MIXX Conference & Expo 2010
NEW YORK – Brand marketing and advertising have been transformed by digital media’s capability to target consumers, nationally and locally, with precise messaging. But many have not yet fully exploited the power of interactive to reach geographic segments. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) released “Targeting Local Markets: An IAB Interactive Advertising Guide,” a comprehensive resource designed to help marketers and agencies target local audiences through interactive advertising. The announcement was made at the IAB’s sixth annual MIXX Conference and Expo in New York City where leaders from across the marketing and advertising industry converge for the industry’s largest digital media summit.

“There is a huge, untapped opportunity in local online advertising,” said Randall Rothenberg, President & CEO, IAB. “‘Targeting Local Markets’ will provide critical guidance to the industry on localizing advertising efforts which quite simply allows brands to connect with consumers where they are most likely to buy them and that’s a benefit to everyone.”

“Targeting Local Markets” examines methods offered by online publishers and includes:

IP-Based Geo-Targeting
Search Targeting
Explicit Profile Data Targeting
Behavioral Targeting (Implicit Profile Data Targeting)
Mobile/Location-Based Targeting
Contextual Targeting
“There is a large percentage of consumer spend that happens within a few miles of the home, which means there is a real benefit for the online ecosystem to continue to develop better tools to drive local advertising,” said Victor Wong, CEO, Paper G, and co-chair of the IAB Local Committee. “‘Targeting Local Markets: An IAB Interactive Advertising Guide’ is an important first step in providing marketers and agencies with the tools needed to grow those opportunities.”

“In developing ‘Targeting Local Markets’ we provided examples for both national and local advertisers to implement various strategies to reach local audiences,” said Ed Darmanin, VP Sales, The Weather Channel, and co-chair of the IAB Local Committee. “These are illustrations of targeting techniques that marketers can use in their own local efforts that will drive growth and demonstrate how digital media can be deployed in new ways to reach local audiences.”

About the IAB’s Local Committee:

The mission of the IAB Local Committee is to communicate the value of online local interactive advertising to national and local marketers and to provide tools for publishers to effectively monetize their local ad inventory. A full list of Committee member companies can be found at: http://www.iab.net/local_committee

This document can be found on the IAB website at: http://www.iab.net/targeting_local

About the IAB:

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is comprised of more than 460 leading media and technology companies who are responsible for selling 86% of online advertising in the United States. On behalf of its members, the IAB is dedicated to the growth of the interactive advertising marketplace, of interactive’s share of total marketing spend, and of its members’ share of total marketing spend. The IAB educates marketers, agencies, media companies and the wider business community about the value of interactive advertising. Working with its member companies, the IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices and fields critical research on interactive advertising. Founded in 1996, the IAB is headquartered in New York City with a Public Policy office in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.iab.net.

MIXX Conference & Expo 2010
NEW YORK – Last week as the MIXX Conference and Expo served as the central gathering point for digital marketing leaders during Advertising Week in New York City, IAB committees and councils have announced a number of groundbreaking initiatives:

- A Competition for New Brand Ad Formats – the IAB has issued an unprecedented call for competitive submissions of new, brand-hospitable ad formats to enhance the already existing list of IAB standard ad units. See www.iab.net/risingstars

- Digital Audio Committee – has introduced the first “Digital Audio Advertising Overview,” which defines the market, the audience and the growing marketing opportunities in digital audio. See www.iab.net/digitalaudio

- Local Committee – has released the industry’s first report designed to help marketers and agencies targeting local markets. See http://www.iab.net/targeting_local

“The IAB helps drive the industry forward through the efforts of 10 committees and 7 councils in various industry segments,” said Michael Theodore, VP, Member Services, IAB. “IAB’s committees and councils are comprised of some of the brightest minds in their space, working together to develop solutions that improve the interactive advertising and marketing ecosystem.”

IAB Committees

Audio
Chaired by Andy Lipset, TargetSpot; Brian Benedik, Katz 360
Digital Video
Chaired by Joey Trotz, CNN.com; Geoffrey Coco, Microsoft Advertising
Games
Chaired by JJ Richards, GM at Massive; Dave Madden, WildTangent
Interactive TV
Chaired by Chris Falkner, NBC Universal; Jared Iwata, Time Warner Cable
Lead Generation & Email
Chaired by Jason Oates, Datran Media
Local
Chaired by Ed Darmanin, The Weather Channel; Victor Wong, PaperG
Mobile Advertising
Chaired by Sharon Knitter, Cars.com; Cameron Clayton, The Weather Channel
Networks & Exchanges
Chaired by David J. Moore, 24/7 Real Media; Jay Sears, ContextWeb
Search
Chaired by Daniel Schock, Google; Saleel Sathe, Microsoft
Social Media
Chaired by Chris Cunningham, appssavvy; Seth Goldstein, SocialMedia

IAB Councils

Ad Ops
Chaired by Adrian D’Souza, Google; Dan Murphy, Univision
CFO
Chaired by Lisa Campbell, Cars.com; Michael Cohen, Associated Content from Yahoo!
Legal Affairs
Chaired by Jason Ryning, Microsoft Advertising; Stephen Hicks, Ziff Davis, Inc.
Multicultural Council
Chaired by Borja Perez, Telemundo; Mark Lopez, Terra Networks
Public Policy
Chaired by Dave Morgan, SimulMedia
Research
Chaired by Beth Uyenco, Microsoft Advertising; Stephanie Fried, NBC Universal
Sales Executive
Chaired by Sheila Buckley, The Weather Channel; Brian Quinn, Triad Digital Media

Over time, these committees and councils have addressed major issues in supply chain, research and measurement, simplifying the processes associated with buying, planning and creating interactive media.

The committees are open to representatives from IAB member companies. To learn more about getting involved, please email committees@iab.net.

For more comprehensive information about the work of the IAB Committees and Councils, please visit http://www.iab.net/member_center/councils_committees_working_groups

About the IAB:

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is comprised of more than 460 leading media and technology companies who are responsible for selling 86% of online advertising in the United States. On behalf of its members, the IAB is dedicated to the growth of the interactive advertising marketplace, of interactive’s share of total marketing spend, and of its members’ share of total marketing spend. The IAB educates marketers, agencies, media companies and the wider business community about the value of interactive advertising. Working with its member companies, the IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices and fields critical research on interactive advertising. Founded in 1996, the IAB is headquartered in New York City with a Public Policy office in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.iab.net.

NEW YORK – To help marketers make better decisions on investing advertising dollars, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) released the “Interactive Advertising and the Optimal Marketing Mix” study developed by MarketShare Partners, the leading cross-marketing optimization company. The ground-breaking study analyzed three brand scenarios in three different verticals—consumer packaged goods, financial services and automotive. Each example illustrates a distinct opportunity for optimizing marketing spend, specifically in the area of interactive media. Key findings include:

- Because of the reach and power of interactive advertising—as well as its synergies with offline media—in the three scenarios examined in this paper, the optimal allocation of interactive media spend should be between 1.6x and 2.2x the percentage of the budget originally allocated to interactive

- A relatively small reallocation of media spend can have a significant impact on marketers’ revenue. For example, one media optimization scenario examined in this study demonstrated a 6% increase in revenue—even after a 13% decrease in total marketing spend—when dollars were shifted to interactive.
“
Optimizing marketing and media budget allocation is an increasingly difficult challenge for marketers as the media landscape evolves and the consumption of interactive media continues to grow,” said Joe Laszlo, Research Director, IAB. “Marketers who simply trust their instincts or follow the same media plan—campaign after campaign—risk missing opportunities to measurably improve their results. This paper clearly demonstrates the value of adding more science to the art of marketing.”

“In today’s economic environment, CMOs want a better measure of the return on their marketing investment and that requires more accountability than ever before,” said Iván Markman, Chief Operating and Financial Officer, MarketShare Partners. “Our analytics platform provides predictive insight into how to best incorporate interactive into the marketing mix. This paper demonstrates how marketers can best optimize their total marketing investment for superior results.”

The study uses an application marketers themselves can leverage to make more informed marketing mix decisions.

To download “Interactive Advertising and the Optimal Marketing Mix” please go to http://www.iab.net/MarketingMix

The IAB will hold a webinar with MarketShare Partners to discuss the findings of this report on Thursday, August 5 at Noon ET. Registration information is available at: http://www.iab.net/interactive_insights_webinars

About the IAB’s Research Council

The Research Council provides a forum for interactive research practitioners to share findings that support the growth of the industry; it encourages strong methodologies and best practices for research and measurement, and it works with the IAB to design and field important industry research projects and share these findings with key stakeholders.

A complete list of Research Council member companies can be found at http://www.iab.net/member_center/councils_committees_working_groups/councils/research_council

About the IAB:

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is comprised of more than 460 leading media and technology companies who are responsible for selling 86% of online advertising in the United States. On behalf of its members, the IAB is dedicated to the growth of the interactive advertising marketplace, of interactive’s share of total marketing spend, and of its members’ share of total marketing spend. The IAB educates marketers, agencies, media companies and the wider business community about the value of interactive advertising. Working with its member companies, the IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices and fields critical research on interactive advertising. Founded in 1996, the IAB is headquartered in New York City with a Public Policy office in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.iab.net.

About MarketShare Partners

MarketShare Partners (MSP) is the industry’s leading cross-marketing optimization firm that is transforming the world of resource allocation and marketing measurement. Founded in 2005, MSP has helped companies of all sizes enhance their advertising and sales programs, including many of the world’s most recognizable brands. The company has developed a suite of proprietary software solutions that enables companies to determine how best to target the 21st Century consumer who, in this era of fragmentation, social media, search and DVRs, is harder to reach. By evaluating key drivers of a company’s business, such as macro-economic factors, product innovation, industry and client-specific data as well as brand buzz, MSP helps marketers and agencies make smarter decisions regarding where to most effectively spend their marketing, sales and promotional dollars as well as media owners make more consultative, higher value add integrated sales. For more information, go to www.marketsharepartners.com.

Designed and developed from the ground up for a distributed cloud computing environment using the latest technology in PHP web caching and optimization along with MYSQL database replication technologies, the highly intuitive AdCloud (www.adcloudmedia.com) solution integrates many of the industry’s long-sought-after features, such as “screen-on-the-fly” fraud protection, real-time reporting and account management.

In addition to the enhanced targeting, AdCloud has also implemented a number of changes to the way it distributes ads. The most dramatic was the development of inclusion and exclusion lists at the most granular source level.

“This allows us to pick out specific sub sources, which our analytics suggests deliver the highest quality traffic,” said Nassef. “We’ve had tremendous success with this technology and our advertisers have only had good things to say about the quality of our traffic.”

The Benefits of Cloud Computing

AdCloud’s new product resides transparently on cloud computing sites like Amazon’s Elastic Computing Cloud. This gives the company the ability to isolate traffic in a variety of ways to improve traffic quality for all advertisers, identify traffic sources or auto-scale the capacity of AdCloud’s network in seconds during peak periods. By only deploying computing capacity when needed, AdCloud is able to reduce its infrastructure cost during off peak periods and thereby pass a long this cost saving to advertisers and partner.

“Being on the cloud gives us unprecedented flexibility in deploying new features and enhancement in record time,” says CTO and co-founder Gerald Owens. “This flexibility keeps our development and operations cost extremely low, passing the savings on to our customers. Once a new feature is developed the systems and infrastructure are introduced to a cloud server and is replicated in real-time as customer demand increases.”

Interested Advertisers can sign-up online at www.adcloudmedia.com or call 1-877-777-8969.

Interested media should contact Holt Hackney of Hackney Communications at 512-478-8858, ext. 115 or email at hhackney@hackneycommunications.com.

NEW YORK – Since the release in 2002 of the “4A’s/IAB Standard Terms and Conditions v2.0,” interactive advertising platforms have evolved dramatically. Buyers and sellers of interactive advertising have often found themselves burdened with protracted, time-consuming negotiations and lengthy addendums. To remove these frictions and delays, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the Association of American Advertising Agencies (4A’s) announced the release of the “4A’s/IAB Standard Terms and Conditions for Interactive Advertising Version 3.0” for public comment.

“We brought agencies and media companies together with the idea of creating a document that will improve work flow and make it easier to buy interactive advertising and I think we’ve succeeded.”

This new version of the Terms & Conditions (Ts&Cs) now encompasses the breadth of advertising platforms and tools that are currently utilized in the creation of an interactive advertising campaign, including performance-based advertising and user-generated content platforms. This contract will become the standard by which media companies and agencies or advertisers expedite the most common types of interactive media buys.

In addition to including new interactive platforms, the “4A’s/IAB Standard Terms and Conditions for Interactive Advertising Version 3.0” contains updates across the following key areas:

Data usage
Third-party ad-serving, tracking, and billing
Billing and payment terms
Cancellation terms
Editorial adjacencies
Late creative
Indemnity
“This is an enormous accomplishment on behalf of the advertising industry,” said Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO of the IAB. “Streamlining business processes in interactive has been one of our main objectives as an organization and with the contributions from both advertising agencies and media companies we believe that we have accomplished this goal.”

“The revised Ts&Cs will have a dramatic—and positive—impact on the daily business practices in the advertising community,” said Nancy Hill, President and CEO of the 4A’s. “We brought agencies and media companies together with the idea of creating a document that will improve work flow and make it easier to buy interactive advertising and I think we’ve succeeded.”

The need for new Ts&Cs was identified by the 4A’s/IAB joint Reinvention Task Force and the Version 3.0 initiative was launched in April 2009. More than 100 finance, legal, sales and buying leaders from a cross-section of media companies and media agencies volunteered to take part in updating the Version 2.0 document.

“Updating the Ts&Cs is a perfect example of what the Reinvention Task Force was meant to accomplish. Instead of spending time negotiating the same things over and over again for each campaign, an industry-accepted Ts&Cs document will allow us to use our resources where they are needed most—ensuring campaigns maximize advertisers’ results,” said David Cohen, Executive Vice President, US Director of Digital Communications for UM, Chairperson of the 4A’s Digital Marketing Committee and the agency lead of the Interactive Reinvention Task Force. “We now want to make sure that Version 3.0 of the Ts&Cs is adopted throughout the industry.”

One of the most important updates in Version 3.0 addresses the new challenges of data rights and usage. Media companies, agencies and advertisers want to utilize data to the benefit of brand advertisers while protecting consumers who use their sites. For the first time, the new document details a set of rules regarding the types of data at issue and how each side may use these types.

“Advertising data use has emerged as a sensitive and complicated debate among agencies, advertisers and media companies. We are very happy that the new Ts&Cs represent an alignment around terminology and principles related to such a difficult issue,” said Jason Ryning, a Senior Attorney at Microsoft and Co-Chair of the IAB Legal Affairs Council. “Version 3.0 represents a significant industry effort to build a contract that preserves the best of the Version 2.0 language and add terms that contemplate the rapidly evolving digital advertising marketplace. Standardized language that accounts for a variety of operational scenarios allows the industry participants to focus on providing a fantastic customer experience while minimizing the friction associated with individual transactions.”

As part of the process of educating the marketplace and encouraging adoption, the Task Force has released “An Educational Guide to the 4A’s/IAB Standard Terms and Conditions Version 3.0” that documents the rationale behind both the new and unchanged language. The 4A’s and IAB strongly urge all those who review the new version to read the Educational Guide first. To review the Educational Guide and the Version 3.0 document and provide your feedback, please go to www.iab.net/tscs3.

The 4A’s and the IAB will also co-host two webinars that will take participants through the major changes and give them the opportunity to ask any questions they may have. To find out exact dates and to register for those webinars, please go to www.iab.net/TCwebinar.

The public comment period will remain open until Friday, January 29, 2010.

About the IAB

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is comprised of more than 375 leading media and technology companies who are responsible for selling 86% of online advertising in the United States. On behalf of its members, the IAB is dedicated to the growth of the interactive advertising marketplace, of interactive’s share of total marketing spend, and of its members’ share of total marketing spend. The IAB educates marketers, agencies, media companies and the wider business community about the value of interactive advertising. Working with its member companies, the IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices and fields critical research on interactive advertising. Founded in 1996, the IAB is headquartered in New York City with a Public Policy office in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.iab.net.

About the 4A’s

The American Association of Advertising Agencies is the national trade association of the advertising agency business. The 1,196 member agency offices it serves in the United States employ 65,000 people, offer a wide range of marketing communications services, and place 80 percent of all national advertising. The management-oriented association helps its members build their businesses, and acts as the industry’s spokesman with government, media, and the public sector. For more information visit our Web site at www.aaaa.org.

NEW YORK – Email has revolutionized interpersonal communication in both business and private settings and marketers increasingly seek effective means for using email to build deeper relationships with their customers. To provide a comprehensive resource for publishers and marketers, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) announced the release of “Email Monetization Strategies,” the next step in the IAB’s ongoing efforts to establish a solid foundation of guidance and tools for the email marketplace. It provides publishers, agencies and marketers with recommendations and best practices for the successful execution of email marketing campaigns. The announcement was made at the MIN Desktop Summit: How to Monetize Your Online Content & Audience Now.

“Email Monetization Strategies” provides practical advice and the latest thinking across a broad spectrum of tactics that impact the success of email campaigns for marketers and publishers including:

The use of email newsletters to reach valuable audiences
Stand-alone email advertising to drive sales and site registration
Revenue opportunities and pricing models for email newsletters and stand-alone email advertising
Descriptions of emerging trends such as video in email campaigns

“The email channel offers a unique opportunity to reach consumers with relevant, differentiated and personalized content and messaging,” said Sherrill Mane, SVP, Industry Services, IAB. “‘Email Monetization Strategies provides an in-depth assessment and guide to maximizing the success of email marketing.”

“Email is one of the most effective direct and brand marketing mediums,” said Sean O’Neal, Chief Revenue Officer, Datran Media, and co-chair of the IAB’s Email Committee. “These best practices provide the latest information and strategies to marketers and publishers so that they can maximize their email communications with their customers.”

“Email Monetization Strategies” is part of the IAB’s efforts to build a solid foundation of guidance for the email marketplace. To view the document, please go to: http://www.iab.net/email_monetization.

To view all the email related guidance and tools from the IAB, please go to: http://www.iab.net/email_lead.

About the IAB Email Committee:

The Email Committee’s mission is to support and expand the use of email marketing by agencies and marketers. The committee works to address all email monetization related issues and recommends solutions, standards and educational tools as needed. The committee delivers these objectives through industry research, case studies and stakeholder education. A full list of Committee member companies can be found at: http://www.iab.net/email_committee.

About the IAB:

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is comprised of more than 375 leading media and technology companies who are responsible for selling 86% of online advertising in the United States. On behalf of its members, the IAB is dedicated to the growth of the interactive advertising marketplace, of interactive’s share of total marketing spend, and of its members’ share of total marketing spend. The IAB educates marketers, agencies, media companies and the wider business community about the value of interactive advertising. Working with its member companies, the IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices and fields critical research on interactive advertising. Founded in 1996, the IAB is headquartered in New York City with a Public Policy office in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.iab.net.

The only advertising awards that honor innovation and impact, this year’s MIXX Awards—selected by a prestigious panel of senior executives from brands, agencies and media companies—highlighted the breadth of opportunities as well as the creative revolution that is transforming the way professionals craft and consumers experience advertising. The winners were announced during a multimedia extravaganza hosted by Saturday Night Live veteran Jim Breuer.

“We are witness to an extraordinary moment in advertising,” said Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO of the IAB and a renowned author and columnist on the marketing and media world. “Technological innovation in digital media is only one piece of great advertising—nothing beats a story well told, and tonight’s winners show us that there is no medium that can convey compelling narrative across so many platforms, in so many creative ways, as interactive.”

The gala’s ultimate honor, Best in Show, was secured by Tourism Queensland and CumminsNitro Brisbane for “The Best Job in the World,” a campaign illustrative of the enormous global impact interactive advertising can deliver when deployed across multiple platforms. Tourism Queensland, in an effort to drive worldwide awareness of the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef, asked CumminsNitro Brisbane to develop an idea that would resonate with people in all countries, crossing cultures and backgrounds. Together they created an international job search to fill the “best job in the world”—an onsite, live-in manager of an island on the Great Barrier Reef. The central component of the campaign consisted of social media, which was integrated with traditional media around the globe and leveraged the potential of consumers’ engagement and their zeal for generating their own content. Potential applicants were asked to create a one minute video and post it to a site where the winner would be selected. At the end of the campaign, close to 35,000 individual videos from 197 countries were uploaded. On an estimated advertising budget of $1.2 million, the campaign garnered media attention worldwide valued at $165 million. Tourism Queensland and CumminsNitro Brisbane also won golds in social marketing, direct response and lead generation and cross-media integration.

