NEW YORK – PubMatic, which provides online publishers — including the majority of the comScore Top 10 — with the technology and services to significantly increase revenue and better manage their advertising inventory, today announced the results of the first multi-party real-time bidding (RTB) case study. The multi-party effort demonstrates how RTB performance compares to other types of digital advertising methods across multiple advertiser categories. The study involved four Demand Side Platforms (DSPs) – MediaMath, [x+1], Turn, and DataXu – which accessed premium publisher inventory through PubMatic’s Sell Side Platform.

The detailed results were unveiled at Ad Revenue 2010, PubMatic’s 3rd Annual Premium Publisher conference, and were outlined in the Ad Revenue 2010 Report distributed to all conference attendees.

Key Takeaways from the collaborative RTB case study include:

- Publishers generated significantly higher revenue from RTB campaigns in comparison to Non-RTB campaigns, across all advertising verticals, by an average of 64%
- RTB outperformed traditional run-of-network non-RTB media buying methods by an average of 749%
- Audience targeted non-RTB campaigns outperformed run-of-network Non-RTB campaigns by an average of 324%
- Based on cost-per-success metric as outlined by the advertisers for each campaign, RTB provided better ROI than non-RTB audience targeted campaigns by 101% on average

A collaborative effort to compare audience targeting methods for publishers and advertisers

In this collaborative effort to help further educate the online advertising industry about RTB, each DSP focused on a specific advertising vertical. Because each DSP works with multiple verticals, the vertical studied is not indicative of any DSP specialization. Each DSP also focused on a specific campaign with very different campaign objectives; therefore it would be impossible to compare performance from one DSP to another.

Study objectives:

1. Track RTB Performance vs. Non-RTB Performance For Each Advertising Campaign

2. Track Similarities in RTB vs. Non-RTB Campaign Performances Across Multiple Advertising Verticals

3. Track Publisher Ad Revenue Lift (eCPM) From RTB Campaigns vs. Non-RTB Campaigns

Study methodology:

During the same 30 day time period in August and September of 2010, each DSP tracked performance of their advertising campaigns by three types of audience targeting methods:

1. Non-RTB: Run of Network

2. Non-RTB: Audience Targeting

3. RTB: Impression-Level Optimization

Each DSP focused on a specific advertising vertical for this study:

Automotive: DataXu
Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG): MediaMath
Finance: [x+1]
Telecommunications: Turn
Parties interested in getting copies of PubMatic’s Ad Revenue 2010 Report, which contains the full details of the study, can contact PubMatic at AdRevenueReport@PubMatic.com or visit http://www.PubMatic.com after Oct 18th to download an electronic version.

About DataXu: (http://www.dataxu.com) DataXu is the leading media management platform for online display advertisers. Combining media buying, optimization and analytics, DataXu has a transformative approach to digital advertising, helping brands and their agencies use dynamic ad decisioning intelligence for the highest media effectiveness, better operational efficiencies and audience insights.

Contact DataXu: (857) 244-6200

About MediaMath: (http://wwwmediamath.com) MediaMath’s TerminalOne™ platform powers the new marketing professional by integrating media, data, optimization, analytics, and workflow automation to return focus to marketing strategy rather than media execution. MediaMath’s technology has driven breakthrough results for dozens of agencies representing the world’s leading brands on thousands of campaigns.

Contact MediaMath: (646) 840-4200

About Turn: (http://www.turn.com) Turn was founded to bring the efficiencies of search advertising to online display and empower the world’s premier advertising agencies and brands to reach custom audiences at scale. We are a software and services company with the industry’s only end-to-end platform for delivering the most effective data-driven digital advertising in the world. Our self-service interface, optimization algorithms, real-time analytics, interoperability, and scalable infrastructure represent the future of media and data management.

Contact Turn: (650) 353-4399

About [x+1]: (http://www.xplusone.com)

[x+1] helps brands, agencies and media companies connect with consumers in more meaningful, actionable ways, delivering offers where they’re most relevant. [x+1] uses its Predictive Optimization Engine (POETM) to enable automated, real-time decision making to ensure that the right message is delivered to the right person at the right time.

Contact [x+1]: (212) 741-4222

PubMatic: (http://www.pubmatic.com) PubMatic’s ad management technology combines an impression-level ad auction, the most comprehensive brand protection tools, and enterprise ad operations support to give the Web’s top publishers the most control over their revenue and brand. Some of the world’s most respected online publishers have chosen to work with PubMatic, including The Huffington Post, eBay, United Online, TV Guide, and the majority of the comScore Top 10.

PubMatic is privately held, backed by funding from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Nexus Venture Partners, and Helion Ventures, and has seven offices around the world in the US, Europe, and Asia.

ADTECH Head Dirk Freytag Promoted to Platform-A Senior Vice President

NEW YORK – AOL’s Platform-A, the leading advertising platform in the U.S. with a 91% reach across the Internet*, announced that it will now offer advertisers the full-service benefits of ADTECH’s ad serving system for delivering brand messages to their customers. The company previously utilized DoubleClick and has now replaced those systems with ADTECH’s technology, which lets Platform-A deliver ad campaigns across AOL’s MediaGlow properties.

“The ad serving switch from DoubleClick to ADTECH is a major milestone for Platform-A and our advertising partners. Acquiring ADTECH was a smart, strategic move that saves the company millions of dollars each year and allows us to more effectively serve display, video, and mobile campaigns across the MediaGlow properties and our third-party networks,” said Greg Coleman, President of Platform-A. “In January, Platform-A reached more than 174 million unique visitors*, and now that we’ve switched our ad serving to ADTECH, we’re in a stronger position to help advertisers reach those consumers more efficiently and build brands that perform online.”

“Bringing our ad serving technology in-house was one of the most complex technological challenges we’ve undertaken, and now that our project is complete, our systems can deliver ad campaigns faster than our former DoubleClick solution,” said Freytag. “Even in a turbulent economy, ADTECH’s business continues to grow, which is a testament to the brand value that ADTECH brings to online advertisers. ADTECH is committed to being a business partner for our customers. We don’t deliver a technology – we deliver solutions that ultimately help drive revenue for digital advertisers.”

In conjunction with today’s announcement, Platform-A also announced that Freytag has been promoted to Senior Vice President of Platform-A, in addition to his role as CEO of ADTECH. Since taking the position of CEO in 2005, Freytag has overseen the growth of ADTECH’s business in Europe and the United States. He joined ADTECH in 2000 as VP of Corporate Communications and in two years rose to become Chief Operating Officer. AOL acquired ADTECH in May 2007 with the strategic goal of leveraging its flagship product, the Helios IQ ad serving platform, to enable web publishers to manage, serve, and evaluate virtually any kind of digital advertising campaign.

Platform A was established by integrating AOL’s advertising business, Advertising.com, ADTECH, Quigo, TACODA and others to provide marketers with an efficient, effective means to leverage display, video, mobile, contextual, affiliate and search marketing solutions at scale. The mission of Platform-A is to enable marketers to reach their targeted audiences at scale through delivery of highly engaging and effective advertising for maximum value and results.

* January 2009 comScore Media Metrix

About Platform-A

Platform-A, AOL’s advertising business, reaching 91%* of the U.S. Internet audience, is the industry’s largest digital advertising platform. Platform-A offers the most comprehensive suite of marketing solutions, powered by the Web’s best advertising technologies. Platform-A includes AOL’s leading media properties – AOL.com, AIM, MapQuest, and more – and Advertising.com’s third-party networks. Platform-A also includes TACODA’s audience insights and behavioral targeting; Quigo, a site- and content-targeting solution; ADTECH, an international digital ad serving business; Third Screen Media, a mobile ad serving network; and buy.at, an affiliate marketing solution. Platform-A currently has operations in the United States, nine countries across Europe, including Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, the UK, and Japan through a joint venture with Mitsui. Learn more at http://www.platform-a.com.

By allowing publishers to aggregate their ad space together into thematic verticals – Environmental/Green Community, Social Enterprise Community, Youth Media & Community – Mission AdWorks gives advertisers a way to reach audiences that are difficult to identify and reach in a highly targeted manner on the open marketplace.

The national marketplace model benefits all parties involved, while doing meaningful good in the world and reaching the highly motivated, action oriented, influential, yet difficult to reach, socially-responsible audience, using behavioral social values to get as close to this target consumer as possible.

Mission AdWorks has partnered with CPM Advisors (www.cpmadvisors.com), a technology company that manages, optimizes and enhances advertising campaigns for online advertisers, and Chapter Three (www.chapterthree.com), an open-source web design and development firm with an interest in social change, to harness their expertise to create a robust value proposition for both advertisers and publishers alike.

“We’ve gotten a great initial reception from partners, advertisers and publishers,” said Michael Clauss, partner in Mission Adworks. “They recognize that Mission AdWorks is differentiated by its mission of doing good, and brings significant advantages by creating highly targeted thematic verticals without sacrificing scale. Most advertisers and publishers want to be associated with doing good, while still making money.”

About Mission AdWorks:

Mission AdWorks is a social advertising marketplace that connects logical groupings of website publishers with marketers that are socially conscious and responsible. The company enables brands and advertisers to simply and efficiently reach the highly motivated, action-oriented, influential, yet difficult to reach, socially-responsible audiences, using behavioral social values to get as close to this target consumer as possible. The company’s management system offers: media delivered from its state of the art ad-serving platform; primary focus on CPM, but capacity for CPC, CPL & CPA campaigns; multiple ad formats including basic image, animation & full rich media; comprehensive reporting and technical support to help maximize campaign performance; multiple channels of niche communities. www.missionadworks.com.

“We are very pleased to have Gill join our sales and management teams,” said Ewert. “As a veteran of Internet media, Gill brings with him a wealth of experience, having held leadership positions with Yahoo!, Deja.com and CMP Media. I look forward to working with Gill as we build on LookSmart’s success in the market and seek to enhance our leadership position in search advertising networks.”

From 2000 to 2007, Brown worked at GoTo.com, Overture Services, and Yahoo! Search Marketing where he evangelized the paid-search advertising model for Yahoo! and built the company’s entire Northwest Regional Sales operation.

“For online advertisers targeting a specific industry or market, search ad networks can be a source of quality traffic. LookSmart has a proven reputation for helping leading brands run successful campaigns every day, allowing marketers to maximize value, regardless of the size or scope of the campaign,” said Brown. “I am delighted to be able to join the company at this stage of its growth and I look forward to leveraging my experience in the industry to help the company continue its success.”

With growing industry-wide demand from advertisers and agencies for increased levels of transparency, brand safety, and user engagement, LucidMedia developed the Verified Inventory program to address all three of these issues and more. Verified Inventory gives advertisers and their agencies access to higher levels of:

* ACCURACY: LucidMedia’s patented relevance engine determines the ‘aboutness’ of Web pages in real-time using more than 14,000 micro-segmented content categories, ranging from A&E/Amusement and Theme Parks to Travel & Tourism/Business Travel.
* BRAND SAFETY: With 32 top-level content channels (such as Automotive, Health, and Sports), 14 unique Media Classes (including news, blogs, social, and enthusiast sites), complementing the more than 14,000 categories, and hundreds of real-time objectionable content filters, LucidMedia Verified Inventory was developed to provide one of the cleanest, most ‘well lit’ advertising spaces for brands on the Internet.
* ENGAGEMENT: Verified Inventory is driven by the principle that increased contextual relevance drives additional user engagement which means more clicks, more acquisitions, more page-views, and ultimately more conversions.
* PROOF: LucidMedia supports the Verified Inventory program with its unique Proof Report, providing advertisers and agencies with some of the industry’s highest levels of transparency and accountability.

“In today’s economic environment, there is growing demand for granularity and truly accurate contextual relevance for advertisers to drive user engagement, while increasing and protecting the value of their brands,” said Ajay Sravanapudi, LucidMedia President and CEO. “We are excited to launch an offering that combines our custom advertising platform and patented natural language processing engine to classify content with unprecedented detail, matching the right ad with the right content at the right time.”

LucidMedia launched Verified Inventory to assure advertisers that while its network expands rapidly, quality is increasing in proportion. In adding to its traffic base, LucidMedia derives inventory from select multiple sources, performing an extensive prequalification of advertising inventory before accepting it to its network, including a deep semantic analysis at the page-level. This also includes analyzing all Verified Inventory content in the five critical areas of context, media class, language, custom keywords and objectionable content. Interested parties can learn more at www.verifiedinventory.com.

About LucidMedia

LucidMedia is an online contextual display advertising network and technology platform focused on optimizing performance at the page-level for advertisers and their agencies. The company’s patented ClickSense® contextual advertising and targeting engine empowers advertisers to reach new levels of insight, safety, and cost-efficiency in their online advertising campaigns. LucidMedia categorizes traffic from many of the Web’s most respected networks and exchanges in both English and Spanish, providing advertisers with a way to more effectively target online advertising inventory and increase their return-on-spend. Today, many of the world’s largest interactive agencies, online advertisers, and ad networks are leveraging LucidMedia’s network and technology platform to drive increased revenue.

RESTON, Va. – LucidMedia (www.lucidmedia.com), an online contextual display advertising network and technology platform, announced that it has been selected to the 2009 OnMedia 100 List. The OnMedia 100 Award is given to the top 100 private, emerging technology companies in the advertising, publishing, marketing, branding and public relations spaces. LucidMedia was selected by the AlwaysOn editorial team based on demonstration of growth, market opportunity, quality of innovation and customer traction.

”We are very pleased to be recognized with this honor, as LucidMedia has made many significant strides during the past year, ranging from our introducing the industry’s first Spanish-language contextual advertising platform to distributing our technology across the Yahoo! Right Media Exchange and a growing base of other partners,” said Ajay Sravanapudi, LucidMedia President and CEO. “We are extremely well-positioned for continued progress throughout 2009 and are grateful to the AlwaysOn team for recognizing our efforts to-date.”

LucidMedia and the other OnMedia 100 winners will be recognized at the OnMedia 100 Conference at the Ritz Carlton, New York City, on February 2-4. This two-and-a-half day executive conference is co-presented by Forbes and will feature presentations and high-level debates from CEOs, journalists, industry experts, investors and publishing and advertising executives.

“The 2009 OnMedia 100 companies have demonstrated their tenacity even in the toughest economic conditions that the technology world has ever encountered,” said Tony Perkins, founder and editor of AlwaysOn. “We applaud their success in pushing the boundaries of innovation, creating market opportunities and transforming the industry even in the earlier stages of their businesses.”

The OnMedia 100 winners were selected from among hundreds of other technology companies nominated by investors, bankers, journalists and industry insiders. The AlwaysOn editorial team conducted a rigorous three-month selection process to finalize the 2009 list.

