REDWOOD CITY, CA – YuMe, the leading relevant video advertising technology company, today announced the availability of new product offerings focused on increasing brand engagement impact of video ads. The new initiative, YuMe Ads, consists of an entirely new base pre-roll unit that features automatic hooks into Facebook, Twitter, YouTube campaigns and features supplemental brand awareness and response elements. Additionally, other units in the YuMe ad portfolio include Ready-Made, quick to market experiences that incorporate key interactive features, and a brand new Custom-Made offering that lets brands create one-of-a-kind video advertising experiences.

YuMe’s unique player technology and video ad framework enables brands to offer interactive experiences natively on publisher sites, providing advertisers with scale across three screens — mobile, online and TV, reaching audiences wherever they are consuming video content.

“Consumers are actively consuming online video and brand advertisers are getting more adventurous and creative about their cross-screen video ad campaigns and offering consumers more ways to interact with their brands,” said YuMe CEO Jayant Kadambi. “These new interactive video ad formats will help brands connect the dots and engage with consumers more fully wherever they are viewing content—whether it be on their phone, PC or TV.”

“With YuMe Ads, we were able to successfully combine both engagement and response objectives in one unit that led to stronger brand recall and purchase intent in a single execution,” said Kelley Elizabeth Train, Group Digital Director for Omnicom PHD. “We have already experienced a 20 percent increase in viewer downloads and trial sign-ups from the custom ad units as opposed to just the traditional video and companion banner. Moving forward we aim to leverage highly interactive ad units in more unique ways to allow the media buys to feel richer and have the ability to answer multiple business objectives.”

Three New Units

YuMe Ads includes three distinct category ad offerings with interactivity and standardized cross-platform compatibility.
·         YuMe Pre-Roll: Enhances traditional pre-roll and supports up to three interactivity options, from a rich set of options, with zero turnaround time and no pricing surcharge. Optional interactions include: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Special Offers, and Store/Dealer Locator and more.

·         Ready-Made: Quick to market for advanced mix-and-match capability and builds off existing pre-roll video with support for special in-player web API integrations (Twitter, Google, YouTube, etc.).

·         Custom-Made: Built to order signature ad units with massive in-player interaction and flexibility around branding. Also supports special in-player web API integrations.

Redefining Pre-Roll

As brands build extensive campaigns that encompass Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other social content sites, video campaigns are an important portal into their broader campaigns. With the new YuMe pre-roll, brands will be able to select up to three optional links as overlay buttons on their video ads, including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, other websites, offers, and dealer/retail information. This format replaces the current pre-roll format from YuMe and commands the same CPM as a traditional video-only pre-roll.

Ready-Made and Custom-Made Units

Ready-made ad units extend flexibility for multiple video combinations, enabling the addition of sophisticated animations, social and interactive features, and supplemental videos and even rendering a microsite experience in the player.  Encompassing some of YuMe’s most popular formats such as PowerRoll, an interactive banner across the bottom of the pre-roll, and InSynch formats that synchronize with other elements of a page, ready-made ad units now include more interactivity and extend to the mobile environment with all new Tap2Motion and 2Motion ad units.

Custom-made ads provide a wholly unique experience, enabling endless creative options specific to the brand and their desired viewer experience. In addition, YuMe’s built-in advanced analytics track all user interactions and provides multi-level insight to marketers seeking to measure their brand impact, such as interaction rates, brand lift, campaign ROI and overall viewer engagement.

For more information on YuMe Ads, please visit: http://www.yume.com/ad_gallery_all.