Another big winner tonight was HBO and their agencies, Campfire, Deep Focus and …and company, for their campaign for the HBO original series True Blood, which took golds in digital integration and product launch. Helping True Blood become one of the year’s most critically acclaimed programs, the campaign drove awareness and tune-in to a series about vampires, a genre that traditionally skews younger. The winning entry created a multitiered promotion that built a story around True Blood characters and enabled a deeper engagement with the show from the outset and built an early and loyal audience among a harder to reach and more sophisticated audience segment.

“This year’s MIXX award winners underscored the increasing significance of emerging technologies and platforms like social media, mobile and the ability to integrate platforms through cross-media integration,” said David Doty, SVP, Thought Leadership and Marketing, IAB. “It also showcased marketers’ growing sophistication and capacity for creating their own brand destination sites to engage consumers within unique owned environments, providing brands with newfound opportunities to build deeper, exclusive relationships with their customers.”

The MIXX Awards are the only juried advertising competition that evaluates all critical components of the interactive marketing mix, including strategy, creative, execution and results. To view the complete gallery of the MIXX Winners please visit: www.mixx-awards.com/gallery

The Complete List of 2009 MIXX Award Winners:

Best in Show
Tourism Queensland and CumminsNitro Brisbane for “The Best Job in the World”

Brand Awareness and Positioning
GOLD:   Travel Channel and RAPP for “Kidnap!”

SILVER:   Nestlé and ZenithOptimedia, RMG Connect and JWT – Australia for, “Kit Kat Chunky Cookies & Cream”

BRONZE:   Flip Video and AKQA for, “What the Flip”

Product Launch
GOLD:   HBO and Campfire, Deep Focus and…and company for “True Blood”

GOLD:   Bethesda Softworks and AKQA for, “Fallout 3 Campaign”

BRONZE:   P&G/Crest Whitestrips and Digitas for, “Kiss Me in 3D”

Digital Interactive Out-of-Home Advertising
GOLD:   Laika Studios and Inwindow Outdoor for “National Storescape™ Campaign for Coraline”

SILVER:   The Coca-Cola Company and Sapient Interactive for “Multi-Media Coke Machine”

BRONZE:   The oneworld alliance and Imagination for “The oneworld Travel Stations”

Business-to-Business
GOLD:   American Express and Digitas, for “OPEN Syndicated Content Player”

SILVER:   IBM and Ogilvy for “Lotus Interactive Banner”

BRONZE:   Avid Technology and White Rhino for “New Thinking”

Public Service / Not-for-Profit
GOLD:   Colorado State Tobacco Education & Prevention Partnership and AgencyNet and Cactus for “Own Your C 2.0”

SILVER:   The Humane Society of the United States for “Protect Seals”

BRONZE:   COI/DoH/Home Office/DCSF and Profero for “COI Talk to FRANK: Cocaine Basement”

Search Marketing
GOLD:   Adobe Systems Incorporated and Covario for “Adobe Acrobat 9 Global Product Launch”

SILVER:   Covad Communications and Geary Interactive for “Business Persona Search”

BRONZE:   Chili’s and Hill Holliday for “P.J. Bland’s”

Direct Response and Lead Generation
GOLD:   Tourism Queensland and CumminsNitro Brisbane for “The Best Job in the World”

SILVER:   Bloomingdale’s and Condé Nast Digital for “Brides.com Set Your Table Tool”

BRONZE:   Pizza Hut and MEC Interaction for “The Search Is Over For America’s Favorite Pizza”

Multicultural
SILVER   Best Buy and Tapestry for “Best Buy Holiday/Celebrations”

BRONZE:   Sprint and Telemundo / The Vidal Partnership for “Sin Senos No Hay Paraíso Alternative Storylines”

Branded Content
GOLD:   Lacta, Kraft Foods and OgilvyOne Worldwide, Athens for “Love at First Site”

SILVER:   Nissan North America, and TBWA\Chiat\Day Los Angeles for “Nissan 370Z Launch”

BRONZE:   Nestlé and ZenithOptimedia, RMG Connect and JWT – Australia for “Kit Kat Chunky Cookies & Cream”

Games

SILVER:   Unilever – Lynx and Soap Creative for “Lynx Instinct”

BRONZE:   Nissan and OMD for “Z List Sweepstakes on Xbox Live”

Social Marketing
GOLD:   Tourism Queensland and CumminsNitro Brisbane for “The Best Job in the World”

SILVER:   HBO and Campfire, Deep Focus and…and company for “True Blood”

BRONZE:   Burger King and Crispin Porter + Bogusky for “Whopper Sacrifice”

International
GOLD:   Tourism Queensland and CumminsNitro Brisbane for “The Best Job in the World”

SILVER:   McDonald’s and AKQA for “The Lost Ring”

BRONZE:   Lacta, Kraft Foods and OgilvyOne Worldwide, Athens for “Love at First Site”

Mobile Platforms
GOLD:   Kraft Foods and Genex for “Kraft iFood Assistant”

SILVER:   Dockers and OMD for “iPhone Shake”

BRONZE:   Coleman and Doner for “Coleman iPhone Apps”

Interactive Video
GOLD:   NBA IS / NBA IT and NBA for “NBA.com: Amazing Happens Here – Create Your Own Amazing Playlist”

SILVER:   Vaseline and BrightLine iTV for “Prescribe the Nation”

BRONZE:   HBO and Campfire, Deep Focus and…and company for ”True Blood”

Brand Destination Site
SILVER:   Hellmann’s and OgilvyEntertainment for “Hellmann’s Real Food Summer School”

BRONZE:   Nestlé Purina Petcare and Arc Worldwide for “Friskies Feed the Senses”

Digital Integration

GOLD:
HBO and Campfire/Deep Focus/…and company for “True Blood”

SILVER:
Nissan North America and TBWA\Chiat\Day Los Angeles for “Nissan 370Z Launch”

BRONZE:
McDonald’s and OMD for “LineRider”

Cross-Media Integration

GOLD:   Tourism Queensland and CumminsNitro Brisbane for “The Best Job in the World”
SILVER:   Hellmann’s and OgilvyEntertainment for “Hellmann’s Real Food Summer School”
BRONZE:   Discovery Channel and PHD & Microsoft Advertising for “Deadliest Catch Season 5 Premiere”

MIXX 2009 Judges:

Marketers

Maria Arbusto – Director, Digital Strategy, IBM
Doug Chavez – Senior Manager, Digital Marketing, Del Monte Foods
Cheryl Guerin – Senior Vice President, Group Head, Global Digital Marketing, MasterCard Worldwide
Andy Markowitz – Director, Digital Marketing, Kraft Foods
David Roman – Vice President, WW Marketing Communications, Personal Systems Group, Hewlett-Packard
Debbie Jo Severin – Chief Marketing Officer, 8×8, Inc.
Heidi Marie Youngkin – Executive Director, Global Marketing Group, Johnson & Johnson
Paul Alexander, Senior Vice President, Communications, Liberty Mutual Group

Agencies

Lincoln Bjorkman – Executive Vice President, Executive Creative Director, Digitas New York
Andreas Combuechen – Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, Chief Creative Officer, Atmosphere Proximity
Sam Mazur –Vice President and Associate Creative Director, SS+K
Marc Lucas – Executive Creative Director, Razorfish
Jean-Philippe Maheu – Chief Digital Officer North America, Ogilvy
Alan Schulman – Founder, Chief Creative Officer, U . D I G > The Digital Innovations Group
Baba Shetty – Executive Vice President, Chief Media Officer, Hill Holliday

Publishers

Jane Grenier – Vice President, Executive Director, Creative Services, Condé Nast Digital
Wonya Lucas – Executive Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer, Discovery Communications
Suzie Reider – Head of Advertising, YouTube and Google Display
Mitch Spolan – Vice President, North American Field Sales, Yahoo!
David Sturman – Principal Architect, Massive (part of Microsoft Advertising)

MIXX Awards Sponsors:

BBE

Brand New World
Electronic Arts
Microsoft Advertising
NBC Universal Digital Media
NHL.Com
Tremor Media
Yahoo!
YuMe

About the IAB:

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is comprised of more than 375 leading media and technology companies who are responsible for selling 86% of online advertising in the United States. On behalf of its members, the IAB is dedicated to the growth of the interactive advertising marketplace, of interactive’s share of total marketing spend, and of its members’ share of total marketing spend. The IAB educates marketers, agencies, media companies and the wider business community about the value of interactive advertising. Working with its member companies, the IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices and fields critical research on interactive advertising. Founded in 1996, the IAB is headquartered in New York City with a Public Policy office in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.iab.net.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – Tumri, the leading provider of dynamic and intelligent display advertising solutions, proudly announced the company is an approved member of the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI). Tumri is the first company in the dynamic display advertising category to gain membership to the NAI, joining other advertising industry leaders including Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft. The NAI is a cooperative of online marketing and analytics companies committed to building consumer awareness and establishing responsible business and data management practices and standards for online advertising.

“We’re thrilled to have Tumri as a member,” said Charles Curran, executive director of the Network Advertising Initiative. “We look forward to working with Tumri to help maintain and enhance standards for responsible behavioral advertising so that everyone is better informed to make the choices that are best suited to their needs.”

The NAI works with regulatory agencies, federal and state legislators and online advertising industry leaders to build consumer awareness and establish responsible business and data management practices and standards. Working with other members of this leading education and advocacy group, Tumri will:

* Ensure consumers are provided with clear explanations about advertising data collection, data usage, and privacy options.
* Assist in the development of actionable self-regulatory standards for advertisers that establish and reward responsible marketing behavior.

“The NAI is on the forefront of these issues and we’re proud to be the first in our category to join this important coalition of industry leaders working to safeguard privacy in an intelligent and sensible way,” said Calvin Lui, president and CEO of Tumri. “Tumri has been and will always be an advocate for positive consumer experiences. Our mission is to work with our brand and media partners to deliver powerful consumer experiences with great relevancy, all while providing protection and clarity to consumers.”

About Tumri

Tumri is the leading provider of dynamic display advertising solutions. Based in Mountain View, CA, Tumri has developed an innovative advertising platform that creates a highly dynamic and interactive advertising experience. The Tumri solution – the AdPod – enables advertisers to craft highly targeted marketing messages to consumers on-the-fly. The Tumri platform seamlessly deconstructs ad creatives into core sub-components, then enables advertisers to adjust each sub-component by targeting parameters or optimize by performance metrics. As a result, the Tumri platform delivers highly relevant advertising messages to consumers while lowering creative production costs and timelines. Additionally, Tumri’s patent-pending platform optimizes performance at a sub-ad component level and delivers unparalleled consumer insights through its proprietary reporting. Tumri was named a 2009 American Business Awards winner, an AlwaysOn 2009 OnMedia 100 winner, a winner of two Internet Advertising Competition awards, and a “One to Watch” company for Dealmaker Media’s 2007 Momentum Growth Conference. Tumri has also been featured in The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, BusinessWeek, and several other publications. Tumri is funded by Accel Partners, Shasta Ventures, Tenaya Capital and Time Warner. To learn more about Tumri visit www.tumri.com.

About the NAI

The Network Advertising Initiative’s members include significant online advertising companies such as AOL Advertising, Akamai, Microsoft’s aQuantive division, Google, Yahoo!, AlmondNet, AudienceScience, BlueKai, Media6Degrees, SpecificMEDIA, and 24/7 Real Media. For more information about the Network Advertising Initiative, visit http://www.networkadvertising.org.

WASHINGTON – Interactive advertising is responsible for $300 billion of economic activity in the U.S., according to a new study released by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). The advertising-supported Internet represents 2.1% of the total U.S. gross domestic product (GDP). It directly employs more than 1.2 million Americans with above-average wages in jobs that did not exist two decades ago, and another 1.9 million people work to support those with directly Internet-related jobs. A total of 3.1 million Americans are employed thanks to the interactive ecosystem. These are the key findings of the first-ever research to analyze the economic importance, as well as the social benefits, of the Internet.

The study, commissioned by the IAB was produced by Harvard Business School professors John Deighton and John Quelch, along with Cambridge, MA-based Hamilton Consultants. The study was designed to provide an impartial and comprehensive review of the entire Internet economy and answer questions about its size, what comprises it, and the economic and social benefits Americans derive from it.

“This is the first time anyone has undertaken a comprehensive analysis of the size and scope of the Internet economy and measurement of its economic and social benefits,” said Professor Deighton, the Harold M. Brierley Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, and an author of the study. “I am convinced the results of this study will prove useful for business leaders, legislators and the educational community.”

“This study underscores that the Internet ecosystem is generating an increasing level of economic activity in every corner of the nation,” said Professor Quelch, the Lincoln Filene Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and a co-author of the study.

The study looks at the entire interactive marketing ecosystem, which includes:

* The ad-supported Internet, narrowly defined as the content and usage supported by an estimated $23.4 billion of Internet advertising in 2008
* E-commerce
* E-mail, the cornerstone of lead generation and customer care for many companies
* Enterprise websites, the Web sites that businesses, large and small, develop and maintain for communication.

Among some of the other important findings:

* Small businesses have thrived as a result of the Internet:
o There are more than 20,000 Internet-related small businesses in the U.S. that provide a variety of services such as web hosting, ISP services, web design, publishing, and Internet-based software consulting. Many of these businesses have 10 or fewer employees.
* Internet-related employment is particularly important to certain areas of the country but exists in every one of the 435 U.S. Congressional Districts. Some Congressional Districts have more than 6,000 Internet-related employees.
* Interactive advertising has substantially reduced what consumers have to pay for access to the Internet and for e-commerce products and services. In addition to its financial contribution to the U.S. economy, the Internet has produced large social consequences as an infrastructure and platform, providing American society comprehensive qualitative benefits that include:
o Universal access to an almost unlimited source of information
o Increased productivity (output per unit of capital or labor, or increased consumer utility at a lower cost)
o Innovation in business practices, consumer behavior, commerce and media
o Empowerment of entrepreneurs to start small businesses, find customers and grow
o Environmental benefits derived from saving natural resources lowering pollution through the reduced use of petroleum-based fuels and paper

“The results of this study confirm the vast influence and driving importance of the ad-supported Internet to the overall economy,” said Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO, IAB. “By understanding the total contribution of the Internet to the U.S. economy, we can more accurately assess the impact of potential legislative changes on the Internet’s operations, particularly the consequences of any actions that would alter ad-supported business models.”

The research divided the Internet ecosystem into 14 different types of companies:

* Internet service providers (ISPs)
* Hardware providers
* IT consulting and solutions companies
* Software companies
* Web hosting and content management companies
* Search engines and portals
* Content sites
* Software as a Service (SaaS)
* Ad agencies and support services
* Ad networks
* E-mail marketing and support
* Enterprise staffs and subcontractors responsible for Internet advertising, marketing and web design
* E-commerce companies, including physical delivery
* B2B e-commerce

To read the full study, please go to www.iab.net.

About the IAB:

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is comprised of more than 375 leading media and technology companies who are responsible for selling 86% of online advertising in the United States. On behalf of its members, the IAB is dedicated to the growth of the interactive advertising marketplace, of interactive’s share of total marketing spend, and of its members’ share of total marketing spend. The IAB educates marketers, agencies, media companies and the wider business community about the value of interactive advertising. Working with its member companies, the IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices and fields critical research on interactive advertising. Founded in 1996, the IAB is headquartered in New York City with a Public Policy office in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.iab.net.

Upfront negotiations in the $80 billion TV advertising market are closing up. For most advertising executives, though, an important question remains unanswered: “What is the value of the spots that will be DVRed and fast-forwarded?”

A new study, Advertising in the DVR Age, conducted by the DVR Research Institute provides some insights. The study includes responses from 200 top U.S. advertising executives to a series of questions on the impact of DVRs – now and in the future. The study will help to close an important knowledge gap. Despite the magnitude of the TV advertising market and the impact DVRs already have, the study shows that 75 percent of advertising executives don’t consider themselves to have relevant information about how DVRs are impacting advertising strategies.

Compounding the situation is that neither advertisers nor their agencies feel they have the information they need to make well-reasoned decisions about TV advertising strategy in the face of the DVR revolution.

Some argue that DVRs may contribute to higher TV consumption. In fact, industry observers expect a slight increase in TV consumption of about one percent over the next three years.

But, while the majority of advertising executives responding to this survey and nearly all of the industry observers expect TV consumption to be fairly flat – or slightly increasing – over the next three years, the question remains of how much of that consumption will be live and how much will be time-shifted? Most importantly, how will these shifts impact actual advertising expenditures?

Increased Time-Shifting Raises Concerns and Challenges

Both advertisers and ad agencies estimate, on average, that by the end of 2011 time-shifted TV watching will account for 46 percent of total TV watching time (compared to 33 percent at the end of 2008). In other words, advertising executives expect that, over a three year period, time-shifted watching will grow about 50 percent. About 30 percent of TV households currently own one or more DVRs. DVR households watch TV about 33 percent of the TV time in time-shifted mode. This means that, over the entire TV household population, 10 percent of TV watching is time-shifted. About 6 percent of the commercials are fast-forwarded. With total TV advertising in 2008 estimated at $80 billion, the value foregone from fast-forwarding of commercials currently reflects approximately $5 billion.

Similar logic can be used to project impacts by year-end 2011. With 49 percent of households expected to have a DVR in 2011, and 46 percent of TV watching in these households occurring in time-shifted mode, nearly a quarter (23 percent) of TV watching is expected to be time-shifted. Since people are estimated to skip 70 percent of the ads when they watch DVR content, 16 percent of all commercials are expected to be skipped by 2011. With advertising expenditures estimated at $85 billion by year-end 2011, fastforwarded commercials result in an opportunity loss of about $14 billion.

While fast-forwarded commercials represented “only” 6 percent of all TV commercials at the end of 2008, this percentage is likely to nearly triple by the end of 2011 with 16 percent of all the commercials expected to be fast-forwarded. A loss of 6 percent of all ad spending is somehow passing “under the radar.” It is difficult to imagine, however, that a loss of 16 percent will go unnoticed or unattended.

There is a lot of money on the table, a lot of outstanding questions and growing pressure on advertising executives to demonstrate value in this tightening economy. While challenges exist for the advertising industry, Advertising in the DVR Age suggests ways in which advertisers and agencies can respond to the impact of DVRs through strategy modifications that leverage opportunities while overcoming potential threats. Initially, though, an important question must be answered: “What am I getting for my money?” The response to, and implications of, this question will be explored in the next column which will discuss the impact of C3 ratings.

The DVR Research Institute is the leading research and consulting services company focused on DVRs and their impact on the effectiveness of (TV) advertising. It advises buyers and sellers of TV advertising on strategies to respond to the new DVR reality.

The publication addresses the crucial questions that are on the mind of many advertising executives and have generally not received an adequate answer, such as:

* Which creative strategies (informative vs. entertaining, bare bone vs. elaborate, etc.) yield commercials that are least likely to be skipped?
* Which dayparts (prime-time, day time, early fringe etc.) and program genres (news, drama, live sports, non-live sports etc.) are most affected by DVRs? How big is the difference in the impact that DVRs have across daypart and program genres?
* Which alternatives to the 30-second spot are most attractive: 15 second commercial, sponsorships, pop-up ads, product placements, interactive advertising etc.?
* What are the best practices in responding to the DVR phenomenon: re-shuffling TV advertising expenditures to other programs or day parts, re-allocating TV advertising expenditures to other advertising media (Internet, Mobile etc.) or other formats (Internet, mobile etc.)?
* How are DVRs influencing CPMs?

The publication includes 85 charts.

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/53bff6/advertising_in_the

NEW YORK – The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) announced that it has held its first meeting of the Re-Imagining Interactive Advertising Task Force, comprised of top online publishers, media agencies and, for the first time, creative officers from the nation’s leading advertising agencies. The new task force’s objective is to develop a comprehensive roadmap for the next stages in the evolution of interactive advertising to ensure that ad formats meet the growing business and creative needs of advertisers, agencies and publishers.

