Industry veteran Frannie Danzinger has recently joined Bizo (www.bizo.com), the world’s largest business audience marketing platform, where she will lead strategic account development and media strategies. She joined the company during a period of triple-digit run-rate growth and we wanted to hear first hand about her new role and about current media buying trends.

Otilia Otlacan: Congratulations on your recent move to Bizo! It’s been a week already – how does it feel, what do you like most about your role at Bizo?

Frannie Danzinger: My move to Bizo feels fantastic! What I like most is the culture and the passion fueled by great people.

Otilia Otlacan: Could you share with us some of the projects that you’ll be working on?

Frannie Danzinger: As Director of Marketplace Development, I am creating two Advisory Councils, one for CMO’s/Marketing Directors and one for Agencies (Media Planners/Buyers). The goal of these Advisory Councils is to foster a thought-provoking environment for peer-to-peer networking and communication, while impacting and shaping the future of digital marketing. I will also focus on furthering communications with marketers and agencies on how Bizo can help accelerate digital success starting with a sound marketing and media strategy.

Otilia Otlacan: You have a wealth of experience in B2B media strategy. In your opinion, how does audience targeting find its place into the mix?

Frannie Danzinger: Thank you. My recent move over to Bizo was fueled by my obsession with not only making sense of great data, but using this data with strategic vision to help marketers succeed in the current, fast-paced, highly competitive environment. Audience targeting is pretty simple and makes perfect sense! The greatest challenge and also the greatest opportunity is building a media strategy that is nimble enough to use the compelling data to learn, to grow and ultimately, to succeed. Additionally, audience targeting certainly can be successful on its own merits (assuming it meets the needs of stated objectives), but also should be considered as a part of an overall strategic approach, and multi-faceted media program.

Otilia Otlacan: Numerous reports have surfaced in the past couple of years about the unintentional budget waste happening in many agencies. Are there any specific tools or metrics available to B2B media buyers to help maximize the efficiency of online campaigns?

Frannie Danzinger: This is a pretty challenging question to answer. I don’t think “budget waste” is necessarily attributed to agencies, nor marketers, per se. In digital media specifically, budget waste is really a function of the need to test, learn, optimize and repeat, to garner the greatest levels of success. So one marketer’s waste is another marketer’s investment in getting the most out of a given campaign or program, as long as learnings are being applied methodically to optimize performance. As the optimization process advances, waste percentage gets smaller, however the best online campaigns are still seeing 95%+ waste. This begs another interesting discussion around the notion of “waste” itself. If the core KPIs or a given program involve driving traffic to a destination URL or engaging with an audience and 95% of the audience targeted still did not take action, an additional measure of awareness or brand lift should be considered as well. In turn, this changes the view of waste, and properly channels the expectations of a media effort against primary and secondary KPIs.

Otilia Otlacan: In your view, which of the current media buying trends will have the highest impact in 2012?

Frannie Danzinger: The greatest impact in this coming year will come from the maximization of true, quality, content integration in messaging, coupled with that content reaching the most succinctly targeted audience.

Otilia Otlacan: Last but not least, is there anything else you would like to tell our readers?

Frannie Danzinger: I feel lucky to be in this every-changing world of marketing each and every day. The environment that we face is both exciting and scary all rolled up into one, and those opposing emotions have a profound effect on the accelerated energy in our business. If you are reading this all the way through, I congratulate you on sharing my passion and energy, and encourage you to dig deeper, father and smarter with every thought you have, and to understand that the wild and crazy media ideas we come up with, can all become reality – keep digging!

About Frannie Danzinger
Prior to joining Bizo, Frannie Danzinger spent more than 14 years at gyro (formerly HSR Business to Business and GyroHSR), a leading business-to-business advertising agency. Most recently, she led gyro’s global media strategy practice as the senior vice president of media.  Danzinger was instrumental in gyro’s media business expansion, growing overall media revenue by more than 250 percent and building a global media team of 20.   Key media clients included Lincoln Financial Corporation, Dymo, Pitney Bowes and PNC.  Prior to this role, Danzinger founded ProMedia LLC, where she served as president and media director.  While running ProMedia, Danzinger was instrumental in establishing first-to-market media ideas for clients such as Flight Options, Avantair, Cleveland Grand Prix and Duke Energy, while exceeding expected ROI benchmarks.  Before launching ProMedia, Frannie was associate media director at Wyse Advertising in Cleveland.