A full list of all the OnMedia 100 winners can be found on the AlwaysOn website at http://alwayson.goingon.com/permalink/post/30893.

About LucidMedia

LucidMedia is an online contextual display advertising network and technology platform focused on optimizing performance at the page-level for advertisers and their agencies. The company’s patented ClickSense® contextual advertising and targeting engine empowers advertisers to reach new levels of performance, insight, safety, and cost-efficiency in their online advertising campaigns. LucidMedia categorizes traffic from many of the Web’s most respected networks and exchanges in both English and Spanish, providing advertisers with a way to more effectively target online advertising inventory and increase their return-on-spend. Today, many of the world’s largest interactive agencies, online advertisers, and ad networks are leveraging LucidMedia’s network and technology platform to drive increased revenue.

About AlwaysOn

AlwaysOn ignited the open-media revolution in early 2003 by being the first media brand to launch a global blog network. In 2004, AlwaysOn continued to lead the media industry in innovation by introducing a social network where members can connect and engage. AlwaysOn is also revolutionizing the media business by applying its open-media principles to its executive event series (Stanford Summit, AlwaysOn Hollywood, AlwaysOn Media and GoingGreen) and quarterly print “blogozine” by empowering its members to post and share their ideas and meet each other online. As our loyal readers know, AlwaysOn is committed to the free-market, merit-driven approach to reporting and event programming. No other media brand has dared to create such open interaction with its readers and event participants.

AUSTIN, Texas – Click Forensics™, Inc. released industry pay-per-click (PPC) fraud figures for the fourth quarter 2008 from the search advertising industry’s leading independent click fraud reporting service – the Click Fraud Index® (www.ClickFraudIndex.com).

Now in its fourth year, the Click Fraud Index monitors and reports on data gathered from the Click Fraud Network™, which provides statistically significant industry PPC data collected from online advertising campaigns for both large and small companies across all the leading search engines. Key findings from data reported for Q4 2008 include:

* The overall industry average click fraud rate grew to 17.1 percent for Q4 2008. That’s up from 16.0 percent in Q3 2008 and from the 16.6 percent rate reported for Q4 2007.
* The average click fraud rate of PPC advertisements appearing on search engine content networks, including Google AdSense and the Yahoo Publisher Network, was 28.2 percent. That’s up from the 27.1 percent rate reported for Q3 2008 and down slightly from the 28.3 percent rate reported for Q4 2007.
* Traffic from botnets was responsible for 31.4 percent of all click fraud traffic in Q4 2008. That’s up from the 27.6 percent rate reported for Q3 2008 and the 22.0 percent rate reported for Q4 2007.
* In Q4 2008, the greatest percentage of click fraud originating from countries outside the U.S. came from Canada (7.4 percent), Germany (3.0 percent) and China (2.3 percent).

“Based on the data we tracked in Q4 2008, it seems that the online advertising industry is not immune to the growing tide of cybercrime during this recessionary period,” said Tom Cuthbert, president of Click Forensics. “Both the overall click fraud rate and the rate of click fraud originating from botnets were the highest ever in Q4 2008. In addition, we’ve started to see old schemes like click farms reemerge. Advertisers should pay close attention to these types of threats in their online campaigns throughout the year.”

The Click Fraud Index publishes data collected from the Click Fraud Network, the industry’s first independent third-party click fraud detection service dedicated to helping companies more accurately monitor their online advertising campaigns for pay-per-click fraud. Click fraud data is tracked and published on a quarterly basis for specific search providers, industries and trends. The service is unique in that it monitors online campaigns for click fraud by correlating data collected from search provider campaigns and the advertisers’ own web sites – providing the industry’s most accurate view of click fraud to date.

About Click Forensics, Inc.

Click Forensics is the industry leader in scoring, auditing and improving traffic quality for the online advertising community. Click Forensics provides traffic quality management solutions for online advertisers, publishers, and ad networks. The company also publishes the Click Fraud Index®, the top independent source of industry click fraud data. Click Forensics is headquartered in Austin, Texas, and is privately held with funding from Sierra Ventures, Austin Ventures and Shasta Ventures. More information on Click Forensics and its offerings is available at www.ClickForensics.com.

Click Fraud Index is a registered trademark of Click Forensics, Inc. Click Forensics and Click Fraud Network are trademarks of Click Forensics, Inc. All other company and product names mentioned are used only for identification and may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

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.

AUSTIN, Texas – Click Forensics™, Inc., the industry leader in scoring, auditing, and improving traffic quality for the online advertising community, today announced that it was named a winner of the Austin Business Journal Tech Innovation Awards. This year’s Awards recognize the most promising technologies developed in the central Texas region in 2008. Click Forensics was recognized in the Internet Award category for its market leadership in helping to quantify the size of the industry click fraud problem and for developing breakthrough technologies that help to mitigate the impact click fraud and low traffic quality have on search advertisers and publishers.

“Austin’s rich technology community is known for developing solutions that impact technology on a global scale,” said Colin Pope, editor of the Austin Business Journal. “The competition for the 2008 Tech Innovation Awards has been strong and we are honored to recognize Click Forensics as a winner.”

Click Forensics offers traffic quality management solutions designed for online advertisers, ad networks and publishers. The Click Forensics solutions use patent-pending heuristics to measure and score traffic quality. The solutions provide continuous updates on sites that are sources of poor quality traffic and click fraud so that advertisers and ad networks can protect their campaigns and those of their clients, while improving overall campaign performance.

“We’re honored to be chosen as a Tech Innovation Awards winner,” said Paul Pellman, CEO of Click Forensics. “Austin has incubated some of the best and brightest young companies in the country and we’re pleased to be among this year’s recipients for this prestigious award.”

For more information on Click Forensics, visit www.clickforensics.com.

About Click Forensics, Inc.

Click Forensics is the industry leader in scoring, auditing and improving traffic quality for the online advertising community. Click Forensics provides traffic quality management solutions for online advertisers, publishers, and ad networks. The company also publishes the Click Fraud Index®, the top independent source of industry click fraud data. Click Forensics is headquartered in Austin, Texas, and is privately held with funding from Sierra Ventures, Austin Ventures and Shasta Ventures. More information on Click Forensics and its offerings is available at www.ClickForensics.com.

Click Fraud Index is a registered trademark of Click Forensics, Inc. Click Forensics and Click Fraud Network are trademarks of Click Forensics, Inc. All other company and product names mentioned are used only for identification and may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

SAN FRANCISCO – LookSmart, Ltd. (NASDAQ:LOOK), a premier search advertising network and management company, today launched a new geo-conversion reporting tool that enables online advertisers to improve return on investment by focusing their budget on the geographic locations best responding to a campaign.

Unveiled today at the Search Engine Strategies conference in Chicago, these geo-conversion tracking reports can be as granular as needed, measuring results at the account, campaign, ad and keyword level, and returning conversion rates by country, designated market area (DMA), state, city and ZIP code. In addition, cost-per-action (CPA) can also be measured.

“We have worked with LookSmart for years. They are a cost-effective lead source for some of our customers, and have also provided cost-effective extended reach and distribution from local search engine marketing,” said Jeff Werner, communications director, WebVisible. “With LookSmart’s enhanced targeting capabilities it just keeps getting better every day and we look forward to continue working with them in the future.”

LookSmart continually enhances the AdCenter, its award-winning search advertising platform. During the past year, the search network veteran has made it easier for advertisers to target niche audiences, manage bid prices and control traffic quality via new features and services. At the same time, LookSmart has expanded its network of high-quality distribution partners and strengthened traffic quality by providing reporting tools and services that give greater insight into the network, enhancing its value to advertisers.

“Advertisers can trust that LookSmart works hard to meet all our customers’ needs; the addition of geo-conversion reporting is just the latest of many enhancements we’ve made this year,” said Ted West, chief executive officer and president, LookSmart. “Our continued quality improvements help advertisers target their campaigns toward the most effective audiences. Used well, the LookSmart platform can provide advertisers with a leg up on the competition.”

“While advertisers of all sizes are challenged by the economy, search advertising networks like LookSmart offer a clear benefit for smaller businesses, which often market to a specific city or region,” said Anita Campbell, editor-in-chief of Small Business Trends (www.smallbiztrends.com), an award-winning, comprehensive online publication for small business owners and entrepreneurs. “Small and local businesses can especially profit from search ad networks that not only help them target their desired audience but also enable them to fine-tune their campaigns to be the most effective.”

LookSmart will be exhibiting at SES Chicago in Booth 410 at the Hilton Chicago on Dec. 9 and 10. For more information about LookSmart at SES Chicago or to schedule a press briefing during the conference, please contact Raymond Deplazes at 415-694-6715 or email LookSmart@racepointgroup.com.

About LookSmart

LookSmart (NASDAQ:LOOK) is a premier search advertising network and management solutions company. A trusted provider of quality search advertising products and services to text advertisers, LookSmart offers targeted pay-per-click search and contextual advertising via its proven Search Advertising Network. For publishers seeking to create their own branded vertical advertising networks, LookSmart also licenses and manages search ad networks using its award-winning AdCenter platform. Dedicated to the quality of text advertising, LookSmart is one of the five founding members of the IAB Click Measurement Panel. For more information, visit www.LookSmart.com or call 415-348-7500.

Pay-per-click fraud, otherwise known as click-fraud, is an internet crime. It occurs anytime an individual, automated script, or computer program clicks on a business’s ad multiple times for the purpose of generating a charge per click. Click-fraud allows competitors to prevent their competition from making sales online, thereby significantly reducing a business’s profit and potentially running their competitors out of business altogether. Due to the competitiveness of the credit card processing industry, BankCard USA has experienced first-hand the financial impact of click-fraud.

In response, BankCard USA has commissioned Connection Marketing to create a universal protocol to catch, identify, and deal with perpetrators of click-fraud. The findings will be made public and free-of-charge at BankCard USA’s website. Currently, Bankcard USA has made available on its website Connection Marketing’s Click Fraud Defense 101 manual that online advertisers can use to reduce their exposure to click fraud. This can be found at http://www.BankCardUSA.com/ClickFraudDefense101.

“Internet marketing is a large source of revenue for many businesses today,” notes Alan Griefer, President of BankCard USA. “Click-fraud is more prevalent than what we can currently measure, and appears to be increasingly problematic for businesses. While it is unfortunate that this type of internet fraud is not more aggressively investigated and prevented, companies like Connection Marketing help keep advertisers from losing their advertising budget to dollars to internet click-fraud thieves.”

About BankCard USA:

Founded in 1993 by Shawn Skelton and Alan Griefer, BankCard USA is a registered merchant service provider. BankCard USA specializes in credit card processing for new or existing businesses. They offer payment solutions for all types of businesses, including internet, retail store-front, mail-order, phone-order, trade shows, professionals, service industry and home-based businesses. For more information visit us at http://www.BankCardUSA.com.

About Connection Marketing:

Founded in 2005 by Michael Stein, Connection Marketing, Inc. is a full service search-engine marketing agency that specializes in click-fraud protection, pay-per-click management (PPC), and search-engine optimization (SEO). For more information visit us at http://www.ConnectionMarketing.net.

LOS ANGELES – The following is an opinion editorial by Mason Wiley, senior vice president of marketing, Hydra:

“Finish all your dinner,” my mom used to tell me. “Or you can’t be a member of the clean plate club.” Not wasting food earned me not only membership in that private collective, but also the reward that went with it, namely dessert.

Anyone raised by Depression-era-born parents was indoctrinated with the notion that waste is bad. Turns out that was good preparation for business. Executive leadership, like mom, abhors waste of any kind. Unfortunately, online advertisers always find that some amount of waste is always inevitable.

Under the long prevailing cost-per-thousand (CPM) model of buying advertising, online marketers have to pay to reach prospects. The major problem here is: whose numbers do you trust? Evidence has emerged that page views cited by online publishers as a proxy for impressions are overstated, to say the least. And what’s a page view worth, anyway? There is no guarantee that an ad is even seen. Heat map research shows that Web surfers, acting as their own internal TiVo, are pretty darn good at ignoring those online banners you spend your good money to place.

So as an online advertiser you do what advertisers have always done to improve their odds: you target. The Internet allows for not just the classic demographic and psychographic targeting but also behavioral and contextual targeting. Sure, it can help reduce paying for ad impressions that go nowhere. But this hyper targeting is giving consumers the heebie-jeebies and giving law-making bodies around the country a spanking new privacy issue to sink their teeth into. And in the end, even with all those fancy targeting schemes, you still end up paying to reach people not the least bit interested in what you have to sell and who will never become customers. You spend a ton of money on online impressions that aren’t impressive at all.

Fortunately, paying for the chance to maybe find a customer is not the only game in town. Now you have the choice to pay only for those ads that drive a customer to make a purchase, fill out a lead form, watch a video clip, or take some sort of conversion or engagement action. It’s called cost-per-action (CPA).

CPA is risk-free and waste-free by definition. Eliminating clickers who do not convert, CPA delivers incremental new customers with predictable ROI. What’s more, it’s not dependent on targeting. So, consumers don’t get hot and bothered about their privacy being invaded.

In fact, for savvy marketers, CPA can make targeting irrelevant. Using CPA, they can cast a wide net across the Internet universe (IU) and have their best prospects self-identify by responding. At that point, the advertiser can unleash all their best-practice CRM tactics to build prospects’ relationship with the brand and convert them into a lifetime customer.

The fact that I work for a CPA ad network might make you think that I am overly biased and therefore not credible. No way! But you don’t have to listen to just me. Listen to Bill Gates, formerly of Microsoft. Not only is he a proponent of CPA, he has predicted this form will eventually “change the economics of the search advertising market.” Or listen to Google VP of Search Product & User Experience Marissa Mayer’s public pronouncement that “CPA is the holy grail of targeted advertising.” CPA has fans.

Apparently, fans are making waves. More forward-thinking advertisers are adding CPA into the online media mix and getting their feet wet slowly. And with all this new status and attention, CPA means advertisers have premium inventory as well as all the transparency they’ve enjoyed with CPM. Combined with the economic benefits of CPA’s risk-free model, advertisers are more bullish now about testing it.

CPA is — finally — recession proof! With large and small retailers dealing with economic slowdown, CPA keeps products top of mind with consumers without breaking any bank. It’s always true, too, that only one metric in advertising matters: sales. CPA, along with its cousin cost-per-engagement, will be the single driving force of online advertising in the years to come with costs that are tied to results and that deliver full accountability and, best of all, control.

It’s a win-with one more win following it. So give CPA a shot. If nothing else you get guaranteed membership into the clean plate club!

