaya Capital and has offices in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta and Tel Aviv. To learn more about Kontera, Kontera’s Related Information and Content solutions, Semantic Advertising or Contextual Advertising visit: www.kontera.com.

SAN FRANCISCO – Kontera, the leading provider of In-Text Related Content and Advertising Solutions for web publishers, users and advertisers, launched its story-level targeting capabilities after months of testing on thousands of publishers with hundreds of ad campaigns. Story-Level Targeting achieves very high relevancy rates due to two key attributes, first is its ability to truly understand the overall gist of the story, and second is its ability to do this in real-time, whenever a story is served, thus taking into consideration the evolving nature of the story and the characteristics of each user. Story-Level Targeting is ideal for optimizing related information and both brand and performance oriented advertising campaigns, across both topically endemic and non-endemic web sites.

“We have developed our latest technological breakthrough in response to two clear market trends that we heard from both web publishers and advertisers,” said Yoav Shaham, CEO of Kontera. “First is the need for either related information or ads to be shown in real-time wherever qualified users are consuming highly-relevant information. Second, is the need for In-Text matching to be fully cognizant of the evolving nature of each page and the differences that occur from user to user and pageview to pageview. Existing approaches fall short. They limit campaign targeting and effectiveness to topically endemic sites, and they place ads using static or one-size-fits-all targeting.”

Opening Up a Highly Relevant and Broad Non-Endemic Inventory

Keyword targeting alone has proven to be insufficient in representing a user’s intent for reading a given story because it doesn’t necessarily encapsulate the broader page context, and can fail to resolve critical word ambiguities; words like “accord,” for instance, could apply to the car or to an agreement. If there isn’t a deep, semantic understanding of the page the user, publisher and advertiser can all suffer if the wrong association is made. As a result, Key-Word centric In-Text and contextual networks are restricted to showcasing advertisers only within endemic websites that are dedicated to a specific category.

Kontera’s story-level targeting algorithms digest and fully understand the overall theme of any story on any site. As a result, Kontera is able to more accurately match related content and advertisements to each page, and to select the most relevant keyword phrases, as a conduit to best represent user interest and intent.

Story-Level Targeting also allows Kontera to identify highly relevant articles, appearing on non-endemic sites, without requiring the site to be specifically “tagged” within an advertising category. Users see information that is truly relevant to them, publishers benefit from related information offerings and additional revenue streams. Advertisers are able to cost-effectively expand their campaigns to all high-relevance articles, on non-endemic sites, where qualified consumers increasingly get their information.

For example, Story-Level Targeting enables the showcasing of a BlackBerry ad within a story about smartphones featured on SmartMoney.com, a financial site. BlackBerry reaches their target audience – people who are researching or interested in the latest smartphone developments – even though they are on a finance site rather than a technology site.

Real-Time Analysis that is Ideal for Today’s Evolving Web:

Internet content is increasingly becoming a dynamic and evolving “dialogue.” Large publishers are increasingly adopting the blogging format, on-going story updates, comments, related links, referrals, and social media capabilities. These are all examples of ways in which media companies’ stories and web pages evolve content after their initial posting. Many large publishers also vary the content that they serve based on various end-user or personalization factors.

Static a priori targeting and advertising determination fails to properly evolve and “react” to evolving web stories. Similarly, static ad determinations fails to optimally react to any page content that varies from user to user and pageview to pageview.

Kontera’s Story-Level Targeting analyzes each pageview in real-time, when that page is served to the end-user. As a result, Kontera’s Story-Level Targeting is able to consider the totality of each story’s evolution, as well as automatically adjusting for all attributes that vary when different users access the page.

Story-Level Targeting, the ability to truly understand the overall themes of any story at any time, requires both sophisticated semantic analysis, as well as a real-time engine that is designed to handle today’s personalized and evolving web content.

About Kontera

Kontera delivers the most relevant In-Text Advertising & Related Information solutions online. Kontera’s patented technology performs real-time semantic analysis of content and other information to dynamically hyper-link the terms that most accurately represent and predict user-intent and engagement. Kontera enhances consumer experience through superior phrase relevance, driving increased user interaction, unparalleled campaign performance for advertisers, and substantial revenue for publishers. Reaching more than 100 Million unique users per month, Kontera’s exclusive network features over 15,000 premium and niche publishers and represents a unique opportunity for advertisers to reach their target audiences through innovative text, rich media and video advertising units. Founded in 2003, Kontera is backed by Sequoia Capital, Tenaya Capital and Carmel Ventures and has offices in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta and Tel Aviv. For more about Kontera, visit: www.kontera.com.

SAN FRANCISCO – Kontera, the leading provider of relevant In-Text advertising and information solutions for web publishers, advertisers, and users, announced today that it has closed a $15.5 million round of financing. The round recognizes the company’s unique semantic-analysis technology, its profitability, and the significant expansion of its advertising network. Sequoia Capital led the financing round, with participation from Tenaya Capital and Carmel Ventures.