About YuMe
YuMe is the leading, relevant video advertising technology company. It enables top-tier publishers to maximize profits on their professional video content while safely delivering the most effective advertising campaigns for major brands and their agencies. YuMe’s patent-pending Relevance Engine powers both its premium in-stream video ad network, The YuMe Connected Audience Network, and its industry-leading advertising management solutions, ACE for Publishers and ACE for Advertisers. The YuMe Relevance Engine matches the right ad to the right audience on whatever screen they are viewing—PC, mobile, or connected TV. As a result, YuMe gives publishers and advertisers unprecedented reach, brand safety, contextual relevance, controlled syndication, unique YuMe Ads and consistent delivery across all digital media platforms. YuMe is a privately held company headquartered in Redwood City, CA with its European headquarters in London. The company is backed by Accel Partners, BV Capital, DAG Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Menlo Ventures, and Intel Capital. For more information, visit www.YuMe.com, follow @YuMevideo on Twitter, or like YuMe on Facebook at www.facebook.com/YuMevideo.

NEW YORK – AOL announced today that it has brokered a unique partnership with VivaKi, the strategic entity that combines the media and digital assets that sit inside of Publicis Groupe. This partnership aims to explore the online video advertising arena and continue to innovate and identify top performing ad models that are best for advertisers, publishers and consumers. This initiative will leverage the success and momentum of VivaKi’s ongoing research effort, The Pool, which has conducted extensive research and testing in the online video space. In its first three waves of research or “lanes,” the ASq was selected as the most superior online video ad model, out-performing the industry’s pre-roll standard.

To date, ASq has 15 certified publishers, including AOL, and has supported over 150 client campaigns across 35 advertisers and garnered more than 400 million impressions. This partnership between VivaKi and AOL will build on the success of this model and identify other formats that provide more personalization and social components within the online video user experience. ASq is powered by VINDICO, a leading video ad management platform, which will also serve the VivaKi-AOL partnership.

“We are excited to be partnering with VivaKi to push product innovation forward and evolve online video ad models,” said Tim Armstrong, Chairman & CEO, AOL. “We challenged the industry last year with the launch of Project Devil in display, which helped us rethink how content and advertising should be viewed on the Web, and we wanted to explore what the Devil principles and philosophies could mean for video ad formats. There is still so much opportunity for growth and innovation.”

“We know the ASq is a breakthrough idea, but there is room for more ad models that support the medium. No other platform can be sustained through simply one format, look at TV or display,” said Tracey Scheppach, VivaKi’s EVP/Innovations Director and Co-Founder of The Pool. “We gave our employees around the world, as well as our trusted partners, an opportunity to voice their ideas for the best online video ad models and we received 72 ideas in total, which we’ve narrowed down to the top three that will go into testing.”

The first model that will go into field trial testing consists of a pre-roll overlay within a video player that gives the viewer an option to click and expand the ad into a branded toolbar, which provides viewers with multiple ways to interact with the brand. The second model is a slate ad format that asks whether the viewer would like to watch a full :30 ad or a :15 ad and then answer a question immediately following the ad. The third and final model is a pre-roll overlay that provides buttons for Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social platforms to enable a seamless way to interact and share ads with their social circle. To reinforce the sharing option, this model would also include a billboard at the end of the pre-roll or at the end of the content. VINDICO will handle ad serving for all three models during this process.

Since its inception in 2008, The Pool has launched nine lanes globally and logged over 35,000 hours, working with over 100 different companies while reaching 262 million consumers.

This lane will kick off in November 2011 and is open to all VivaKi clients. Results are expected in early 2012 and official names will be given to the three models during The Pool process.

About AOL

AOL Inc. (NYSE: AOL) is a premier global media company with a suite of brands and products serving consumers, advertisers and publishers worldwide. The AOL Huffington Post Media Group is a leading source of news, opinion, entertainment, community and digital information comprising a wide range of destination websites, including AOL.com, The Huffington Post, TechCrunch, Moviefone, Engadget, Patch, AOL Music, StyleList and MapQuest. The AOL Advertising.com Group includes Advertising.com, ADTECH, Pictela, Video (inclusive of AOL Video, goviral and 5min Media), Content Solutions and Sponsored Listings and serves a combined content and advertising market at scale through video, brand advertising, content and ad serving. AOL is focused on engaging consumers and providing online advertising services and solutions on both AOL Huffington Post Media Group destination websites and third-party websites, in addition to serving consumer platforms including AOL Mail, AIM, about.me, and mobile experiences. AOL also operates one of the largest Internet subscription access services in the U.S., which serves as another distribution channel for its consumer subscription products, such as AOL TechGuru and Computer Checkup.