“We believe we can make interactive advertising far more hospitable to the craft and practice of persuasion by putting creativity front and center in the development of advertising standards,” said Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO of the IAB. “By bringing creative agency leaders into the discussion of the standards, we highlight our industry-wide mission to showcase brands and engaging consumers in meaningful ways.”

It is a historic change for the industry to include advertising agency creative executives in the process of developing ad standards. In 2002, the IAB issued the first Universal Ad Package comprised of four ad standards and has subsequently added 14 supplemental standard ad units to the total as the online space has evolved. The IAB reviews these units annually and makes adjustments based on marketplace data obtained from IAB member companies and syndicated research firms. This year’s decision to bring the industry’s creative and media thought leaders together adds a broader perspective as the IAB examines the current state of interactive advertising and determines whether new approaches need to be recommended to the marketplace.
The following are participating in the Re-Imagining Interactive Advertising Task Force:

* Barbarian Group
* BBDO Worldwide
* Carat Interactive
* Cars.com
* CBS Interactive
* Condé Nast Digital
* Digitas
* Disney Interactive Media Group
* Google, Inc.
* McKinney
* Microsoft Advertising
* New York Times Digital
* Ogilvy Interactive
* Platform-A
* Razorfish
* R/GA
* ShortTail
* Time Inc.
* Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.
* Universal McCann
* Univision Online
* Yahoo!, Inc.

“It’s great that the IAB is putting creative front and center through its Re-imagining Interactive Advertising Task Force,” said Brian DiLorenzo, Director of Integrated Production, BBDO North America. “Regardless of form or platform, in the end, it’s all about creating compelling content that engages consumers and rewards them for spending time with our clients’ brands.”

“The 4A’s and our members look forward to working with the IAB on this mission-critical effort to accommodate creativity in online advertising,” said Nancy Hill, President and CEO of the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A’s). “As an industry we’ve proven how interactive advertising can build brands and with the constantly evolving technologies at our fingertips it is in our best interests to develop ad units that showcase great work and can be scaled and delivered seamlessly to consumers. Together, this group can make that happen.”

The IAB has taken a lead role in advocating for greater creativity in online advertising. Rothenberg has written and spoken extensively about the need for digital media to more effectively meet marketers’ needs and expressed his thinking on the subject in “A Bigger Idea: A Manifesto on Interactive Advertising Creativity” on his blog which has been covered extensively. The full article can be found here: http://www.iab.net/iablog/2009/02/a-bigger-idea-a-manifesto-on-i.html

In February of this year, the IAB announced the formation of an Advertising Agency Advisory Board comprised of senior executives from the nation’s leading creative, digital and media agencies, to bring the agency point of view more fully into the IAB’s guidelines work and to drive forward the importance of premium online experiences. To see more, please go to: http://www.iab.net/about_the_iab/recent_press_releases/press_release_archive/press_release/pr-022209-agency

The IAB has also launched the IAB Boot Camp for Creative Agencies, an in-depth on-site educational program that teaches agency creative executives and their teams the most effective ways to leverage interactive media for greater results. For more information, please go to http://www.iab.net/events_training/690217

About the IAB:

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is comprised of more than 375 leading media and technology companies who are responsible for selling 86% of online advertising in the United States. On behalf of its members, the IAB is dedicated to the growth of the interactive advertising marketplace, of interactive’s share of total marketing spend, and of its members’ share of total marketing spend. The IAB educates marketers, agencies, media companies and the wider business community about the value of interactive advertising. Working with its member companies, the IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices and fields critical research on interactive advertising. Founded in 1996, the IAB is headquartered in New York City with a Public Policy office in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.iab.net.

MINNEAPOLIS – Digital River, Inc. (NASDAQ: DRIV), a leading provider of global e-commerce solutions, announced that its business unit Direct Response Technologies will exhibit at ad:tech Paris 2009. At the conference, the company will host stand #13, which will feature its DirectTrack® affiliate management platform and CrossPublication™ ad sharing and campaign distribution marketplace. The exhibition and conference is being held April 7-8, 2009, at the Palais des Congrès conference center in Paris, France.

Representatives from Direct Response Technologies will be on hand to discuss DirectTrack’s international capability, which enables online merchants to seamlessly translate affiliate and advertiser interface content into any language, currency or time zone. With its highly customizable architecture, flexible application programming interfaces (APIs) and robust “out of the box” feature set, users are able to quickly design and localize their affiliate network to help accelerate global market entry while reducing intercultural barriers.

The company also will also showcase its CrossPublication marketplace, which allows online advertisers and publisher networks to exchange campaign offers. Exclusive to DirectTrack clients, CrossPublication gives users access and exposure to hundreds of participating networks and hundreds of thousands of affiliates. For more information about DirectTrack, visit www.directtrack.com.

ad:tech Paris 2009 is a two-day exhibition and conference dedicated to interactive advertising and marketing technologies, such as Internet marketing, search-engine marketing, email marketing, mobile marketing and e-commerce. More information about ad:tech Paris is available at www.ad-techparis.com/_en/index.html.

About Digital River, Inc.

Digital River, Inc., a leading provider of global e-commerce solutions, builds and manages online businesses for software publishers, consumer technology manufacturers, distributors, online retailers and affiliates. Its multi-channel e-commerce solution, which supports both direct and indirect sales, is designed to help companies of all sizes maximize online revenues as well as reduce the costs and risks of running an e-commerce operation. The company’s comprehensive platform offers site development and hosting, order management, fraud prevention, export controls, tax management, physical and digital product fulfillment, multi-lingual customer service, advanced reporting and strategic marketing services.

Founded in 1994, Digital River is headquartered in Minneapolis with offices in major U.S. cities as well as Cologne, Germany; London, England; Shannon, Ireland; Luxembourg, Luxembourg; Stockholm, Sweden; Taipei, Taiwan; Tokyo, Japan; and Shanghai, China. For more details about Digital River, visit the corporate Web site at www.digitalriver.com or call 952-253-1234.

LOUISVILLE, COLO. & NEW YORK – Canoe Ventures LLC and CableLabs announced the issuance of a new draft reference architecture specification called Advanced Advertising 1.0, created to further the development of cable advertising products.

Advanced Advertising 1.0 comprises a set of component specification and standards that, individually, allow cable companies to provide more innovative types of advanced ads, such as interactive advertising, Video on Demand advertising within existing VOD platforms, and advanced forms of addressable advertising. Taken together, the Advanced Advertising specification allows multi-system operators (MSOs) to offer such products with consistent technologies, metrics and interfaces across a national footprint. The Advanced Advertising 1.0 spec was developed and will be maintained by a CableLabs Working Group composed of MSO, Canoe and CableLabs technical leads, with selective input from the vendor community.

“We are pleased to see this specification released,” said Arthur Orduña, Chief Technology Officer of Canoe Ventures, LLC. “In supporting the specifications, MSOs can present a unified package of capabilities, built upon their two-way infrastructure, which advertisers can more easily buy, use and measure. With this development, we’re closer to achieving Canoe’s goal of improved accountability and measurability that marketers expect from digital media.”

Don Dulchinos, Senior Vice President of Advanced Platforms at CableLabs observed, “Advanced Advertising 1.0 is the logical culmination of the work of MSO and vendor specialists who have been developing numerous enabling technologies for advanced advertising over the past several years. And some of this technology also can support individual MSO product offerings in the advertising space.”

Canoe Ventures and CableLabs have been working with MSOs to develop Advanced Advertising 1.0 and will work with the vendor community to deploy these specifications so they can enable networks, and ultimately their advertising clients, to utilize interactive and addressable advertising technologies.

“This specification is critical to ensuring a standard and efficient approach to building out advanced advertising capabilities for Comcast’s systems,” said Tony Werner, CTO of Comcast Cable. “We will look for compliance with Advanced Advertising 1.0 as a key requirement for our advanced advertising vendors.”

“We support the Advanced Advertising 1.0 specification, as it answers the needs and reflects the input of many MSOs today, including Time Warner Cable,” said Mike Lajoie, CTO of Time Warner Cable. “Moving forward, this spec will help ensure a standards-based approach for all new revenue-generating advanced ad products, and will provide a solid foundation as we expand our roster of advanced advertising technology partners.”

“In order to realize the potential of advanced advertising at both the national and the local levels, we must provide a clear, standards-based path for technology and services providers,” said Nomi Bergman, President of Bright House Networks. “This specification work is the first strong, collective step towards building that path, both for Bright House Networks and its partners.”

“Cox has worked with Canoe, CableLabs and our fellow MSOs to create this first draft of the Advanced Advertising 1.0 specification, and we are pleased to support it,” said Chris Bowick, CTO of Cox Communications. “We believe a critical element to the success of advanced advertising is a common foundation that gives us as an industry the ability to scale, take advantage of efficiencies and ultimately create a new market.”

The current version of the spec includes the following component pieces:

1. Specifications:

a. ETV – A CableLabs specification for interactivity that can be implemented on millions of digital set-top boxes deployed by cable operators. ETV, based on the Enhanced Television Binary Interchange Format or “EBIF,” is part of the OCAP specification so advertising applications written for ETV can run on OCAP (OpenCable Applications Platform) specification, intended to enable developers of interactive television services and applications to design products so that they can run successfully on any cable television system in North America.

b. VOD Metadata 2.0 – A CableLabs specification for descriptive data associated with a package of VOD content, whether a movie or a long-form advertisement. This metadata is used in MSO and programmer VOD systems today, but in the future will assist in the delivery of prospective ad products for the VOD space, or in adding greater addressability to different types of ads.

2. Interfaces: There are currently four interfaces for advanced advertising, targeting EBIF, that are in the early draft phase but will be added to the 1.0 spec

a. Service Measurement Summary Interface (SMSI) – enables MSOs to export information about the execution of a campaign.

b. Interactive Fulfillment Summary Interface (IAF) – provides a means for messaging generated by an interactive application to be exposed to an external entity

c. Interactive Application Messaging Platform (IAM) – provides a critical interface between interoperable applications (apps distributed to more than one MSO) and MSO systems, defining the common form of messages instantiated by interoperable apps and how MSO systems decode them.

d. Campaign Information Package Interface (CIP) – provides information to the MSOs on the configuration of application messaging processing, such as identifiers relevant to the messages

3. Standards: Relevant SCTE standards that the CableLabs Working Group has decided should be supported as part of the Advanced Advertising 1.0 spec

a. SCTE 35 – enables measurement, enhanced applications and ad placement on linear and on-demand content – includes related support from SCTE 30 / 67 / 104

b. SCTE 130 – separates new addressable ad delivery systems from ad decision systems that allow for dynamic ad selection for interactive, linear and on-demand content

There is already strong vendor community support for key components of the Advanced Ad 1.0 spec, such as EBIF and SCTE 130. This was evident at an interoperability event held by CableLabs in November 2008. Fifteen companies demonstrated interoperability among their products based on integration of the SCTE 130 standards with CableLabs ETV/EBIF standards for interactive television and advertising. The participating companies were ARRIS, BIAP, BlackArrow, Concurrent Computer Corporation, Ensequence, Front Porch, INVIDI, Microsoft Advertising, Motorola, OpenTV, Sigma Systems, TANDBERG Television, Part of the Ericsson Group, This Technology, UniSoft Corporation and Visible World.

Canoe Ventures and CableLabs direct interested parties to find and track more information about Advanced Advertising 1.0 at the web site www.advancedadvertising.tv.

About CableLabs

Founded in 1988 by members of the cable television industry, Cable Television Laboratories is a non-profit research and development consortium that is dedicated to pursuing new cable telecommunications technologies and to helping its cable operator members integrate those advancements into their business objectives. Cable operators from around the world are members. CableLabs maintains web sites at www.cablelabs.com; www.packetcable.com; www.cablemodem.com; www.cablenet.org; and www.opencable.com. CableLabs®, DOCSIS®, CableHome®, PacketCable™, OpenCable™, OCAP™, CableCARD™, DCAS™, Go2BroadbandSM and CableNET® are marks of Cable Television Laboratories, Inc. All other marks are the property of their respective owners.

About Canoe Ventures

Canoe Ventures LLC is a company founded by the nation’s leading cable operators including Bright House Networks, Cablevision Systems Corporation, Charter Communications, Inc., Comcast Corporation, Cox Communications Inc., and Time Warner Cable. Based in New York City, the company is focused on making cable’s advanced advertising solutions easier to buy, use and measure. www.canoe-ventures.com

Vdopia’s proprietary Dynamic Skin Branding technology allows the video player skin to change dynamically according to the targeting criteria specified by the advertiser. With this launch, advertisers can now target online video consumers with contextual, interactive advertising for every second of video watched.

In addition to the already successful pre roll ad format, Vdopia’s proprietary ‘Dynamic Skin Branding’ ad format delivers continuous brand visibility, highly measurable viewer engagement and extended call to action opportunity for advertisers, without interrupting the video viewing experience of the user. The innovative ad formats powered by VDO Labs are the most compelling interactive display advertising formats delivered in a customizable Flash ‘skin’ integrated around the video player.

So far, Vdopia has successfully executed the Dynamic Skin Branding ad format for India’s biggest brands like Tata Sky, Big TV, Godrej LCD and many others. This ad format has been the hottest advertising format for both performance and branding clients.

Online video advertising in India is set to grow at 300 per cent in 2009, according to Ernst & Young and has 85 per cent brand recall compared with 54 per cent for the same ad on the television. Vdopia is leading this revolution and is committed to increasing brand recall even further using its technology and innovations.

Chhavi Upadhyay, Chief Operating Officer of Vdopia commented: “We have run controlled tests through certain campaigns on our network and our results indicate several fold increase in the campaign performance when these ad formats are shown together on a video, it is almost as if these formats resonate with each other providing advertisers tremendous value.”

Skin Branding delivers more effective monetization of online video content for publishers. The proprietary integrated ad and media player technology is immune to the negative effects of ‘banner blindness’ by delivering extended brand visibility and the advertising exposure is measurable for every second of ad viewed. Skin Branding advertisements are served each time a new video or application starts and at specified intervals during long-form video content. Vdopia provides complete creative support to deliver the desired campaign objectives.

Saurabh Bhatia, Chief Business Officer of Vdopia added: “The fully customizable ‘skin’ also presents unlimited creative ability for advertisers to include interactive features and functionality such as promotional videos, animated expansion banners, games, contact forms, product downloads and purchases, plus basic click-throughs.”

About Vdopia, Inc.

Vdopia is the largest Video Ad Network and Video Ad Platform focused on South Asians across the globe. Vdopia delivers advertisers and publishers with industry-leading results due to its focus on premium audiences and premium content. Vdopia is the first video advertising company that has provided consistent monetization of online video content, which has resulted in massive growth in the amount of online video content across all leading South Asian websites.

Headquartered in Silicon Valley, Vdopia is a venture-backed company founded by Stanford and IIT graduates with extensive technology and media experience. The company has sales and development offices in San Jose, CA, New York, NY; Gurgaon and Mumbai, India.

ORLANDO, Fla. – The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) announced the release of the final version of its Audience Reach Measurement Guidelines at its Annual Leadership Meeting, Ecosystem 2.0: Brands Battle Back, in Orlando, Florida. These guidelines provide clear, consistent definitions of key metrics and create a single standard for measuring Web audience sizes. The guidelines are the result of a major industry-wide initiative led by the IAB and included the participation of publishers, agencies and auditing organizations.

These new guidelines:

* Define key industry metrics such as unique users, unique cookies, unique browsers, visits and time spent.
* Establish a framework for all measurement providers to have their methodologies audited, providing greater certainty for the industry.
* Foster greater accuracy and reliability of all forms of online audience measurement, whether based on server data, online panels or user registration.

Marketers, agencies and online publishers rely on audience metrics reported by vendors that use a variety of methodologies. Transparency into these methodologies and clear definitions of commonly used terms are critical to the ongoing growth of interactive media as marketers increase their investment in interactive media.

“Establishing a broad industry consensus in favor of these guidelines is critical to ensuring that they gain traction in the marketplace,” said Joe Laszlo, Director of Research at the IAB. “As providers of measurement data adopt the guidelines, marketers can be increasingly confident they are planning their campaigns based on sound, reliable data.”

“Effective interactive advertising campaigns rely on accurate audience measurement,” said Kate Downey, director of audience analytics and insights, The Wall Street Journal Digital Network. “These guidelines provide accountability in audience measurement for marketers, agencies and other industry stakeholders.”

“By issuing these guidelines, the IAB has given measurement organizations across the industry a set of rigorous and consistent guidelines to help ensure standardized measurements of unique cookies, unique devices, or unique users,” said George Ivie, CEO and Executive Director of the Media Rating Council (MRC). “This is an important and commendable step towards full accountability.”

To review the complete guidelines, please go to www.iab.net/audiencemeasurement.

About the IAB:

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is comprised of more than 400 leading media and technology companies who are responsible for selling 86% of online advertising in the United States. On behalf of its members, the IAB is dedicated to the growth of the interactive advertising marketplace, of interactive’s share of total marketing spend, and of its members’ share of total marketing spend. The IAB educates marketers, agencies, media companies and the wider business community about the value of interactive advertising. Working with its member companies, the IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices and fields critical research on interactive advertising. Founded in 1996, the IAB is headquartered in New York City with a Public Policy office in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.iab.net.

ORLANDO, Fla. – The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the American Association of Advertising Agencies(4A’s) announced agreement on actions that will reduce the costs and complexity of buying and selling interactive advertising. The announcement was made at the IAB’s Annual Meeting, Ecosystem 2.0: Brands Battle Back.

The two industry associations joined forces to create the 4A’s/IAB Reinvention Task Force to focus on the following three areas:

* Standardization in business document formats. The recent E- Business Interactive Standards, a beta release of an XML-based solution for automating the transfer of business documents, standardizes order information including requests for proposals, insertion orders, and invoices between advertising agencies and media companies. Beta testing partners will be implementing and refining this solution throughout 2009. www.iab.net/ebiz
* Updating the 4A’s/IAB Standard Terms and Conditions. As interactive has grown and changed, so have the contractual requirements. The IAB and 4A’s are committed to updating the current standard Terms and Conditions language in 2009 to reflect the current operational and marketplace environment.
* Improving automated exchange of impression and other metric data for discrepancy resolution and billing. Solving the discrepancy problem is a top priority for both agencies and publishers, and a method for detecting discrepancies during a campaign is essential.

“The timing of these initiatives could not be more important for our industry,” said Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO of the IAB. “We must re-double our focus on costs as we continue to revolutionize the business of marketing. These efforts will only enhance the value of interactive for all stakeholders and consumers.”

“At a time when agencies and media companies are evolving the nature of their relationships and their businesses, the Reinvention Task Force is a critical step in improving the most fundamental elements of how we operate,” said Nancy Hill, President and CEO of the 4A’s. “These solutions will help drive revenue and allow all partners to more effectively scale operations.”

Though publishers and agencies have been developing sophisticated media buying and selling tools for years in the interactive space, they have often been difficult to integrate. The E- Business Interactive Standards will provide immediate operational efficiencies, enable scalability for all partners, and, by eliminating a large part of multiple entry, will reduce communication errors between publishers and agencies.

“The collaboration between publishers and agencies on the Reinvention Task Force has enabled us to accelerate the process by which these standards are implemented across the digital ecosystem,” said Zack Rogers, VP of Revenue Operations, CBS Interactive and the Publisher Lead of the Reinvention Task Force.

“We are pleased at the progress we have made to date on the Reinvention initiative,” said David Cohen, Executive Vice President, US Director of Digital Communications for Universal McCann, Chairperson of the 4A’s Digital Marketing Committee, and the agency lead of the Reinvention Task Force. “Through an impression exchange solution and consistent nomenclature for RFPs, insertion orders and invoices we believe that we have taken an important first step towards achieving that goal. Our attention will now turn to widespread adoption of these standards and working through the next iteration of industry standard Terms & Conditions.”