About Bizo
Bizo is how marketers reach and engage business professionals, wherever they travel online. Bizo can precisely target more than 100 million professionals around the world, including more than 80 percent of the U.S. business population. This unprecedented reach and targeting gives marketers cost-effective access and insight into business professionals – the most valuable online audience segment. Simply put, Bizo knows business audiences. More than 400 leading brands including AMEX, Monster, Salesforce.com, Microsoft, and FedEx count on the precise display ad targeting, social media measurement, and deep audience analytics that the Bizo Audience Marketing Platform provides to successfully execute their branding and direct response initiatives.

For more information on Bizo, or for a free look at the Bizographic make-up of your website audience, visit www.bizo.com.

Research finds “huge untapped potential” in social advertising

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – With Facebook’s initial public offering last week, the social networking giant can look ahead to a potentially huge new source of revenue from “social advertising,” according to new research by MIT Sloan School of Management Associate Professor of Marketing Catherine Tucker. Tucker says that Facebook itself is only beginning to recognize the “untapped potential” of this kind of advertising fueled by its own technology.

Tucker’s research counters the prevailing view of recent years that social network websites are unfruitful venues for paid advertising. Instead, she finds that social advertising has been under-valued and underrated as a revenue stream and as an effective way to deliver messages, though only if those messages are delivered the right way.

“Facebook has only recently figured out what is unique about all the data they collect,” says Tucker. “Facebook knows who peoples’ friends are, which can be hugely valuable to marketers. Feeding that social network into the Facebook algorithm creates huge and under-exploited profit potential.”

In social advertising, marketers use online social relationships to target and improve their ads. For her new research paper, Tucker examined data from an experiment in which a nonprofit charity used both traditional and social advertising on Facebook. Tucker found that the social ads, which were targeted to friends of `fans’ of the nonprofit on Facebook, attracted far more clicks than those that were not. “When you target ads based on who is friends with whom, you can double the number of click,” she says. “This is because advertisers can uncover consumers who could also get excited about their product.”

“Social advertising is not necessarily replacing display advertising,” adds Tucker. “Rather, it is a different and more effective form of targeted advertising that still remains unrefined, even on Facebook.” So far, Facebook’s algorithm appears to treat all Facebook friends equally, Tucker explains. “But among your friends, certain people have more influence; they are the `gatekeepers’ whom you tend to follow more closely. When Facebook refines its algorithm to incorporate such gatekeepers as part of social advertising, we will see ever greater improvements in advertising response.”

But Facebook must be careful about how it uses such powerful information, Tucker cautions. “There is a level of intrusiveness that no advertiser should cross. Advertisers must avoid being overt in their attempts to exploit social networks in their advertising. If Facebook too explicitly takes advantage of your friend, it could cross that line.” For example, in her study she finds that an ad that states explicitly, “Be like your friend” deters users, who could resent that Facebook or any other company is openly commercializing friendship. But if the consumer is simply informed that “Susan likes this,” it is not seen as a personal intrusion. “Speculatively, the results suggest that intrusive or highly personal advertising is more acceptable if done algorithmically by a faceless entity such as a computer than when it is the result of evident human agency,” Tucker writes.

These are the kinds of issues with which Facebook itself is grappling as it gets more deeply into social advertising. “Facebook is not giving much guidance to advertisers about how to use this new technology, partly because it is so new. But the results of my research suggest that social networks will be able to exploit their unique data on who is friends with whom to enlarge their share of advertising dollars.”

Study reveals gap in brands’ perceptions of local digital advertising activity compared to reality of implementation; calls attention to need for education and assessment of localized business strategies

ST. LOUIS – GMS Local, a service of GroupM and provider of local online services for national brands, announced research revealing a gap in the perceived local digital media activity expressed by national brands with brick and mortar locations versus what is actually being implemented. While 69 percent of marketers surveyed indicate they spend greater than the national average of 25 percent of budgets allocated to local marketing, 33 percent have yet to implement basic local digital efforts that positively impact business performance, such as online business directory listings. An exploration of the research is detailed in the white paper “Perception vs. Execution: Examination of Brands’ Local Business Strategies Reveals Gaps to Act On.”

As the Internet speeds to the forefront of local advertising, marketers are bullish about their current and future investments in local advertising – particularly in local digital media, the research revealed. Eighty-three percent of marketers surveyed expect their local online spending to increase at a greater rate than the projected national growth (25 percent) over the next three years. Such growth supports the expansive consumer activity happening in the local digital marketplace, where up to 20 percent of searches conducted have local intent (jumping to 40 percent on mobile devices), and the adoption of location-based check-in services is happening in the masses, with companies such as Foursquare topping 1 billion check-ins. According to Borrell Associates, local digital advertising is expected to grow 18 percent in 2012, with local online spend projected to surpass all other channels by 2015. This growth, compared to the gap in what marketing executives perceive their brands are doing at the local level and the reality of their execution over the past 12 months – and into 2012 – shows national advertisers are missing the opportunity for sizeable gains.