About VivaKi

VivaKi is part of Publicis Groupe (Euronext Paris Exchange: FR0000130577; and part of the CAC 40 index) the world’s third largest communications group. VivaKi aggregates the marketplace influence of four autonomous brands, including two global media agency networks: ZenithOptimedia and Starcom MediaVest Group; and two leading digital marketing agencies: Digitas and Razorfish. On behalf of its agency brands and their clients, VivaKi faces the market to help identify and build technology, message distribution, audience aggregation and content solutions for the future.

About The Pool

The Pool is a first of its kind industry program that unites the financial resources and thought leadership of its clients and a host of content providers to test and create industry standards for new advertising models. By “pooling” insights and resources, this initiative aims to identify future engagement models across a variety of emerging media platforms. Participating clients and content providers are given the opportunity to view and evaluate new advertising models and receive access to all proprietary research ahead of the marketplace. The following lanes have been launched and released: Lane 1: US online video – November 2008 launch, February 2010 industry release; Lane 2: US short-form online video – July 2009 launch, September 2010 industry release; Lane 3: China online video – April 2010 launch, April 2011 industry release. The following Lanes have been launched and are still in progress: Lane 4: UK online video – October 2010 launch; Lane 5: MENA display – September 2010 launch; Lane 6: Spain online video – November 2010 launch; Lane 7: Australia online video – March 2011 launch; Lane 8: China online video/cross media metrics – August 2011 launch; Lane 9: US Tablets – October 2011 launch.

San Mateo, California – Jivox, the leading online video advertising and marketing platform for local businesses and publishers, today announced significant enhancements to its online video ad creation, management, and optimization platform to give online publishers a more cost-effective way to service even the smallest advertisers.

With the latest version of the Jivox platform, online publishers can now offer all of their advertisers the opportunity to run video ads within a video content player, before, during or after streamed video content (pre-roll, mid-roll and post-roll).  Jivox “Plug-n-Play” technology enables any Adobe Flash-based video content player to serve in-stream video ads and take advantage of the powerful interactivity features and reporting features available in the current Jivox video ad player.

The new platform release also introduces significant reporting enhancements, including aggregated reporting across video, display and text ads.  By integrating with third-party banner and text ad creation tools, Jivox can now provide publishers and advertisers with a single, dashboard-style view of all their ads’ performance on the publisher’s site.

The company has also added “view-through” tracking and reporting to the mix – this helps advertisers better assess their true ad performance by attributing a customer visit or conversion to a customer having seen an ad.  With the combination of traditional click-through metrics, video engagement metrics exclusive to Jivox, and the new view-through reporting capabilities now available to publishers, Jivox provides the most robust and comprehensive video ad analytics available today.

Online publishers can access all of these new features via the Jivox Publisher Portal, an online service for Jivox’s white label publisher partners. The Jivox Publisher Portal enables publishers’ sales and ad operations teams to access and manage their advertiser accounts, enter insertion orders, set campaign pricing, track campaigns, and traffic video ads all from a central console. Extensive analytics enable publishers to track real-time critical metrics related to ad performance and ad inventory, and report back to their advertisers.

“Delivering video ads within video content has in the past involved very complex integration between advertising service providers and the publisher’s video player,” said Diaz Nesamoney, CEO of Jivox. “The new version of the Jivox platform helps publishers reduce the complexity by enabling the wide variety of video content players in the market to easily integrate with the Jivox Video Ad platform, while offering easy provisioning and serving of video ads within video content.”

