“With the value of branding no longer a secret, the world becoming borderless, and the rate of information travel unbounded, assessing brand distinction and leadership is no easy task. The range of excellence in this year’s global pool was inspiring, and demonstrated the value of effective rebrands and the global commitment evident in solutions,” said Thebe Ikalafeng, CEO of South Africa-based Brand Leadership Group and 2009 ReBrand 100 juror.

To select winners, jurors reviewed the work which was required to transcend cosmetic changes. In addition to specific review guidelines they followed, strong consideration was given to execution and strategies that made an emotional connection, and met the stated objectives and needs of the identified target market. In true democratic fashion, a one-person entity had as much opportunity to be selected as did global organizations, since jurors were unaware of the brand strategist’s name and size when reviewing the projects.

Over 40 industries and 21 countries are represented among the 2009 winners. Some of the world’s best known branding consultants such as Interbrand, The Brand Union, DDB Canada, and more competed, as did in-house teams, small agencies, and representatives of multinational corporations. The jury panel, new each year, consists of a multidisciplinary mix of prominent, international, industry experts. The 2009 panel of 10 included CEO for InterbrandHealth Jane Parker, Burt Helm of BusinessWeek, and Creative Director of Australia-based Principals, Simon Wright.

“I am thrilled for our company in receiving this well-deserved honor,” said Michael Sprouse, Chief Marketing Officer for Epic Advertising. “When we re-branded the company and embarked on development of our corporate web presence, we had the singular goal of making the site itself the best, most informative, sleekest, easy-to-navigate B2B site in the industry. To have our names alongside some of the world’s most respected brands speaks volumes about the job we did in achieving our goal.”

Unique among other awards, “before” and “after” scenarios of each brand transformation are reviewed with details of the accompanying write-up on the approach. The rebrand could have been an enterprise-wide effort, a change in a single brand component, or a brand extension. Winning rebrands are showcased for inspiration and learning at www.rebrand.com.

About Epic Advertising:

Epic Advertising (www.EpicAdvertising.com) is a global online performance marketing company that provides advertisers and agencies with measurable Internet advertising impact. Leveraging proprietary and patent-pending technologies, and over 38,000 publishers, Epic provides its advertising partners with performance and direct response marketing services, search engine marketing, media planning, branded marketing campaigns and targeted, worldwide online reach.

A pioneer in both the online performance marketing industry and in Internet advertising integrity assurance and compliance, Epic Advertising brings an intense focus on achieving the highest ROI yield for its advertising partners via transparent Display, Search and Social Media consumer web traffic. Epic scales its solutions through enormous internet reach, technology and unparalleled industry expertise.

The company has achieved several industry accolades, including being named an AlwaysOn Global Top 250 Company as one of the top private companies in the world, a comScore top-50 ranking in internet reach (Ad Focus), a 2008 Inc. 5000 company, and a 2009 ReBrand 100 winner.

Epic Advertising is headquartered in New York, with offices in San Francisco, Toronto and London. The company is privately held and backed by private equity firms TA Associates and Stripes Group.

About ReBrand™ and the ReBrand 100® Global Awards:

ReBrand is the global, online resource for case studies on the most effective brand transformations: the repositioning, revitalizing, and redesign of existing brand assets to meet strategic goals. Featured in such media as The Wall Street Journal, CNN Money, BusinessWeek, and Yahoo! Finance, ReBrand’s leading program, the annual ReBrand 100® Global Awards, has entry deadlines in late September of each year. To view winning case studies or to learn how to enter, visit www.rebrand.com.

All trademarks, service marks and company names are the properties of their respective owners.

NEW YORK – Epic Advertising (www.EpicAdvertising.com), the privately held, New York-based online marketing leader, today announced strong September results, posting seven percent and 14 percent gains, respectively, in revenue and profit over last September. In an environment marked by tightening budgets and consolidation, the performance marketing company’s publisher and advertiser bases experienced robust growth.

Epic also announced its participation in ad:tech New York, from November 3-4, at the Hilton New York. The annual gathering is the industry’s premiere digital marketing event, providing brand advertisers, agencies, portals, online publishers and technology providers a forum to exchange ideas. Epic (booth #804) will showcase its industry-leading performance ad network business, and demonstrate its new iMobilePublisher, the first iPhone application enabling publishers to monitor critical performance data like cost per click, total clicks and payment history, in real time, wherever they are.

CMO Michael Sprouse and other key Epic personnel will be on hand both days to discuss the new platform and the company’s recently announced London expansion, and to give their take on interactive marketing’s prospects in a tight-money environment.

“We are working hard to continue our growth with calculated, responsible investment that our clients have grown accustomed to from us during these tighter times,” Sprouse said. “In a tough economic environment, performance marketing should get a closer look by advertisers needing to make every dollar work harder and looking for true accountability and transparency. Our leading targeting and technical infrastructure, as well as our global scale and reach, help advertisers achieve precisely that.”