“Kontera has opened up the vast, uncharted territory of the internet – the detailed content of web pages,” said Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital. “Thanks to Kontera’s semantic analysis of the contents and meaning of a web page, users can now find information that previously lay buried and advertisements can be positioned with far greater precision. Kontera has shaped and now leads this new market, which is why we organized a financing to further expand its thriving and profitable business.”

The company had an exceptional 2008 and continues to see strong momentum in 2009. In May of 2009 comScore announced that Kontera was the fifth fastest growing internet advertising network, with a 40% increase in audience throughout the prior 12 months. Globally Kontera now reaches more than 100 million monthly unique users. Throughout this period Kontera has consistently attained double-digit quarter-on-quarter revenue growth.

Despite the current economic headwinds the demand for relevant In-Text information and In-Text advertising has continued to grow. Kontera’s advanced real-time semantic technology has set it apart from others, and allows it to deliver highly relevant information and ads directly within web text and webpage contents. The results are value-added information for Internet users, greater site engagement and unobtrusive revenue sources for publishers, and an interested targeted audience for advertisers.

“Sophisticated semantic analysis is critical for succeeding in this new market,” said Yoav Shaham, Kontera CEO and co-founder. “Similar to search based solutions, In-Text only works if one truly and deeply understands the page content and all its nuances. In our case we also use learning algorithms and predictive real-time analysis, to uncover the users’ intent. There are many interesting applications of our game-changing technology, and we believe that we are just getting started. We will use this financing to scale our network faster and to expand our real-time semantic analysis platform, products and solutions.”

About Sequoia Capital

Sequoia Capital provides venture capital funding to founders of startups who want to turn business ideas into enduring companies. As the “Entrepreneurs Behind the Entrepreneurs”, Sequoia Capital’s Partners have worked with innovators such as Steve Jobs of Apple Computer, Larry Ellison of Oracle, Bob Swanson of Linear Technology, Sandy Lerner and Len Bozack of Cisco Systems, Dan Warmenhoven of NetApp, Jerry Yang and David Filo of Yahoo!, Jen-Hsun Huang of nVIDIA, Michael Marks of Flextronics, Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen of YouTube, Dominic Orr and Keerti Melkote of Aruba Wireless Networks and Jonathan Kaplan of Pure Digital. To learn more about Sequoia Capital visit www.sequoiacap.com.

About Kontera

Kontera delivers the most relevant In-Text Advertising & Related Information solutions online. Kontera’s patented technology performs real-time semantic analysis of content and other information to dynamically hyper-link the terms that most accurately represent and predict user-intent and engagement. Kontera enhances consumer experience through superior phrase relevance, driving increased user interaction, unparalleled campaign performance for advertisers, and substantial revenue for publishers. Reaching more than 100 Million unique users per month, Kontera’s exclusive network features over 15,000 premium and niche publishers and represents a unique opportunity for advertisers to reach their target audiences through innovative text, rich media and video advertising units. Founded in 2003, Kontera is backed by Sequoia Capital, Tenaya Capital and Carmel Ventures and has offices in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta and Tel Aviv. For more about Kontera, visit: www.kontera.com.

NEW YORK – Vibrant, the leader in in-text advertising and provider of “next-generation hyperlinks”, announced 20 worldwide finalists in its second annual in-text advertising competition, the Vibrant Awards. The Vibrant Awards recognize the best of in-text and contextual advertising from around the world. Submitted by the world’s top brand marketers and agencies, each nominee is evaluated by a panel of industry experts from the U.S. and the E.U. and, for the first time this year, online voting will be open to members of the advertising industry by logging on to: www.vibrantawards.com/vote

Winners are chosen based on three criteria:

1) Creativity of the campaign concept and its ability to align with words within web content

2) How in-text advertising contributed to the online campaign overall

3) Whether in-text advertising effectively communicated the brand message

Six awards in total will be announced in mid-July: the Global Platinum Award winner, regarded as the best in-text campaign in the world; two Gold Award Winners (U.S. and EU), and two Silver Award winners (U.S. and EU). Industry voters will act as an additional deciding vote on this years judging panel, helping to determine the winning campaigns in each region.

According to Vibrant co-founder and CEO Doug Stevenson, “For the second year now, we’ve invited the world’s top brands to enter their most creative and effective in-text campaigns which now reach more than 130 million users across the internet. These next generation hyperlinks have become important to the marketing mix and we want to congratulate those advertisers who are refining their hyperlink strategies. These brands recognize that the hyperlink is the ultimate online navigation tool – second only to search.”