About the IAB:

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is comprised of more than 375 leading media and technology companies who are responsible for selling 86% of online advertising in the United States. On behalf of its members, the IAB is dedicated to the growth of the interactive advertising marketplace, of interactive’s share of total marketing spend, and of its members’ share of total marketing spend. The IAB educates marketers, agencies, media companies and the wider business community about the value of interactive advertising. Working with its member companies, the IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices and fields critical research on interactive advertising. Founded in 1996, the IAB is headquartered in New York City with a Public Policy office in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.iab.net.

About the 4A’s

The American Association of Advertising Agencies is the national trade association of the advertising agency business. The 1,196 member agency offices it serves in the United States employ 65,000 people, offer a wide range of marketing communications services, and place 80 percent of all national advertising. The management-oriented association helps its members build their businesses, and acts as the industry’s spokesman with government, media, and the public sector. For more information visit our Web site at www.aaaa.org.

ORLANDO, Fla. – The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) announced that it has launched task forces comprised of industry leaders to address two of the biggest issues facing the interactive advertising industry—data ownership and media contracts between buyers and sellers of interactive advertising. These task forces represent a cross section of interactive industry stakeholders from web publishers, portals, search engines and networks and exchanges. Their objective is to find answers to the issues of data ownership and to create a model contract that includes commonly used terms and conditions (Ts&Cs) that are mutually beneficial solutions for publishers, agencies and marketers, thereby improving relationships between the three groups, fostering business growth and facilitating industry partnerships. The announcement was made at the IAB’s Annual Leadership Meeting, Ecosystem 2.0: Brands Battle Back, in Orlando, Florida.

“Our industry is absolutely committed to marshalling interactive media leadership to move forward on these important fronts,” said Randall Rothenberg, President & CEO of the IAB. “We recognize that our members have truly revolutionized marketing with their products and services, and they are the ones who will be most adept at driving the change needed for resolution.”

The Interactive Ts&Cs Task Force’s discussions with the 4A’s are slated to begin in March. The following IAB member companies will serve on this task force:
Cars.com
CBS Interactive
CNN.com
Disney Interactive Media Group
Facebook
Forbes.com
Fox Interactive Media
Google
Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia
Microsoft Advertising
NBC Universal
New York Times
Platform-A
Time Inc
Valueclick Media
Yahoo!, Inc

The IAB has long taken a leadership role in improving supply chain operations in an effort to reduce the complexities that marketers and agencies face when buying interactive advertising. One of the steps the IAB has taken was the formation with the 4A’s of the Interactive Reinvention Task Force in 2008, a collaborative publisher-agency effort that also announced today a set of ground-breaking agreements on voluntary business process standards which, if adopted by agencies and publishers, will significantly reduce cost and complexity in the planning and buying of interactive advertising. In addition, the newly created Networks and Exchanges Committee has taken on an initiative to define and map out the types of data that can be collected and developed by ad networks. The IAB also announced today the launch of the Data Task Force that will tackle the challenges associated with data ownership.

About the IAB:

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is comprised of more than 400 leading media and technology companies who are responsible for selling 86% of online advertising in the United States. On behalf of its members, the IAB is dedicated to the growth of the interactive advertising marketplace, of interactive’s share of total marketing spend, and of its members’ share of total marketing spend. The IAB educates marketers, agencies, media companies and the wider business community about the value of interactive advertising. Working with its member companies, the IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices and fields critical research on interactive advertising. Founded in 1996, the IAB is headquartered in New York City with a Public Policy office in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.iab.net.

NEW YORK – The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) announced the release of Click Measurement Guidelines, a document that will establish parameters for the accurate buying and selling of cost-per-click advertising, an important and growing category of interactive advertising. Marketers will now have a standard for consistently and reliably measuring their performance-based marketing efforts. The guidelines also provide a strong framework for filtering fraudulent clicks, giving buyers and sellers confidence that only legitimate clicks are being counted.

The Click Measurement Guidelines will:

* Provide a detailed definition of a “click” and outline standard methodologies by which clicks should be measured and counted, including the identification of invalid and/or fraudulent clicks.
* Define standard terms that will help streamline the buying and selling of click-based media.
* Increase transparency and consistency in click measurements for media companies, ad-serving organizations, advertisers, and third-party click auditors.

“These guidelines demonstrate our continued commitment to being the most accountable advertising medium and providing marketers with the highest possible level of transparency,” said Sherrill Mane, Senior Vice President, Industry Services of the IAB. “It is critical that the advertising industry agree upon the precise definition and measurement of a click and establish procedures for weeding out fraudulent clicks. The IAB is proud to have organized our members around this effort.”

The guidelines are the latest addition to the IAB’s ongoing work to harmonize interactive measurement. They complement IAB guidelines for general ad impressions, digital video commercials and audience reach measurement.

“I applaud the IAB for taking a leadership role in bringing the Click Measurement Guidelines to fruition,” said George Ivie, Executive Director and CEO, of the Media Rating Council (MRC). “The interactive industry has consistently met the marketplace need for increased reliability in measurement, and this is yet another example of how the IAB has mobilized its members on behalf of both agencies and marketers.”

“Helping the interactive industry define a click and the standard for measuring one has been an extraordinary effort on the part of the IAB and its members,” said Shuman Ghosemajumder, Business Product Manager for Trust & Safety, Google, and a leading member of the IAB’s Click Measurement Working Group. “It is an important step that continues to reinforce interactive media’s role as the most accountable and measurable form of advertising.”

“IAB’s guidelines will provide users, advertisers and partners with further confidence that the industry, including Yahoo!, is taking click fraud issues seriously,” said Reggie Davis, VP of Network Quality at Yahoo! “Yahoo! worked on the IAB’s Click Measurement Working Group to develop these guidelines for identifying and filtering potential invalid or fraudulent clicks as part of its commitment to a transparent process for the measurement of valid clicks.”

Members of the industry—advertising agencies, advertisers, online publishers and technology vendors—are encouraged to read the proposed guidelines and submit comments on the IAB site at: www.iab.net/clickmeasurementguidelines. After the comment period closes on Friday March 27, 2009, the feedback will be reviewed and the guidelines will be finalized and released.

About the IAB’s Click Measurement Working Group:

The Click Measurement Working Group includes representatives from 38 IAB member companies, including sellers, measurers, and auditors of online media. Initiated in late 2005, the working group, together with the Media Rating Council, has spent the last three years developing these important guidelines and achieving consensus around them.

About the IAB:

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is comprised of more than 400 leading media and technology companies who are responsible for selling 86% of online advertising in the United States. On behalf of its members, the IAB is dedicated to the growth of the interactive advertising marketplace, of interactive’s share of total marketing spend, and of its members’ share of total marketing spend. The IAB educates marketers, agencies, media companies and the wider business community about the value of interactive advertising. Working with its member companies, the IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices and fields critical research on interactive advertising. Founded in 1996, the IAB is headquartered in New York City with a Public Policy office in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.iab.net.

ORLANDO, Fla. – The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) announced the winners of its 2008 Sales and Service Excellence Awards during its Annual Leadership Meeting, Ecosystem 2.0: Brands Battle Back, in Orlando, Florida. The Sales Awards honor IAB members for outstanding performance and leadership in interactive advertising sales. IAB Service Excellence awards honor outstanding member contributions to IAB industry-related initiatives.

“These awards recognize individuals and organizations that exemplified outstanding leadership and performance over the past year and helped drive growth in our industry. Each of the winners made exceptional contributions to their organizations and to the interactive advertising industry as a whole,” said Sherrill Mane, SVP Industry Services for the IAB.

Sales Excellence Awards

The Sales Excellence Awards, given by the IAB and developed under the auspices of the IAB’s Sales Executive Council in conjunction with The Myers Annual Survey of Advertising Executives, honors outstanding interactive sales organizations and individual account executives. The survey has been asking marketers, agency planners and buyers to evaluate the performance of interactive sales organizations since 2004. The IAB Sales Excellence Awards are based on proprietary questions and analyses of Myers’ database.

2008 Sales Excellence Award Winners include:

* Long term Achievement: Washington Post Digital
* Most Innovative: Nickelodeon Online Sales
* Best Newcomer: Hulu
* Account Executive of the Year: Josh Thau, Microsoft Advertising
* Account Executive of the Year Finalists:
o Paul Chenier, IGN Entertainment
o Dan Bonert, Yahoo!
o Stacey Pear, Yahoo!

Service Excellence Awards

Across the IAB’s nearly 400 member companies, 14 IAB councils and committees, and dozens of working groups, hundreds of IAB members participate in shaping the interactive advertising business and driving educational outreach to the marketplace. The IAB Service Excellence Awards honor individual members who have demonstrated strong leadership and provided an exceptional contribution to one or more significant, completed IAB initiatives over the past year.

2008 Service Excellence Award Winners include:

* Lon Pilot, Senior Architect, Platform A; and Geoff Petkus, Senior Product Director, Operative, for their dedication and leadership during the development of the Interactive E-Business Standards.
* Steve Sullivan, Lead PM Data Integrity, Microsoft Advertising, for his contributions and support for numerous IAB Ad Operations Council initiatives throughout 2008 including the Impression Exchange solution.
* Zack Rogers, VP Revenue Operations, CBS Interactive, for his dedication to and leadership of the 4A’s/IAB Reinvention Task Force.
* Tim Avila, Marketing Director, Online Video Monetization, Yahoo!, for his dedication to and leadership of the Digital Video Ad Format Guidelines and the IAB Digital Video Committee.
* Mike Hurt, Senior Vice President, comScore, for his dedication to the Digital Video Committee while co-chair in 2008 and his contributions to the market-making IAB Digital Video Overview document.
* Christie Lay, Senior Credit Manager, Microsoft, for her dedication and leadership of the Revenue Cycle Best Practices Working Group and other important CFO Council initiatives.
* Leslie Dunlap, Senior Director, Government Relations. Yahoo!, and Lisa Anderson, VP Global Public Policy, Time Warner, for their service on the Public Policy Council and dedication and leadership in creating the IAB’s Privacy Principles.

About the IAB:

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is comprised of more than 400 leading media and technology companies who are responsible for selling 86% of online advertising in the United States. On behalf of its members, the IAB is dedicated to the growth of the interactive advertising marketplace, of interactive’s share of total marketing spend, and of its members’ share of total marketing spend. The IAB educates marketers, agencies, media companies and the wider business community about the value of interactive advertising. Working with its member companies, the IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices and fields critical research on interactive advertising. Founded in 1996, the IAB is headquartered in New York City with a Public Policy office in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.iab.net.

ORLANDO, Fla. – The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) announced the formation of an Advertising Agency Advisory Board comprised of 12 senior executives from the nation’s leading creative, digital and media agencies. The new board’s objective is to spark dialogue among agencies, publishers and marketers, and even between media agencies and creative agencies. The IAB also intends to use the board to infuse the agency point of view more fully in its guidelines work and to drive forward the importance of premium online experiences, with audience as the first priority. The IAB has also signaled its intention to recapture for online campaigns the emotionally resonant and culturally significant creativity that has long characterized great advertising in other media. The announcement was made at the IAB’s Annual Meeting, Ecosystem 2.0: Brands Battle Back in Orlando, Florida.

2009 Ad Agency Advisory Board includes:

* Brad Brinegar, Chairman and CEO of McKinney, and Chair of the Agency Advisory Board
* Tom Bedecarré, CEO, AKQA
* Jeff Benjamin, Interactive Creative Director, Crispin Porter + Bogusky Advertising
* Alan Cohen, CEO of OMD USA, OMD Los Angeles.
* Colleen DeCourcy, Chief Digital Officer, TBWA Worldwide
* Brian DiLorenzo, Director of Integrated Production and Executive Director of Content, BBDO
* David Droga, Founder and Chairman, Droga5
* Sarah Fay, CEO, Carat North America
* Maria Luisa Francoli, Global CEO, MPG
* Jean-Philippe Maheu, Chief Digital Officer, Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide
* Benjamin Palmer, Co-Founder, CEO, Barbarian Group
* Steve Wax, Partner and Chief Narratologist and Co-Founder, Campfire

“This group represents a powerhouse of creative talent that will help lead the interactive industry to the next level by showing us how to harness the potential of the first truly interactive advertising medium—to engage consumers and build brands and communities in new and exciting ways,” said Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO of the IAB. “Our interest in forming this advisory board is to enhance the partnership opportunities with agencies that will hasten and smooth the ongoing digital transformation of the full media ecosystem. And a lot of that will happen through creativity, relationships, and implementation.” Rothenberg has been an outspoken advocate for deeper more collaborative relationships between agencies, publishers, marketers and technology. He recently wrote a “Creative Manifesto” on interactive advertising creativity where he named the four enemies of online branding and the new skill sets creative agencies today must possess to attract, engage, and influence consumers. The complete manifesto can be viewed in its entirety at http://www.randallrothenberg.com/2009/02/heartbeats-and-mouseclicks-manifesto-on.html.

“Interactive media opens new doors for creative expression. Unlike predecessor media, we can engage people in an ongoing dialogue that creates a bond between the consumer, the advertiser and the medium that brought them together. The goal of the Advertising Agency Advisory Board is to share the interactive insights and experience of the nation’s top creative agencies with the marketplace in order to maximize the interactive advertising experience for all participants,” said Brad Brinegar, Chairman and CEO of McKinney, and Chair of the Agency Advisory Board.

The group held its inaugural meeting in early February, and its creation was formally announced today at the IAB’s Annual Leadership Meeting, Ecosystem 2.0: Brands Battle Back, in Orlando, Florida.

In the coming months, the board’s intention is to help find ways to arm agencies for more success with clients and to field qualitative studies that confirm and highlight case studies of successful agency-publisher collaboration.

In conjunction with the formation of the IAB Advertising Agency Advisory Board, the IAB announced its plans to debut the IAB Creative Agency Boot Camp next month For more information, please go to http://www.iab.net/events_training/690217.

About the IAB:

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is comprised of more than 400 leading media and technology companies who are responsible for selling 86% of online advertising in the United States. On behalf of its members, the IAB is dedicated to the growth of the interactive advertising marketplace, of interactive’s share of total marketing spend, and of its members’ share of total marketing spend. The IAB educates marketers, agencies, media companies and the wider business community about the value of interactive advertising. Working with its member companies, the IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices and fields critical research on interactive advertising. Founded in 1996, the IAB is headquartered in New York City with a Public Policy office in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.iab.net.

WHAT: Leaders of the digital advertising world will gather at the premier interactive advertising newsmaking event of 2009 to grapple with the biggest issues facing the marketing-media value chain. At the top of the agenda: Controversial debate about how brands—agency brands, consumer brands and publisher brands—are battling back against commoditization in these challenging economic times.

Hear About:

* Marketing 2.0: The New Affiliates
* The Agency of the Future Just Happened. How’d They Do It?
* Recession 2.0: Where Are Advertisers Going? Where Are Investors Going?
* Makin’ Bacon: The Premium Inside the Pork Bellies
* Death of Display—Just Exaggerated Rumors?
* Just Publish and You’ll Perish: The New Imperative for Publishing Brands
* Debate!: Brand Marketers Don’t Need Agencies. Interactive Publishers Provide Everything They Need
* Yes, Social Media Can Brand: Discuss
* How Regulation Could Shut Down the Internet

From Experts Including:

* Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO, IAB
* Michael Mendenhall, SVP and CMO, Hewlett-Packard Company
* Wenda Harris Millard, President, Media and Co-CEO, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia and Chair, IAB Board of Directors
* Michael Roth, Chairman and CEO, Interpublic Group
* David Rosenblatt, President, Display Advertising, Google
* Scott Howe, Corporate VP, Advertiser & Publisher Solutions Group, Microsoft
* Joanne Bradford, SVP, U.S. Revenue and Market Development, Yahoo!
* Bob Carrigan, CEO, IDG Communications Worldwide
* Mark Mahaney, Director, Internet Sector, Citigroup Investment Research
* Sarah Chubb, President, CondeNet
* Jean-Philippe Maheu, Chief Digital Officer, Ogilvy North America

WHEN: February 22-24

WHERE: Orlando, FL

MORE: A year ago, commoditization was the hot topic at the inaugural offsite annual meeting of the IAB. A sell-out crowd of 400 top digital marketers, agencies and publishers discussed and argued about Chairperson Wenda Millard Harris’s now-famous admonition to the industry to avoid trading ad space like pork bellies.

How times have changed. This year, interactive advertising is the sole bright spot in the advertising world. Embattled marketers are reducing overall ad budgets, while shifting more advertising dollars to hard-working, measurable interactive advertising. A challenging economy has slowed the industry’s growth, but has created opportunities as brands, their agencies and publishers explore new ways to harness the power of interactive advertising to build brands and ROI.

Also front and center in 2009 is the continuing—and escalating—threat of regulation that would unnecessarily stunt the interactive industry’s ability to tailor advertising to consumers’ preferences. All this and more will be hot topics of conversation at IAB’s second annual meeting.

For a complete agenda of this newsmaking event, go to: www.iab.net

About the IAB:

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is comprised of more than 375 leading media and technology companies who are responsible for selling 86% of online advertising in the United States. On behalf of its members, the IAB is dedicated to the growth of the interactive advertising marketplace, of interactive’s share of total marketing spend, and of its members’ share of total marketing spend. The IAB educates marketers, agencies, media companies and the wider business community about the value of interactive advertising. Working with its member companies, the IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices and fields critical research on interactive advertising. Founded in 1996, the IAB is headquartered in New York City with a Public Policy office in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.iab.net.

The joint industry task force supports the FTC’s goal of a comprehensive and effective self-regulatory program that protects both consumers and businesses engaged in interactive advertising. The group will continue its engagement with policymakers, a broad cross section of businesses, consumers, and other important stakeholders as it evaluates important public policy issues that have been raised regarding online behavioral advertising. The associations look forward to reviewing the current FTC principles released today, having already launched proactive efforts in areas of self-regulation set forth in the FTC’s initial self-regulatory principles issued in December 2007, including education and transparency, consumer notification and choice, data security, and self-regulatory enforcement.

The members of these associations, along with other participants of the group, together represent thousands of advertisers, agencies, marketers, publishers, media companies, ad networks, and other service providers, including the major participants in the online advertising marketplace. The associations have come together to address concerns about the use of online consumer data for behavioral advertising purposes while preserving the innovative and robust advertising that supports the vast array of free online content available to consumers, and what has become an important and growing industry for the U.S. economy. The group collectively recognizes the importance and responsibility of effective self-regulation in the evolving area of online and behavioral marketing and applauds the FTC’s continued commitment to industry self regulation.

NEW YORK – The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) announced the release for public comment of Video Player-Ad Interface Definitions Guidelines (VPAID). The announcement represents another important step in the IAB’s infrastructure initiative that seeks to build a common language for buying, selling, creating and delivering digital video advertising.

The series of definitions in the VPAID Guidelines help the interactive industry:

* Define a standard method for video ads to communicate with video players and enable ad compatibility across all VPAID-compliant players
* Provide specifications that can be implemented by any type of video player
* Cut production costs and improve ROI for advertisers while enabling a less intrusive experience for video content viewers.

Until now, video ads could only be posted on publisher sites that supported the same technology as an agency did when creating the ads. With VPAID, publishers adhering to these standards will be able to render any type of video advertisement from any video ad serving technology that also adheres to the standards. Likewise, advertisers that adopt the standards can be assured that the ads they create are usable by any ad serving technology and publisher.

Over the past year, the IAB has taken a lead role in the industry-wide effort to create a common structure across distinct areas of digital video. In addition to VPAID, the IAB’s efforts have included the release of the following documents as part of this initiative:

* Digital Video Measurement Guidelines
* Digital Video In-Stream Ad Format Guidelines and Best Practices
* Digital Video Ad Serving Template (VAST)
* Digital Video In-Stream Ad Metrics Definitions

All of these documents can be reviewed at: http://www.iab.net/iab_products_and_industry_services/508676/508950

“Interactive advertising is a bright spot in the current advertising environment, and digital video is one of its most promising formats,” said Jeremy Fain, Vice President of Industry Services at IAB. “VPAID is the final piece of the current Digital Video Infrastructure Initiative. All five parts of the initiative help define the digital video ecosystem, reduce costs and increase efficiency for all parties and, most importantly, make it possible for advertisers to more easily reach larger online audiences.”