About Jivox
Jivox makes it easy for businesses to reach local customers with online video marketing.  The Jivox online video platform enables businesses to easily create high-impact videos at no cost and use them in local online ad campaigns, on web sites and directory listings, in viral marketing programs, email campaigns and more.  Jivox provides targeted distribution of video ads through a premium network of over 800 local media and content websites, ensuring that every ad reaches the intended audience. The Jivox platform is also being used by national and local media groups to streamline online video ad creation and to offer self-service ad creation and distribution directly to their advertisers.  Jivox is a privately held company headquartered in San Mateo, Calif. For more information about Jivox, please visit www.jivox.com.

London, June 4th, 2009 – VIDEOPLAZA, announces its first UK clients for its ‘built for video’ ad server platform – Monetizer. Factory Media and Incisive Media will both launch online video advertising services, through Videoplaza, to capitalise on the growing popularity of online video.

Videoplaza, a privately owned company, based in Stockholm and London, enables clients to manage, present and track online video advertising. It has developed an ad server platform that can increase revenues and demonstrate media value, from advertising placed in and around their online video content. Working with leading broadcasters, news media, business and consumer publishers in five countries, Videoplaza’s ad server technology, creative ad formats and real-time reporting enables clients to monetise the time users spend watching online video, rather than started streams.

Factory Media’s extreme sports video channel Mpora www.mpora.com will offer advertisers and sponsors access to its valuable audiences using Interactive Pre, Mid and Post Roll advertising. The channel will also use In-stream overlays, served within the video content, a format proving popular with advertisers and users alike and also Companion Ads synchronised with a client’s video ads.

Incisive Media, www.incisivemedia.com, a leading business information provider, is implementing Videoplaza’s ad server to offer exciting new opportunities for brands and B2B advertisers to target its high value audiences, starting with the IT professional community VNUnet  www.vnunet.com

By adopting Videoplaza’s ad server platform both companies will be able to more effectively manage their online video advertising inventory, optimize client campaigns and demonstrate improved advertiser ROI, in terms of advertising exposure and engagement. The deals will also introduce the next generation interactive preroll format to the market called the iRoll.

John Barnes, Managing Director – Digital Strategy and Development UK & Asia for Incisive Media stated “We see a great opportunity in video and want to be equipped with the best monetisation tool in the market. We have chosen to work with Videoplaza not just because of their technology, this company understands this space and has made it work in other markets.”

According to Darryl Newton, Managing Director, Factory Media, “Mpora.com is now a significant part of our business, with over 2 million video streams served each month. Demand for advertising on our platform is growing incrementally and clients are particularly excited by creative video solutions. Working with Videoplaza we feel we can meet the needs of these customers better by offering more dynamic and engaging formats combined with video specific reporting such as engagement rates and time spent with the ads.

Sorosh Tavakoli, Founder and CEO for Videoplaza added “We are delighted to announce agreements with these two great innovative publishers. We are doing everything we can to repeat the success from the Swedish market where more and more publishers have profitable online video products.”

Videoplaza has been in the UK since January 2009 and is building a local team to advise and support both local media owners and international networks based in London.

For further information contact:

Sorosh Tavakoli, Founder and CEO Videoplaza
+44 7530 885 492
sorosh@videoplaza.com

John Barnes, Managing Director – Digital Strategy and Development UK & Asia, Incisive Media
+44 (0)20 7316 9007
john.barnes@incisivemedia.com

Darryl Newton, Managing Director, Factory Media
+44 (0)20 7332 9700
darryl.newton@factorymedia.com

About Videoplaza

Videoplaza AB is based in London and Stockholm, privately owned and backed by venture capital company Creandum. The company is working with leading broadcasters, newspaper publishers and other premium media owners in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and the UK. It has developed an ad server that is uniquely designed to meet the challenges of monetising online video content. The technology is compatible with any video platform, offers rich video specific reporting and maximises the clients potential advertising inventory. The ad formats offered are all compliant with the new IAB UK Video Guide launched April 29th, 2009.

Videoplaza website: http://www.videoplaza.com
Videoplaza blog: http://www.videoplaza.com/blog
Videoplaza client list: http://www.videoplaza.com/customers

The value of online video advertising is forecast to increase, in line with its growing popularity with users. eMarketer estimates the market will be worth $1.9Bn by 2011 and to account for 10% of all online advertising spend.