“Every single data point we see shows consumers becoming more mobile and reliant on digital for their local information. This rapid consumer shift has created challenges for brands as they attempt to keep up, and we are seeing a willingness to invest, as validated in this research,” said Chris Copeland, CEO, GroupM Search. “The research also shows a clear disconnect between what brands believe they are doing with those investments and what is actually being done. We speak to advertisers daily that have enormous blind spots in local digital coverage, and who welcome the education and strategy needed to resolve their willingness to spend and target which is hindered by the inability to determine what to do first and next.”

Additional insights from the research include:

- One of three national brands has yet to invest in the basic local digital effort of online business directory listings.

- Only 55 percent of national brands surveyed have initiated geo-modified paid search campaigns.

- While half of all consumers are making business selections off consumer ratings and reviews, less than 50 percent of national advertisers invest in local online review sites.

- Thirty-two percent of marketers attribute their insufficient engagement to a lack of awareness, with respondents specifically stating they are unaware of offerings, don’t understand them or believe them to be unnecessary.

- Fifty-eight percent indicate that funding prevents them from engaging more in the local digital space.

Brands will continue placing big bets on the online local space given the consumer shift to this space for their discovery efforts, with 70 percent of marketing executives for national brands reporting their local online investments as a percent of total local advertising outpace current national averages. As detailed in the whitepaper, national advertisers can overcome these challenges with deeper education around opportunity in the local digital space and self-assessment of the reality of their allocation and programs.

Additionally, following a three-step action plan will help advertisers reach optimal performance and local digital success:

- Conduct an online local listing business audit

- Diagnose the ‘local storefront’ for your brand by applying social media tools that listen to consumer sentiment at the local store level

- Practice education, innovation and experimentation

“Technology and mobility have opened the gateway for national brands to be able to create personalized experiences with consumers at the local level,” said Steve Scherfy, Local and Mobile Manager for GMS Local. “From business location listings to local social intelligence, managing the entire digital storefront is key.”

For the study, marketing executives and managers of national brands with a minimum of 500 physical locations were surveyed. The comparative study, conducted between September and November 2011, set forth to investigate the challenges that brands within the digital marketplace face, including the ability to understand emerging technology, analyze what is relevant and act on these tools based on their business needs. It also explored how engaged each national brand is with local marketing. Survey questions with local digital marketing averages and best practices from national data were utilized to gain reaction and comparative “self-assessments” against those averages by participating respondents and brands.

About GMS Local

GMS Local is a service of GroupM, and comprehensive digital solution focused on creating meaningful connections between brands and consumers at the local level. Using paid, earned and owned media solutions, GMS Local maximizes local consumer engagement opportunities for national advertisers with an extensive local footprint. Local digital marketing perspective can be found at www.gmslocal.com, or on the GMS Local blog.

Former AOL VP will drive the growth of OpenX’s breakthrough advertising technology service for large publishers

LOS ANGELES – OpenX Technologies, Inc. (OpenX), the world’s leading independent provider of digital advertising technology, announced the appointment of senior online advertising industry executive Eric Rosenthal as General Manager of the company’s Enterprise business. In the newly created role, Rosenthal will be responsible for rapidly increasing adoption of OpenX Enterprise, the company’s paradigm-shifting Software as a Service revenue serving platform. The appointment is immediately effective.

Launched in February 2011, OpenX Enterprise is the company’s digital ad technology platform that combines the capabilities of a true premium ad server with new, advanced ad exchange technology which enables publishers to maximize yield across all their ad revenue channels in real-time. Specifically, unified real-time ad decisions allow publishers to maximize the value of every ad impression, including allowing them to take full advantage of a wide range of Real-Time Bidding buyers in a controlled way. Combined with groundbreaking ad operations tools, highly sophisticated data capabilities, and massively flexible architecture with complete APIs, OpenX Enterprise solves some of the most fundamental challenges facing publishers.

“We’re very pleased that Eric is joining the team and look forward to him using his deep experience and knowledge of the industry to help grow our business and continue furthering the global adoption of OpenX Enterprise,” said Tim Cadogan, chief executive officer, OpenX. “Eric brings a wealth of experience from working directly with publishers and has a rare knowledge and understanding of what they need in today’s rapidly changing online advertising ecosystem to be successful.”