About the author

As senior vice president of marketing, Mason Wiley comes to Hydra (www.hydranetwork.com) with more than 20 years of experience in marketing, brand-building, and sales. His diverse career includes developing a television campaign that repositioned Arnold Schwarzenegger from rich Hollywood movie hero to heroic political outsider.

To Provide Brand Advertisers with Measurable Impact

Irvine, Calif. – December 3, 2008 – Specific Media, the world’s largest independent media platform, today unveiled new research that shows display advertising significantly lifts search activity. The study leverages 12 months of proprietary Specific Media Ad Effectiveness data backed by comScore, tracking more than 60+ Specific Media campaigns to draw averages demonstrating the direct correlation between display advertising and search. The benchmark study provides brand advertisers with unique, measurable insights into the effectiveness of their display advertising campaigns.

“Specific Media provides its brand advertisers with unique post-campaign reporting tools that show how their display campaigns impact search, site visitation and engagement,” said Chris Vanderhook, COO, Specific Media. “We’ve always known that display advertising significantly impacts consumer activity, now we provide brand advertisers with the tools and validation to verify and quantify that impact.”

The study demonstrates that consumers exposed to display advertising were more likely to search for brand terms (i.e. automotive manufacturer), and segment terms (i.e. vehicle class), than unexposed consumers. Segmented results include:

Display Advertising Lift on Search Activity

Advertiser Category Search (Brand & Segment)
Automotive 144%
CPG 22%
Health 260%
News & Media 144%
Personal Finance 206%
Property & Real Estate 125%
Retail 69%
Travel & Tourism 274%
Average Lift 155%

Averages based on comScore Ad Effectiveness data for Specific Media display advertising clients over 12-month period ending August 2008.

The study shows that display advertising has a direct impact on both paid and organic searches and clicks. “As advertisers look to control their media spend, measure impact and validate the effectiveness of their marketing efforts, strategies that lift organic traffic are invaluable,” said Vanderhook.

Through a suite of pre- and post-campaign reports, utilizing data from comScore and other leading industry sources, Specific Media is the only advertising network offering online advertisers a truly cumulative view of campaign effectiveness, delivering valuable best practices data for current and future media planning.

About Specific Media (www.specificmedia.com)

Specific Media is uniquely positioned as the world’s largest independent media platform, solving the reach and data problems facing today’s advertisers. Specific Media enables advertisers to target consumers throughout North America and Western Europe based on demographics, behaviors, geographic locations and the contextual relevance of websites visited. Specific Media’s Premium Network reaches more than 150 million US consumers and 225 million consumers globally each month. With a relentless focus on delivering measurable, predictable results in a brand-friendly environment, Specific Media is defining tomorrow’s marketing standards, today.

2nd December, 2008 – Eyeblaster, home of the world’s most innovative digital marketing solutions, today announced the roll out of Eyeblaster TV, a new online video rich media ad unit, which delivers increased functionality for online advertisers.

Eyeblaster’s new online ad offering will encourage advertisers who are traditionally confined to television to spread their TV ad budgets towards online video. This will increase the reach and lifespan of TVCs, without necessitating a costly reformatting process for advertisers to transfer them into a workable online video ad format.

Eyeblaster Director of Operations APAC, Mick O’Brien says, “Eyeblaster TV allows the advertiser to better amortise the cost of building the TVC by allowing the commercial to translate easily into an online format. This positively impacts the advertiser’s bottom line and engages with consumers through a type of advertising that they are already familiar with. Eyeblaster TV extends the reach of an advertisers’ TVC to connect with consumers who are online and provides advertisers with metrics about their target market and the effectiveness of the ad campaigns in reaching that market.

“We have seen a surge of interest in this product since it went to market 6 weeks ago. Traditional TVC advertisers such as Coca-Cola, Mercedes and ING have embraced Eyeblaster TV because it simply makes sense to take an ad already running on TV and run it online as well. It’s a cost effective seamless process that gets their product out to more consumers.”

The Eyeblaster TV video unit will appear at the top right of a user’s monitor running 30 or 60-second TV commercials. Eyeblaster TV is particularly attractive for ad campaigns that consumers are accustomed to viewing on television in longer time frames, such as movie trailers. The online format can take this interaction one step further by engaging the consumer using interactive features such as clicking on the ad to view in full screen High Definition, collecting data capture, or pulling in dynamic content from the advertiser’s website allowing the user to immediately receive more information about the product and indicate purchase intent.

For businesses wanting to tap into the burgeoning online ad market, Eyeblaster TV allows them to increase the usability of their TVC’s, which are costly to generate, through a literally ‘cut and paste’ process. This seamless transition means that there is no longer a need to shoot video specifically for online ads because Eyeblaster TV extends the reach of an advertisers existing creative – translating into savings along the bottom line.

Advertisers using Eyeblaster TV include Visa Entertainment for the James Bond Quantum of Solace trailer through Sensis, MCN and Fairfax.

Managing Director of Fairfax Digital – Media, Pippa Leary says, “FDTV, which uses Eyeblaster’s new TV ad format, allows our advertisers to access the 14 million-strong monthly unique browsers on the Fairfax Digital network by targeted demographic.

“Encouraged by technology innovations like FDTV and the growing consumption rates of online video in Australia, we are seeing more categories, including FMCG, move their brand advertising online. Marketers are harnessing the incremental reach garnered through a predominantly light commercial TV viewing audience on our network.

FDTV allows advertisers to develop new creative video advertising formats for online audiences, combining the strength of video commercials with a rich media ad unit to a focused demographic, as well as extending the life and reach of their TVCs using existing creative.”

To see all Eyeblaster TV previews visit http://tinyurl.com/6zj4ox

About Eyeblaster Australia
Eyeblaster is the global leader in integrated digital marketing services and was the first company to bring third party video advertising technology to the Australian and New Zealand markets. Eyeblaster Australia services a range of marketing and online advertising agencies on behalf of numerous blue chip clients including Optimedia for 20th Century Fox, The Media Store for Toyota-Lexus, Initiative Media for Revlon, and Carat for Adidas. Eyeblaster’s impressive client list is a reflection of the personalised easy to use service as well as its innovative and ground breaking approach to digital technology.

In 1999, Eyeblaster was among the pioneers in rich media communication. Today, Eyeblaster extends its inventive heritage in digital advertising through Ad Campaign Manager (ACM). ACM enables interactive agencies, advertisers and publishers to manage campaigns across digital media channels, including online, mobile and in-game, and a variety of formats, including rich media, in-stream video, display and search. ACM is a robust, integrated and easy-to-use platform that allows customers to focus on campaign strategy, creativity and media efficiency without having to worry about the technical complexities associated with managing global advertising campaigns online.

In 2007, Eyeblaster delivered campaigns for nearly 7,000 brand advertisers serving approximately 2,500 ad agencies across over 2,700 global web publishers in over 40 countries worldwide throughout North America, South America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Africa and the Middle East. Learn more at http://www.eyeblaster.com.

RESTON, VA, November 17, 2008 – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today announced the availability of its comScore Brand Metrix norms database, compiled from nearly 200 brand impact studies conducted across a range of industries and online ad campaigns. comScore Brand Metrix is a breakthrough service for measuring the effectiveness of online advertising campaigns in meeting branding objectives such as heightened brand awareness, improved attitudes toward the brand, increased purchase intent — and ultimately incremental purchasing.

“In an environment where proving the effectiveness of every advertising dollar is essential, comScore Brand Metrix gives marketers and publishers the ammunition to demonstrate the true value of their online advertising efforts,” said Evan Neufeld, comScore vice president of advertising solutions. “With online display ads yielding click-thru rates of less than 0.1 percent, advertisers can no longer rely on click-thrus to gauge online ad performance. Doing so fails to capture the impact of advertising impressions – or view-thru – on attitude and future behavior, which are essential metrics in assessing the complete return on an investment in online advertising.”

comScore Brand Metrix relies on the comScore panel to parse differences in behavior and attitudes among those consumers exposed to an online ad campaign compared to those who are not exposed. It is the first product in the industry to measure the true impact of online ad exposures because it overcomes the deleterious impact of cookie deletion that other services ignore, and which can lead to an understatement of the actual view-thru impact of online ads by a factor of 20 percent or more.

Norms Database Shows Substantial Lift in Sales, Advertiser Trademark Search and Site Visitation

The comScore Brand Metrix norms database contains the results of studies that have been conducted across ten vertical industries and includes the following metrics: top-of mind unaided awareness, total unaided awareness, aided awareness, total advertising awareness, online ad recall, favorability, likelihood to recommend, and likelihood to purchase. For a subset of the studies, the norms database also includes the important behavioral metrics of advertiser trademark searches, site visitation and purchasing – both online and at retail stores.

“Online advertising offers a very compelling value proposition because it gives marketers a bigger bang for their buck,” added Neufeld. “Not only does online marketing have the benefits of more attractive advertising rates and a faster growing retail channel, but it’s clear from the results of our studies that Internet marketing also generates incremental sales in retail stores.”

The comScore norms data provide compelling empirical support for the belief that there is a quantifiable view-thru impact of online ad exposures on brand value and sales. For the studies in which both retailers’ online and offline sales were analyzed, for periods ranging from two weeks to three months after the initial exposure to an online display ad, the incremental online sales lift was 27 percent and offline sales lift was 17 percent

____________________________________________________________________________
Lift in Retailers’ Online and Offline Sales among Internet Users Exposed to Display Ads

Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations

Source: comScore Brand Metrix, Norms Database

Monthly Sales ($) per Thousand Exposed Consumers

Control Test Lift

Online Sales $994 $1,263 27%

Offline Sales $9,905 $11,550 17%

____________________________________________________________________________

Online ad exposures also yield a lift in various important online behaviors, such as brand site visitation and trademark searches. For example, a substantial lift in visitation to the advertiser’s Web sites can be observed in the weeks following an exposure to a display ad, even though click rates are less than 0.1 percent. Specifically, there was a 65 percent increase in lift in the week following the first ad exposure and a 46-percent increase over the four weeks following the first exposure, underscoring the latent branding effect.

____________________________________________________________________________
Lift in Advertiser Site Visitation Among Internet Users Exposed to Display Ads

Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations

Source: comScore Brand Metrix, Norms Database

Advertiser Site Reach

Control Test Lift

Week Following First Ad Exposure 2.1% 3.5% 65%

Weeks 1-2 After First Exposure 3.1% 4.8% 54%

Weeks 1-3 After First Exposure 3.9% 5.8% 49%

Weeks 1-4 After First Exposure 4.5% 6.6% 46%

____________________________________________________________________________

The comScore norms data also show that online display ads can cause an increase in search queries that involve the advertiser’s trademark brand name. Specifically, the average lift in branded trademark searches for the online advertisers studied was 52 percent in the week following the first ad exposure. The norms data also show a substantial continued impact, with a 38-percent lift in trademark searches in the four weeks following the first ad exposure.

____________________________________________________________________________
Lift in Branded Trademark Search Among Internet Users Exposed to Display Ads

Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations

Source: comScore Brand Metrix, Norms Database

Percentage Making a Trademark Search

Control Test Lift

Week Following First Ad Exposure 0.2% 0.3% 52%

Weeks 1-2 After First Exposure 0.4% 0.5% 46%

Weeks 1-3 After First Exposure 0.5% 0.7% 40%

Weeks 1-4 After First Exposure 0.6% 0.9% 38%

____________________________________________________________________________

“We switched to comScore Brand Metrix because their method of recruiting test and control groups is more accurate and produces less bias than other methods of recruitment we have seen,” said Christine Peterson, VP, Digital Media Director, Carat. “We know we can expect unique and actionable insights from each study.”

“comScore has helped us bring our clients a new level of campaign measurement utilizing both cross-media methodologies and behavioral data analysis,” said Kelli Robertson, Group Planning Director, AKQA.

comScore Chairman to Present Norms Data at Wharton Conference

comScore executive chairman Gian Fulgoni will discuss the implications of the norms data in his presentation, “How Online Advertising Works: Whither the Click?” at the Empirical Generalization in Advertising Conference at the SEI Center at Wharton Business School in Philadelphia on December 5, 2008.

For more information on comScore Brand Metrix, please visit http://www.comscore.com/contact

About comScore

comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) is a global leader in measuring the digital world and preferred source of digital marketing intelligence. For more information, please visit www.comscore.com.

Revenues for the third quarter of 2008 were $15.4 million, a 37% increase from $11.3 million in the third quarter of 2007 and a 10% decrease from $17.1 million in the second quarter of 2008. Net loss for the third quarter of 2008 was $1.6 million, or ($0.10) per share based on approximately 17.1 million weighted average shares outstanding, which includes $211 thousand of severance expense. This is compared to a net loss of $4.3 million, or ($0.19) per share based on approximately 22.9 million weighted average shares outstanding in the third quarter of 2007 which included $2.3 million of restructuring, severance and asset impairment charges. Net loss for the second quarter of 2008 was $176 thousand, or ($0.01) per share based on 17.0 million weighted average shares outstanding.

During the first quarter of 2008, the Company classified certain consumer assets as Assets Held for Sale on the Consolidated Balance Sheet. The results for the current and prior periods exclude these certain consumer assets which are accounted for in discontinued operations.

Loss from continuing operations for the third quarter of 2008 was $1.6 million compared to a loss from continuing operations in the third quarter of 2007 of $2.9 million. Loss from continuing operations for the second quarter of 2008 was $40 thousand.

“We are satisfied to have delivered third quarter revenue growth of approximately 37% compared to the prior year period,” commented Ted West, President and Chief Executive Officer. “We remain confident in LookSmart’s value proposition and competitive positioning within the search advertising networks marketplace, particularly in light of the challenging economic and consumer environment. We believe search advertising will prove increasingly relevant, and particularly cost-effective, as advertisers seek performance-based advertising leads and consumers search more aggressively for value on the web. During the third quarter, LookSmart took actions aimed at further streamlining and focusing the organization on search advertising networks, with a keen focus on network quality enhancement, while making several strategic investments in our brand, product offerings, and network infrastructure to position LookSmart for future growth. While the investments made during the third quarter affected our profitability, we are confident that, through the actions taken, we are creating a stronger business platform built for economic recovery and longevity.”

Revenues from the Company’s Advertiser Network were $13.9 million in the third quarter of 2008, an increase of 39% from $10.0 million in the third quarter of 2007. Revenues from the Company’s Publisher Solutions were $1.5 million in the third quarter of 2008, an increase of 15% from $1.3 million in the third quarter of 2007.

Gross margins from continuing operations were 40% in the third quarter of 2008 versus 44% in the third quarter of 2007 primarily due to higher traffic acquisition costs (TAC). During the third quarter of 2008, the Company continued to manage TAC slightly higher in order to enhance network search query quality and to drive higher advertising revenues and profit contribution in the Advertiser Network. Gross margins from continuing operations for the second quarter of 2008 were 40%.