The company will thank its clients and partners at an ad-tech-timed party at Marquee Night Club. The November 3 event will benefit the Thomas Blake, Sr. Memorial Cancer Research Fund and is invitation-only until midnight.

About Epic Advertising:

Epic Advertising (www.EpicAdvertising.com) is a global online performance marketing company that provides advertisers with measurable Internet advertising impact. Leveraging proprietary and patent-pending technologies, and the over 38,000 publishers in AzoogleAds, its highly-acclaimed performance ad network, Epic provides its advertising partners with performance and direct response marketing services, media planning, branded marketing campaigns and a targeted, worldwide online reach.

A pioneer in both the online performance marketing industry and in Internet advertising integrity assurance and compliance, Epic Advertising brings an intense focus on achieving the highest ROI yield for its advertising partners via transparent display and search consumer traffic. Epic scales its solutions by leveraging vast quantities of data, enormous internet reach and unparalleled industry expertise.

The company has achieved several industry accolades, including being named an AlwaysOn Global Top 250 Company as one of the top private companies in the world, a comScore top-50 ranking in internet reach (Ad Focus) and being named a 2008 Inc. 5000 company.

Epic Advertising is headquartered in New York, with offices in San Francisco, Toronto and London. The company is privately held and backed by private equity firms TA Associates and Stripes Group.

NEW YORK-Epic Advertising (www.EpicAdvertising.com), the New York-based online performance marketing company, announced today that its performance display ad network division, the Azoogle Ad Network, has been ranked the 28th largest ad network domestically (48th largest web property overall in the “Ad Focus” report) for July 2008 by comScore, Inc., the industry leader in online audience measurement. This placement ranks Epic among the very top for specialty or niche ad network players, and within range of the largest horizontal ad networks – while only counting a portion of Epic’s overall traffic, with the rest coming from search via its performance search business. The company’s monthly reach through the Azoogle Ad Display Network now spans more than 40 million unique visitors a month. July marks the first time the company or any of its business units have been publicly ranked by comScore, Inc.

Epic Advertising is a dominant, global performance marketing company, connecting advertisers from all over the world to highly targeted online consumers through display advertising, via the Azoogle Ad Display Network, its award-winning performance-based ad network, and through its performance search business. Epic’s traffic comes from its vast display “reach” – as counted in the comScore report — and through high-performing search marketing.

“These results are very positive for us and highlight an important piece of our compelling overall growth story in 2008,” said Michael Sprouse, Chief Marketing Officer of Epic Advertising. “Our reach via display advertising in the U.S., as these rankings indicate, coupled with the reach numbers we track internally through Search, show a position of strength in the global online marketing ecosystem to the tune of over 22 billion ad impressions served per month worldwide. We are becoming a growing force in providing advertisers and agencies with a wide range of effective marketing solutions, whether through display, search, social network monetization, text ads, video advertising, pCPM and more. We don’t just buy impressions; rather, we ensure our marketing and targeting efforts across all platforms are tailored to each client individually.”

About Epic Advertising:

Epic Advertising (www.EpicAdvertising.com) is a global online performance marketing company that provides advertisers with measurable Internet advertising impact. Leveraging proprietary and patent-pending contextual and behavioral targeting technologies, and the over 35,000 publishers in its highly-acclaimed Azoogle Ad Network, Epic provides its advertising partners with performance and direct response marketing services, media planning and a targeted, worldwide reach.

A pioneer in both the online performance marketing industry and in Internet advertising integrity assurance, Epic Advertising brings an intense focus on achieving the highest ROI yield for its advertising partners via transparent display and search consumer traffic. Epic scales its solutions by leveraging vast quantities of data, enormous internet reach and unparalleled industry expertise.

Epic Advertising is headquartered in New York, with offices in San Francisco and Toronto. The company is privately held and backed by private equity firms TA Associates and Stripes Group.

New York, NY – August 18, 2008 – Epic Advertising (www.EpicAdvertising.com), the New York-based online performance marketing company, announced today that its performance display ad network division, the Azoogle Ad Network, has been ranked the 28th largest ad network domestically (48th largest web property overall in the “Ad Focus” report) for July 2008 by comScore, Inc., the industry leader in online audience measurement. This placement ranks Epic among the very top for specialty or niche ad network players, and within range of the largest horizontal ad networks – while only counting a portion of Epic’s overall traffic, with the rest coming from search via its performance search business. The company’s monthly reach through the Azoogle Ad Display Network now spans more than 40 million unique visitors a month. July marks the first time the company or any of its business units have been publicly ranked by comScore, Inc.