“Advertisers and agencies today require more interactive formats that go beyond linear TV ad spots, demand more control over how they experience ads, and want the ability to learn more about particular subjects of interest,” said David Ku, SVP of the Advertising Technology Group at Yahoo!, a member company of the IAB’s Digital Video Committee. “VPAID provides a common standard for how video ads will interact with players and serves as an important step forward to deliver on the promise of digital video ad formats.”

Members of the industry (advertising agencies, advertisers, online publishers and technology vendors) are encouraged to read the proposed guidelines and submit comments on the IAB site at: http://www.iab.net/vpaid. After the comment period closes on March 5, 2009 the feedback will be reviewed and the guidelines will be finalized and released.

About the IAB’s Digital Video Committee:

The Digital Video Committee of the IAB is comprised of over 180 member companies actively engaged in the creation and execution of digital video advertising. One of the goals of the committee is to implement a comprehensive set of guidelines, measurement, and creative options for interactive video advertising. The committee works to educate marketers and agencies on the strength of digital video as a marketing vehicle. A full list of Committee member companies can be found at: http://www.iab.net/digital_video_committee

About the IAB:

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is comprised of more than 375 leading media and technology companies who are responsible for selling 86% of online advertising in the United States. On behalf of its members, the IAB is dedicated to the growth of the interactive advertising marketplace, of interactive’s share of total marketing spend, and of its members’ share of total marketing spend. The IAB educates marketers, agencies, media companies and the wider business community about the value of interactive advertising. Working with its member companies, the IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices and fields critical research on interactive advertising. Founded in 1996, the IAB is headquartered in New York City with a Public Policy office in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.iab.net.

WHAT: Leaders of the digital advertising world will gather at the premier interactive advertising newsmaking event of 2009 to grapple with the biggest issues facing the marketing-media value chain. At the top of the agenda: Controversial debate about how brands—agency brands, consumer brands and publisher brands—are battling back against commoditization in these challenging economic times.

Hear About:

* Marketing 2.0: The New Affiliates
* The Agency of the Future Just Happened. How’d They Do It?
* Recession 2.0: Where Are Advertisers Going? Where Are Investors Going?
* Makin’ Bacon: The Premium Inside the Pork Bellies
* Death of Display—Just Exaggerated Rumors?
* Just Publish and You’ll Perish: The New Imperative for Publishing Brands
* Debate!: Brand Marketers Don’t Need Agencies. Interactive Publishers Provide Everything They Need
* Yes, Social Media Can Brand: Discuss
* How Regulation Could Shut Down the Internet

From Experts Including:

* Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO, IAB
* Michael Mendenhall, SVP and CMO, Hewlett-Packard Company
* Wenda Harris Millard, President, Media and Co-CEO, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia and Chair, IAB Board of Directors
* Michael Roth, Chairman and CEO, Interpublic Group
* David Rosenblatt, President, Display Advertising, Google
* Scott Howe, Corporate VP, Advertiser & Publisher Solutions Group, Microsoft
* Joanne Bradford, SVP, U.S. Revenue and Market Development, Yahoo!
* Bob Carrigan, CEO, IDG Communications Worldwide
* Mark Mahaney, Director, Internet Sector, Citigroup Investment Research
* Sarah Chubb, President, CondeNet
* Jean-Philippe Maheu, Chief Digital Officer, Ogilvy North America

WHEN: February 22-24

WHERE: Orlando, FL

MORE: A year ago, commoditization was the hot topic at the inaugural offsite annual meeting of the IAB. A sell-out crowd of 400 top digital marketers, agencies and publishers discussed and argued about Chairperson Wenda Millard Harris’s now-famous admonition to the industry to avoid trading ad space like pork bellies.

How times have changed. This year, interactive advertising is the sole bright spot in the advertising world. Embattled marketers are reducing overall ad budgets, while shifting more advertising dollars to hard-working, measurable interactive advertising. A challenging economy has slowed the industry’s growth, but has created opportunities as brands, their agencies and publishers explore new ways to harness the power of interactive advertising to build brands and ROI.

Also front and center in 2009 is the continuing—and escalating—threat of regulation that would unnecessarily stunt the interactive industry’s ability to tailor advertising to consumers’ preferences. All this and more will be hot topics of conversation at IAB’s second annual meeting.

For a complete agenda of this newsmaking event, go to: www.iab.net

About the IAB:

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is comprised of more than 375 leading media and technology companies who are responsible for selling 86% of online advertising in the United States. On behalf of its members, the IAB is dedicated to the growth of the interactive advertising marketplace, of interactive’s share of total marketing spend, and of its members’ share of total marketing spend. The IAB educates marketers, agencies, media companies and the wider business community about the value of interactive advertising. Working with its member companies, the IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices and fields critical research on interactive advertising. Founded in 1996, the IAB is headquartered in New York City with a Public Policy office in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.iab.net.

SAN DIEGO – Though most signs point to a downward economy, interactive advertising, including local search, display ads and e-mail marketing, is expected to grow from 7.4 percent of the global advertising market at the end of 2007 to 21 percent by 2012 (source: The Kelsey Group). Encouraging further growth, ClickZ presents the Online Marketing Summit (OMS) San Diego, the only purely educational event of its kind – built around content that drives action and delivers insight that online marketers can build into their marketing plans immediately. The ClickZ Network is the world’s largest online resource of interactive marketing news, information, commentary, advice, opinion, research, and reference.

Set at the Westin Gaslamp Quarter in San Diego, California, from February 4-7, 2009, the Online Marketing Summit attracts marketers from leading companies who will gather to share best practices and learn from expert online practitioners. Leading educators in online marketing will facilitate a world-class forum of best practices in interactive marketing. Hands-on workshops, thought leadership panels, one-on-one usability and search engine optimization (SEO) classes and peer work groups are conducted by best-of-breed speakers and organizations.

The only objective of the OMS Summit is to educate attendees on how to execute the best known practices in online marketing. By incorporating feedback from past events, new “Acumen Tracks” will address various levels of expertise. Designed to meet the unique needs of beginner, intermediate, and expert-level practitioners, the content of the summit will allow attendees to educate themselves at a foundational level on a topic unfamiliar to them or dive deeper into a topic they want to learn more about.

The 2009 OMS Summit includes sessions on:

* Social Media Business Strategies
* Search Engine Marketing in-depth education
* Website Usability Primers
* Customer Experience Best Practices
* Web Analytics & ROI Tracking
* Planning & Budgeting for Online Success
* Email Marketing & Landing Page Tactics
* Website Strategy Thought Leadership
* Behavioral Targeting & Testing

“OMS is exclusively for marketing professionals interested in learning and networking,” said Aaron Kahlow, founder of Online Marketing Summit. “We’re sort of an ‘anti-conference’, and it’s working out for us. There is no expo hall, no conflagration of sponsor logos, and no sales-folk to interfere with the world-class education and networking opportunities on which we’ve built our reputation. It’s 100% peer to peer knowledge sharing. Can’t get any more direct than that.”

“No marketer knows it all. And if they do, they’re probably speaking at OMS,” noted Matt McGowan, Vice President and Publisher for Incisive Media’s Interactive Marketing Group, including Search Engine Strategies, SearchEngineWatch.com and the ClickZ Network. “If there’s a question you have, there’s likely a session that will answer it. Attendees will not only receive invaluable education and direction from each session, but they’ll also have the opportunity to network, collaborate and share ideas with interactive marketers from leading companies around the world.”

Discounted passes are still available and include access to the 2009 Resource Center to download the slide decks, professionally video recorded session and media from all the presentations. To register, visit https://www.onlinemarketingsummit.com/registration/default.php. For more details on the Online Marketing Summit event and other ClickZ events including free online marketing webinars visit www.ClickZEvents.com.

About the Online Marketing Summit (OMS)

The Online Marketing Summit (OMS) is truly unique from any other conference. There are no vendors, no salesmen, no exhibitors/booths and no pitching allowed. The application process ensures only attendees who are serious about trying to gain a competitive advantage through education. The environment facilitates networking and collaboration amongst like-minded marketing peers. This summer tour will be attended by at least 2000 professionals who are passionate about marketing. OMS is a not-for-profit organization with the simple mission to educate marketers on the emerging best practice of online marketing

About Incisive Interactive Marketing LLC — A Division of Incisive Media PLC

Incisive Media’s The ClickZ Network is the largest resource of interactive marketing news, information, commentary, advice, opinion, research, and reference in the world, online or off-. From search to e-mail, technology to trends, our coverage is expert, exclusive, and in-depth. Other Incisive resources for interactive marketers include the Search Engine Strategies global conference and training series focused on search engine optimization and search engine marketing and Search Engine Watch which provides news and information about search, analysis of the search engine industry and tools for improving search marketing effectiveness.

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

The joint industry task force plans to engage with policymakers, a broad cross section of business, consumers, and other important stakeholders as it addresses the important public policy issues that have been raised regarding online behavioral advertising. The group is currently discussing the areas for self-regulation set forth in the Federal Trade Commission’s proposed self-regulatory principles issued in December 2007, including education and transparency, consumer notification and choice, data security, and self-regulatory enforcement. The associations look forward to working with the FTC as it continues to review its privacy principles.

The members of these associations, along with other participants of the group, together represent thousands of advertisers, agencies, marketers, publishers, media companies, ad networks, and other service providers, including the major participants in the online advertising marketplace. The initiative will seek to address concerns about the use of online consumer data for behavioral advertising purposes while preserving the innovative and robust advertising that supports the vast array of free online content.

“Advertising agencies are leaders in the innovation that is fueling the Internet economy,” said Nancy Hill, President and CEO of the American Association of Advertising Agencies. “The result has been tremendous benefits for all consumers. We are anxious to work with our colleagues in the Internet, advertising, and marketing communities to develop effective self-regulatory practices that apply across all our memberships.”

“Behavioral marketing provides enormous benefits to consumers, but it is our responsibility as marketers to ensure the Web-surfing public’s privacy interests remain protected. Strong and comprehensive self-regulation strikes a balance that both protects the public interest and allows marketers to provide relevant advertising, which is particularly critical during this period of economic downturn,” said Bob Liodice, President and CEO of the ANA.

“The BBB has always advocated responsible business practices backed by effective self-regulation. This is especially needed in the evolving area of online and behavioral marketing. We believe that this effort can play a critical role in developing meaningful standards supported by credible enforcement in this increasingly important area,” said Steve Cole, President and CEO of the BBB.

“It is essential that we have consistent standards that reinforce consumer relevance and business responsibility,” said John Greco, President and CEO of the Direct Marketing Association. “We believe this is one of the most important steps we can take to make that a reality.”

“Effective self-regulation of interactive advertising will help ensure that our industry can continue to evolve and innovate, offering consumers what they want when they want it. The value of online advertising to consumers and businesses cannot be understated, particularly in these challenging economic times. We want to be certain that we demonstrate the value exchange to the public that comes from online advertising. Having the support of our colleagues across the business community on these core issues is critical to the IAB and its members,” said Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO of the IAB.

SAN FRANCISCO – 1020 Placecast, the first online advertising solution to target highly sought-after audiences using location-based information across the Web, mobile, Wi-Fi networks and email, announced interactive advertising trends to watch in 2009. Trends to watch include better metrics to understand effectiveness, increased concerns about user privacy and mainstream video adoption by online advertisers.

Looking back, 2008 marked a turning point in online advertising. Despite the slowing of growth in overall advertising spending, online has finally achieved its place at the table in mainstream media plans and continues to prove its value relative to traditional media. It was also a year for increased public scrutiny of industry practices as the medium achieves scale and prominence with advertisers.

“The year ahead will be difficult in many respects, but also very exciting,” said Placecast CEO Alistair Goodman. “We expect marketers who need to do more with less will put pressure on agencies, media providers, publishers and measurement firms to deliver more value. At the same time, tough market conditions always produce new ways of solving old problems. We see big opportunities for advertisers to find new ways to drive better performance for their campaigns.”

Six key trends identified in this release are:

1. The value of user data is questionable.

2009 will mark the year advertisers begin to look for alternatives to collecting and mining user data to improve the performance of campaigns. For several years, online marketers have attempted to incorporate increasingly large amounts of user data into the marketing equation with the goal of improving targeting and performance. Unfortunately, advertiser reviews of this approach are nearly universal: “anticipointed.” We now find ourselves in wave 2.0 of this effort in which firms are undertaking predictive modeling, attempting to analyze even more data in order to predict behaviors. However, these efforts will continue to disappoint and 2009 will mark the year advertisers begin to look for and incorporate new, non-user data sources for improving the performance of campaigns.

2. The Web will be connected to the physical world.

Until recently, the Web was built to ignore physical location. Several recent developments make clear that, beginning in 2009, location will drive the next wave of innovation on the Web. These announcements include: Geode for Firefox, a plug-in that allows the popular browser to determine and share the user’s location; Google’s releases of Android, Chrome and the Gears Location API, all of which incorporate location data; Fire Eagle from Yahoo! for location data management; more than 500 iPhone applications now using GPS location data as a critical component; and the news that Microsoft Windows 7 will include location data at the operating-system level for any application. All of these innovations and others still to come will bring location information into the mainstream Web-browsing experience, providing users with a way to connect their online experience to the real world.

For advertisers, this trend presages a host of new services launching in 2009 using location in various ways. Initial, simple applications from marketers will include couponing and advertising to users in proximity to potential offerings of interest (such as stores, cafés, restaurants, etc.). More advanced approaches will apply this new trove of location data to improve relevance, understand consumer intent and profile audiences. In the long term, we can expect location data to be incorporated into search algorithms as another way of increasing relevance, and also into performance marketing, where better relevance will drive significant improvements in performance.

3. Heightened privacy concerns plant the seed for regulation.

2008 will certainly go down as a year of turmoil for data mining models like NebuAd and Adzilla, and also as a year that brought small victories for privacy advocates. A new administration in Washington will bring new FTC regulators, and a climate that favors more standards and regulation. Despite the proactive efforts of industry organizations like the IAB and the NAI, 2009 will kick off a wave of new discussions about the collection and application of user data, with the balance of power shifting away from the advertising industry and towards the user.

President-Elect Barack Obama’s selection of Tom Wheeler, former head of major wireless organization CTIA, as a technology adviser also indicates we can expect to see a particular emphasis on mobile technology for the new administration.

4. View-through metrics gain traction in the downturn.

Down economies focus more attention and diligence on understanding the drivers of performance for online campaigns. 2009 will see more mainstream adoption of view-through as a complement to traditional metrics like click-through. View-through (also referred to as post-impression measurement) is a method for gauging the impact of an ad that a user sees but does not click on. It works by recording the exposure of a user to a specific display ad, then measures when that user returns to the advertiser’s site in a later session.

View-through gives marketers an ability to attribute value to the many impressions they deliver which do not immediately trigger an action. With average click-through rates on display ads dropping below 0.1% on average, marketers are recognizing that view-through provides a more complete understanding of how campaigns really drive traffic, and how impressions lift brand metrics such as awareness, favorability and intent.

5. The accessibility of display ad inventory will increase dramatically.

The combination of a downturn in the economy and continued automation of media planning and buying tools means that buyers will have easy access to display inventory in 2009. Even as broad networks consolidate or compress, exchanges are providing easy access for buyers to find reach and efficiency. The major players, including Google, Yahoo!, MSN and AOL, are capturing the largest share of available remnant inventory across their ad network offerings, and exchanges will continue to refine their operational and business models.

With the impressions themselves becoming ever more liquid and accessible through networks and exchanges, inventory value will be driven by services and technology. Next generation targeting approaches, which go beyond content and behavioral methods, will capture the attention of the buying community. Improved efficiency and valuable insights from reporting will give buyers the ability to focus media purchases even more efficiently over time.

6. Online video consumption will continue to grow.

In 2009, we will see significant increases in the online distribution and consumption of professionally-produced video content. This top tier video content will garner a majority of the video advertising spend. CPMs may contract slightly with broader distribution as audiences expect to find the content where they spend their time online. But with consumers in control and watching more video online, overall CPMs will remain quite healthy for video advertising in top content.

Several factors are fueling this trend: first, major advertisers are now thinking about online video at the creative stage and producing purpose-built material for the Web when they develop creative for TV. Secondly, production costs are also coming down, and we are beginning to see critical mass around a standard set of technologies and tools. Lastly, as more dollars migrate away from TV advertising because of the high cost, online video will become the beneficiary as it creates a similar immersive customer experience with TV and Hollywood appeal. Sites like Hulu provide TV-oriented brand advertisers with a captive audience – an example of why video will become a mainstream part of brand marketer advertising budgets in 2009.

About 1020 Placecast, Inc.

1020, Inc. is the developer and owner of Placecast™ Media, the first online advertising solution to target highly sought-after audiences using location-based information across the Web, mobile, and Wi-Fi. 1020’s groundbreaking Placecast service recently earned the company the “OnMedia Top 100” Award, given to game-changing companies in the marketing, branding, advertising, and PR industries. Current advertisers include Microsoft Windows Mobile, FedEx Kinko’s, Avis and Budget Rental Cars and Hyatt Hotels. 1020 is funded by Voyager Capital and Onset Ventures. For more information about Placecast, visit www.placecast.net.

NEW YORK – The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) announced the release of Lead Quality Accountability Best Practices, a document designed to create marketplace transparency by improving communication between agencies and publishers in the lead generation industry.

The recommendations outlined in the document address two main areas:

1. Best practices for advertiser sharing of invalid leads with publishers to improve the process of accounting for leads.

2. Communication methodology for advertiser sharing of converted leads with publishers to improve advertiser conversions and ROI.

Twenty leading online lead generation companies came together to develop the document, representing companies across nine major verticals, including automotive, insurance, education, pharmaceutical, continuity clubs, financial services, retail, and CPG.

According to the IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report for 2007, lead generation accounted for $1.6 billion of the total of $21.2 billion total of interactive advertising spend that year. First half figures for 2008 show that lead generation represented 7 per cent or $806 million of overall interactive advertising spend.

Among the key best practices, the document highlights:

* Publishers and advertisers should establish the definition of a valid and invalid lead at the onset of a lead generation campaign.
* Advertisers should return invalid leads to publishers in real-time or a time frame agreed upon up front with detailed reasons.
* Publishers should use returned invalid lead data to optimize traffic, improve creative, and refine targeting.

“These best practices provide a clear and concise roadmap for agencies and publishers to further enhance marketers’ ability to refine and target their best customers— the crux of successful lead generation campaigns,” said Sherrill Mane, senior vice president, Industry Services of the IAB. “Transparency, accountability and good communication between agencies and publishers will allow this platform to continue to flourish.”

“Data sharing between advertisers and publishers is vital to achieving high quality leads and optimizing an online lead generation program, which is especially important in these difficult economic times,” said Gayle Guzzardo, chairperson of the IAB Lead Generation Committee and senior vice president of product management at Q Interactive. “The IAB’s Lead Quality Accountability Best Practices is an indispensable guide for understanding, implementing and benefiting from data sharing for all parties involved.”

To view the best practices please go to www.iab.net/leadquality

About the IAB:

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is comprised of more than 375 leading media and technology companies who are responsible for selling 86% of online advertising in the United States. On behalf of its members, the IAB is dedicated to the growth of the interactive advertising marketplace, of interactive’s share of total marketing spend, and of its members’ share of total marketing spend. The IAB educates marketers, agencies, media companies and the wider business community about the value of interactive advertising. Working with its member companies, the IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices and fields critical research on interactive advertising. Founded in 1996, the IAB is headquartered in New York City with a Public Policy office in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.iab.net.

NEW YORK – The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) today announced the release for public comment of Audience Reach Measurement Guidelines, a major industry-wide initiative that provides clear, consistent definitions of metrics and sets standards for how to measure unique audience across different methodologies. The guidelines were released at the IAB’s annual Leadership Forum on Audience Measurement in New York City, where leaders of media companies, measurement companies and advertising agencies convened to gain insights on the evolution of audience measurement and where sessions will be devoted to a detailed review of the proposed guidelines.

“These guidelines represent an industry wide endorsement of clarity and transparency of methodologies and metrics, particularly around reach, a core metric used throughout the media world,” said Sherrill Mane, senior vice president, Industry Services of the IAB. “The driving force for marketers’ ongoing embrace of interactive media is the accountability that interactive provides and these guidelines will enhance that clarity and certainty.”