Prior to joining OpenX, Rosenthal was at AOL where he was Vice President of National Sales and a member of the executive team that led Publisher Partner Development for AOL’s Rich Media Ad Serving platform (Pictela) for both publishers and agencies. In 2011, Rosenthal’s team achieved a tenfold increase in revenue. Rosenthal also brings experience as Senior Sales Director at DoubleClick (now Google DoubleClick) where he helped generate an annual run rate of more than $50M. Prior to AOL, Rosenthal was Vice President of Sales at Kyte (now Kit Digital), a leading online, social media and mobile video platform for live and on-demand content, where he increased revenues by more than 200%.

“I’m extremely excited to join OpenX and help publishers maximize their ad revenue through OpenX’s unique revenue serving vision,” said Eric Rosenthal, general manager, Enterprise. “OpenX had an incredible 2011 with hundreds of publishers signing up to use OpenX Enterprise. It’s truly a great time to be joining the team and helping to scale the business.”

Rosenthal began his career as Regional Sales Manager at Verizon Business before holding roles at Solbright (now part of Operative) and Panther CDN (now CDNetworks). He is a graduate of Ithaca College and holds an MBA in Marketing from The George Washington University School of Business.

About OpenX

OpenX is the world’s leading independent provider of digital advertising technology that enables businesses to manage and maximize their ad revenue. OpenX products, including OpenX Enterprise and OpenX Market, provide a comprehensive revenue serving platform by combining ad serving with a unique ad exchange.

OpenX Technologies, Inc. is based in Los Angeles and is backed by leading investors including Accel Partners, Index Ventures, SAP Ventures, AOL Ventures, Mitsui & Co. Global Investment, Inc., Presidio Ventures and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures. For more information, please visit www.openx.com.

NYC, NY – MediaMind Technologies Inc., the leading independent provider of integrated digital advertising solutions, announced today the establishment of the MediaMind Global Publisher Unit (http://publisher.mediamind.com ). Following the unification of three technology powerhouses—MediaMind, Unicast, and Eyewonder under the DG umbrella—now online publishers have access to additional resources and services worldwide to bolster their rich media offering.

Typically the first to adopt new advertising technologies, online publishers demand innovative solutions along with white-glove service supported by teams that understand their business. The Global Publisher Unit helps publishers expand beyond the basic ad unit experience and scale their rich media product offering with advanced, innovative technologies such as dynamic creative optimization, mobile and in-stream video.

The MediaMind Global Publisher Unit has collaborated with the IAB to develop four of the six IAB Rising Star Formats recently launched for North America. In response to MediaMind’s announcement of this new Unit, Peter Minnium, Head of Digital Brand Initiatives at the IAB stated, “The IAB views the MediaMind Global Publisher Unit as a key partner in setting industry standards and developing innovative formats that will enable consumers to connect with brands more effectively.”

Many of the leading global publishers already benefit from partnering with this unit. “As a unified team, we are even better positioned to support key global publishers such as MSN, Yahoo!, the budding social media marketplace, as well as news and entertainment broadcast channels such as NBC, CBS, etc.,” said James Dillon, Senior Vice President of the MediaMind Global Publisher Unit.

For more information on MediaMind, visit http://www.mediamind.com .

About MediaMind
MediaMind, a division of DG (NASDAQ:DGIT), is a leading global provider of digital advertising campaign management solutions to advertising agencies and advertisers. MediaMind provides media and creative agencies, advertisers and publishers with an integrated platform to manage campaigns across digital media channels and a variety of formats, including rich media, in-stream video, display and search. During 2010, MediaMind delivered campaigns for approximately 9,000 brand advertisers, servicing approximately 3,800 media and creative agencies across approximately 8,200 global web publishers in 64 countries.

Canada’s technology incubator, Intertainment Media, takes stake in Toronto advertising technology start up

NEW YORK / LOS ANGELES / SAN MATEO / TORONTO – Intertainment Media Inc. (“Intertainment” or the “Company”) (TSXV:INT / OTCQX: ITMTF / FRA: I4T) announced that it has finalized its early stage investment in Shiny Ads, an award winning advertising technology company, which specializes in the sell-side automation of premium inventory for online publishers.

Shiny Ads and its suite of products is well positioned to capture a share of the estimated $14 billion dollar self-serve ad market. Winner of the Foreign Affairs Technology Growth Initiative and chosen by the IDC as a top 10 digital company to watch, Shiny Ads currently counts an impressive list of clients including CBS Interactive, DeviantArt.com, Wikia.com, AdWeek.com, Unanimis.co.uk, and SourceInterlink as well a number of other tier one brands.