Epic Advertising is a dominant, global performance marketing company, connecting advertisers from all over the world to highly targeted online consumers through display advertising, via the Azoogle Ad Display Network, its award-winning performance-based ad network, and through its performance search business. Epic’s traffic comes from its vast display “reach” – as counted in the comScore report — and through high-performing search marketing.

“These results are very positive for us and highlight an important piece of our compelling overall growth story in 2008,” said Michael Sprouse, Chief Marketing Officer of Epic Advertising. “Our reach via display advertising in the U.S., as these rankings indicate, coupled with the reach numbers we track internally through Search, show a position of strength in the global online marketing ecosystem to the tune of over 22 billion ad impressions served per month worldwide. We are becoming a growing force in providing advertisers and agencies with a wide range of effective marketing solutions, whether through display, search, social network monetization, text ads, video advertising, pCPM and more. We don’t just buy impressions; rather, we ensure our marketing and targeting efforts across all platforms are tailored to each client individually.”

About Epic Advertising:
Epic Advertising (www.EpicAdvertising.com) is a global online performance marketing company that provides advertisers with measurable Internet advertising impact. Leveraging proprietary and patent-pending contextual and behavioral targeting technologies, and the over 35,000 publishers in its highly-acclaimed Azoogle Ad Network, Epic provides its advertising partners with performance and direct response marketing services, media planning and a targeted, worldwide reach.

A pioneer in both the online performance marketing industry and in Internet advertising integrity assurance, Epic Advertising brings an intense focus on achieving the highest ROI yield for its advertising partners via transparent display and search consumer traffic. Epic scales its solutions by leveraging vast quantities of data, enormous internet reach and unparalleled industry expertise.

Epic Advertising is headquartered in New York, with offices in San Francisco and Toronto. The company is privately held and backed by private equity firms TA Associates and Stripes Group.

There has been much written lately regarding the online marketing of ringtones and other mobile content. Various settlements and cooperative agreements have been reached between government agencies and companies. What can marketers, publishers and networks do, and equally importantly, not do if they market mobile content to consumers?

Let me first provide some pertinent background information: at AzoogleAds, in mid-2005, we commenced a broad effort to establish clear best practices on integrity assurance issues, initially around the email marketing of ringtones, and later, effectively banning adware in early 2006. In late summer of 2006, on our own volition, we became the first company in the sector to adopt a Mobile Acceptable Use Policy and to ban the use of the term “Free” in cases where the offer was not, in fact, free. When the Florida Attorney General (FLAG) commenced a broad-based investigation into mobile content marketing in 2007 – an ongoing investigation, focusing on nearly every mobile content marketer in the business – the FLAG relied heavily on our existing policies, which had been in place for well over a year, when we jointly drafted our Assurance of Voluntary Compliance. The idea was to create a Code of Conduct for the industry overall – a Code of Conduct with the teeth of the FLAG to back it up. Why is this all important? One, it illustrates that mobile content marketing and marketing-related compliance issues are not “new” despite the recent rash of announcements. Two, it illustrates the comprehensive knowledge we have uniquely built up for over 3 years relating to mobile content marketing.

To be clear, this article applies to mobile content marketing, and not to incentive marketing. Certain industry observers have incorrectly tied these two together because they may sometimes be used in tandem. However, Mobile content marketing refers specifically to selling some type of mobile device content – e.g., a ringtone, a text service, etc. Incentive marketing is generally a process whereby a consumer is offered something of value – say, an iPod – in exchange for completing a number of offers which are displayed on a series of web pages referred to as an incentive order path or a “Co-Reg” path.

Now, numerous other companies and ad networks are carefully examining their own marketing practices in this sector, as well they should. However, there remains significant confusion around what companies can and cannot do when marketing mobile content. Despite the wave of regulatory action, there are still plenty of players that fail – through ignorance, laziness or willful neglect – to embrace legitimate marketing practices. As a result, consumers remain at risk and suspicion will continue to hang over the sector (ironically, the neglectful players are quite well-known and easy to find, and sometimes stoop to trying to poke holes in the truly “above board” players to mask their own malfeasance).

Hence, we’ve compiled a list of marketing guidelines for publishers and ad networks that can benefit you in many ways. Heeding these guidelines will keep costs associated with chargebacks and fraud down, help to protect your business legally (and avoid regulatory risk), and allow you to maintain a profitable, and more importantly, sustainable relationship with advertisers and consumers.

“Top 10 list” for Online Publishers and Ad Networks

10. DON’T mislead consumers with deceptive language
Restrict the use of FREE and FREE-like language in ad-copy. Displaying FREE and its derivatives (“Bonus”, “Complimentary”, “Gift”, etc) are allowed so long as these keywords are not being deceptively applied. What does this mean? Publishers may not imply that ringtone offers carry no monetary obligations on the part of the consumer when in fact they do. The intent and spirit of this position remains in sync with that of the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) – marketers may not use language that a reasonable consumer would interpret to mean “no charge whatsoever”. Moreover, if a marketer uses the term FREE or FREE-like language, when the program DOES contain a cost, that language must be modified adjacent to the FREE claim with the relevant material terms of the offer (price and billing period) – i.e., if you use FREE in a search title, the search description must provide the disclaimer, “with 9.99 per month subscription”.