Total operating expenses in the third quarter of 2008 were $8.1 million, which included $0.7 million of non-cash, share-based compensation charges and $0.2 million of severance expense. In addition, the Company incurred costs related to the development of a new corporate brand and the vertical managed network strategy. Operating expenses for the third quarter of 2007 were $8.4 million, which included $0.6 million of non-cash, share-based compensation charges, $0.2 million of restructuring costs related to a reduction in workforce, and $0.5 million of severance expense. Operating expenses for the second quarter of 2008 were $7.1 million, which included $0.6 million of non-cash, share-based compensation charges.

On a non-GAAP basis, for the third quarter of 2008, Adjusted EBITDA (net loss before interest income, net, taxes, depreciation and amortization excluding stock based compensation charges and loss from discontinued operations) was a loss of $444 thousand compared to an Adjusted EBITDA loss of $2.3 million in the third quarter of 2007.

An explanation of LookSmart’s use of non-GAAP financial measures, including the limitations of such measures relative to GAAP measures and reconciliation between GAAP and non-GAAP measures where appropriate, is included later in this release.

Capital expenditures, including capitalization of internally developed software, in the third quarter of 2008 remained constant from the prior quarter at $1.2 million, and increased $0.7 million from $0.5 million in the third quarter of 2007. During the third quarter of both 2008 and 2007, the Company purchased no intangible assets. Depreciation and amortization from continuing operations was $0.8 million in the third quarter of 2008 compared to $1.2 million in the third quarter of 2007.

The Company ended the quarter with approximately $30.0 million in cash, cash equivalents, and investments, a decrease of approximately $4.4 million from approximately $34.4 million on June 30, 2008. The decrease in cash was primarily due to the loss from operations generated in the third quarter of 2008, and to the timing of accounts receivable collection. On a per share basis the Company’s cash and investment balance was $1.76 as of September 30, 2008.

Q3 2008 Key Metrics Performance

* Total paid clicks increased to approximately 184 million for the third quarter of 2008 compared to approximately 83 million for the third quarter of 2007 and 195 million for the second quarter of 2008.
* Average revenue per click (RPC) for the third quarter of 2008 was approximately $0.08, a decrease from approximately $0.12 in the third quarter of 2007, and consistent with the second quarter of 2008 at approximately $0.08. The change reflects a shift in the segment composition of and channels to reach search advertising network customers.
* Traffic acquisition costs (TAC) of 62.5% for LookSmart’s Ad Network increased from the 59.0% rate in the third quarter of 2007, and increased from the 61.9% rate in the second quarter of 2008.

Persuant to the Company’s stock repurchase program, the Company did not repurchase any additional shares of its common stock during the second and third quarters of 2008. As such, the Company currently has $2.2 million authorized for share repurchase through the open market at the prevailing market price or in privately negotiated transactions.

The number of shares of common stock outstanding at the end of the third quarter of 2008 was 17,040,259.

About LookSmart, Ltd.

LookSmart is an online search advertising network solutions company that provides performance solutions for online advertisers and publishers. LookSmart offers advertisers targeted, pay-per-click (PPC) search advertising and contextual search advertising via its Advertiser Networks; and an Ad Center platform for customizable private-label advertiser solutions for online publishers. LookSmart is based in San Francisco, California. For more information, visit www.looksmart.com or call 415-348-7500.

The acquisition of acerno, a unique online co-operative of shopping and purchase data for enabling more relevant online advertising, is intended to enhance Akamai’s Advertising Decision Solutions.

“Our customers have expressed growing interest in solutions that will enable them to make more precise and efficient online advertising decisions,” said Mike Afergan, Akamai’s CTO and senior vice president of Advertising Decision Solutions. “With our acquisition of acerno now complete, we are excited to add more value to our Advertising Decision Solutions line. Our combined capabilities should benefit the eco-system of ad networks, online publishers and Internet advertisers by providing them with real-time, actionable data to serve more relevant marketing messages.”

The Akamai Difference

Akamai® provides market-leading managed services for powering rich media, dynamic transactions, and enterprise applications online. Serving the world’s most recognized brands across diverse industries, Akamai has revolutionized how online publishers can monetize their content, and how online advertisers can expand their customer reach. Transforming the Internet into a more viable place to inform, entertain, advertise, interact, and collaborate, Akamai’s global network of tens of thousands of distributed servers provides the scale, reliability, insight and performance for businesses to succeed online. To experience The Akamai Difference, visit www.akamai.com.

The release contains information about future expectations, plans and prospects of Akamai’s management that constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements regarding the expected benefits of the acquisition of acerno. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors including, but not limited to, expectations regarding the performance of the combined business, difficulty in integrating acerno’s operations with Akamai’s, failure of Akamai’s network infrastructure, market acceptance of our Advertising Decision Solutions services and those provided by acerno and other factors that are discussed in the Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and other documents periodically filed with the SEC.

Saving Advertisers Significant Time and Money

Irvine, Calif. – November 11, 2008 – Specific Media, the world’s largest independent media platform, today announced the launch of Dynamic Display™, a powerful solution that enables online advertisers to deliver customized, highly-relevant display ads to target audiences across their online media plans in real time, with minimal creative investment required.

The Dynamic Display platform simplifies the management and delivery of creative elements that appear within a display ad, providing advertisers the flexibility and control to customize up to three areas of an ad template. Each area can be populated to highlight different products, business locations, sales incentives, merchandising opportunities and more. By strategically developing a data feed with each customer, Specific Media is able to set rules that alter the customizable components of the ad template and deliver specific messages based on distinct audience profiles throughout its Premium Network.

Combined with Specific Media’s leading demographic, behavioral, contextual, geographic and retargeting technologies, the Dynamic Display platform saves advertisers time and money while enabling them to reach relevant audiences with pinpoint accuracy and unparalleled efficiency. The platform is particularly beneficial for large organizations that offer a variety of products or services, or vary their message to add relevance and impact when targeting segmented audiences.

“The Dynamic Display platform represents a significant breakthrough in the way customized messages are streamlined to a mass audience to create maximum impact,” said David Jakubowski, senior vice president, Specific Media. “We feel that this platform, combined with our leading targeting technologies, provides advertisers a way to inject new life into their display advertising strategies.”

The platform’s flexibility allows advertisers to integrate and scale campaigns based on existing data feeds and media buys, while continuously delivering real-time results that can be applied to campaign objectives. Several advertisers within the travel sector are currently leveraging the platform to reach holiday travelers, including American Airlines.

“For the fourth quarter, we wanted to maximize the reach and impact of our online advertising efforts by serving highly relevant and timely messaging to American Airlines’ broad base of travelers,” said Jessie Wallin, digital media planner for the American Airlines account at TM Advertising. “Specific Media’s Dynamic Display platform allows us to simplify the process of delivering highly customized messages by assigning each audience segment to one of dozens of creative combinations.”

Specific Media’s Dynamic Display platform is available to advertisers across a variety of industries including the retail, automotive, consumer packaged goods and entertainment sectors.

About Specific Media

Specific Media is uniquely positioned as the world’s largest independent media platform, solving the reach and data problems facing today’s advertisers. Specific Media enables advertisers to target consumers throughout North America and Western Europe based on demographics, behaviors, geographic locations and the contextual relevance of websites visited. Specific Media’s Premium Network reaches more than 150 million US consumers and 225 million consumers globally each month. With a relentless focus on delivering measurable, predictable results in a brand-friendly environment, Specific Media is defining tomorrow’s marketing standards, today.

CAMBRIDGE, MA – November 03, 2008 – Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM), the leader in powering rich media, dynamic transactions and enterprise applications online, today unveiled its Insight for Publishers service (www.akamai.com/insight), a real-time solution that helps online publishers develop new ad strategies in order to better monetize their advertising inventory. Insight for Publishers is available immediately for all U.S.-based Akamai customers.

As part of the Company’s recently announced Advertising Decision Solutions line, Insight for Publishers enables online content providers to more easily identify in real-time and sell their most valuable audiences across their owned and operated properties. Unlike other ad targeting solutions, Insight for Publishers can be enabled without costly and time consuming manual page changes, leading to faster time-to-market and stronger ad revenue strategies.

“Akamai is helping our customers act on valuable audience intelligence right away- enabling publishers to provide advertisers with better access to meaningful consumer segments, thus driving increased advertising revenue,” said Mike Afergan, Akamai’s CTO and senior vice president of Advertising Decision Solutions. “Providing a quick and easy way to gain in-depth knowledge about a site’s audiences, from simple browsing activity to sophisticated custom behaviors, this service provides valuable cross-site audience intelligence for publishers to make smart advertising decisions.”

Quick, Seamless Implementation Reduces Time-to-Readiness, Improves ROI
Insight for Publishers enables customers to use their existing Akamai configuration to package and sell audience segments. This simple integration of anonymous data with their existing ad logic allows customers to act on behavioral data in real time for instantaneous targeting of ads, increasing their overall cost per thousand impressions (CPMs). In addition, the Akamai product gives publishers the ability to generate audience segments without the use of pixels. This simpler technology removes the key technical barrier of pixel tagging and can allow for more accurate targeting capabilities, quicker turnaround on advertising campaign launches, and a higher ROI on advertising investments.

Leading Publishers among Early Adopters
Internet conglomerate IAC has leveraged Akamai’s content delivery services for several years. IAC Advertising Solutions (IAC/AS), a division of IAC, is an early customer of Akamai’s Insight for Publishers. IAC/AS tested and now relies on Akamai’s solution to help bundle its audience into desirable targeted segments across Web properties like Evite and Citysearch, and the new IAC Network of 24+ leading and emerging sites.

“The Akamai solution is faster and more efficient to implement than any other behavioral targeting product,” said Ali Mirian, director of product management at IAC/AS. “It’s easy for us to unify disparate data and, it’s almost implementation-free on the advertiser side. Akamai brings us speed to market and robust, precise targeting.”

As one of the nation’s largest diversified media companies, Hearst Corporation has ownership of leading daily and weekly newspapers, magazines, cable networks, Internet businesses, and television production companies. When selling advertisers access to key demographics across multiple sites, Hearst’s goal is to increase the value of their ad products and inventory. Already using Akamai to deliver content for their many sites, Insight for Publishers provided an easy solution to gather anonymous data on users to improve CPMs.

Benefits to Publishers

* Increase ad revenue—Insight for Publishers provides a view into audience composition and anonymous browsing behaviors across site properties to drive more targeted and creative ad strategies, and to increase the value of non-premium site inventory
* Launch new campaigns fast—Very limited set-up time lets publishers launch ad targeting strategies faster and more cost effectively.
* Make precise audience decisions—Insight for Publishers can act on behavioral data in real time to make instantaneous ad targeting decisions by integrating with the publisher’s existing ad logic.
* Integrate with your existing ad server—Insight for Publishers is completely media-and technology-agnostic.
* Leverage social media—Audience insight can translate to immediate value within user-generated content communities.
* Maintain personal privacy—Insight for Publishers relies solely on anonymous and non-personally identifiable end user information, maintaining the integrity of data and privacy policies.

About Advertising Decision Solutions
Akamai’s Advertising Decision Solutions are designed to help buyers and sellers of online advertising create attractive audience segments with the necessary scale to achieve better results from campaigns and investments. As a result, publishers will be able provide advertisers with better access to relevant consumers, strengthening the relationship with those advertisers and driving increased advertising revenue. In addition, advertisers will benefit by seeing greater return on investment and improved ad campaign performance, while cutting waste from their ad budgets by reaching their intended audience at the right time. Finally, consumers, often faced with irrelevant online advertising clutter, will enjoy greater advertising relevance and continued growth in the amount of content that is available for free because it is supported by advertising.

The Akamai Difference
Akamai® provides market-leading managed services for powering rich media, dynamic transactions, and enterprise applications online. Serving the world’s most recognized brands across diverse industries, Akamai has revolutionized how online publishers can monetize their content, and how online advertisers can expand their customer reach. Transforming the Internet into a more viable place to inform, entertain, advertise, interact, and collaborate, Akamai’s global network of tens of thousands of distributed servers provides the scale, reliability, insight and performance for businesses to succeed online. To experience The Akamai Difference, visit www.akamai.com.

AUSTIN, Texas – Click Forensics™, Inc. released industry pay-per-click (PPC) fraud figures for the third quarter 2008 from the search advertising industry’s leading independent click fraud reporting service – the Click Fraud Index™ (www.ClickFraudIndex.com).

Now in its third year, the Click Fraud Index monitors and reports on data gathered from the Click Fraud Network™, which more than 4,500 online advertisers and agencies have joined. The Click Fraud Network provides statistically significant industry PPC data collected from online advertising campaigns for both large and small companies across all the leading search engines. Key findings from data reported for Q3 2008 include:

The overall industry average click fraud rate was 16.0 percent for Q3 2008. That’s down slightly from the 16.2 percent rate reported for both Q2 2008 and Q3 2007.
The average click fraud rate of PPC advertisements appearing on search engine content networks, including Google AdSense and the Yahoo Publisher Network, was 27.1 percent. That’s down from the 27.6 percent rate reported for Q2 2008 and the 28.1 percent average click fraud rate reported for Q3 2007.
Traffic from botnets was responsible for 27.6 percent of all click fraud traffic in Q3 2008. That’s up from 25.2 percent for Q2 2008.
In Q3 2008, the greatest percentage of click fraud originating from countries outside North America came from Russia (4.9 percent), France (4.8 percent) and the U.K. (3.5 percent).
“For the past two quarters the industry average click fraud rates seem to be hovering around the 16 percent level,” said Tom Cuthbert, president of Click Forensics. “Gains are being made by advertisers taking more action to proactively filter out fraud before it affects online campaigns. However, the growth in click fraud traffic from botnets continues to rise and it should be one of the top areas advertisers and the industry should monitor closely.”

The Click Fraud Index publishes data collected from the Click Fraud Network (www.ClickFraudNetwork.com), the industry’s first independent third-party click fraud detection service dedicated to helping companies more accurately monitor their online advertising campaigns for pay-per-click fraud. Click fraud data is tracked and published on a quarterly basis for specific search providers, industries and trends. The service is unique in that it monitors online campaigns for click fraud by correlating data collected from search provider campaigns and the advertisers’ own web sites – providing the industry’s most accurate view of click fraud to date.

About Click Forensics, Inc.