The technology challenge for many publishers is to make their traditional display ad server work seamlessly with their video platform. Too often, their existing technology is not able to deliver the potential volume of ads given the length of time users are spending watching video. Videoplaza’s ‘built for video’ ad server lets publishers place and then track the effectiveness of their clients advertising, while allowing more campaigns to be served while not being too intrusive to the users. The company can demonstrate how this has more than doubled client revenues.

CHICAGO – Akoo International Inc. announced the national launch of the most advanced interactive entertainment and advertising platform in the digital out-of-home marketplace. The “Akoo” network combines premium video entertainment – including music videos from all four major labels: Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, and EMI – with a proprietary platform that engages viewers to activate content on HD LCD-TV screens using their mobile phones like remote controls.

Akoo is currently available throughout the food court environments of 50 high-profile malls in top 25 DMAs (see www.akoo.com for information about participating malls). The network will be deployed at 150 of the nation’s highest-traffic malls by December 2009, reaching an audience of 490 million annual viewers with an average engagement exceeding 30 minutes.

The Akoo network has proven to drive measurable engagement, activations, and transactions with a media-elusive, predominantly 18-34 year-old demographic. The platform’s ability to capture actionable behavioral data and deliver targeted advertising across digital screens and user mobile devices – steps away from the retail point of sale where purchase intent is highest – provides marketers with greater measurability of marketing impact and ROI.

“We’re extremely excited to deliver fully immersive audio/video entertainment experiences to millions of consumers,” said Niko Drakoulis, Akoo’s CEO. “For a limited number of advertisers, Akoo also provides non-cluttered, accountable media at a time when quantifying return on marketing spend is imperative.”

Akoo achieves full coverage of each food court environment with multiple pairs of 46-inch, side-by-side HD LCD-TV screens. Each pair of screens is comprised of a Programming Guide screen, featuring available on-demand content, user tutorials, and sponsors’ advertising, and an adjacent Entertainment screen, featuring Akoo’s entertainment programming, playback of user-selected content, and sponsors’ pre-roll ads and overlays with call-to-action messaging.

Additionally, a professional audio solution in each location monitors ambient crowd noise and automatically adjusts the volume level of Akoo programming to maximize audio and visual impact. Akoo is the sole and exclusive interactive entertainment source in each food court.

To interact with the network, consumers discover content codes on the Programming Guide screen or table-top print media and text the content code of their choice to the Akoo network. A text message is immediately returned to the user’s mobile device, confirming the selection, and the content is queued to play on the Entertainment screen in the order it was received. When all on-demand selections are played, the regularly scheduled programming automatically resumes.

Consumers may also use the Akoo Remote, a free mobile application accessible via any mobile phone’s Internet browser. The Akoo Remote allows users to search through the location’s available video library; make on-demand requests with one-click; and identify and tag “What’s Playing Now,” for subsequent purchase on popular digital music services, such as Apple’s iTunes or Amazon MP3.

Users with Wi-Fi enabled devices, such as Apple’s iPhone, can also access Akoo’s free Wi-Fi service at every location to interact with programming. Akoo’s Wi-Fi service offers exclusive access to network features, as well as special content and promotional offers from Akoo advertisers.

About Akoo International Inc.

Akoo International Inc. develops and deploys interactive entertainment networks in out-of-home environments, delivering premium video content and immersive brand experiences across HD LCD-TV screens powered by the Company’s proprietary platform. Founded in 2001, the Company is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. For more information, visit www.akoo.com.

LOS ANGELES – Traffic Marketplace, the leading independent online advertising network, announced a new strategic distribution agreement with ARTISTdirect Internet Group, Inc. (“ADIG”), making Traffic Marketplace the exclusive advertising and sponsorship sales agency for ARTISTdirect.com and the ARTISTdirect Internet Group Network.