The gathering, reporting, and measurement of audience metrics has a material impact on interactive media buying decisions. Transparency into these methodologies and clear definitions of commonly used terms are critical to the ongoing growth of interactive media as marketers continue to allocate a larger portion of their budget to the platform.

The guidelines will address these key areas of audience measurement:

* Provide definitions of key industry metrics such as unique users, unique cookies, unique browsers, visits and time spent.
* Establish a framework for all measurement providers to have their methodologies audited, providing greater certainty for the industry.
* Foster greater accuracy and reliability of all forms of online audience measurement, whether based on server data, online panels or user registration.

“Audience size and composition are vital to planning interactive advertising campaigns,” said Lynn Gutstadt, Director of Corporate Research, CBS Interactive and a member of the IAB’s Audience Measurement Working Group. “Adoption of these guidelines by the interactive industry will give marketers, agencies and other stakeholders in the digital ecosystem greater certainty in the measurement of our audience.”

“Ongoing Media Rating Council (MRC) audits of several of the syndicated measurement companies represent a commendable step toward accountability,” said George Ivie, CEO and Executive Director of the MRC. “The completion of the IAB Audience Reach Measurement Guidelines paves the way for other measurement organizations, for example census measurers such as sites, ad-servers or analytics organizations, to have rigorous consistent guidelines to help ensure consistent measurements of unique cookies, devices or in certain circumstances even users.”

Members of the industry (advertising agencies, advertisers, online publishers and technology vendors) are encouraged to read the proposed guidelines and submit comments on the IAB site at www.iab.net/audiencemeasurement. After the comment period closes on January 20, 2009, the feedback will be reviewed and the guidelines will be finalized and released.

About the IAB:

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is comprised of more than 375 leading media and technology companies who are responsible for selling 86% of online advertising in the United States. On behalf of its members, the IAB is dedicated to the growth of the interactive advertising marketplace, of interactive’s share of total marketing spend, and of its members’ share of total marketing spend. The IAB educates marketers, agencies, media companies and the wider business community about the value of interactive advertising. Working with its member companies, the IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices and fields critical research on interactive advertising. Founded in 1996, the IAB is headquartered in New York City with a Public Policy office in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.iab.net.

NEW YORK – The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) announced that Internet advertising revenues reached almost $5.9 billion for the third quarter of 2008, representing an 11 percent increase over the same period in 2007. While double-digit annual growth continues, the quarter-to-quarter curve remains relatively flat compared to recent past performance. The Q3 2008 figures, published in the IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report, are 2 percent higher than the Q2 2008 results. Set against strong economic headwinds in the U.S. economy, Q3 ’08’s $5.9 billion represents nonetheless the second-highest quarter results ever. For the first nine months of 2008, revenues totaled $17.3 billion, up from $15.2 billion in the same period a year ago and surpassing the record set in the first nine months of 2007 by nearly 14 percent.

“The growth of interactive advertising that we’ve been experiencing over the past few years has stabilized due in large part to the difficult current economic climate,” said Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO of the IAB. “Interactive advertising continues to be the most measurable and cost-effective way to reach consumers, and we see more and more marketers seeking to harness its power.”

David Silverman, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, added that, “a weakening economy will continue to be a challenge to all forms of advertising-supported media. However, the Internet should be better poised to withstand the storm given its ability to combine performance-based advertising along with broad-based branding.”

Conducted by the New Media Group of PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Internet Advertising Revenue Report was launched in 1996 by the IAB and aggregates data from all companies that report meaningful online advertising revenues. The results are considered the most accurate measurement of interactive advertising revenues as the data are compiled directly from information supplied by companies selling advertising on the Internet. The survey includes data concerning online advertising revenues from Web sites, commercial online services, ad networks, free e-mail providers, and other companies selling online advertising. First- and third-quarter revenue reports are estimates, with actual figures released with the second- and fourth-quarter data respectively. PwC does not audit the information and provides no opinion or other form of assurance with respect to the information.

About PricewaterhouseCoopers:

PricewaterhouseCoopers (www.pwc.com) provides industry-focused assurance, tax and advisory services to build public trust and enhance value for its clients and their stakeholders. More than 155,000 people in 153 countries across our network share their thinking, experience and solutions to develop fresh perspectives and practical advice.

“PricewaterhouseCoopers” refers to the network of member firms of PricewaterhouseCoopers International Limited, each of which is a separate and independent legal entity.

About the IAB:

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is comprised of more than 375 leading media and technology companies who are responsible for selling 86% of online advertising in the United States. On behalf of its members, the IAB is dedicated to the growth of the interactive advertising marketplace, of interactive’s share of total marketing spend, and of its members’ share of total marketing spend. The IAB educates marketers, agencies, media companies and the wider business community about the value of interactive advertising. Working with its member companies, the IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices and fields critical research on interactive advertising. Founded in 1996, the IAB is headquartered in New York City with a Public Policy office in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.iab.net.

Next year will be the first in many in which some components of interactive advertising show little or no growth, or may even decline. The changes foreseen are not cyclical, and show no sign of improving quickly, irrespective of upward movement in the nation’s economy. For local interactive media, the big slowdown has begun a year earlier than we anticipated. The spending levels by local advertisers – which have grown at a frenetic 47% this year – are expected to slow down to a relatively paltry 8% in 2009. Local media companies projecting double-digit and even triple-digit increases in their interactive budgets next year will have a very difficult time meeting those expectations – especially if they rely on banner ads. Traditional forms of interactive advertising such as banner ads are quickly falling out of favor and site publishers should begin looking at expanding their ad arsenal with other offerings. Download the executive summary to read more.

Forecasting how businesses will spend their precious ad dollars next year is like skeet- shooting in a windstorm. We’ve got the velocity and trajectory down pat, but the gusts caused by the credit crisis make it harder to pinpoint the target. The generalities, however, are certain for 2009: spending on traditional media will decline, while spending on interactive will increase. Our latest forecast has onine media dropping 1.4 percent next year, while interactive media increases 7.2 percent.

For local interactive media, the big ad slowdown has begun a year earlier than we anticipated. Spending by local advertisers – which has grown at a frenetic 47 percent this year – is expected to diminish to a paltry 7.8 percent in 2009. Local media companies projecting double-digit and even triple-digit increases in their interactive budgets next year will have a very difficult time meeting those expectations – especially if they rely on banner ads. The credit crisis has magnified trends that were already in motion. For most of this decade, advertisers have been viewing interactive media as a more effcient, less costly way of reaching consumers than traditional media buys. “Adjusting the dials” of advertising expenditures is normal business behavior in bleak economic environments. It can be seen in prior downturns as far back as 75 years ago, when radio advertising got a big boost (at the expense of newspapers) during The Great Depression, and 17 years ago when cable advertising expenditures accelerated during the 1991-92 recession. The dials are just about adjusted for interactive media, with some final tweaking occurring next year.

Key Topics Covered:

Executive Summary

CHAPTER 1 – The National Forecast

- Fig.1: US Media Ad Revenue 2007-2009

- Fig.2: Interactive Ad Format Spending, 2007-2009

- Fig.3: Change in National & Local “Standard Format” Ad Spending, 2004-2009

- Fig.4: 2008 Interactive Ad Spending – B2B versus B2C Components

CHAPTER 2 – Credit Crisis Impact

- Fig.5: Original and Recast 2008 US Ad Media Revenue Projections Compared

- Fig.6: Original and Recast 2008 US Interactive Ad Format Spending Projections – Compared

- Fig.7: Forecast Effect of Credit Crisis on “Standard Format” Ad Sales, 2004-2009

- Fig.8: Forecast Effect of Credit Crisis on Paid Search Ad Sales, 2004-2009

- Fig.9: Forecast Effect of Credit Crisis on Direct E-mail Ad Sales, 2004-2009

CHAPTER 3 – Promotions Spending – the Rest of the Story

- Fig.10: Promotions Spending 2007-2009

- Fig.11: Online Promotions Spending, 2006-2013

- Fig.12: Percentage Growth in Online Promotions Spending From Previous Year, 2007-2013

- Appendix A – How Borrell Associates Forecasts

- Appendix B – 2009 Local Interactive Ad Spending Forecast by DMA

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/dac4c3/2009_outlook_big

NEW YORK – Search Engine Strategies (SES), the leading digital marketing conference series geared toward search engine marketing (SEM) and optimization (SEO), announces that Kevin Ryan, chairman of the SES Advisory Board will bring his principled approach and insights in online marketing to ad:tech New York, an interactive marketing conference, taking place this week. The panel, “Search Marketing Tactics and Strategies: Best Practices Across Current and Emerging Digital Search Platforms,” will profile some of the most useful online advertising marketing tactics and best practices across current and emerging digital platforms.

Conference coordinators from the SES advertising marketing conference are preparing for the Midwest’s only search marketing conference and expo, taking place at the Chicago Hilton on December 8-11, 2008. SES Chicago (http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/chicago) will feature an intriguing lineup of sessions and new content covering search marketing, interactive advertising, social media and the best kept secrets in search. Led by the industry’s most notable visionaries, SES Chicago draws thousands of marketers each year, and boasts a 98 percent satisfaction rate from attendees.

This year, SES Chicago offers up-to-the-minute, practical information in over 60 sessions that marketers can use immediately to grow their businesses through search marketing and interactive advertising. Additionally, the interactive advertising conference is followed by a full-day of search engine training sessions. These thorough workshops take place in a small classroom setting, giving attendees the opportunity to work closely with instructors, who provide the practices, applications, and hands-on exposure needed to become – and remain – a top performer in the field.

SES Chicago attendees who stay one day or the entire week will walk away with the knowledge and skills needed to be a successful search engine marketer, and will enhance their professional know-how by keeping their marketing acumen up-to-date with the latest developments in search engine marketing and optimization.

For information on SES Chicago or to view the 2008 Chicago conference schedule, see http://searchenginestrategies.com/chicago.

About SES

Search Engine Strategies (SES) is the leading global conference series focused on search engine optimization and search engine marketing (SEM). SES, ClickZ, Search Engine Watch, and their associated conference series ClickZ Events are part of the Interactive group of Incisive Media.

About Incisive Media

Incisive Media is a leading global provider of specialized business news and information, in print, in person and online. The company’s principal markets include commercial real estate, financial services, legal services, marketing services and risk management. Incisive Media’s market-leading brands include Accountancy Age, Computing, Investment Week, Legal Week, Post, Real Estate Forum and The American Lawyer, in addition to ClickZ, Search Engine Watch and their associated conference series. For more information, visit www.incisivemedia.com.

NEW YORK – The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) today announced a series of groundbreaking initiatives designed to improve efficiencies by driving industry-wide adoption of critical workflow improvements, best practices and guidelines by media companies and advertising agencies within the digital marketing ecosystem. The announcements were made at the IAB’s annual Ad Operations Summit in New York City, where leaders in advertising operations and account management at media companies and advertising agencies convened to share a 360 degree view of key supply chain areas in interactive marketing.

The following solutions were announced:

* E- Business Interactive Standards, a beta release of an XML-based solution for automating the transfer of business order information between advertising agencies and media companies. Beta testing partners will be implementing and refining this solution throughout 2009. www.iab.net/ebiz
* Interactive Advertising Workflow Best Practices, a document that provides comprehensive process recommendations to agencies and publishers for improved communications and efficient operations throughout the entire lifecycle of an advertising campaign. The document’s best practices focus on how to improve the management of advertising accounts by decreasing discrepancies, campaign set-up errors and billing cycles between advertising agencies and publishers. www.iab.net/workflow
* Digital Video Ad Serving Template (VAST), an XML-based solution designed to standardize communication between digital video players and servers. VAST allows publishers to increase digital video yield by utilizing ad networks to sell unsold inventory and reduce friction with buyers by allowing third-party ad tags. www.iab.net/vast
* Ad Load Performance Best Practices, a document that details how agencies and publishers should develop and serve digital advertising campaigns to reduce load time for ads and improve their performance. www.iab.net/adload
* Best Practices for Rich Media Ads in Asynchronous Ad Environments, a solution that establishes a standard set of rich media implementation rules for rich media ad vendors, creative development teams, and publishers when serving ads into dynamic environments. www.iab.net/ajaxrichmedia

“These initiatives will revolutionize our industry by improving efficiencies in the interactive business—which means growth for publishers, for agencies and for marketers who will now reach their customers even more effectively,” said Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO of the IAB.

Jeremy Fain, vice president of the IAB, said: “It is time to begin the critical work of adopting these standards and practices across the digital ecosystem and I encourage all stakeholders in the industry to take the necessary steps toward implementation so we can accelerate our trajectory of growth as an industry.”

“For our industry to increase revenues, we have to find efficiencies that help us maximize technology and reduce costs,” said Dan Murphy, senior vice president of Research, Univision Online. “By adopting these standards we have the opportunity to make the necessary improvements that will transform the industry into a truly scalable and integrated advertising marketplace.”

About the IAB:

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is comprised of more than 375 leading media and technology companies who are responsible for selling 86% of online advertising in the United States. On behalf of its members, the IAB is dedicated to the growth of the interactive advertising marketplace, of interactive’s share of total marketing spend, and of its members’ share of total marketing spend. The IAB educates marketers, agencies, media companies and the wider business community about the value of interactive advertising. Working with its member companies, the IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices and fields critical research on interactive advertising. Founded in 1996, the IAB is headquartered in New York City with a Public Policy office in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.iab.net.

Palo Alto, CA — November 3, 2008 — Gigya, Inc., the largest widget and content sharing platform for the social web, today announced that it has created a widget for the Interactive Advertising Bureau The IAB widget was designed to provides easy access to the latest IAB news, upcoming events, standards and guidelines, and a feed of the IABlog, a recognized industry news blog featuring commentary from IAB President and CEO Randall Rothenberg

“As a member of the IAB, we were delighted to work together to create a widget that fosters engagement with the valuable content and services the IAB provides,” stated Liza Hausman, VP of Marketing at Gigya. “We work with hundreds of brand advertisers, web publishers, and media and entertainment companies to help them engage their audiences through widgets, and we see this IAB widget as a clear reflection of the IAB’s commitment to nurturing the next generation of online media and advertising.”

“The IAB widget will allow us to deliver our latest, most in-demand content to our key stakeholders in the interactive community and extend our reach on behalf of the interactive industry,” said David Doty, senior vice president, Thought Leadership & Marketing of the IAB.

The IAB widget can be grabbed and shared from the IAB website www.iab.net/widget and the IAB Facebook page and is also accessible through the Facebook application directory under the name IAB-Interactive Advertising Bureau Daily News+. Incorporating Gigya’s Wildfire technology, the IAB widget can be installed with ease to over 50 online destinations including blogs, start pages, desktops and social networks including Facebook and MySpace.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is comprised of more than 375 leading media and technology companies who are responsible for selling 86% of online advertising in the United States. On behalf of its members, the IAB is dedicated to the growth of the interactive advertising marketplace, of interactive’s share of total marketing spend, and of its members’ share of total marketing spend. The IAB educates marketers, agencies, media companies and the wider business community about the value of interactive advertising. Working with its member companies, the IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices and fields critical research on interactive advertising. Founded in 1996, the IAB is headquartered in New York City with a Public Policy office in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.iab.net.

About Gigya:
Gigya gives people the power to socialize and share content across the web, providing publishers and marketers with powerful tools for increasing audience reach and engagement online. Reaching more than 174 million people each month, Gigya’s technology platform includes world-class sharing, analytics and monetization features. The company’s products simplify access to more than 50 unique web platforms, distributing content across the social web and bringing users’ social graphs to any site. Each day, millions of people use Gigya to engage with their friends and with content from Gigya’s publisher and advertiser clients such as CNET, DoubleClick, Electronic Arts, Levis, MTV, RockYou!, Toyota, Unilever and Walmart.

Irvine, Calif. – October 21, 2008 – Specific Media, the largest independent online advertising network, today announced the launch of Offline Sales Impact™, the industry’s most comprehensive and accurate offline sales reporting product for online advertising clients across a variety of vertical markets including the automotive, retail and travel sectors. Specific Media’s proprietary Offline Sales Impact reports reveal the direct correlation between online advertising campaigns and consumers’ offline purchase behavior.

Utilizing test and control group data provided by leading third-party industry research firms including comScore and Nielsen Online, Specific Media is the only interactive media company that can track consumer purchases resulting directly from online advertising campaigns it runs on behalf of its advertisers. Specific Media provides these advertisers with the ability to understand the true impact of their campaigns and accurately measure ROI. Offline Sales Impact reports provide clients a deep view into campaign-generated unit sales, consumer purchase behavior, price sensitivity, lifestyle segmentation, and more.

“To effectively measure their spend, advertisers need to understand the direct sales impact their online campaigns are delivering in the offline marketplace,” said Chris Vanderhook, co-founder and COO, Specific Media. “This need is magnified in a volatile economy, where every ad dollar spent needs to be quantified. We developed Offline Sales Impact to provide the most highly accurate, scientifically sound offline reporting capabilities in the industry, made possible through our partnerships with the most respected third-party data sources in the online advertising world.”

Vanderhook adds that offline impact reporting is a unique benefit to online advertising. “TV and radio just can’t provide this clear understanding of consumer purchase behavior as it relates to their advertising campaigns. As advertisers continue to take a hard look at their advertising spend in traditional channels, we’re confident they will see a real benefit in the ability to better quantify their interactive advertising.”

The third-party partnerships Specific Media maintains with leading research firms ensures consumer anonymity is maintained, and that online advertising privacy standards are fully upheld. Offline Sales Impact reports are customized for clients by industry, and are currently benefitting Specific Media customers in the retail, automotive, consumer packaged goods, entertainment and travel categories.

About Specific Media
Specific Media, the advertising industry’s largest independent online advertising network, enables advertisers to target consumers throughout North America and Western Europe based on demographics, behaviors, geographic locations and/or the contextual relevance of websites visited. Specific Media works with many of the Fortune 500 companies including seven of the top 10 brands. The company’s Premium Network reaches more than 150 million US consumers and 225 million consumers globally each month. Since 1999, Specific Media has connected advertisers with target audiences across consumer branded publishers. Visit www.specificmedia.com.

NEW YORK, October 7, 2008 – The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) released the IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report covering the first six months and the second quarter of 2008. Internet advertising revenues (U.S.) for the first six months of 2008 were $11.5 billion, setting yet another new half-year record that represents a 15.2 percent increase over the first half of 2007. The second quarter of ’08 was up 12.8% over the same period of 2007 and showed a slight decline of 0.3% from the first quarter.

Search and Display-related advertising continue to set records. Search revenues totaled almost $5.1 billion for the first six months of 2008, up 24 percent from the $4.1 billion for the same period in 2007. Display-related advertising totaled close to $3.8 billion for first six months of 2008, compared to the $3.2 billion reported for the same period in 2007, showing about a 19% increase. Display-related advertising includes Display Banner ads, Rich Media, Digital Video, and Sponsorship.

“Interactive advertising continues to demonstrate year over year growth as marketers and consumers increase their embrace of digital media,” said Randall Rothenberg, president and CEO of the IAB. “The essentially flat performance we see quarter to quarter reflects in part cyclical advertising trends. Compared to the trajectory in other media and in the general economy, interactive has outperformed because it delivers a level of accountability unmatched by any other advertising medium.”

“Due to the unique efficiency and effectiveness of targeted and measurable campaigns, Internet advertising has shown strong growth in the first six months of 2008, compared to the same time period last year. This growth has come in spite of an environment that has put significant pressure on the advertising industry in general.” said David Silverman, partner, Entertainment, Media & Communications Practice, PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The following data highlights key first six-month revenue data breakouts; dollar figures are rounded. ($ millions if not indicated):

Advertising Formats: Search and Display-related ads continue to be leading formats.

Industry Concentration: Percentages of revenues by the top 10, top 25 and top 50 have remained consistent.

Pricing Models: Performance deals continue to be the leading pricing models, followed closely by CPM deals.

Conducted by the New Media Group of PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Internet Advertising Revenue Report was launched in 1996 by the IAB, and aggregates data from all companies that report meaningful online advertising revenues. The results are considered the most accurate measurement of interactive advertising revenues with the data compiled directly from information supplied by companies selling advertising on the Internet. The survey includes data concerning online advertising revenues from Web sites, commercial online services, ad networks, free e-mail providers, and all other companies selling online advertising. First and third quarter revenue reports are estimates, with the actual figures being released along with second and fourth quarter data respectively. PwC does not audit the information and provides no opinion or other form of assurance with respect to the information.