Click Forensics is the industry leader in scoring, auditing and improving traffic quality for the online advertising community. Click Forensics provides traffic quality management solutions for online advertisers, publishers, and ad networks. The company also publishes the Click Fraud Index™, the top independent source of industry click fraud data. Click Forensics is headquartered in Austin, Texas, and is privately held with funding from Sierra Ventures, Austin Ventures and Shasta Ventures. More information on Click Forensics and its offerings is available at www.ClickForensics.com.

Click Forensics, Click Fraud Index and Click Fraud Network are trademarks of Click Forensics, Inc. All other company and product names mentioned are used only for identification and may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

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.

SAN FRANCISCO – LookSmart, Ltd. (NASDAQ:LOOK), a pay-per-click (PPC) search advertising network and technology solutions provider, today announced the launch of its Thought Leadership Series, a blog featuring online advertising industry visionaries such as John Battelle, Danny Sullivan, Charles Knight and Anita Campbell.

“We are proud to sponsor this educational series in the hopes that the insights provided will help advertisers make smarter choices in online advertising,” said Ted West, chief executive officer and president of LookSmart. “Providing value to advertisers is our top priority and doing that through great service and lower cost-per-click on a quality network isn’t enough – we need to provide them with the best insights in the business.”

The Thought Leadership Series will feature some of the most influential voices in the online advertising industry covering a diverse range of topics including search advertising, search engine optimization, alternative search engines, small business trends and the conversion of media and online communities. Among the contributors are:

- John Battelle, founder/chairman/CEO of Federated Media Publishing, Inc.
- Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land
- Charles Knight, editor of AltSearchEngines
- Anita Campbell, editor-in-chief of Small Business Trends

You can follow LookSmart’s Thought Leadership Series at: http://blogs.looksmart.com/thought_leadership.

About LookSmart

LookSmart (NASDAQ:LOOK) is the premier search advertising network and management company. A trusted provider of quality search advertising products and services to text advertisers, LookSmart offers targeted pay-per-click search and contextual advertising via its proven Search Advertising Network. For publishers seeking to create their own vertical advertising networks, LookSmart licenses and manages its award-winning AdCenter platform to companies such as Ask.com. Dedicated to the quality of text advertising, LookSmart is one of the five founding members of the IAB click measurement panel. For more information, visit www.LookSmart.com or call 415-348-7500

CAMBRIDGE, MA and NEW YORK, NY – October 21, 2008 – Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM) and acerno announced today that the two companies have signed a definitive agreement for Akamai to acquire acerno in a merger transaction. The transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions, including the approval of acerno’s stockholders, is anticipated to close later this quarter. The acquisition is not expected to have a material impact on Akamai’s normalized earnings* in 2008.

The acquisition of acerno, a unique online co-operative of shopping and purchase data for enabling more relevant online advertising, is expected to greatly enhance Akamai’s Advertising Decision Solutions, a new product line also being announced today. These new Akamai solutions will enable online advertising businesses to boost the performance of their online marketing investments by driving smarter advertising decisions based on relevant audience segments.

Real-Time Solution for Online Advertising Decision-Making
Akamai’s Advertising Decision Solutions are designed to help buyers and sellers of online advertising create attractive audience segments with the necessary scale to achieve better results from campaigns and investments. acerno’s powerful technology will complement the ability of Akamai’s Advertising Decision Solutions to seamlessly incorporate real-time anonymous Web browsing information with anonymous online purchasing data from advertisers’ websites to present the most relevant ad. In addition, Akamai’s Advertising Decision Solutions can be enabled without costly and time consuming implementation, leading to faster time to market and increased ad revenue.

As a result, publishers will be able provide advertisers with better access to relevant consumers, strengthening the relationship with those advertisers and driving increased advertising revenue. In addition, advertisers will benefit by seeing greater return on investment and improved ad campaign performance, while cutting waste from their ad budgets by reaching their intended audience at the right time. Finally, consumers, often faced with irrelevant online advertising clutter, will enjoy greater advertising relevance and continued growth in the amount of content that is available for free because it is supported by advertising.

Protecting Consumer Privacy
Akamai already powers the online efforts of many of the Internet’s largest publishers and ad networks, as well as hundreds of leading consumer brands. Akamai’s Advertising Decision Solutions will build on the company’s unique and trusted position in the online industry.

As members of the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI), Akamai and acerno are committed to maintaining both user privacy and customer confidentiality. All of Akamai’s Advertising Decision Solutions, as well as acerno’s services, rely solely on anonymous and non-personally identifiable end user information.

“Akamai’s new Advertising Decision Solutions are a critical advancement in our product portfolio, designed to stimulate the economic model of online advertising by bringing greater simplicity and effectiveness to both ad buyers and sellers,” said Paul Sagan, president and CEO of Akamai. “As a trusted and strategic partner to today’s leading online retailers, publishers, and advertisers, supporting an estimated $84 billion in e-commerce transactions on our network for U.S. retailers alone, Akamai’s goal is to offer the industry’s most efficient online advertising solutions, while being a leader in upholding consumer privacy. Our investment in developing the Advertising Decision Solutions line over the past two years and acquiring acerno today, represent a strategic next step for Akamai.”

Mike Afergan, Akamai’s CTO and senior vice president of Advertising Decision Solutions, added, “We plan to leverage and grow acerno’s unique industry co-operative to enhance our new solution line. Our combined capabilities with acerno should benefit the eco-system of ad networks, online publishers and Internet advertisers by providing them with real-time, actionable data to serve more relevant marketing messages. Our Advertising Decision Solutions have already been adopted by several key stakeholders in the online advertising industry, resulting in higher revenues and better results.”

“This is a big win for the online advertising industry,” said Tom Sperry, president and CEO of acerno. “Greater precision in the advertising world reduces inefficiency, so advertisers earn a higher return on their investment. Together, Akamai and acerno will be able to create a unique solution for advertisers to expand their reach of customers across multiple publishers and networks, while leveraging predictive and descriptive modeling for improving conversion rates. For acerno’s customers, Akamai will bring instantaneous scale and increased efficiencies to further improve the value of the co-op.”

Many of the Internet’s leading retailers currently contribute anonymous data to acerno’s information co-op. This data is used in acerno’s predictive models to determine why online shoppers actually browse, add merchandise to carts and eventually buy. In turn, this allows co-op members access to the most comprehensive source of information about what millions of online shoppers are looking to purchase and when they are likely to buy.

“Tom Sperry and Dave Hinton, chief operating officer of acerno, have assembled a first-class team, designed a set of breakthrough services, and built trusted relationships with a valuable set of clients,” Sagan added. “We look forward to welcoming the entire acerno team to Akamai and to working together to build even more value for our customers.”

Under terms of the agreement, Akamai will acquire all of the outstanding equity of a holding company that owns acerno in exchange for approximately $95 million in cash, subject to certain closing adjustments. The merger transaction is expected to be accounted for by Akamai under the purchase method of accounting.

About acerno
Using anonymous consumer shopping data from product manufacturers and multi-channel retailers, acerno’s powerful analytics predict who these consumers are and what products or services they are interested in buying. acerno is a community of retailers, brand marketers and consumers whose interests align: brands create consumer demand for products; retailers promote those products for sale; consumers react positively to relevant advertising. acerno was founded in 2004 by an experienced team of direct marketing, online advertising and e-commerce professionals. acerno’s financial advisor in the transaction was The Jordan, Edmiston Group, Inc.

The Akamai Difference
Akamai® provides market-leading managed services for powering rich media, dynamic transactions, and enterprise applications online. Serving the world’s most recognized brands across diverse industries, Akamai has revolutionized how online publishers can monetize their content, and how online advertisers can expand their customer reach. Transforming the Internet into a more viable place to inform, entertain, advertise, interact, and collaborate, Akamai’s global network of tens of thousands of distributed servers provides the scale, reliability, insight and performance for businesses to succeed online. To experience The Akamai Difference, visit www.akamai.com.

Epiar is Introducing the Service at the New York Search Marketing Expo Conference Oct. 6-8

EDMONTON, Alberta – Epiar, a global leader in Internet market research, has introduced a new pay-per-click (PPC) advertising service, Epiar negative keywords®, to complement its search engine optimization (SEO) and marketing (SEM) services. The new PPC negative keywords service is now available to the general public after several noteworthy and successful trials with various clients and companies during the past six months of a pilot project.

Epiar negative keywords® – which can save companies up to 40 percent of their paid search marketing budget – is being formally launched at SMX East, the Search Marketing Expo in New York, held October 6-8.

Negative keyword targeting is becoming increasingly popular to weed out worthless impressions and clicks in pay-per-click campaigns. This reduction of wasted traffic can decrease costs by avoiding unwanted clicks and by increasing the campaign’s average Quality Score, a measure Google AdWords uses to determine ad placement and costs.

Epiar has spent years developing advanced keyword research and analysis software allowing them the ability to create lists of negative keywords for any topic or industry. Using unique technology not currently available on the marketplace, Epiar negative keywords® offers custom lists of up to 10,000 negative keywords (the maximum number currently permitted by Google) to companies for their PPC campaigns.

Many online advertisers already use a handful of negative keywords to increase the efficiency of their advertising campaigns. Epiar offers an extension of this principle, and clients have found the results extraordinary.

Allan Dick, Chief Marketing Officer of Vintage Tub & Bath (a top 500 Online Retailer), said: “Epiar saved us 20% of our PPC ad spend while maintaining the same sales volume. We love their aggressive and comprehensive methodology and customer service!”

Consult Sales, Inc. saw similar outstanding results. In the six weeks prior to using Epiar Consult Sales saw its cost-per-sale go down, while pageviews and average time on site went up.

Jeff Hughes, president of Consult Sales, Inc., said: “The bottom line is that in the first seven weeks we paid for the Epiar investment, and increased our profits by over 40%. You can’t argue with that!”

But Terry Orsten, owner of Clear Haven Center, may have said it best: “This is a no-brainer.”

For more information about negative keywords and how they work, visit www.epiar.com or call 888-428-5545.

About Epiar

Founded in 2001 by partners Ken Jurina and Bob Vaasjo, Epiar is a strategic Internet marketing firm specializing in keyword research services for search engine marketing and optimization (SEM & SEO), web site usability, inbound link building, SEO copywriting, and online marketing consultancy.

NEW YORK – At the SMX East Conference, Click Forensics™, Inc., the industry leader in scoring, auditing and managing traffic quality for the online advertising community, today announced a new feature for the Click Forensics for Advertisers™ solution which allows brands to identify and track organizations and individuals unlawfully using trademarked names for search marketing campaigns. The new feature produces updated reports on potential trademark abusers who use well-known brand names to generate Pay Per Click (PPC) traffic. Companies can use the new solution to more quickly take action to protect intellectual property and their own search marketing investments.

Trademark infringement in Pay Per Click is a growing and highly-visible problem on content networks and major search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN. Perpetrators commonly register domains containing well-known brand names and then display ads on them that generate traffic and PPC ad revenue. Consumers often see the results when mistyping a web site URL only to find themselves on a different web site with lots of ads and pop-ups.

“The Trademark Use report from Click Forensics is another powerful weapon in the battle to improve search advertising traffic quality,” said Mike Brown, Vice President of Internet Marketing for VEGAS.com, the official Vegas travel site. “It allows advertisers to more quickly identify and stop trademark infringement online, which helps boost the performance of pay per click advertising initiatives.”

The Trademark Use report works by identifying registered domains using trademarked names. It is a feature of the Click Forensics for Advertisers solution, which uses patent-pending analytics and live campaign data from the Click Fraud Network™ to identify and filter out sources of click fraud and poor quality traffic before it affects online advertising campaigns. Similar to a spam filter, Click Forensics for Advertisers delivers regular updates on new sites and sources perpetrating click fraud, trademark infringement or those sending bad traffic to clients and members.

“The impact of trademark infringement in search advertising goes beyond consumer annoyance,” said Paul Pellman, CEO of Click Forensics. “It’s affecting the advertising budgets of major brands as they’re forced to spend more money to get the high-quality search traffic that is rightly theirs. We’re helping to change that by giving brands a tool they can use to fight back.”

For more information on Click Forensics for Advertisers and its new Trademark Infringement reporting feature, visit www.clickforensics.com.

About Click Forensics, Inc.

Click Forensics is the industry leader in scoring, auditing and improving traffic quality for the online advertising community. Click Forensics provides traffic quality management solutions for online advertisers, publishers, and ad networks. The company also publishes the Click Fraud Index™, the top independent source of industry click fraud data. Click Forensics is headquartered in Austin, Texas, and is privately held with funding from Sierra Ventures, Austin Ventures and Shasta Ventures. More information on Click Forensics and its offerings is available at www.ClickForensics.com.

Click Forensics, Click Forensics for Advertisers, FACTr, Click Fraud Index and Click Fraud Network are trademarks of Click Forensics, Inc. All other company and product names mentioned are used only for identification and may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

AUSTIN, Texas – Click Forensics™, Inc., the industry leader in scoring, auditing and managing traffic quality for the online advertising community, today announced that it has expanded its product development team with the appointment of Dr. Vincent Granville to the position of Chief Scientist. The company has also recently added several other developers to its product group. Dr. Granville and his new colleagues are experts in the areas of online fraud prevention and advertising optimization. In their new roles at Click Forensics they will spearhead research and development to explore the latest solutions for improving traffic quality in search advertising.

“Click Forensics leads the industry in the battle to stop click fraud and improve online advertising quality,” said Dr. Vincent Granville. “I’m honored to join the team and look forward to helping the company improve the ROI for online search advertisers around the world.”

Over the past 15 years, Dr. Granville has helped tackle a number of high-level fraud detection and prevention problems to improve online advertising for industry leaders. Examples include helping Visa with real-time credit card fraud detection, CNET with advertising optimization, and Wells Fargo with improving the online user experience. Dr. Granville most recently served as the Chief Science Officer for Authenticlick, where he assisted major search engines and large advertising clients with click fraud detection efforts. He has also launched numerous statistically-oriented websites, including DataShaping.com, AnalyticBridge.com and AnalyticTalent.com. Dr. Granville is a former post-doctorate of Cambridge University and worked with the National Institute of Statistical Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“Vincent’s extensive background in fraud detection and advertising optimization will be invaluable to our search engine, publisher and advertising clients and partners,” said Paul Pellman, CEO of Click Forensics. “We look forward to working with him and the newest members of our development team to deliver the best solutions for improving traffic quality for the $25 billion online advertising industry.”

Using patent-pending analytics and live campaign data from the Click Fraud Network™, Click Forensics develops solutions used by online publishers, search engines and advertisers that identify and block sources of click fraud and poor quality traffic before they affect online advertising campaigns. Similar to a spam filter, the solutions deliver regular updates on new sources of click fraud and bad traffic to Click Forensics clients and members.