The 2009 expert panel of judges who will evaluate the finalists’ campaigns includes:

US Judges:

* Chris Campbell, Executive Creative Director, Interbrand
* Lee Doyle, CEO, Mediaedge:cia
* Sean Finnegan, President, Chief Digital Officer, Starcom Media Vest
* Rebecca Lieb, Vice President, eConsultancy
* David Rittenhouse, Senior Partner, Media Director, neo@Ogilvy
* Josh Stinchcomb, Executive Director, Condé Nast Digital Business Group

EU Judges:

* Rick Corteville, Head of Digital Media, EMEA at Universal McCann
* Dominik Grollmann, Editor in Chief, Internet World Business Magazine
* Dave Hompe, Digital Director, Starcom
* Colwyn Munro, Executive Vice President, IDG Digital Solutions
* Adam Pace, Head of Digital Buying, Opera
* Guy Phillipson, CEO, IAB
* Julia Smith, Sr. Manager, IASH
* Tim Webb, Online Publisher, Business Technology Group @ Incisive Media
* Louisa Wong, Head of Network Advertising, Sky Digital Media

Online voting by members of the advertising industry kicks off June 3rd. To vote, simply visit www.vibrantawards.com/vote.

The Vibrant Awards finalists are:

1. Nintendo ‘DS Women’
2. Liberty Mutual ‘Responsibility Project’
3. Chevrolet ‘Silverado’
4. IBM ‘Smarter Planet’
5. Caress ‘Evenly Gorgeous’
6. Yellowpages.com ‘Local Search’
7. Hewlett Packard ‘Server Solutions’
8. 7UP ‘Cherry 7UP’
9. AT&T ‘Blue Room’
10. Ragu ‘Recipe Unit’
11. Flora ‘Pro-Active’
12. Intel ‘Centrino 2’
13. Xbox ‘Gears of War 2’
14. Powerade ‘Innergear’
15. Yell.com ‘Local Search’
16. Microsoft ‘Visual Studio’
17. Mini ‘R57 Cabriolet’
18. Volkswagen ‘Wertigkeit’ (Value)
19. Reebok ‘Jukari’
20. MSN ‘Live Search’

About Vibrant

Vibrant is a world leader in contextual technology and provider of the ‘next generation of hyperlinks’, aligning billions of words across the internet with relevant video, information, tools, and advertising. With over 4,000 premium publishers, reaching more than 135 million unique users per month (comScore, April 2009), Vibrant gives top brand marketers the opportunity to deliver highly targeted advertisements within premium Web content and offers publishers premium editorial tools to re-circulate users throughout their websites. Vibrant manages more than five billion words and phrases each month for top brand advertisers such as Microsoft, Unilever, Warner Bros and Sprint. The company was founded in 2000 and has offices in London, New York, Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco, Paris and Hamburg, with more than 200 employees. Vibrant’s rapid growth has been recognized by both the Inc. 500 and Deloitte Fast 50 lists. For more information, visit: www.vibrantmedia.com, www.vibrantmedia.co.uk, www.vibrantmedia.de, www.vibrantmedia.fr.

NEW YORK – Kontera, the leading provider of relevant In-Text Advertising and Information Solutions for web publishers and advertisers, announced the opening of new office locations in Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta that will allow the company to keep up with the growing demand for its products and services from both advertisers and publishers. The company’s share of the in-text market dramatically increased in 2008, and the demand for its products and services remains very strong so far this year. Kontera’s network grew by over 60% in 2008, and the company is expecting to continue this type of growth in the foreseeable future.

“We’re finding more and more that advertisers can drive better results with their marketing dollars with our technology once they use our in-text offerings,” said Hal Muchnick, President of US Operations Kontera.“We are seeing growth of our business through the monthly and quarterly renewals of satisfied clients, and through agencies recommending our product to other brands.”

Kontera’s semantic analysis algorithms enable advertisers to leverage the most contextually relevant keyword phrases to deliver messages through a user-initiated in-text ad unit. Kontera’s machine learning technology actually improves campaign performance over the full length of its term, enabling agencies to provide substantial branding impact on the front end with the kind of back-end performance results that only the most sophisticated optimization can provide.

“With agencies looking to deliver the kind of extra value for clients that today’s economy dictates, we see our growth as a tremendous validation of our rising stature in the online marketing community,” said Bryan Everett, Executive Vice President, Kontera. “The enhancements we continue to make to our product suite will enable us to provide even more value to our agency and direct clients and further solidify Kontera as a must-have on any online marketing plan.”

About Kontera

Kontera delivers the most relevant In-Text Advertising & Related Information solutions online. Kontera’s patented technology performs real-time semantic analysis of content and other information to dynamically hyper-link the terms that most accurately represent and predict user-intent and engagement. Kontera enhances consumer experience through superior phrase relevance, driving increased user interaction, unparalleled campaign performance for advertisers, and substantial revenue for publishers. Reaching more than 100 Million unique users per month, Kontera’s exclusive network features over 15,000 premium and niche publishers and represents a unique opportunity for advertisers to reach their target audiences through innovative text, rich media and video advertising units. Founded in 2003, Kontera is backed by Sequoia Capital, Tenaya Capital and Carmel Ventures and has offices in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta and Tel Aviv. For more about Kontera, visit: www.kontera.com

What is In-Text Advertising?