A copy of the full report is available at: http://www.iab.net/media/file/IAB_PWC_2008_6m.pdf

About PricewaterhouseCoopers:
PricewaterhouseCoopers (www.pwc.com) provides industry-focused assurance, tax and advisory services to build public trust and enhance value for its clients and their stakeholders. More than 154,000 people in 153 countries across our network share their thinking, experience and solutions to develop fresh perspectives and practical advice.

© 2008 PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. All rights reserved. “PricewaterhouseCoopers” refers to PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP or, as the context requires, the PricewaterhouseCoopers global network or other member firms of the network, each of which is a separate and independent legal entity.

About the IAB:
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is comprised of more than 375 leading media and technology companies who are responsible for selling 86% of online advertising in the United States. On behalf of its members, the IAB is dedicated to the growth of the interactive advertising marketplace, of interactive’s share of total marketing spend, and of its members’ share of total marketing spend. The IAB educates marketers, agencies, media companies and the wider business community about the value of interactive advertising. Working with its member companies, the IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices and fields critical research on interactive advertising. Founded in 1996, the IAB is headquartered in New York City with a Public Policy office in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.iab.net.

NEW YORK – Forbes.com (www.forbes.com), home page for the world’s business leaders, is the first business or financial Web site to complete the auditing process and receive ad measurement accreditation by the Media Rating Council (MRC), it was announced today.

This accreditation certifies that Forbes.com has adhered to the MRC’s Minimum Standards for Media Rating Research and the Measurement Guidelines of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), in counting online advertising impressions and traffic measurements. The accreditation also certifies that Forbes.com provides full and complete information to the MRC regarding all details of its operation, conducts its processing and reporting substantially in accordance with representations to its clients and the MRC, and submits to annual audits of its procedures by CPA firms engaged by the MRC.

To date, more than ten companies have been accredited by MRC, among them Yahoo (U.S. sites), AOL, MSN, Disney Interactive, CNET Networks and Doubleclick.

“We are excited and proud that the MRC accreditation has verified the validity of our ad serving delivery and reporting process, as we experience continued traffic growth,” said Jim Spanfeller, President and CEO, Forbes.com. “We are in strong support of the interactive industry utilizing one universal measurement system, and this accreditation is a giant step in that direction.”

George Ivie, Executive Director of the Media Rating Council, said “I congratulate Forbes.com on this significant achievement and thank them for their commitment to the MRC process. MRC accreditation provides the Industry with assurance that Forbes.com is measuring and reporting online ad impressions in accordance with MRC Standards and IAB guidelines.”

The ad impression measurement guidelines were developed by the IAB in conjunction with its members and representatives from the major online publishers and ad serving organizations around the world. Published in November 2004, the guidelines address long-standing marketer and agency concerns about the need for a standardized method of measuring interactive advertising impressions. More information on the guidelines is available at http://www.iab.net/standards/measurement.asp.

About Forbes.com

Forbes.com (www.forbes.com), home page for the world’s business leaders and the No. 1 business news source in the world, is among the most trusted resources for senior business executives, providing them the real-time reporting, uncompromising commentary, concise analysis, relevant tools and community they need to succeed at work, profit from investing and have fun with the rewards of winning. Throughout the business day Forbes.com publishes more than 4,000 articles, delivering the best of Forbes journalism and that of its selected partners with all the immediacy, depth and interactivity that the Web allows. Forbes.com is part of Forbes Digital, a division of Forbes Media LLC. Forbes.com and affiliated properties – ForbesAutos.com, ForbesTraveler.com, Investopedia.com, RealClearPolitics.com, Clipmarks.com and the Forbes.com Business and Finance Blog Network – together reach nearly 40 million business decision makers each month.

About MRC

The Media Rating Council (MRC) is a nonprofit industry association whose members represent television and radio broadcasters, cablecasters, print organizations, advertisers, Internet organizations, advertising agencies and industry trade associations. The MRC charter is to maintain audience research confidence and credibility with the goal of securing for the industry audience measurement that is valid, reliable and effective. The MRC was formed in 1964 at the urging of the United States Congress. Audience measurement services seeking MRC Accreditation are required to disclose to the MRC membership (and all customers) all methodological aspects of their service; meet MRC Minimum Standards For Media Rating Research; and submit to MRC designed audits to authenticate and illuminate procedures. The membership evaluates the audits conducted by independent CPA’s on MRC’s behalf and the MRC Board grants Accreditation if deemed warranted. In addition, the MRC membership actively pursues research issues they consider priorities in an effort to improve the quality of Research in the marketplace. Further information about MRC’s accreditation and auditing procedures can be obtained from: www.mediaratingcouncil.org or Executive Director, Media Rating Council, Inc., 370 Lexington Avenue, Suite 902, New York, NY 10017.

About IAB

Founded in 1996, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) represents leading interactive companies that are actively engaged in, and support the sale of interactive advertising. IAB boasts over 250 members that are responsible for selling over 86% of online advertising in the United States. On behalf of its members, the IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices, fields interactive effectiveness research and educates the advertising industry regarding the use of interactive advertising. For more information, please visit www.iab.net.

NEW YORK, NY (September 22, 2008)—The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) today announced the release of “Ad Campaign Measurement Process Guidelines,” at its annual MIXX Conference & Expo in New York. The guidelines address the process of a publisher’s or advertising agency’s use of a third-party ad server and its application service provider. The result of a consensus of participating auditing organizations and the IAB, it provides definitions and guidance on how to audit the processes used in the placement, trafficking and reporting of interactive advertising.

This document will:

* Help the IAB, publishers and ad agencies drive greater transparency and consistency in ad measurement through certification achieved by an audit of technology, process and data.
* Provide a Self-Assessment Questionnaire that allows publishers, third-party ad servers and agencies to perform a self-assessment of their compliance using methods outlined in the document and meant to help the industry reduce discrepancies.

“These guidelines establish methods that, when followed, reduce discrepancies and errors in the process of buying, selling, and delivering interactive advertising—this is a top priority for the IAB,” said Jeremy Fain, Vice President of Industry Services for the IAB.

“The completion of this document is a milestone for the industry as interactive advertising continues to deliver on the promise of accountability and cost effectiveness, and I encourage all stakeholders to quickly adopt these guidelines into their business practices,” said Sherrill Mane, Senior Vice President of Industry Services of the IAB.

“These guidelines help all parties in the ad serving process reduce human errors which are one of the leading causes of large impression discrepancies,” said George Ivie, President of the Media Rating Council. “Solving the discrepancies of media measurement is critical and the IAB’s guidelines make real inroads in improving our ability to accurately measure and report ad campaigns.”

To review the complete document, please go to, www.iab.net/campaign_measurement_process

About the IAB:
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is comprised of more than 375 leading media and technology companies who are responsible for selling 86% of online advertising in the United States. On behalf of its members, the IAB is dedicated to the growth of the interactive advertising marketplace, of interactive’s share of total marketing spend, and of its members’ share of total marketing spend. The IAB educates marketers, agencies, media companies and the wider business community about the value of interactive advertising. Working with its member companies, the IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices and fields critical research on interactive advertising. Founded in 1996, the IAB is headquartered in New York City with a Public Policy office in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.iab.net.

TRAFFIQ is co-hosting an expert panel on automation for online advertising, and sponsoring the prestigious MIXX Awards in honor of the industry’s top creative teams and talent.

This year’s MIXX Conference will take place on September 22 – 23 in New York. There will be the usual massive information exchange, with star speakers including Chrysler CMO Deborah Meyer, journalist Charlie Rose, author and virtual community maven Clay Shirkey, CBS President Les Moonves, and “Heroes” creator and producer Tim Kring.

TRAFFIQ’s chief operating officer, Dan Ballister will participate on a panel discussing the rapidly growing self service model for media planning and buying and ad sales management.

Panel information:

“The Self-Service Revolution”: A completely automated process for setting up and executing highly targeted ad campaigns can’t possibly be true—or can it? Just how far does the reality go? What are the possibilities, both today and in the near future? As chief operating officer of TRAFFIQ, Dan Ballister is ideally placed to answer such questions and more. He’ll be joined by four other top experts.

Panel date and time: Monday, Sept. 22, 4:45 – 5:30 p.m.

MIXX Awards 2.8 Gala

TRAFFIQ is a sponsor of this year’s awards gala for the best in interactive advertising. The MIXX Awards is the only competition that evaluates and rewards all facets of a marketing campaign, including strategy, creative development and execution, media placement and integration, and effectiveness and ROI. The awards are hosted by Rob Norman, chief executive officer of GroupM Interaction Worldwide.

Awards ceremony date and time: Tuesday, Sept. 23, 7 – 9:45 p.m.

About TRAFFIQ

TRAFFIQ (www.traffiq.com) is an efficient, open and value-driven marketplace, directly connecting buyers and sellers of online media for optimized ad yield and maximum return on investment. Participants on TRAFFIQ include leading advertisers, ad agencies and publishers. TRAFFIQ is a member of the IAB, helping educate interactive advertisers and publishers on the best practices that foster industry growth. TRAFFIQ is headquartered in New York City, with offices in Vienna, VA. For more information, contact us at info@traffiq.com.

PORTLAND, Ore.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–With a gloomy national economic season looming, reinforced by exploding fuel prices and rising unemployment reports, it’s no surprise that the advertising industry is also anticipating a season of uncertainty. Marketing professionals are experiencing increasing challenges daily, virtually unable to discern tangible results, while simultaneously paying growing media rates that aren’t justified. Ad Age’s top story in the June 23rd issue confirms “Big marketers, facing a weakening economy…clamped down on spending (in 2007).” As evidenced by recent shifts of many Fortune 500 marketing budgets, it’s clear the advertising industry is on the verge of a major overhaul.

86% of marketers claim pressure is mounting for tangible results

According to the 2008 “State of the Marketer” survey report from Eloqua, accountability pressure is growing: 86 percent of marketers say pressure has increased on them to account for results. Moreover, 68 percent of organizations are measuring the quantifiable contribution of marketing to the bottom line.

Tim O’Leary, co-founder and CEO of Portland, Oregon-based R2C Group, has some thoughts on what’s got to give. “A recession can be good for marketers and agencies that are equipped to take advantage of opportunities,” claims O’Leary, who has led the nation’s largest independently-owned direct response advertising agency to rapid growth and more than $420 million in annual billings.

While many marketers are finding it harder and harder to measure the “success” of their dollars spent, and many of them using tired, traditional strategies, O’Leary and company are succeeding with a form of marketing that can be measured: integrated direct response advertising. O’Leary scoffs at how many big agencies continue to reinvent themselves creatively, without delivering bottom line results to their clients: “Publicly traded advertising agencies just don’t have their clients’ best interests at heart anymore.”

Advertising dollars are moving away from traditional strategies

According to Fitch Ratings, “The trend that will continue to affect the media universe…is the ongoing shift in advertising dollars from traditional media into non-traditional media…and ad spending continues to follow consumer patterns.” Focused on their client’s bottom line, R2C Group has experienced exponential growth over the past three years, thanks to a steady diet of big brand, Fortune 500 clients flocking to R2C Group for their unique and untraditional, results-driven approach.

R2C Group has rapidly evolved from a small direct response agency to an industry-leading, full-service advertising agency. The company’s recent acquisition of Chautauqua Communications, a San Francisco-based firm specializing in digital, interactive and online direct response solutions, further expands its service offering by adding online creative and digital media buying expertise to its integrated direct response offerings. These new capabilities are the perfect compliment, allowing R2C Group to directly connect direct response television campaigns to their client’s online and interactive strategies, with highly trackable results. R2C Group consists of: Respond2, the nation’s leading independently owned direct response creative agency, and Cmedia, an industry-leading media planning, research and buying agency.

Creative agency Respond2 became virtually married to its sister company, Cmedia, in 1999 when respective owners, Tim O’Leary and Michelle Cardinal, tied the knot themselves. Cardinal, president and co-founder of R2C Group, led Cmedia to explosive growth over the past 10 years, ranking Cmedia as the largest women-owned company and one of the largest privately held companies in the State of Oregon by the Portland Business Journal’s Book of Lists. Profiled in Inc. Magazine as one of the nation’s “Most Fascinating Entrepreneurs,” Cardinal is widely considered among peers and industry insiders as a pioneer in her field.

Fortune 500 companies are flocking toward results-driven approach

From newer, emerging brands to Fortune 500 companies, R2C Group’s clients have one thing in common; they are all dependent on generating profitable ROI from their advertising. O’Leary enjoys challenging the status quo, comparing his agency to what he refers to as “old school, old media, traditional brand agencies.” He asserts, “Unlike traditional brand agencies, R2C Group practices what it preaches: capturing, captivating and converting sales across all channels. We don’t just get results — we build brands by creating trackable, measurable, ongoing relationships with each and every customer.”

Is there a difference between the super-agencies’ big-budget campaigns and the R2C Group’s hybrid direct response/branded strategy? Cardinal says Yes. “R2C Group’s work is completely measurable and accountable. In fact, we’re the only agency on the planet that can directly correlate a television ad campaign with a client’s online and interactive strategies with equally measurable results. Many of our big brand clients are using direct response television campaigns not only to grow direct and online sales, but also to bolster their retails efforts too.” R2C’s portfolio of success among well known big brands is growing rapidly, and includes the likes of Google General Mills, Proctor & Gamble, Microsoft, Phillips, Merck, The Home Depot, Adobe, eBay, Vonage, Sprint, Chase, Blockbuster, Bare Minerals, KitchenAid and many more.

This newly-integrated direct response pioneer wants the world to know who they are and why they’re succeeding for their clients… and more importantly, why in the midst of a tumultuous economy, you should care.

R2C Group is a full-service advertising agency, specializing in direct response solutions, including direct response television (DRTV), online and interactive advertising, and complete media strategies. For more information on R2C Group, explore their new website at: www.r2cgroup.com.

NEW YORK – The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) today announced the full lineup of participants in this year’s MIXX (Marketing and Interactive Excellence) Conference and Expo, the Official Interactive Event of Advertising Week 2008 and the preeminent annual gathering of the interactive industry. Energizing this year’s event is a new theme, “Invention and Reinvention.” This fresh direction for MIXX 2008 spotlights the constant state of creation and evolution required of business leaders in today’s rapidly changing digital landscape.

Speakers are a “who’s who” of top marketers, advertising agency executives, publishers and industry gurus including:

* Deborah Meyer, Vice President and CMO, Chrysler LLC
* Tim Armstrong, President, Advertising and Commerce, North America and Vice President, Google Inc.
* David Kenny, Chairman & CEO, Digitas (A Publicis Company)
* Michael Linton, SVP & CMO eBay, Inc.
* Young-Bean Song, Director of Analytics & Atlas Institute, Microsoft Advertising
* Henry Blodget, Editor, Silicon Alley Insider
* Jacqueline Corbelli, Chairman & CEO, Brightline iTV Marketing Specialists
* Clay Shirky, Writer, Consultant, and Teacher on New Media and the Internet
* Charlie Rose, Emmy Award-winning journalist and host of the Charlie Rose Show
* Leslie Moonves, President and CEO, CBS Corporation
* Andrew Robertson, President and CEO, BBDO Worldwide

“This year’s MIXX captures the feverish pace of transformation happening in the media world today,” said IAB president and CEO Randall Rothenberg. “The interactive industry’s continual innovation forces each of us to evolve and change how we do business—media companies now behave like advertising agencies and marketers act like media companies. And MIXX this year will share the very best thinking from all parties in the ecosystem on how to reach and engage consumers today, which is truly our single biggest combined challenge.”

In addition to the lineup of keynotes, panels, breakout sessions, industry forecasts and an exhibit hall filled with an all-star line-up of vendors, MIXX 2008 offers its attendees an unrivaled opportunity to learn from senior marketers who will share case studies from across a variety of emerging platforms.

* How does a top advertising agency decipher the ad network landscape for its biggest clients?
* Internet Television: It’s not the future, it’s the present and the industry’s leaders will share how to do it right.
* Gaming: Reaching and engaging the toughest audiences
* The NHL and Dodge,: Learn how two giant brands converged interactively for a fully integrated digital video campaign.
* The Next Big Thing: See a series of rapid-fire demonstrations from companies on the bleeding edge of the interactive revolution.

For a full list of confirmed speakers and information on how to register, please visit www.mixx-expo.com.

The event takes place on September 22-23 at the Crowne Plaza Times Square and will culminate with the 2008 MIXX Awards Gala on the evening of September 23.

About the IAB:

Founded in 1996, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (www.iab.net) represents over 375 leading interactive companies that actively engage in and support the sale of interactive advertising. IAB members are responsible for selling over 86% of online advertising in the United States. On behalf of its members, the IAB is dedicated to the growth of the interactive advertising marketplace, of interactive’s share of total marketing spend, and of its members’ share of total marketing spend. The IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices, fields interactive effectiveness research, and educates marketers, agencies, and media companies, as well as the wider business community, about the value of interactive advertising.

SAN DIEGO, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Analog Analytics, a digital advertising company specializing in integrating and optimizing interactive direct response marketing, today announced it will be offering “Super Banner” online ads to help retailers and online advertisers deliver innovative interactive marketing campaigns with higher ROI and conversion rates than ordinary banner ads. The Super Banner ads allow users to click on the banner to receive an E-coupon on their mobile handsets to redeem at participating retail stores or be connected automatically with a company’s call center.

Analog Analytics’ proprietary technology allows companies to capture new registrations for lead generation with names, mobile numbers and location. In addition, the company’s technology tracks banner ad to retail conversions with its analytics engine and real time demographic profiling, offering advertisers unique insight into their customer base. The Super Banner ad to call center feature allows businesses to connect with a highly motivated customer and close a sale immediately.

The Super Banner Ads are delivered to the web by Analog Analytics’ Dynamic Coupon Ad Server (DCAS). This is a software platform for digital advertisers designed to deliver millions of “Super Banner Ads” and their associated coupons as a function of the conversion rate. The DCAS software modifies the frequency and the value of an advertiser’s coupon offering in real time. Depending on the conversion rate and the Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) requirements, the software will dynamically increase or decrease the value of the offering for each coupon.

Similar to paid search optimization tools, the software enables advertisers to set limits and goals for their coupon campaigns and enable the software platform to optimize the value within the online media spend for the specific goal within a defined time period.

For example, a flower company might decide to run 1 million banner impressions the day before Mother’s Day with a coupon offering free delivery. However, if conversions are running poorly or not hitting the desired ROAS goal, the software platform can automatically create a new associated coupon that might offer free shipping, and $10.00 off for all orders placed before midnight.

“We are combining the best of rich interactive and direct response marketing with E-coupons,” explains Analog Analytics CEO Ken Kalb. “Our Super Banner ads allow retailers and ad agencies to provide convenient and easy-to-redeem mobile e-coupons or a fast connection to a call center where businesses can make a sale instantly. The banner ad over time has lost much of its effectiveness, but the new Super Banner ad makes for a whole new advertising experience. This is a rich new source of quality leads.”

Recent marketing studies have confirmed that with the economic downturn, more companies are continuing their online campaigns as well as shifting dollars from offline programs to the interactive space. According to the 2008 Promo Interactive Marketing survey, even in a tough economy, interactive marketing remains a valuable way to reach out to customers in a measurable way. And online coupons are of increasing interest to consumers.

Consumers will find several benefits to clicking on the Super Banner ads:

* Instant connections to call centers allow for immediate redemption of E-coupons
* E-coupons on mobile handsets are fast, easy-to-use anytime and anywhere
* Mobile E-coupons enable multiple purchases and facilitate loyalty reward programs
* Shopping experience with on E-coupon is streamlined and efficient
* Mobile E-coupons “live” on the mobile handset, and don’t get lost or mangled and are inherently green.

About Analog Analytics

Analog Analytics is a digital advertising company specializing in integrating and optimizing interactive advertising and direct response marketing. The company, based in San Diego, California provides advertisers, agencies, publishers and advertising networks with its proprietary and patent pending technology to increase the performance and return on interactive advertising spend.