For more information on Click Forensics, visit www.clickforensics.com.

About Click Forensics, Inc.

Click Forensics is the leading provider of PPC traffic quality management and click fraud prevention solutions that help online advertisers and publishers stop click fraud and improve search marketing campaigns. The company also publishes the Click Fraud Index™, the top independent source of industry click fraud data. Click Forensics is headquartered in Austin, Texas, and is privately held with funding from Sierra Ventures, Austin Ventures and Shasta Ventures. More information on Click Forensics and its offerings is available at www.ClickForensics.com.

Click Forensics, Click Forensics for Advertisers, FACTr, Click Fraud Index and Click Fraud Network are trademarks of Click Forensics, Inc. All other company and product names mentioned are used only for identification and may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

NEW YORK – 24/7 Real Media, Inc., the leading global digital marketing company, introduced its Lifecycle Media Management model, a unique approach to help online advertisers maximize the value of 24/7 Real Media’s leading media network and extensive targeting capabilities.

Marketers have long used the customer lifecycle, or purchase funnel, in order to understand and segment customers and position advertising accordingly. 24/7 Real Media incorporates this approach to provide strategic guidance on which online ad targeting methods are most effective to reach and engage customers as they move through the four Lifecycle phases: awareness, preference, purchase and loyalty.

Lifecycle Media Management works by first understanding where an advertiser’s customers are in the purchase cycle, and then by deploying a strategic combination of targeting techniques to effectively reach them with a particular campaign. A sample approach for an advertiser aiming to drive brand awareness could include demographic and geographic targeting, in conjunction with Mindset Media buys. A sample approach for an advertiser whose goal is retaining and upselling customers could center on behavioral targeting or retargeting.

Each advertiser’s message is given prominent reach across the 24/7 Real Media network, one of the ten largest networks with over 123 million monthly unique visitors in the US (comScore Media Metrix, August 2008) across more than 1,500 publishers. The 24/7 Real Media ad network has grown 37% in 2008, and now reaches 65% of all U.S. Internet users, ensuring advertisers have access to a large segment of their target customers.

“Lifecycle Media Management offers advertisers unparalleled precision to accomplish specific program goals like increasing brand awareness, driving sales and retaining or up-selling customers,” said Ari Bluman, President of North American Sales and Operations for 24/7 Real Media, Inc. “With so many innovative targeting options available to advertisers, we can help formulate a clear strategy for distributing each unique advertising message, and help them ensure that message reaches the right customers across our massive media network.”

For more information on 24/7 Real Media’s network, visit www.247realmedia.com.

About 24/7 Real Media, Inc.

24/7 Real Media, Inc. a WPP company, is the leading global digital marketing company, empowering advertisers and publishers to engage their target audiences with greater precision, transparency and ROI. Using its award winning ad serving, targeting, tracking and analytics platform, powerful search marketing technology and global network of specialized Web sites, the company has turned the art of reaching audiences across virtually any digital medium into a measurable science. The company is headquartered in New York, with 18 offices in 12 countries throughout North America, Europe and the Asia Pacific region. For more information, please visit www.247realmedia.com.

24/7 Real Media: The Science of Digital Marketing.

24/7 Real Media is a member of the NAI and adheres to the NAI privacy principles that have been applauded by the FTC. These principles are designed to help ensure Internet user privacy. For more information about online data collection associated with ad serving, including online preference marketing and an opportunity to opt-out of 24/7 Real Media cookies, go to: www.networkadvertising.org.

- interCLICK Expands to Los Angeles, Appoints Monica Seebohm
interCLICK has also announced that Monica Seebohm has been hired as the company’s senior director of sales, Southwest region. In this role, Seebohm will head interCLICK’s new Los Angeles office and be in charge of strengthening the company’s relationships with regional online advertisers and agencies. Seebohm is heavily involved in the area’s interactive community and was previously a strategic accounts manager with ValueClick Media, a division of ValueClick, Inc.

REDWOOD CITY, Calif.—August 25, 2008—SpotMixer (www.SpotMixer.com) an innovative online video advertising service of One True Media, Inc., announced today that the company is gaining rapid momentum in the do-it-yourself video ad creation market, adding thousands of new business users since its May launch. SpotMixer is kicking off the fall advertising season with an expanded template library, now offering more than 300 templates. As it rolls out service enhancements that even more effectively meet customers’ needs, SpotMixer is becoming known as the leading online service provider for businesses to easily and inexpensively create professional-quality video ads they can distribute online or via television.

“With SpotMixer, our goal is to give businesses the best of both worlds,” said Mark Moore, CEO of One True Media, which owns and operates SpotMixer. “Unlike other video ad services providers, we do not limit advertisers to stock footage or pre-built ads in order to make it ‘easy,’ and we do not require advertisers to pay us or third-party videographers in order to produce a ‘custom’ ad. In a single interface, we give customers all the tools and all the options to produce the ads they want, and distribute them via the channels that will reach their target audience. Our unique offering is the reason why SpotMixer is seeing such rapid adoption in the market.”

Enhanced Template Library
SpotMixer is the first and only video ad services provider to offer a template-based approach for custom video ads, allowing users to create ads with the same ease as assembling an online photo album. SpotMixer’s professionally designed templates include a wide range of transitions, effects, music and pacing that appeal to a broad range of businesses. Users simply choose from the over 300 available templates and insert their own photos, videos, music (or augment with SpotMixer’s extensive library of stock photos, videos, and music tracks), and record an optional voiceover. The result is a polished video ad. Businesses can create ads on SpotMixer free of charge, and when they are ready to publish, monthly subscriptions start at $59.

Local and National TV Advertising Options
One of the first self-serve ad creation platforms selected by Google for its TV Ad Creation Marketplace, SpotMixer gives businesses options to use their ads in the medium that will be most effective for them. Using SpotMixer, businesses can take an online ad and transform it into a television ad they can distribute via Google TV Ads on local or national television. Businesses now have an easy way to try out TV advertising.

Ease of Use, Happy Customers
“SpotMixer demystifies the process of creating, editing, and distributing video ads,” said Dick Rozic, co-founder of Aveon Inc., a custom audio/video and home automation system integrator serving clients in the Houston area. “With SpotMixer, we can create videos on the fly that appeal to any one of our many target audiences, from clients looking for a single-room surround or home theater system to those building a new custom home who want all the latest home technologies throughout their home. The fact that potential customers can now see our video ads online or even on TV allows us to showcase our services and positions us as the premier home control solutions provider in Houston.”

About SpotMixer and One True Media

SpotMixer, a service of One True Media, Inc., helps small and medium sized businesses join the online video marketing revolution by offering templates and tools for easy-to-use yet sophisticated video ad creation, distribution and analytics. The first and most respected name in Web-based video creation for consumers, One True Media has leveraged its technology and marketing expertise into SpotMixer, enabling businesses to have an elegant yet affordable solution for creating and managing their online advertising. Founded in 2005, the company is backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and is headquartered in Redwood City, CA. For more information about SpotMixer, please visit www.SpotMixer.com.

WebTrends bases this estimate on results of its new service, WebTrends Ad Director, which will formally debut at the Search Engine Strategies (SES) conference in San Jose, Calif., Aug. 18-21. WebTrends Ad Director utilizes self-learning technology to optimize millions of combinations of keywords, landing pages and ads across the major search networks to achieve maximum results. Companies using the solution have seen their return on ad spend increase an average of 44 percent.

“Search engine marketing is one of the most critical acquisition channels for many companies, but it is clear that a significant portion of these investments are being wasted or underutilized,” said Kevin Ryan, vice president and global content director of Search Engine Strategies and Search Engine Watch. “As search marketing becomes even more competitive, marketers would be smart to investigate automated methods for increasing SEM returns.”

“We have customers that are realizing over 1,500 percent return on ad spend after switching from their old bid management tools,” said Alex Yoder, WebTrends CEO. “But more importantly, all WebTrends Ad Director customers have seen substantial gains over bid management, while reducing the manual overhead associated with these outdated solutions. With WebTrends Ad Director, we have struck the optimal balance between what machines can do best — repetitive analysis, testing and updates on a massive scale — and the insight and perspective humans bring to search marketing decisions.”

Some of the clients who have realized substantial improvements in their SEM advertising results since switching from bid management to WebTrends’ automated optimization solution include Safelite™ AutoGlass, who increased daily sales by 42 percent after two months, and Orion™ Telescopes and Binoculars, who increased quarterly SEM revenues by 35 percent in one year, without increasing average CPC costs.

“We were able to achieve a much higher conversion rate and broader coverage of the online space while reducing staff hours dedicated to search campaign management by 50 percent,” said Alicia Albo, PsPrint (http://www.psprint.com).

In addition to significantly improving search advertising results, WebTrends Ad Director is the only automated solution that enables companies to override the system to achieve goals outside of normal parameters. For example, a company may wish to set minimum bids on certain terms, such as brand terms, regardless of the observed return.

To view our online press kit for SES San Jose: http://www.virtualpressoffice.com/kit/WebTrends

About WebTrends Inc.

WebTrends provides web analytics and online marketing solutions to optimize marketing campaigns and customer engagement. WebTrends Marketing Lab delivers the industry’s most recognized analytics, SEM, and visitor intelligence solutions to enable companies to understand their customers, drive customer engagement, and enhance marketing and brand awareness. Thousands of leading global organizations, including HSBC, Microsoft, Reuters, General Mills, and Ticketmaster, have chosen WebTrends business solutions and client services expertise to optimize their customers’ online experiences.

For more information, visit: www.webtrends.com.

WebTrends is a registered trademark of WebTrends Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the properties of their respective owners.

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.

LookSmart’s investor presentation is scheduled for Monday, August 18th, 2008 at 9:00 a.m. PST.

The presentation will be webcast live and archived online on the Investor Relations section of the Company’s website at www.looksmart.com.

Conference attendees will include a select group of institutional portfolio managers and analysts, and will feature CEOs and CFOs from some of the fastest-growing companies in the technology sector. SRA has arranged for webcasting of company presentations during this event. To access the lobby page for the webcast of presenting companies please go to: http://www.wsw.com/webcast/sra7/.

About LookSmart

LookSmart is an online search advertising and technology solutions company that provides performance solutions for online advertisers and publishers. LookSmart offers advertisers targeted, pay-per-click (PPC) search advertising and contextual search advertising via its Advertiser Networks; and an Ad Center platform for customizable private-label advertiser solutions for online publishers. LookSmart is based in San Francisco, California. For more information, visit www.looksmart.com or call 415-348-7500.

About Security Research Associates, Inc.

Security Research Associates, Inc. (SRA) was founded in San Francisco in 1980 and, today, offers investment banking and M&A services as well as institutional brokerage services. A boutique firm by design, SRA works with a select group of portfolio managers from around the country and focuses on technology and life science companies in the micro and small cap arenas. For more information about SRA see our web site at www.sracap.com or call us at 415-925-0346.

RESTON, VA, August 4, 2008 – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released a study based on data from the comScore Ad Metrix service, revealing that American Apparel ranked as the top advertiser using online display ads among apparel retailers in the United States, with 483 million ads delivered during the month of April.

comScore Ad Metrix provides detailed reporting of the number and types of online display ads viewed by Internet users for the U.S. market. The syndicated service measures the number of times each advertiser’s ads are viewed and where they are viewed, the demographics of those exposed to the ads, and the reach and frequency of the advertiser’s campaign. It also provides samples of the creative ad units with information on ad sizes.

American Apparel Top Online Advertiser among Apparel Retailers

American Apparel delivered 483 million display ad views in April, reaching 49 million Internet users an average of 9.9 times during the month. Under Armour ranked second with 311 million ad views, followed by Snorg Tees (249 million) and L.L. Bean (205 million).

*Share of advertising voice among Top 15 online advertisers in the category

** Excludes house ads and small 120×120 ads

While athletic apparel (Under Armour, Nike, NFL Shop), shoes (Nike, Endless, Skechers), and t-shirts (American Apparel, Snorg Tees, and Busted Tees) are well represented among the top online advertisers in this segment, many of the largest apparel retailers are noticeably absent from this list.

“Apparel is one of the largest U.S. e-commerce categories, accounting for roughly 15 percent of total online retail sales,” said Evan Neufeld, comScore Vice President, Advertising Effectiveness. “However, some of the biggest retailers in the category are significantly underrepresented in the online display ad market. Given the Internet’s proven ability to drive both online and offline sales, those retailers failing to make use of this growing advertising channel are overlooking a substantial opportunity.”

American Apparel Advertises Heavily on Social Media Sites

In April, the majority of display ads for American Apparel were delivered via social media. Nearly half of its ads appeared on top social networking sites MySpace.com (24 percent) and Facebook.com (19 percent), while AOL’s AIM application carried nearly 12 percent.

“American Apparel is a cutting edge brand, and its online advertising strategy clearly reflects that,” added Mr. Neufeld. “Using social media as the primary vehicle to drive its provocative ad campaigns has helped it build a strong presence among its core audience of young adults.”

To request more information on comScore Ad Metrix, please visit: http://www.comscore.com/contact

About comScore
comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) is a global leader in measuring the digital world. For more information, please visit www.comscore.com/boilerplate.

IDG TechNetwork Ad Director Dan Shaw explained, “ Today around 30% of UK IT users and buyers visit sites outside the largest 50 (Source : Hitwise April 2008 ) These sites are growing in share and importance and have highly engaged audiences who visit these sites due to a strong sense of loyalty and because they find the content highly relevant and useful. The IDG TechNetwork makes executing campaigns into these sites simple and effective and acts as a complement to the direct relationships marketers they have with the larger sites”

Recent IAB figures show that 40% of all online advertising is channelled through networks (Source: IAB online research July-Dec 2007) but until now these have tended to be broad based and limited in their ability to target vertical niches. Unlike large advertisng networks that aggregate and sell remnant inventory, the vertical ad networks powered by Adify will enable IDG TechNetwork to focus on selling high value, branded and targeted advertising programmes, generating additional revenue across the network.The IDG TechNetwork is the first vertical network delivering extended reach to IT professionals and users and focuses on the ‘long tail’ that has grown in share of the UK audience.

Christian Harris, owner and founder of BIOSMagazine.co.uk highlighted the benefits to his company of the partnership. “We have limited resources to pitch advertising budgets from the big IT clients and agencies but collectively and in partnership with IDG we are able to get onto campaigns without incurring the cost and challenges of running our own sales team. For a small business such as ours it leaves us free to do what we are good at – developing compelling content and at the same time receive ad revenues to enable us to further grow our business.”