With one of the web’s deepest and broadest catalogues of content, covering every genre of music and film, ARTISTdirect has established itself among the top online destinations for 24/7 in-depth coverage of entertainment. ARTISTdirect features one of the largest selections of free music content that ranges from over 10,000 music videos and 7 million albums, tracks and samples to millions of artist pages, as well as news that includes behind-the-scenes interviews, reviews and exclusive artist content with everyone from 50 Cent to Bruce Springsteen.

As the 5th largest Entertainment – Music network property on the Internet according to comScore, the ARTISTdirect Network attracts more than 12 million unique visitors per month. ARTISTdirect’s user demographic is characterized as young, net-savvy and extremely mobile — a highly desirable segment among national advertisers.

“The addition of ARTISTdirect further enhances our rich audience profiles and increases our network’s reach, notably among the teen demographic,” said Jim Waltz, President, Traffic Marketplace. “Beyond the additional reach, our advertisers will gain exclusive access to a dynamic network of popular sites and an extensive variety of advertising packages. This new partnership with ARTISTdirect continues our commitment to invest in products, services and relationships that give our advertisers visibility and innovation that no other ad network can offer.”

The ARTISTdirect Network inventory is now exclusively available to Traffic Marketplace advertisers. In addition to display banners, Traffic Marketplace and ARTISTdirect will offer customized advertising solutions including sponsorships, audio ads, video or audio player pre-roll, custom skinning, and wallpaper opportunities.

“Advertisers are always looking for new and innovative ways to tap into the young adult target,” said Dimitri Villard, CEO, ARTISTdirect, Inc. “In addition to getting more visibility with some of the biggest advertisers in the world, Traffic Marketplace provides us with the market know-how and expertise to integrate advertiser messages into our content in a holistic and compelling way that engages consumers.”

According to comScore Media Metrix, Traffic Marketplace reached 147 million unique users, or 77 percent of the U.S. Internet audience, in January 2009.

About ARTISTdirect Internet Group, Inc.:

Headquartered in Santa Monica, CA, ARTISTdirect Internet Group controls some of the Internet’s leading consumer music and entertainment information properties. Its flagship website www.ARTISTdirect.com is the premier destination for all things related to music and film and their artists. Through its rich, multimedia repository of contextually relevant information and entertainment, the company creates deep connections between artists and fans that deliver benefits to both the entertainment consumer and the entertainment industry. ARTISTdirect.com receives over 3 million unique visitors per month while the ARTISTdirect Network, a family of related Web sites, draws more than 12.4 million monthly unique visitors. Featuring the latest hit videos, streams, free downloads, breaking news, in-depth interviews with musicians, actors, filmmakers and film score composers, a huge data base filled with biographies and discographies plus hard-to-find information, as well as CDs, concert and movie tickets for purchase, ARTISTdirect.com is the ultimate resource for anyone with an appetite for finding new and interesting content about their favorite artists and their music and films. ADIG’s other properties include the legendary Ultimate Band List, www.UBL.com, one of the web’s first music properties.

About ARTISTdirect, Inc.:

ARTISTdirect, Inc. (OTCBB:ARTD) is a publicly-held holding company with two operating subsidiaries: ARTISTdirect Internet Group, Inc., which operates one of the largest destination sites on the Internet for music and motion picture news, information and streaming music. ADIG also operates an ad network that is currently ranked 5 in comScore’s ranking of music sites. MediaDefender, Inc. provides intellectual property protection and business information services to major motion picture studios, record labels, television networks, gaming companies and software publishers and Internet marketing services to advertising agencies and other clients.

About Traffic Marketplace:

As the premiere B2A™ (Business-to-Audience) online ad network, Traffic Marketplace delivers relevance in online advertising by connecting advertisers with their target audience. Reaching more than 147MM unique users monthly, Traffic Marketplace generates in excess of 30 billion advertising impressions each month, delivering more than 20 million leads and customers a year through its targeted display advertising, lead generation, co-registration, email and custom hosted solutions. www.trafficmarketplace.com