SAN FRANCISCO – VideoEgg, the brand engagement pioneer, announced it has agreed to acquire Six Apart, the leader in conversational media, to form SAY Media, a modern media company.1 SAY Media brings together influential voices and their communities to enable advertisers to reach a global audience of 345 million.2 The company provides systemic ways for advertisers to engage the social consumer in an era when attention is scarce and interruptive ad models are less effective.

Connecting rich experiences with attentive audiences. The new entity combines VideoEgg’s engagement technologies with Six Apart’s social publishing platform to power advertising campaigns that are more conversational and interactive. Through the creation of social hubs and influencer-driven custom content programs linked to the innovative AdFrames offering, SAY Media delivers engagement across display and mobile. The result is advertising that is more efficient, useful and social.

A powerful collection of influential creators, passion-based communities and engaging sites. SAY Media’s audience of 73 million social techies is larger than CNET, Wired, and IDG combined. At 25.5 million moms, SAY Media out-numbers Nickelodeon Family, BabyCenter and the CafeMom Network combined. The company’s 34 million sports enthusiasts are nearly 40 percent more than ESPN online. SAY Media partners with hundreds of powerful online sites and vertical communities like Talking Points Memo, BakeSpace.com, Daily Makeover, Divine Caroline, Gaia Online, Instructables, and Minyanville as well as influential voices including Jeff Katz, movie producer and founder of GeekWeek.com, Dr. Alan Greene, pediatrician and founder of DrGreene.com and Deborah Piscione, founder of celebrity news site Betty Confidential. Overall, SAY Media’s total audience will rank #1 in Blogs and #2 in Conversational Media, second only to Facebook.3

A platform for a new era. Media is changing faster than advertising, moving fluidly across devices and social platforms, and authored by a new breed of passionate, niche creators. Advertising technologies have not kept pace with the change. By creating better approaches to distribute, integrate and measure advertising experiences, The SAY Media Platform enables more brands to realize the potential of digital media, and enables more creators to grow audience and benefit from improved economics.

Matt Sanchez, CEO: “Media has fundamentally changed and the new models can’t be ignored. Content consumption patterns are being driven by social connections and new types of content creators and aggregators from Huffington Post to Perez Hilton to Angry Birds have built passionate audiences and grown strong media businesses out of the change. SAY Media is a media company designed to meet these new challenges and help advertisers find systemic ways to garner attention.”

Troy Young, President: “On-demand access to media has increased the value consumers ascribe to their attention. A recent study we conducted with comScore and IPG Labs shows they simply refuse to be subjected to sub-par ad experiences—and why should they? They don’t have to. This powerful indictment of the interruptive ad model validates our approach. We offer our clients what no other media company can—the ability to get attention and gain influence in a new media world that is more conversational, more interactive and more social.”

Mena Trott, Six Apart co-founder: “SAY Media continues Six Apart’s mission to make passionate creators successful. Whether on TypePad or another platform, developing a game or an application, the company will empower people to create great content and make money doing it. This acquisition marks a new beginning as we launch a modern media company centered on the creators, the content, and the audiences that are redefining media.”

Jonathan Nelson, CEO, Omnicom Digital: “VideoEgg’s history of delivering rich ad content gets really interesting when combined with the scale SAY offers in key verticals like women, parenting and young men. Add Six Apart’s social publishing technology and they will have the ability to make content an integrated part of the offering. This is timely proposition for media and creative agencies looking to move beyond banners.”

Jeff Katz, former executive at New Line Cinema and Fox and founder of GeekWeek.com: “The SAY Media team understands what drives me as a creator and supports my passion for producing genre content. Their expertise in engagement media, their dedicated sales team and unrivaled technology platform empower me to build a business by doing what I love—creating great content and connecting with my audience at GeekWeek.”

About SAY Media

SAY Media is a modern media company, the evolution of VideoEgg as it continues its mission to make online advertising better. SAY Media helps advertisers engage today’s social consumer through rich content experiences while helping creators monetize their work and grow their audiences. The company connects paid and earned media to deliver brand messages to an online audience of 345 million across display and mobile.

1 VideoEgg and Six Apart have entered into a reseller agreement, which allows each party to sell certain name products of the other party during the period prior to completion of the acquisition.

2 Calculations compiled by SAY Media using comScore’s global projections for VideoEgg and Six Apart as well as comScore’s measurement of total unduplicated audiences in US, Canada and the UK.

3 The vertical reach figures are SAY Media calculations based on comScore’s US July Plan Metrix, Key Measures and Cross Visiting tools.

SAN FRANCISCO – VideoEgg, Inc., the rich media ad network for guaranteed engagement, announced a partnership with Six Apart Ltd., a leading social media and services company dedicated to making bloggers successful. Under the terms of this agreement, Six Apart Media will offer AdFrames ad units as part of the company’s advertising program, allowing bloggers to easily integrate VideoEgg’s invitation-based ads into their TypePad blogs and subsequently increase ad revenue potential.

“Our goal is to help our publishers make money on the content they work hard to create,” said David Tokheim, executive vice president of Six Apart. “By partnering with VideoEgg and incorporating their proven performance-based AdFrames unit into our advertising solution, Six Apart provides great service and meaningful ad revenue to our publishers.”

