Top Provider of Search Advertising Quality Management Honored in Internet Award Category

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.”
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Search Advertising Network Delivers High Volume of Quality Clicks at a Reasonable Cost

SAN FRANCISCO – LookSmart, Ltd. (NASDAQ:LOOK), the search advertising network and management company, highlighted metrics that demonstrated the company’s delivery of superior value for search advertisers who seek broad and cost-effective reach for their keyword text advertising campaigns.

During this year’s second fiscal quarter, LookSmart’s network averaged nearly 500 million queries per day, providing search advertisers with a quality complement to their campaigns on the major search engines. According to a research paper from search engine marketing solutions provider Efficient Frontier, “Search Engine Performance Report Q2 2008,” Google, Microsoft Live and Yahoo delivered CPCs of approximately 71 cents, 59 cents and 51 cents, respectively. LookSmart’s average cost-per-click during the same period was 8 cents.
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Google Gets $1.14 of Every New Dollar Spent on Search, Accounting for 76% of US Search Spending

SUNNYVALE, Calif. – Efficient Frontier, the worldwide leader in providing Search Engine Marketing technology and services to leading advertisers and agencies, today released the U.S. Search Engine Performance Report: Q3 2008. The report, the largest independent research in the search marketing industry, was based on an analysis of 60 billion impressions and 428 million clicks across an index of Efficient Frontier advertisers. The results of the research indicate that while overall growth has been slowing throughout 2008, return on investment remains strong in this highly productive direct marketing channel.

The report showed that Google continues to gain ground. For every new dollar spent on search advertising in Q3 2008 versus Q3 2007, Google received $1.14, while Yahoo and Microsoft each lost $0.07. Google continues to dominate the overall share of spending at 76%, although the company’s search advertising growth decreased by 1.9 percentage points from Q2 to Q3 2008. Yahoo search gained 1.8 points in the same quarter to bring it to 19.2% of total spent while Microsoft Live Search held relatively steady at 4.8% share.

Of Google’s 76% share, 4.6% was from Google content, an increase of 82.8% for non-financial services advertisers. Google content was the only search engine channel for which all advertisers increased spending in Q3 2008.
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FACTr Service to Give Greater Insight into Network, Improve Advertiser Value

SAN FRANCISCO – LookSmart, Ltd. (NASDAQ:LOOK), a pay-per-click (PPC) search advertising network and technology solutions provider, announced it is partnering with Click Forensics, the industry leader in scoring, auditing and improving traffic quality for the online advertising community, to receive third party PPC quality reports. LookSmart is leveraging Click Forensics’ FACTr reports to improve the speed and flow of feedback from advertisers on the value delivered through the LookSmart network.

“LookSmart is focused on maintaining and enhancing our network quality assurance processes, which are key to delivering the highest return on investment to our search advertisers,” said Ted West, chief executive officer and president of LookSmart. “The FACTr reports represent one more way we are delivering on our promise to advertisers to help them make smart, dependable choices that will make a real difference for their business.”
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New Functionality Delivers Improved ROI for Search Advertisers

SAN FRANCISCO – LookSmart, Ltd. (NASDAQ:LOOK), a pay-per-click (PPC) search advertising network and technology solutions provider, today announced the release of valuable enhancements to its award-winning text advertising platform that make it even easier for advertisers to target niche audiences, manage bid prices, and control traffic quality.

Enhancements to the LookSmart AdCenter platform include:

- Day Parting – advertisers can target the right message at the right time by scheduling campaigns to run at specific times of day and days of the week
- Easy Price Adjustments – advertisers can save time and effort by adjusting bid prices and reserve amounts on millions of keywords and thousands of campaigns at once
- Negative Keyword Management – advertisers can decrease campaign administration time by applying keywords at the campaign level
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Superior Distribution Partners Position Network as a Smart Choice for Search Advertisers

SAN FRANCISCO – LookSmart, Ltd. (NASDAQ:LOOK), a pay-per-click (PPC) search advertising network and technology solutions provider, announced its ad network has been bolstered by the addition of 30 high-quality distribution partners, some of which resulted from expanding internationally into the UK and Australia. High-quality traffic, which offers search advertisers improved click-through and conversion rates in categories such as travel, technology and retail, has doubled while low-quality traffic has been cut in half.

“As we add top-quality traffic, we work vigilantly to maintain unsurpassed excellence throughout the network – our goal is to deliver superior ROI and conversion rates for all our search advertisers,” said Ted West, chief executive officer and president of LookSmart. “Our LookSmart Network Management team weighs user conversion data and employs statistical models to gauge network quality and reporting in real time – ultimately delivering better value to our customers.”
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Stokes argues three percent of search advertisers dominate Google AdWords

SAN JOSE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Richard Stokes, AdGooroo founder and chief gooroo, reveals successful search marketing tactics known only by a small amount of search advertising’s elite in his new book, Mastering Search Advertising – How the Top 3% of Search Advertisers Dominate Google AdWords.

“Mastering Search Advertising conveys a ton of insights that go well beyond well-trodden AdWords knowledge. It puts hard numbers on a lot of things that I’ve believed but been unable to prove, about what makes the top 3 percent dominate the search engines,” says Perry Marshall, author of Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords. “…Those who want to prevail in hyper-competitive markets need this book.”
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Leading Search Advertising Provider Partners with Digital Influence Group for New Corporate Identity

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug 18, 2008 – LookSmart, Ltd. (NASDAQ:LOOK), a pay-per-click (PPC) Search Advertising Network and technology solutions provider, today unveiled its new corporate identity and redesigned Web site, LookSmart.com, at the 2008 Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Jose. The company is an exhibitor, as well as a sponsor and participant in a panel discussion entitled “Everything but Google: Alternative Search Advertising Options.” LookSmart worked with Boston-based, social media marketing agency Digital Influence Group on the project.
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