At launch The IDG TechNetwork has over 45 sites live which already represents in excess of 5,000,000 UK ad impressions per month. Partner sites already committed include Edugeek, Bios magazine, Financial Sector Technology, Retail Systems, Spiceworks, Technology Bites, System Management News, Data Center Knowledge, and Digital Inspiration.

Mediacom signed the first campaign to go live on the TechNetwork for Dell. Chris Pullon, Media Planner on the account, said: “The IDG TechNetwork has allowed us to take Dell’s message to an untapped audience. The internet has led to a fragmented number of sites, and it is important we explore routes to reach those buyers. Mediacom has always sought new opportunities to allow our clients to gain the broadest reach and the TechNetwork will give us one further option when planning for clients”.

IDG joins Adify’s existing global partners such as Time Warner, NBC Universal, The Guardian and Reuters. Adify is the world’s leading solution for creating, managing and commercialising vertical ad networks used by over 100 network builders and thousands of website publishers worldwide.

Commenting on the IDGTechNetwork Emmet Geaney, Senior Account Manager, Adify said, “We are delighted to have been chosen to enable the creation of the UK’s first technical vertical network. Our platform links selected partner sites into a unique advertising offering which maximises the opportunities presented by an ever fragmenting online audience, whist efficiently managing all back office complexities. The pace of take up that the IDG TechNetwork has already demonstrated from both partner sites and advertisers is extremely impressive – and this network looks to swiftly become an established and highly credible option for both the brand and agency advertising communities.”

IDG has gained a strong reputation for the growth and development their own sites such as pcadvisor.co.uk and Techworld.com and is now sharing its experience in content delivery, site design and sales representation skills with many smaller sites. Qualifying sites are required to successfully pass through rigorous selection criteria. Potential sites are evaluated for quality, originality and objectivity of editorial content as well as meeting design and commercial criteria in order to ensure that the network consists of first class partners who can deliver strong and effective marketing solutions.

Only the IDG TechNetwork specifically concentrates on reaching technology buyers in their favoured media environments. As the premier advertising network operated by an established technology publisher, its expert understanding of optimising enterprise, SMB and consumer technology sites ultimately gives these more focussed web players a distinct competitive advantage.

Partner sites signing up to the TechNetwork will benefit from being part of a high-quality vertical network. With an exclusive focus on the technology market, IDG is well positioned to represent these quality sites to key agencies and clients – all sites will have the IDG seal of approval (checked for content, design and independence), ensuring advertisements appear only on credible sites. Member sites will also gain access to IDG best practices (such as SEO) through regular seminars and briefings

Agencies and advertisers benefit in the same way. Because this is a vertical network that is fully transparent, agencies can now plan campaigns and increase the number of sites included while still dealing with just one point of contact.

Advertisers can target specific sites and channels, concentrate on contextual content and editorial focus, and even eliminate specific sites from their programs.

About International Data Group (IDG)

International Data Group (IDG) is the world’s leading technology media, events, and research company. IDG’s online network includes more than 450 Web sites spanning business technology, consumer technology, digital entertainment, and video games worldwide. IDG publishes more than 300 magazines and newspapers in 85 countries including CIO, CSO, Computerworld, GamePro, InfoWorld, Macworld, Network World, and PC Advisor. IDG’s lead-generation service, IDG Connect, matches technology companies with an audience of engaged, high-quality IT professionals, influencers, and decision makers.

IDG is a leading producer of more than 750 technology-related events including Macworld Conference & Expo, LinuxWorld Conference & Expo, Entertainment for All Expo (E for All), DEMO, and IDC Directions. IDC, a subsidiary of IDG, is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events. Over 900 IDC analysts in more than 90 countries provide global, regional, and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities and trends.

Additional information about IDG, a privately held company, is available at www.idg.com. Note: All product and company names are trademarks of their respective companies.

About Adify

Adify Corporation is the premier vertical ad network management company and an independent, wholly-owned subsidiary of Atlanta-based Cox Enterprises, one of the nation’s leading media companies and providers of automotive services.

While back-to-school buying remains primarily an in-store activity, there’s plenty of opportunity for online marketing to influence back-to-school revenue, the survey reveals. Eighty-three percent of all back-to-school consumers indicate that they’re somewhat likely to seek information on promotions they see online. The survey also shows that women are typically the primary decision-makers for back-to-school purchases.

“While back-to-school buying remains primarily an offline activity, the survey reveals plenty of opportunity for online marketing to influence back-to-school purchases,” said Stuart Rodnick, Senior Director of the ADlytics group. “As an example, the usefulness of weekly circulars can be extended online where they can be viewed any day of the week and targeted to in-market back-to-school shoppers.”

Nearly 40% of consumers who buy early are likely to purchase electronic items vs. later shoppers (17%). This suggests that advertisers may want to promote laptops, cell phones and other electronics during the earlier summer months. Advertisers can also use online targeting as a way to reach these consumers during these early summer months.

With the majority of back-to-school purchases overall taking place in August, retailers can start to accelerate spending and increase store traffic earlier in the summer by highlighting promotional specials during mid-summer, similar to the way Black Friday and Cyber Monday accelerate holiday shopping spend.

Platform-A’s ADlytics group collaborated with OTX, a top-25 global consumer research and consulting firm, to conduct the survey. OTX gathered data from a sample of 1,000 families with school-aged children (age 6-17). Interviews were collected April 10 – 14 to assess how and when they will make back-to-school purchases this year. Platform-A’s ADlytics Group provides thought leadership that helps advertisers drive revenue through fact-based insights, strategy expertise and innovative research projects that measure the effect of online advertising to online and offline results.

About Platform-A
Platform-A, AOL’s advertising business, is the industry’s largest digital advertising platform, offering the most comprehensive suite of marketing solutions, powered by the Web’s best advertising technologies. Platform-A includes AOL’s leading media properties – AOL.com, AIM, MapQuest, and more – and Advertising.com’s third-party networks. Platform-A also includes TACODA’s audience insights and behavioral targeting; Quigo, a site- and content-targeting solution; ADTECH, an international digital ad serving business; Third Screen Media, a mobile ad serving network; and buy.at, an affiliate marketing solution. Platform-A currently has operations in the United States, nine countries across Europe, including Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, the UK, and Japan through a joint venture with Mitsui.

About OTX
OTX is a global consumer research and consulting firm that has established itself as a leading provider of online-based research. The company specializes in providing innovative, cutting-edge online technology, products and analysis to the marketing, entertainment and advertising communities. OTX has developed the most innovative products available for online research today – products that work to uncover deeper and more profound consumer insight. Today the company is one of the fastest growing research companies in the United States and has offices in Los Angeles, New York, Cincinnati, Miami, Chicago and London, with strategic partners in Japan, Australia, Russia, China, and Mexico.

Check out their press release below, it seem they’re the first to be properly audited for in-game ad impressions counting.

NEW YORK — June 3, 2008 — Massive Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft Corp. and a leading network for video game advertising, today announced that it has successfully completed an audit by Interactive Media Services Group Ltd. (ImServices) to verify the accuracy of Massive’s process for impression counting. As the first dynamic in-game advertising network to undergo a third-party impression audit, Massive provides advertisers and agencies with the accountability required of a mature media form.

“Our audit by ImServices, an industry leader in auditing Web sites and advertising networks, is the latest affirmation that the Massive in-game advertising network is taking the necessary steps to rapidly evolve and to deliver the level of measurement and accountability our clients expect,” said Cory Van Arsdale, chief executive officer of Massive. “As the pioneers and leading innovators in the in-game industry, we remain committed to a high level of transparency and integrity in our processes, and third-party auditing is a critical step.”

“Our review of Massive’s controls over advertising delivery, measurement and data security shows Massive to be compliant with the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Ad Impressions Measurement and Audit Guidelines and applicable Minimum Standards as published by the Media Rating Council (MRC),” said Dick Bennett, CEO of ImServices. “I believe it is significant that Massive, one of the top players in online gaming, has taken the leadership role and become the first in-game advertising network to seek a third-party audit.”

Massive will undergo annual audits on the performance of its current procedures based on standards for accuracy and accountability. Specifically, the audit verifies that Massive’s process for impression counting is consistent, and that the sizes, angles and cumulative second thresholds cited are accurately reflected in the network’s technology and operations.

While no industry standards currently exist for in-game advertising measurement, Massive will be one of a number of in-game advertising companies working with the IAB and the MRC to develop acceptable standards. Once such guidelines are in place, Massive will evaluate its processes and make necessary adjustments so that it is in full compliance, and will make them the basis of all subsequent audits.

The team’s broad industry experience at ImServices has given them considerable insight into the needs of online advertisers, content providers and service providers. They possess a thorough knowledge of the processes involved with developing independent measurement standards and have been deeply involved in initiatives to create these critical standards for the online advertising community. Through active participation in key organizations such as the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and Advertising Research Foundation (ARF), they have helped to shape evolving online measurement and verification standards.

About Massive Inc.
Massive Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft Corp., is the creator of a leading network for dynamic video game advertising. The Massive Network offers advertisers the ability to engage an aggregated gaming audience in real time across multiple platforms. Over 200 blue-chip advertisers have run campaigns across the Massive Network throughout North America and Europe. Publishers in the Massive Network generate revenue through dynamic in-game advertising, enabling them to fully realize the value of their content while preserving and enhancing the game experience. Massive’s technology allows for all forms of downloadable media and advertising content to be contextually integrated into the game environment, including image, audio, video and game object formats. More information can be found online at http://www.massiveincorporated.com.

About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Sydney – June 17, 2008

Tribal Fusion, the world’s largest independent online advertising network and leading site-representation company, today launches into the Australian marketplace. Through the latest ad serving and optimisation technology, Tribal Fusion delivers advertising solutions to brand and direct marketers and premium publishers by offering customised placements in contextually relevant content. With a significant number of English-speaking users in the Tribal Fusion network and an agency model comparable to North America and Europe, Australia is an ideal market into which Tribal Fusion can expand its offering.

The demand for online display advertising continues to grow as both consumers and advertisers shift from traditional to digital media. Major brand advertisers, in particular, are looking for safe, cost-effective alternatives to buying on portals and marquee sites. Consumers themselves are ever more sophisticated, demanding a more tailored and personal approach to marketing. This has presented a challenge to marketers in the delivery of the right message to the right consumer in a complex and ever expanding online world with increasing audience fragmentation – a challenge which Tribal Fusion addresses in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., India, and now in Australia.

Vicki Lyon, Director of Business Development, Tribal Fusion – Australia, said, “Tribal Fusion has built a successful independent advertising network with its innovative approach and unique technologies, addressing the needs of both online marketers and publishers. We offer site-specific and special placements, and various ways to target users anonymously such as geotargeting and behavioural targeting. Tribal Fusion delivers campaign results with the transparency and quality of sites that advertisers have come to expect.”

To maintain the quality of sites in its network, Tribal Fusion accepts and partners with only six percent of the online publishers who apply. Lyon continued, “Our revenue-share model operates in the best interests of publishers, delivering them multiple ways to monetise content through revenue sharing, free ad serving, and quality advertisers and advertising.”

In Australia, Tribal Fusion has already run successful pilot programs with clients including Microsoft, whose online campaigns are managed by Andrew Davis, Digital Account Manager, Universal McCann – Australia. Davis commented, “Working with Tribal Fusion we have been able to deliver effective online media in a very cost-efficient model for our clients. These are key criteria. We have found Tribal Fusion to be helpful and creative, and their briefs are always developed to offer value to our clients.”.

Dilip DaSilva, Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Exponential Interactive, Inc., the parent company of Tribal Fusion, stated, “Tribal Fusion has enjoyed six years of profitable growth, and international expansion is a key strategy to our continuing success. Australia is an exciting market for Tribal Fusion as we see the strong growth in the online sector teamed with a healthy agency culture. Our existing user base of English speaking consumers makes Tribal Fusion a natural fit for both Australian publishers and digital marketers.”

“With the explosion in online media content and advertising, we wanted to ensure that our high-quality advertisers and publishers have access to a broad range of tools to reach their target audiences and increase their revenue potential. Tribal Fusion offers the most robust, dynamic, scalable solutions that leverage our proprietary technology,” DaSilva added.

Tribal Fusion represents over 1500 web publishers worldwide and works with 38 of the top 50 online advertisers including brands such as Microsoft, AT&T, Hewlett-Packard and Sony. Tribal Fusion offers advertisers site-specific and special placements, behavioural targeting, profile targeting, geotargeting, and daypart advertising and tandem ads.

About Tribal Fusion

Tribal Fusion® is the leading site representation company serving over 30 billion monthly impressions to more than 230 million unique users worldwide every month. The company partners with top quality web publishers to provide brand advertisers with targeted ad placements. Offering site-specific, channel-wide, run-of-network ads as well as behavioural and contextual placements, Tribal Fusion delivers results through expert advice and intelligent technology. Tribal Fusion® is owned by Exponential Interactive, Inc.™ – a technology-driven media services company that delivers innovative products and services to meet the demands of advertisers and publishers. Additional information is available at http://www.tribalfusion.com and http://www.exponential.com.

comScore Ad Metrix provides detailed reporting of the number and types of online display ads viewed by Internet users for the U.S. market. The syndicated service measures the number of times each advertiser’s ads are viewed and where they are viewed, the demographics of those exposed to the ads, the reach and frequency of an advertiser’s campaign, and provides samples of the creative ad units with information on ad sizes.

McDonald’s Captures 34 Percent Share of Voice among Top 10 QSR Advertisers McDonald’s delivered more than 295 million display ad views (34 percent share of voice) in March, reaching 52 million Internet users an average of 5.7 times during the month. Quizno’s ranked second with 11.1 percent share of voice, followed by KFC (9.6 percent) and Papa John’s (9.3 percent).

*Excludes QSRs where beverages are the primary menu item

**Share of advertising voice among Top 10 online advertisers in the category

Pizza Hut’s Share of Site Visits Outpaces Online Advertising

To provide some dimension to the share of voice ranking, the study also looked at the share of visits to the Web sites of each of the top 10 restaurant companies to see if there is any relationship with the share of voice. It appears that there is little relation between the two metrics, since site traffic seems to be more heavily influenced by televised promotions and online ordering functionality at a few of the companies. For example, PizzaHut.com, whose online advertisements promote online ordering for home delivery or in-store pick up, has a disproportionately high share of site traffic (23.3 percent) relative to its share of online advertising voice (6.8 percent).

*Index = share of site visits/share of advertising voice x 100; Index of 100 represents parity

Online Represents Substantial Opportunity for QSR Advertisers

Despite McDonald’s position as one of the top U.S. advertisers (#16 in 2006, according to Ad Age), in terms of overall dollars spent on advertising, the company ranked just #113 in terms of the total number of online display ads delivered in March 2008, according to comScore Ad Metrix.