As part of the collaboration, Six Apart bloggers can now integrate Twig, a new AdFrames unit that has already demonstrated a two-fold improvement in publishers’ advertising returns compared to standard in-page advertising units. Stretching the full width of the browser window, Twig is the industry’s first ad unit that is always at the top or bottom of the frame and has an opt-in full page expansion, allowing advertisers to bring a rich interactive environment directly to the user. As with the other AdFrames ad units, Twig is offered with VideoEgg’s cost-per-engagement (CPE) model, ensuring advertisers only pay when a user engages with the ad.

The partnership also expands the reach of VideoEgg’s ad network, adding access to thousands of additional blogs and web sites and vastly extending the company’s reach into the online blogging community. Launch partners include Orbitcast, Jake Ludington’s MediaBlab, Geeks are Sexy, Make Use Of and Blog Net News.

“VideoEgg continues to grow its network with environments that deliver engaged audiences to brand advertisers,” said Brian Birtwistle, vice president of Audience Network at VideoEgg. “Many new media environments are an undervalued opportunity for advertisers. Twig changes this equation – especially for blogs. Now, thousands of Six Apart blogs can bring additional value to advertisers through the AdFrames experience.”

Advertisers such as Puma, Unilever and BMW use VideoEgg to increase the amount of time users spend with their brand content. The company’s model is changing the way brands deliver advertising and provides the industry’s most feature rich advertising experience. VideoEgg was recently recognized with ClickZ’s 2009 Marketing Excellence Award for its CPE pricing approach and accountable brand advertising platform.

About VideoEgg, Inc.

VideoEgg is a new kind of rich media advertising network that guarantees brand engagement. The network is composed of over 100 million uniques across more than 600 leading video, gaming and social network sites as well as social and mobile applications, bringing outstanding consumer reach and engagement to its advertising partners. An advertising innovator, VideoEgg was the first to commercialize interactive advertising overlays onto video, an approach that is being widely adopted by the industry. Founded in 2005 and based in San Francisco, with offices across North America, in the UK and Australia, the company is privately held and backed by August Capital, First Round Capital, Maveron, WPP and Focus Ventures. For more information on VideoEgg, please visit http://www.videoegg.com.

Follow VideoEgg on Twitter: http://twitter.com/videoegg

About Six Apart

Six Apart Ltd. is a leading social media software and services company and the maker of the TypePad premier hosted blogging service, the Movable Type social publishing platform, and Vox, a free blogging service for friends and families. Six Apart Media provides advertising solutions for leading brands and influential bloggers, and Six Apart Services offers a wide range of web site development services dedicated to help publishers and corporations thrive in today’s social media landscape. Founded in 2001, Six Apart is a global company with its headquarters in San Francisco, and offices in Tokyo, Paris and New York City. For more information, visit the Six Apart corporate web site at http://www.sixapart.com.

AdFrames and VideoEgg are trademarks, servicemarks or registered trademarks in the United States and other countries. All other brands, names, or trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.

LOS ANGELES – Buzznet, which operates the web’s largest community of pop culture web sites with an audience of 40 million unique monthly users, announced that it has changed its name to Buzz Media, Inc. The newly-named company will focus on the continued growth of its socially programmed web sites, including Celebuzz, Buzznet, the Superficial, SocialiteLife, What Would Tyler Durden Do, Stereogum, Idolator, Just Jared and Absolute Punk.

In addition, Buzz Media announced that it has secured a new round of financing totaling $12.5 million. Focus Ventures, a Palo Alto, California based venture firm with more than $830 million under management, joined the latest round. Existing investors, including Anthem Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, Redpoint Ventures and Sutter Hill Ventures, also participated in the round.

Buzz Media’s unique social programming platform enables its professional editorial teams to leverage the programming contributions from its audience of millions of passionate and knowledgeable members. This approach allows the company to cost-effectively program thousands of topics in a deep and dynamic manner, driving a large, engaged, influential and loyal audience across its leading pop culture branded properties.

“This latest round of financing further validates our strategy of using social programming to build the most authentic and authoritative pop culture brands on the web,” said Tyler Goldman, CEO, Buzz Media. “In these challenging economic times, it’s also extremely efficient.”

Buzz Media will use the funds for the continued growth of its portfolio of leading pop culture properties. More than 40 million people worldwide visit Buzz Media properties every month. The company’s pop culture focused portfolio includes leading online music and celebrity destinations.

“Buzz Media’s unique publishing approach has not only allowed it to build the leading pop culture brands on the web, it has also enabled the company to produce highly programmed campaigns within its portfolio of leading branded properties for advertisers to engage its large and influential audience,” said Steve Bird at Focus Ventures. “We believe that these types of highly targeted and content-rich experiences are a major part of the future of advertising on the web, and are pleased to lead this new round of funding.”

Focus Ventures, Buzz Media’s newest backer, specializes in privately held, expansion stage technology companies. Other investments have included EqualLogic, acquired by Dell, Pure Digital, and Six Apart.

About Buzz Media Inc.

Buzz Media Inc. is the web’s largest pop culture community. By utilizing its proprietary social media platform, the Buzz Media team brings together professional news content, respected voices in the industry, and user-generated input to create the most up-to-the-minute, deep and dynamic content on the web, allowing passionate members the ability to consume, create, and connect. Celebuzz is a pop culture and community destination presenting the most comprehensive and colorful coverage on celebrity. Buzznet is one of the fastest growing online music communities providing fans the platform to create in-depth music experiences surrounding artists and bands they love.

For more information, please visit: buzz-media.com.