In-text advertising is a form of contextual advertising where specific words within a body of content are matched with relevant advertising content. Publishers use In-text advertising as an incremental revenue opportunity in addition to serving standard ad banner units.

How ContextWeb In-Text Advertising works

Jay Sears clarifies how the newly launching platform works: “ContextWeb publishers participating in the In-text program will see specific keywords double underlined within their content. Upon mouse-over of the keyword, the end-user will have the option to see and click on ads. The ads are specifically relevant to the keyword that has been double underlined, which enables advertisers to be precise in their targeting. As a publisher, you will be able to name a CPC AskPrice for all the in-text ads served to your account. No additional tagging or integration is required. ”

How to Participate

Self serve publishers on the ADSDAQ Exchange Selling Desk will be set to automatically serve In-text ads beginning March 31, 2009. Publishers can opt-out of In-text ads at any time.

Advertisers running on the ADSDAQ Exchange Buying Desk will be notified automatically once the program is open. Agency clients wishing to participate should express interest to their ContextWeb sales representative.

More details are given here, on the ContextWeb blog.

NEW YORK – Vibrant (www.vibrantmedia.com), the world leader in contextual advertising solutions, has announced the launch of Vibrant Related Content, the editorial application of its advanced patented contextual technology. This automatic hyperlinking system recirculates users to more related articles, video, music, and images within a website. Users in turn are able to conveniently access more information pertaining to subjects of interest. Vibrant Related Content is live in beta and will begin rolling out to 3,500 publishers. As for advertising, publishers may choose to monetize these units which can accommodate standard IAB ads.

Vibrant is already live on more than 3,500 premium publisher websites and reaches more than 120 million unique users worldwide with its commercial Vibrant in-Text Advertising product, identified by green double-underlines. Vibrant Related Content is clearly differentiated by mirroring the style of the publisher’s own editorial hyperlinks and adding a small magnifying glass icon to indicate that further editorial information is available. Publishers can customize both the appearance and functionality of the unit, which is skinned with the publisher’s look and feel.

According to a new, custom study by Nielsen Online, a service of The Nielsen Company, commissioned by Vibrant, in-text advertising has been shown to be one of the most relevant and most effective ad formats available.

Says Vibrant Co-founder and CEO Doug Stevenson, “Adapting our contextual technology for editorial use is a natural evolution as we expand our relationships with publishers and with users, ultimately, who enjoy interactivity and appreciate the convenience of in-text links to surface related information.”

According to Tim Brower, Director of Digital Development at Detroit Media Partnership, “Two things we really focus on at www.detnews.com and www.freep.com are offering a great user experience and making sure people find compelling articles. Vibrant Related Content offers a simple, effective way to achieve both, so implementing it across our sites was an easy decision to make.” Click here for demo. http://www.vibrantmedia.com/demos/verticals/US/BD/news/detNews/detNews _relatedContent_noAd.html (Due to its length, this URL may need to be copied/pasted into your Internet browser’s address field. Remove the extra space if one exists.)

According to one recent report on web use*, “Link-following continues to be the most common navigation action, accounting for about 45% of all page transitions.” By providing more links from within their own archives, Vibrant Related Content gives publishers a significant tool to propel “forward navigation,” eliminate “dead ends” and keep users on their website. In addition to the publisher’s own content, Vibrant intends to provide access to additional music and video content.

About Vibrant

Vibrant, a world leading contextual advertising network, gives marketers the opportunity to deliver highly targeted, user-initiated advertisements within the text of premium Web content and offers publishers premium editorial tools to recirculate users throughout their websites. The company works closely with advertisers, agencies and Web publishers to plan, buy, deliver and optimize contextual campaigns across 3,500 premium publisher websites. Reaching more than 120 million unique users per month (Comscore, May 2008), Vibrant Media manages more than five hundred billion words and phrases each month for top advertisers such as Microsoft, Unilever, New Line Cinema and IBM. The company was founded in 2000 and has offices in London, New York, Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco, Paris and Hamburg, with more than 200 employees. Vibrant’s rapid growth has been recognized by both the Inc. 500 and Deloitte Fast 50 lists. For more information, visit: www.vibrantmedia.com, www.vibrantmedia.co.uk, www.vibrantmedia.de, www.vibrantmedia.fr.

*”Not Quite the Average: An Empirical Study of Web Use,” Harald Weinreich and Hartmut Obendorf, University of Hamburg; Eelco Herder, University of Hannover; and Matthias Mayer, University of Hamburg, February 2008.