“It’s clear that that the quick-serve restaurant industry has been slower than many other industries to move its advertising dollars online,” said comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni. “But, given the Internet’s broad reach and ability to selectively reach consumer segments, its potential as a brand-building advertising medium is beginning to attract more attention. The reality is that while most working Americans do not watch TV during the day and therefore cannot be reached via this medium, many do use computers during this daypart. For the working population, online advertising is a highly effective way to put one’s QSR brand top of mind with the consumer in the hours and minutes before they decide where to eat lunch.”

To request more information on comScore Ad Metrix, please visit: http://www.comscore.com/contact

About comScore
comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) is a global leader in measuring the digital world. For more information, please visit www.comscore.com/boilerplate.

New York, NY – Epic Advertising, the New York-based online performance marketing company, today announced the official launch of Performance CPM (pCPM), a patent-pending metric that allows advertisers to track performance-marketing campaigns by measuring “induced visits.” Advertisers can now determine campaign effectiveness utilizing a new, more comprehensive approach.

The premise of pCPM is rooted in induced visits, or visits to an advertiser’s site tracked beyond direct clicks. A visit to an advertiser’s site is “induced” if it results in any way from an ad, even if there is no immediate response or direct click path from ad to site. This metric goes beyond traditional campaign measurement tactics by employing scientific techniques to discern the broadest types of cause and effect, excluding things like “accidental clicks.”

Along with measuring induced visits, the metric encompasses elements from traditional tracking methods – CPC, CPM and CPA – as well as inherent branding impacts to offer a more holistic view of an online advertising campaign’s success. Because pCPM involves only statistics, it avoids any retention of Personally Identifiable Information (PII).

Prior to its release, Epic Advertising’s pCPM was refined internally over a 6-month period and tested in beta on a handful of selected advertising campaigns. Beta test results demonstrated induced visits accounted for a 60% increase on top of clicks. The results also showed that the measurement helped to ascribe value to branding ads seen but not actually clicked.

“pCPM alters the way online advertisers can gauge the true value of their campaigns by allowing them to now measure true effectiveness and influence,” says Don Mathis, President of Epic Advertising. “For instance, if you see an ad without clicking but remember the company’s URL, and then visit the site later, we would capture and realize that induced visit as part of pCPM.”

Added Mathis, “This method lets our advertisers do two new things: they can see the impact of an ad beyond direct clicks, and they can put a solid measure of user-impact on their traditional brand-oriented CPM campaigns. It encompasses the standard metrics used in the marketplace as well, so it is more comprehensive. We believe our method, marrying marketing and technology, is the next step in online marketing campaign tracking and will serve as a model for the industry.”

About Epic Advertising:
Epic Advertising (www.EpicAdvertising.com), founded in 2000 as AzoogleAds, is an elite, global performance marketing company, providing advertisers with superior customer acquisition marketing services. Leveraging its industry-leading performance-based ad network under its AzoogleAds subsidiary, and its search engine marketing capabilities under its Bazaar Advertising subsidiary, Epic provides advertisers with direct response marketing services with a world-wide reach that are second to none.

Epic Advertising utilizes proprietary and patent-pending optimization and targeting technology, and leverages a network of tens of thousands of publishers, to generate extremely high volumes of top quality consumer traffic for its advertising partners. 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, and scales its solutions by leveraging vast quantities of data, its proprietary targeting and search technologies, and its unparalleled industry expertise.

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

ATLANTA – May 19, 2008 – EyeWonder, Inc., a leading innovator in Interactive Digital Advertising technologies and services, today announced it is one of the rich media providers now officially approved to run ads on the Google content network. This certification enables advertisers to work with EyeWonder to serve and track their display ad campaigns across the Google content network. EyeWonder’s participation gives advertisers access to more creative format options, flexibility and control over their campaigns with all the benefits of third-party ad serving.

“EyeWonder’s addition will enable more advertiser and agency clients to immediately benefit from easy access to the richest media and video ad solutions – ones that have been consistently proven to deliver stronger branding results for online display campaigns,” said Michael Rosner, Senior Vice-President, Global Sales at EyeWonder. “We are proud to work with the Google content network, and we look forward to bringing the most compelling and interactive ad options to the world’s largest online ad network.”

EyeWonder is one of the world’s top providers of rich media and digital video advertising products and services. According to Nielsen Online, AdRelevance, a global leader in Internet media and marketing research, EyeWonder tripled its campaign impression volume from 2006 to 2007, and also more than doubled its rich media market share. A recent MarketNorms® analysis concluded that in-page rich media and video ad campaigns powered by EyeWonder showed significant advantages in delivering increases in core brand metrics compared to those of other rich media ad providers. EyeWonder and Google worked together to ensure that ads served into the content network meet Google’s policies and specifications. Having completed the certification process, EyeWonder’s addition to the content network combines the impact and effectiveness of today’s richest and most interactive ads with the reach of the world’s largest advertising network. Now, advertisers can reach these audiences with compelling campaigns that feature the emotional impact of EyeWonder video, the latest creative and interactive features and more, all within the ad unit itself.

For more information on EyeWonder, please contact Michael Rosner at mrosner@eyewonder.com.

About EyeWonder, Inc.
EyeWonder is a pioneer and innovator in Interactive Digital Advertising, providing clients with the technology, experience and industry expertise to advance their brand. The company’s products and services are used by the world’s top agencies and brands to universally deploy campaigns across existing and emerging platforms. For more information, please visit www.eyewonder.com.

NEW YORK – April 21, 2008 – 24/7 Real Media, Inc., the leading global digital marketing company, today announced a partnership with four major publishers to create BBN, the nation’s largest B2B online advertising network. Cygnus Business Media, Nielsen Business Media, Reed Business and The McGraw-Hill Companies are coming together for the first time to offer unprecedented reach and more efficient media buys for online advertisers.

BBN offers the most highly concentrated and far-reaching collection of B2B targets ever created, including the Web sites of leading publications such as Construction Equipment, Adweek, AviationWeek & Space Technology and CPA Technology Advisor. The BBN network reaches nearly 10 million monthly unique users, with approximately 60% of their audience consisting of small business owners and decision makers. This powerful network includes more than 200 Web properties covering dozens of industries to ensure advertisers reach their specific B2B targets.

Former CBS executive and MarketWatch co-founder, Derek Reisfield, has been appointed Chairman of the new venture. “The BBN will fill a critical need by connecting B2B publishers with the advertisers and agencies trying to reach their high quality audiences in a way that provides greater reach,” said Reisfield. “The BBN is excited to launch with so many great B2B sites. At launch, we are the leading network for advertisers to reach high quality B2B audiences.” The BBN will also be inviting other B2B publishers to participate later this year.

The BBN properties are the latest addition to 24/7’s digital media offering, which consists of over 1,500 sites serving advertising impressions in countries around the world. 24/7 Real Media’s network reaches around 150 million unique viewers each month, with participants achieving optimal ROI through the industry’s most advanced targeting solutions including lifecycle management, search retargeting, geo-demographic, content, behavioral, retargeting and custom.

“BBN gives advertisers unparalleled access to reach decision makers across the entire B2B spectrum with one large-scale purchase, through four of the industry’s largest and most highly respected publishers,” said David J. Moore, CEO of 24/7 Real Media, Inc. “We continually innovate in order to deliver more effective targeting and broader reach for our advertising partners, and have developed the preeminent network in a number of verticals such as B2B.”

The BBN network will be utilizing Open AdStream®, 24/7 Real Media’s proprietary, award-winning ad serving and campaign management platform, for the targeting and delivery of ads to their Web sites. Open AdStream combines the powerful business intelligence of Web analytics and behavioral targeting with a world-class management platform, delivering all digital formats across all digital platforms.

“This partnership will be a valuable opportunity for Cygnus to reach new advertisers and generate greater revenue for our online B2B properties,” said Carr Davis, CEO Cygnus Business Media. “24/7 Real Media has provided us with the tools and ad management expertise to ensure we are gaining the best value for our ad inventory across each of our publications.”
For more information on the BBN network, visit www.247realmedia.com.

About 24/7 Real Media, Inc.
24/7 Real Media, Inc. a WPP company (Nasdaq: WPPGY), is the leading global digital marketing company, empowering advertisers and publishers to engage their target audiences with greater precision, transparency and ROI. Using its award winning ad serving, targeting, tracking and analytics platform, powerful search marketing technology and global network of specialized Web sites, the company has turned the art of reaching audiences across virtually any digital medium into a measurable science. The company is headquartered in New York, with 18 offices in 12 countries throughout North America, Europe and the Asia Pacific region. For more information, please visit www.247realmedia.com.

TRAFFIQ to Preview New Ad Exchange Capabilities:
Stop by TRAFFIQ’s booth No. 5271 in the Moscone Center Exhibit Hall on April 15 and 16 for a live demo of the latest evolution of the TRAFFIQ platform, featuring a unique new capability for online media buying and selling.

TRAFFIQ Nominated for People’s Choice Award:
TRAFFIQ has been nominated for the ad:tech “People’s Choice” award in the “Best Business to Business Transaction Web Site” category. This is in addition to the recent recognition of TRAFFIQ by Forrester Research as a leading example of a smart ad exchange choice for advertisers and publishers. Visit the TRAFFIQ booth for copies of the Forrester study and TRAFFIQ’s Ad Exchanges & Ad Networks whitepaper.

TRAFFIQ to Co-Host Panel Discussion on Strategies for Mid-Tail Success:
Dan Ballister, chief operating officer for TRAFFIQ, will co-host an industry panel on one of the hottest topics today among online advertisers and publishers: how to successfully engage and monetize the increasing numbers of consumers flocking to mid-tail sites. As inventory becomes tight among the portals and top 100 properties, advertisers are migrating to mid-sized Websites—following users who are spending less time at the big sites and more time within the mid-tail of the online ecosystem.
Forget blind networks and outdated metrics; come hear Dan and his fellow experts lead “Beyond the Banner/Beyond the Network,” a wide-ranging discussion of innovative and practical strategies for media success in this important new market. Event details below:

Panel details:
Beyond the Banner/Beyond the Network: The Mid-Tail and the Promise of Engagement
Thursday, April 17, from 3:30 p.m. to 4:30 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 publishers, advertisers, and ad agencies. TRAFFIQ is also a member of the IAB Marketplace advisory board, helping educate interactive advertisers and publishers on the best practices that foster industry growth. Other board members include CondéNet, Colgate Palmolive, Carat and Forrester Research. TRAFFIQ is headquartered in New York City, with offices in McLean, VA. For more information, contact us at info@traffiq.com.

New York, NY – March 27, 2008 – TRAFFIQ™ – The Internet Traffic Exchange today announced it has been selected as a finalist for Ad:Tech’s 2008 ‘Best Business-to-Business Transaction Website’ award.

The Ad:Tech awards recognize web-based platforms that are able to simplify complex business processes and create new efficient markets in the online advertising space.

TRAFFIQ directly connects publishers and advertisers in a transparent and value-driven marketplace. It reduces the dependency on blind ad networks and makes the process of media buying and selling fast, simple and efficient. TRAFFIQ provides members with exclusive benefits and economic value unavailable through alternate media channels, and was designed to require very little labor for maximum results.

At any given time, there are over 1000 ad agencies, advertisers and premium publishers on the TRAFFIQ exchange, including: Technorati, Healthcentral.com, Sky Sports, PerezHilton and Drudge Report.

“We are very pleased with this nomination,” said Mark Kahn, chief executive officer of TRAFFIQ. “We’ve worked hard to design a platform that provides real and unique value to online advertisers and publishers, and are excited to be an integral part of the buying and selling process.”

Industry Panel:
Dan Ballister, TRAFFIQ’s chief operating officer, will be co-hosting a panel discussing online consumer engagement at Ad:Tech San Francisco, on April 17, 3:30 p.m. The panel: ‘Beyond the Banner/Beyond the Network: The Mid-Tail and the Promise of Engagement,’ will be moderated by Joey Dumont, partner and managing director of Questus.

Ballister, along with his co-presenters, will lead this session for the more advanced online marketers, exploring new approaches to leverage the Web beyond standard ads placed blindly across ad networks.

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 publishers, advertisers and ad agencies. TRAFFIQ is headquartered in New York City, with offices in McLean, VA. For more information, contact us at info@traffiq.com. TRAFFIQ is a member of the IAB Marketplace advisory board, helping educate interactive advertisers and publishers on the best practices that foster industry growth. Other board members include CondéNet, Colgate Palmolive, Carat and Forrester Research. Those interested in learning more about TRAFFIQ at Ad:Tech San Francisco can also stop by TRAFFIQ’s display booth, stand 5271.

That’s because eighteen minutes will be the length of each of four educational sessions to be presented by TRAFFIQ™ – The Internet Traffic Exchange, for the benefit of online advertisers and web publishers on March 31, at the IAB Marketplace: Ad Networks & Xchanges special event.

The one-day educational event will provide participants with an objective and up-to-date overview of how exchanges and networks are changing the landscape of online advertising, and how these changes will likely affect the way advertisers and publishers buy and sell online media.

Dan Ballister, chief operating officer, and Dean Vegliante, vice president of seller development, will present TRAFFIQ’s unique transaction model. This model features a new automated media buying standard, allowing publishers to list blocks of inventory up for auction, or to respond directly to buyers’ requests for inventory with matching offers.

Advertisers can browse and bid on searchable blocks of inventory, or post a Request for Listings (RFL)—broadcasting their media buying requests to a universe of qualified, premium publishers with one single post.

TRAFFIQ’s open platform helps replace the mechanics of a blind ad networks with a transparent, highly efficient environment. The advantages for buyers and sellers include streamlined costs, fast and direct sales of premium and niche inventory, high predictability of sales and revenue, brand protection based on advance knowledge of ad placement details, and more. Sellers pay fixed, published commissions on ads sold, and buyers pay no exchange fees at all.

Such benefits are one reason TRAFFIQ has garnered praise from analysts at Jupiter Research and Forrester Research, among others.

“Learn From the Experts” Presentation details:
What: Four 18-minute educational sessions
Advertisers: 3:30 PM and 4:16 PM
Publishers: 3:53 PM and 4:39 PM

When: Monday, March 31, from 3:30 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Where: Roosevelt Hotel, Madison Ave. at 45th St., New York, NY

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 publishers, advertisers and ad agencies. TRAFFIQ is headquartered in New York City, with offices in McLean, VA. For more information, contact us at info@traffiq.com. TRAFFIQ is a member of the IAB Marketplace advisory board, helping educate interactive advertisers and publishers on the best practices that foster industry growth. Other board members include CondéNet, Colgate Palmolive, Carat and Forrester Research.