LOS ANGELES–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Break Media, the Internet’s premier entertainment community for men, and Panache, the video advertising delivery-platform leader, today announced key findings from joint research which tested the effectiveness of four popular in-stream video advertising standard formats established by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) in May, 2008.

Leading brands, including Honda and T-Mobile, participated in the study by running campaigns run-of-site on Break.com over an 11 week period, which concluded on August 2, 2008. Each campaign used the four IAB standardized ad units: linear non-interactive (pre-roll), linear interactive (interactive pre-roll), non-linear non-overlay invitation ad (non-overlay ad) and non-linear overlay (overlay ad). The ads ran against short-form professional, semi-professional and user-generated content on Break.com with Panache providing the ad delivery and back-end reporting technology to test user interaction and engagement levels with each ad format.

“The standardization of video ad formats by the IAB was a critical first step in streamlining media buying, planning and creative processes across the digital video medium,” said Keith Richman, CEO of Break Media. “Our research was a result of our desire to provide data about the effectiveness of those new standards to our clients and partners, and to lay a foundation for future research initiatives to build and expand upon.”

Key Findings

Break Media and Panache were able to mine the data for trends and insights into consumer behavior and online engagement using the various ad formats.

Findings showed:
– Overall results demonstrate the high engagement levels of tested ad units and that marketing objectives should drive creative development
– Pre-roll offers a strong call to action (click-thru rates averaged 10%); Non-Overlays’ strength appears to be in building brand awareness (78% viewed the ad for more than 15 seconds, a majority of the time)
– Pre-roll showed surprisingly high engagement with incredibly high click-thru rates when interacting with a targeted audience
– Completion rates for both 15 second pre-roll and interactive pre-roll averaged 87%
– Pre-roll click-thru rate for the 15 second spot was close to 10%
– Interactive pre-roll click-thru rate for the 15 second spot ranged between 11% higher and 35% higher than non interactive pre-roll depending on the nature of the call to action
– The overlay ad yielded high exposure and overall engagement
– 77% viewed campaigns with the overlay ad for at least 15 seconds and click-thru rates were five times industry averages for standard in-page media
– Media-rich creative with bold colors and animation resulted in increased click-thru rates
– Click-thru rates almost tripled for the non-overlay ads when using brighter, vibrant colors (.045 vs. 0.13%)
– When using interactive pre-roll ads, having the entire ad clickable appeared to impact call to action
– Click-thru rates were four times as high when the entire ad was clickable vs. just the call to action.

“For the in-stream advertising market to evolve, the efficacy of ad formats—whether IAB-standard or new emerging formats—needs to be understood in order for our industry to scale,” said Steve Robinson, CEO of Panache. “This research begins to fill the knowledge gap between the formation of standards and the prophetic future of an efficient and scalable online advertising industry.”

“This study offers a window into the measurable effectiveness of new video ad formats, and it moves forward the broader discussion of online brand-building and advertising,” said Daniel Taylor, senior analyst at Yankee Group. “As the industry develops new ways to engage online audiences, it’s important to benchmark the progress we make. By making this study public, Break and Panache have advanced the entire industry.”

The study conducted by Break and Panache provides a guide for advertisers looking to validate online ad spend and determine the best format and creative to lift key engagement metrics and build brands. It is also intended to spur additional insight on best practices for brands advertising online.

About Break Media

Break Media is the Internet’s premier entertainment community for men. Its wholly owned branded properties (Break.com, Cage Potato, Chickipedia, Holy Taco, Wall Street Fighter and Screen Junkies) and the over 70 site Break Media Network reach 50 million men worldwide each month. Founded in 1998, Break Media offers advertisers unrivaled opportunities to market directly to a young, male demographic using innovative ad formats that introduce relevant brands to the audience either broadly or on a targeted, integrated basis. For more information, please visit http://breakmedia.break.com/.

About Panache

Founded in 2006, Panache is a privately held company headquartered in Los Angeles. The Panache technology enables Internet video sites and networks to dynamically deliver any ad format directly into video content from a third-party ad server or ad network. Ad formats can be generated and delivered to viewers based on profiling and behavioral targeting, resulting in a highly customized experience for the user and a highly scalable model for the video publisher. With Panache, ad formats are completely detached from the video player, allowing publishers to create and deploy new advertising formats in minutes without engineering resources. Panache’s patent-pending solution makes it easy to deliver advanced interactive advertising to all video-distribution channels, including broadband, television, IPTV and other emerging technologies. For more information, visit http://www.panachetech.com.

She will work in the organization’s Washington, D.C. office, reporting to IAB Vice President of Public Policy Mike Zaneis, on legislative, regulatory, and public policy issues that affect IAB members.
“IAB is committed to promoting the interactive advertising industry’s public policy agenda, and it’s important that we maintain a strong presence in Washington, D.C.,” said Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO of the IAB. “This is particularly true at a time when the online advertising industry’s successful efforts to self-regulate are being challenged by ill-informed and ill-advised regulatory proposals that would severely curtail the ability of businesses to market effectively on the Internet.”

“I am excited to welcome Alison Pepper,” said Zaneis. “She has extensive experience lobbying at both the state and Federal levels. She is a skilled attorney who brings a deep practical background from within the industry to IAB.”

Pepper has a truly impressive background, having worked at Experian as Manager for Government Affairs, in Washington, D.C. Prior to that, she was the State and Local Government Relations and Public Policy Programs Coordinator at the Public Affairs Council, in Washington, D.C. Pepper received a J.D. from Georgia State University College of Law and is a member of the Georgia Bar Association.  She is a cum laude graduate of the University of Georgia.

About the IAB:
Founded in 1996, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (www.iab.net) represents over 375 leading interactive companies that actively engage in and support the sale of interactive advertising. IAB members are responsible for selling over 86% of online advertising in the United States. On behalf of its members, the IAB is dedicated to the growth of the interactive advertising marketplace, of interactive’s share of total marketing spend, and of its members’ share of total marketing spend. The IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices, fields interactive effectiveness research, and educates marketers, agencies, and media companies, as well as the wider business community, about the value of interactive advertising.

As online publishers continue to experience growth rates of 20-30% in ad revenue, the race to create new advertising opportunities has left publishers with an excess of inventory which they are selling through ad networks at up to 90% discounts versus direct sales rates. The study finds the trend particularly foreboding for branded online publishers who traditionally earn between $10-20 CPM (the industry term for the cost per 1,000 ad impressions advertisers pay) and therefore risk severe price erosion.

“Online publishers are producing more inventory than the market demands, and risk devaluing the premium nature of their brands, particularly in light of ad networks growth and their dramatically lower pricing,” said John Frelinghuysen, a partner in Bain’s Global Media Practice and study author. “Building more effective relationships between publishers and ad networks is critical. In the longer-term, both parties will benefit from gains in ad network CPMs.”

The reason for the rapid growth in the use of ad networks is two-fold:

• Interviews with online publishers, conducted as part of the study, indicate that the lack of adequate pricing tools and inventory management discipline contributed to the growth in available ad space. This is causing publishers to seek out ways to sell large inventories of unsold ads. Publishers often lack basic information on realized prices and inventory sold by client and channel, limiting management’s ability to make effective decisions.

• Large marketers continue to shift significant portions of their advertising budgets online and view ad networks as an effective way to achieve greater buying scale and drive down CPMs.

“What this benchmark study tells the industry is that there is a need for more sophisticated yield management on the part of premium publishers, for stronger partnerships between publishers and ad networks, for development of best practices, and more focus on the value of interactive advertising.” said Sherrill Mane, senior vice president, Industry Services of the IAB. “Our industry is at an important juncture and now is the time for publishers to adopt strategic approaches to the use of ad networks who themselves have become critical players in the digital ecosystem.”

Another important finding of the study is that publishers who actively manage and use multiple ad networks can achieve higher revenues on display ads sold via networks. The benchmarking study finds publishers vary in their adoption of ad networks, the approaches used and the results attained but overall finds that the keys for success for online publishers are having dedicated staff, better tools and metrics that allow constant vigilance in managing ad pricing, reported sell rates and channel conflicts.

The authors of the benchmarking study offer recommendations to both publishers and ad networks to pursue steps toward higher realized pricing and enhancing mutual benefits of collaboration. These include:

• Publishers must become more disciplined in managing ad inventory and deploy improved methods and tools to enhance yield management

• Ad networks should partner more closely with publishers to enhance the value of the relationship for both parties.

Other key findings from the benchmarking study include:

• Overall, online publisher revenues grew by a healthy 32% in 2007 versus 2006, yet ad network revenues grew more rapidly (in excess of 50%), as marketers boosted online spending.

• High demand for premium video inventory resulted in CPMs 2-3 times greater than display ads on average.

• Most publishers in the study lack information to closely measure the impact of cross-platform sales, though most indicate focus on using cross-platform to drive volume, not price.

The Digital Pricing Study was developed as a benchmark to explore the impact of online ad intermediaries on ad rates, profitability and ad inventory management for media companies (publishers). The study methodology included executive interviews and in-depth analysis of proprietary company data, including direct, ad network and cross-platform sales, pricing (CPMs) and impressions volume for seven leading online media publishers. The selection criteria included having leading brands, publishing premium content, and selling advertising on a national basis. To view the complete study, please go to www.iab.net/digital_pricing_research.

NEW YORK, NY (July 29, 2008)—To meet the need for standardization in the expanding digital video landscape, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) today announced the release of a “Digital Video Ad Serving Template” (VAST), designed to standardize communication protocol between video players and servers.

VAST will allow companies to build digital video players and video ad servers that have the same interfaces and speak the same standard language. Publishers who use the standard will be able to plug into multiple third-party digital video ad servers and networks without additional development and therefore enable a powerful tool for improving yield.

This document:

- Defines a standard ad response for in-stream video
- Provides specifications that are compatible with any video player framework
- Includes guidance for most on-demand video players (i.e., Adobe’s Flash, Microsoft’s Windows Media Player and Real Player)
- Includes accommodations for linear video and interactive ads (e.g.“pre-roll”) as well as non-linear ads such as clickable overlays as described in the IAB Digital Ad Format Guidelines

“Digital video is one of the most exciting platforms to emerge within the interactive advertising ecosystem,” said Randall Rothenberg, president and CEO of the IAB. “VAST is a critical industry accomplishment because it lays out a much-needed mechanism for standardization in one of the hottest areas of interactive advertising.”

“VAST allows for standardized communication between ad servers and players which is essential as more and more marketers embrace digital video as a key element of their interactive media plans and publishers wish to maximize yield on their video inventory,” said Ari Paparo, Group Product Manager, Advertiser Products of Google.

The public comment period will last until September 10, 2008. The feedback will then be reviewed and the document will be finalized and publicly released.

To review the complete document, please go to: http://www.iab.net/vast

About the IAB’s Digital Video Committee:
The Digital Video Committee of the IAB is comprised of over 145 member companies actively engaged in the creation and execution of digital video advertising. One of the goals of the committee is to implement a comprehensive set of guidelines, measurement, and creative options for interactive video advertising. The committee works to educate marketers and agencies on the strength of digital video as a marketing vehicle. A full list of Committee member companies can be found at: http://www.iab.net/member_center/35088?iabid=a0330000000s0p4AAA

About the IAB:
Founded in 1996, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (www.iab.net) represents over 375 leading interactive companies that actively engage in and support the sale of interactive advertising. IAB members are responsible for selling over 86% of online advertising in the United States. On behalf of its members, the IAB is dedicated to the continuing growth of the interactive advertising marketplace, of interactive’s share of total marketing spend, and of its members’ share of total marketing spend. The IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices, fields interactive effectiveness research, and educates marketers, agencies, and media companies, as well as the wider business community, about the value of interactive advertising.

NEW YORK, NY (July 24, 2008)—The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB ) today announced the public comment release of “Ad Campaign Measurement Process Guidelines,” a document that addresses the process of a publisher’s or advertising agency’s use of a third-party ad server and its application service provider. The guidelines supplement current measurement guidelines and provide definitions and guidance on the auditing of processes used in the placement, trafficking and reporting of interactive advertising. The document is the result of a consensus of participating auditing organizations and the IAB.

This document will:

• Help the IAB, publishers and ad agencies further establish transparency and consistency in the area of ad measurement through certification by having all phases of ad serving put through a technology, process and data audit

• Provide a Self-Assessment Questionnaire that allows publishers, third-party ad servers and agencies to perform a self-assessment of their compliance using controls outlined in the document and meant to help the industry reduce discrepancies.

“As an industry, we are providing marketers with the most powerful, accountable and cost effective way to reach consumers,” said Randall Rothenberg, president and CEO of the IAB. “To continue to deliver on this promise, we must establish methods that reduce discrepancies in the buying process of interactive advertising—we’ve made great strides by bringing these guidelines to fruition.”

“The IAB’s work both with its members and the auditing organizations in completing this document is a critical step in solving the ongoing challenges of media measurement discrepancies,” said George Ivie, President of the Media Rating Council. “Our research has found that human error plays a material role in large impression discrepancies and these guidelines, when followed, will assist in reducing those errors and improve overall efficiencies in the measurement process.”

After the 30-day comment period, ending on September 10, the feedback will be reviewed and the guidelines will be finalized and publicly released.

To review the complete document, please go to, www.iab.net/campaign_measurement_process

About the IAB:
Founded in 1996, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (www.iab.net) represents over 375 leading interactive companies that actively engage in and support the sale of interactive advertising. IAB members are responsible for selling over 86% of online advertising in the United States. On behalf of its members, the IAB is dedicated to the growth of the interactive advertising marketplace, of interactive’s share of total marketing spend, and of its members’ share of total marketing spend. The IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices, fields interactive effectiveness research, and educates marketers, agencies, and media companies, as well as the wider business community, about the value of interactive advertising.

New York, New York(July 22, 2008)—The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) today announced that submissions to the fourth annual MIXX Awards hit record levels, surpassing 2007’s entries by nearly 40 percent. Since their founding in 2005, the MIXX Awards, the only advertising awards to recognize creativity and effectiveness, have evolved into the most prestigious interactive advertising award and have attracted a distinguished cross-section of the world’s top brands and agencies.

· This year’s entries include submissions from hundreds of agencies—“native digital” shops and large traditional ones as well.

· These agencies have submitted the work they have done on behalf of their clients who encompass every major vertical industry—including blue-chip brands, luxury products and services, pharmaceuticals, automotive, financial, consumer packaged goods , entertainment and technology.

· The campaigns will be evaluated in 18 categories by a cross-industry panel of judges that includes senior executives from agencies, publishers, and marketing organizations deliberating together—an industry first.

“The sheer quantity of submissions and the caliber of the marketers and agencies represented is a testament to the increasingly critical role that interactive advertising plays in marketers’ media plans,” said Randall Rothenberg, president and CEO of the IAB, the trade association for interactive media in the United States. “To think that this awards show is only in its fourth year and has already attained levels of submissions that are on a par with long established shows is nothing short of a revolution—showing how far interactive advertising has come. Now the real excitement begins as our judges see which work among this extraordinary lineup will make it to the final round.”

Winners of the IAB’s 2008 MIXX Awards will be announced at a ceremony in New York City on September 23, near the start of Advertising Week, a gathering of the media and marketing industries that typically draws 10,000 professionals to conferences, seminars, recruiting events, and parties celebrating advertising and its evolution. The host for this year’s MIXX Awards is one of the industry’s keenest observers and practitioners, Rob Norman, Group M CEO, whose regular riffs on all things interactive have made him the natural emcee for the evening’s ceremonies.

Last year’s MIXX Award winners included many of the most prominent brand marketers in the United States, including Anheuser Busch, American Airlines, The Coca-Cola Company, BMW, Royal Caribbean, Showtime and Unilever, as well as leading agencies such as Universal McCann, Ogilvy, McKinney, Digitas, BBDO and Mindshare. In 2007, the gala’s ultimate honor, Best in Show, went to Goodby, Silverstein, and Partners, San Francisco, for its super-rich media campaign for Hewlett-Packard, “The Computer is Personal Again.”

For more information and to view the complete gallery of the 2007 MIXX Finalists, please visit: www.mixx-awards.com/gallery.

About the IAB:
Founded in 1996, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (www.iab.net) represents over 375 leading interactive companies that actively engage in and support the sale of interactive advertising. IAB members are responsible for selling over 86% of online advertising in the United States. On behalf of its members, the IAB is dedicated to the continuing growth of the interactive advertising marketplace, of interactive’s share of total marketing spend, and of its members’ share of total marketing spend. The IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices, fields interactive effectiveness research, and educates marketers, agencies, and media companies, as well as the wider business community, about the value of interactive advertising.

The document:
• Educates media companies, agencies, marketers and users about how advertising is currently implemented within the mobile platform
• Explores the mobile platform as a viable part of the interactive advertising ecosystem
• Includes case studies of mobile advertising campaigns designed to assist marketers and agencies in campaign execution.

“The recent growth of mobile advertising clearly illustrates how quickly we are moving to a three-screen universe,” said Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau. “This report outlines the opportunity for marketers and agencies to reach increasingly mobile consumers giving them information when they want and where they want—this is no longer the future but the here and now.”

“This was the IAB Mobile Committee’s first major initiative and we are proud to have created a comprehensive guide for marketers, agencies and publishers on the mobile platform,” said Gary Schwartz, CEO, Impact Mobile and Co-Chair of the IAB Mobile Committee. “Mobile is changing the way consumers interact with advertising and once they get accustomed to it there is no going back.”

On July 21, the IAB will host a Leadership Forum on Mobile Advertising in New York City, where industry leaders, including marketers and agencies, will explore the opportunities and innovations of this dynamic medium.

To download the full report, please go to www.iab.net/mobileplatform.

About the IAB’s Mobile Advertising Committee:
The IAB’s Mobile Advertising Committee works to make mobile a more effective and efficient advertising platform for marketers and agencies through the development and endorsement of measurement guidelines, creative guidelines and best practices.

About the IAB:
Founded in 1996, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (www.iab.net) represents over 375 leading interactive companies that actively engage in and support the sale of interactive advertising. IAB members are responsible for selling over 86% of online advertising in the United States. On behalf of its members, the IAB is dedicated to the growth of the interactive advertising marketplace, of interactive’s share of total marketing spend, and of its members’ share of total marketing spend. The IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices, fields interactive effectiveness research, and educates marketers, agencies, and media companies, as well as the wider business community, about the value of interactive advertising.

Key recommendations from the document include:

- Specific processes for obtaining internal pricing approval
- Advice to publishers that they closely monitor open receivables that are more than 60 days overdue and that they recommend actions to their sales teams for collections
- Implementation of appropriate controls along the insertion-order process to ensure proper execution
- Regular meetings between collections teams and Ad Sales Management.

“The work that we’ve done collectively as an industry in streamlining many areas of the advertising supply chain is important for the growth of interactive advertising,” said Randall Rothenberg, president and CEO of the IAB. “By working with our members to enhance operational efficiencies, we deliver on the promise of an extraordinary medium that is transforming consumers’ lives.”

“This document provides guidance on how to improve our internal and external communications. This will not only increase productivity, prevent costly errors and decrease the amount of time it takes to collect payment but it also improves customer satisfaction. It ultimately means more revenue for the company,” said Christie Lay, Senior Credit Manager, Microsoft Corporation and one of the working group members who participated in the document’s creation.

The “Revenue Cycle Best Practices” document along with the other three documents in the series—“Billing Methods Best Practices,” “On-time Delivery Toolkit” and “Campaign Setup Best Practices”—can be found at www.iab.net/revenue_cycle

About the CFO Council:
The council is a forum for finance professionals of IAB member companies to identify general finance related issues and recommend solutions. Among the broad issues that the council will address are: interpreting accounting rules, financing opportunities, and bad debt and receivables. The committee will deliver these objectives through industry research, standards and best practice development and stakeholder education.

About the IAB:
Founded in 1996, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (www.iab.net) represents over 375 leading interactive companies that actively engage in and support the sale of interactive advertising. IAB members are responsible for selling over 86% of online advertising in the United States. On behalf of its members, the IAB is dedicated to the continuing growth of the interactive advertising marketplace, of interactive’s share of total marketing spend, and of its members’ share of total marketing spend. The IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices, fields interactive effectiveness research, and educates marketers, agencies, and media companies, as well as the wider business community, about the value of interactive advertising.