9. DON’T promote content that is not offered by the Service Provider (Advertiser)
Not all artists, shows, albums and songs are licensed by Advertisers. Not all Advertisers carry the same content and publishers shouldn’t assume so. Check the Advertiser’s sites for new content, subscribe to their RSS feeds, and take advantage of content catalogues when they are made available to you.

8. DON’T use artist & album images without consent from the Advertiser
Even though Advertisers may offer hundreds of artists and albums as part of their value-added services, it is they who license the rights to use artist likeness, album covers and other intellectual property. Although publishers and ad networks are given the ability to market this content through some programs, the licenses themselves do not extend automatically. All publishers and networks should obtain special written permission from Advertisers to use copyrighted content. This is not an arbitrary requirement, it is the law.

7. DON’T spam users on social networks
Restrict the use of social and community sites for the distribution of your marketing. This includes blogs, forums, social networks and any other virtual environment not meant for commercial use. Yes, it’s a good idea to do legitimate media buys with these types of sites in order to market, but it is not a good idea to use profiles, comments and internal messaging for the distribution of ads. Why? Because the social networks literally say so in their Terms of Use, and will use all legal means to enforce their policies. Remember, all unsolicited electronic messages violate applicable anti-spam and resource abuse laws.

6. DON’T use high risk or prohibited distribution methods
Incentivized, “limited time” and other bait & switch tactics are not sustainable in the marketing of off-deck mobile content like ringtones. Forced clicks, referrer obfuscation, and domain targeting are also examples of nefarious practices. If an ad network, vendor or traffic broker has a reputation for running spyware-generated traffic, think twice before partnering with them.

6a. DO check out http://www.benedelman.org and http://www.affiliatefairplay.com for more information on Adware, Spyware and related commission fraud.

5. DO take care in the choice and placement of your keywords
Normally, bidding on a variety of keywords is fine so long as it meets the requirements of an ad network’s T&Cs and applicable search engine-specific guidelines. Trademark restrictions and some other concerns may apply, but there is no general prohibition against bidding on the term “FREE” (though Advertisers may have additional per-program requirements) – as long as it is modified as described above. It is the display that truly matters. Help yourself run compliant campaigns through the use of negative keyword lists, keyword permutation generators, and restrictive match settings. More likely then not, Advertisers will have offer-specific keyword blacklists that you should be mindful of when bidding.

4. DO practice White-Hat SEO techniques when running non-paid search campaigns
Because of their commercial nature, “organic” (non-paid) search results are subject to the same scrutiny as paid results. The messages you convey to consumers through site content (body, headers, titles, etc) influence the perception of the offer. Just as their paid counterparts, organic results can in no way deceive the consumer through false claims. Search engines frown upon keyword stuffing, cloaking, and content spam. Search engine crawlers like “clean” code.

4a. DON’T make mistakes that will bring down your quality score or ban you from an engine.

3. DO familiarize yourself with relevant regulatory guidelines
Despite some opinions to the contrary, ours’ is a heavily regulated industry. Government agencies such as the FTC, advocacy groups such as the Mobile Marketing Association (“MMA”), and State Attorney Generals oversee behavior in the online advertising space just as they do in the world of traditional media. Not surprisingly, the FTC’s “Guide Concerning the Use of the Term ‘Free’” and other special language have been around since 1971. Some links to become familiar with:

3a. FTC on ‘FREE’: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/guides/free.htm
3b. FTC Rules of the Road: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/ruleroad.shtm
3c. MMA Best Practices: http://www.mmaglobal.com/bestpractices.pdf

2. DO read an ad network’s terms and conditions
Why do Terms and Conditions matter? Not only are these T&Cs a legally binding contract signed by you when you join an ad network, they reflect US Law and applicable Best Practices for a particular ad network. The FTC Act’s prohibition on “unfair or deceptive acts or practices” encompasses internet advertising, marketing and sales as much as it does to TV and Radio. In addition, many Commission rules and guides are not limited to any particular medium used to disseminate claims or advertising, and therefore, apply to all commercial online activities.

1. DO ask questions and communicate with your ad network staff and account managers
Communication and collaboration is critical. Work closely with partners and professionals at ad networks to understand offer-specific requirements and familiarize yourself with the regulatory aspects of the industry. When in doubt, put yourself in the consumer’s shoes and look at your marketing campaigns from the user’s perspective. And finally, realize that state and federal agencies have enforced and will continue to enforce relevant consumer protection laws. Offline or online, they will act to ensure that products and services are marketed truthfully.