“Intertainment Media is very excited to close its investment in Shiny Ads. The potential for this advertising technology to successfully deploy on a global scale is, in our opinion, phenomenal.” said David Lucatch, CEO of Intertainment Media. “Intertainment Media is committed to its philosophy of investing, nurturing and developing leading edge technologies digital and social media platforms and the Shiny Ads investment was a natural fit with that mandate.”

“We are extremely happy to have an organization such as Intertainment Media share in our vision for our technology.” said Roy Pereira, CEO and Founder of Shiny Ads. “We look forward to tapping into their experience and resources as we look to take Shiny Ads to the next level.”

“The investment in the Shiny Ads platform provides a fantastic strategic opportunity for Intertainment Media’s current portfolio of investments.” said Brad Parry, CMO of Intertainment Media. “The ability to more efficiently direct premium advertisers to our available inventory across our multiple platforms will ensure that we are securing the best possible returns for our inventory.”

The initial early stage investment of $250,000 will provide Intertainment Media with an ownership stake in Shiny Ads and also provides the opportunity for Intertainment Media to increase its investment by an equal amount within six months at today’s valuation and will also provide Intertainment Media with a seat on the Shiny Ads board.

About Intertainment Media – www.intertainmentmedia.com
Intertainment Media Inc. is one of Canada’s leading technology incubators and is focused on developing, nurturing and investing in technologies and companies that provide technology solutions for brands and consumers alike.
Intertainment Media also owns and operates a number of key properties including Ad Taffy, itiBiti, Ortsbo, Deal Frenzy and Magnum, with investments in leading edge technologies and social media platforms including theaudience.com . For more information on the Company and its properties, please visit www.intertainmentmedia.com

Headquartered in the Toronto, Canada region, with offices in New York, Los Angeles and San Mateo, CA, Intertainment Media Inc. is listed on the Toronto Venture Exchange under the symbol “INT” (TSXV:INT) and in the US on the OTCQX Exchange under the symbol “ITMTF”. Intertainment is also traded in Europe, on the XETRA Exchange under the symbol “I4T”.

About Shiny Ads – www.shinyads.com
Shiny Ads is an advertising technology company specializing in sell-side automation of premium inventory. The award-winning Self-Service Advertising Platform is a core product offering. With Shiny Ads, smaller advertisers are able to quickly and easily purchase advertising without the need of industry knowledge, graphic designers, or a large budget. Shiny Ads is NOT an ad network, nor does it solicit directly from advertisers or ad networks. Shiny Ads is a solutions provider that supports direct sales team and works in conjunction with ad networks – providing online publishers with access to an untapped revenue stream. Visit website at ShinyAds.com or check out the demo at vimeo.com/shinyads/intro.

MADE FASHION WEEK MADE to showcase design innovation
MADE to partner art and commerce
MADE to promote creativity across established and emerging platforms
MADE to support the growth of New York’s fashion community

New York, NY – When guests attend fashion shows or presentations at MADE Fashion Week with the MADE app on their mobile device, they will instantly receive images of looks as the models walk the runway. Further, users can make notes, tweet images and curate a custom look-book that can be e-mailed in real-time, enabling designers to instantly extend the reach of their designs beyond the runway. This app enables designers’ looks to stand the test of time and fosters commerce into buying season – and beyond.

Viewers watching MADE shows over Livestream on MilkMade.com can also enjoy the same benefits and features, since Sonic Notifyʼs technology, which is triggered by soundless audio signals, will also send content of the app through the userʼs home computer.

The MADE app will also include a show schedule, bios, contact and sales information for each MADE Designer. The app will be available for download on MilkMade.com, the Apple store and the Android Market Site on February 6th 2012.

About MADE
MADE was born from the successful Fashion Week collaboration that started in 2009. Now in its sixth season, MADE FASHION WEEK continues to showcase outstanding design talent and harness the energy of New York’s creative communities. The compelling program of events – over 50 fashion shows and presentations, parties, concerts, panel discussions and an unrivaled online presence (MILKMADE.COM) – has translated to success at a retail level and in the press, as well as in the highly coveted digital arena. MADE is a year-round, dynamic platform for connecting ascending talent in fashion, music, art and popculture with visionary brands to create new cultural platforms and communities.

Its vibrant atmosphere encourages creativity, fosters growth and challenges convention and MADE’s innovators are a powerful voice in the international dialogue who have initiated shifts in their collective industries.

About Sonic Notify
Sonic Notify enables consumer brands, event venues and broadcasters to reach individuals in real-time with highly-targeted content based on a user’s location and interests. Sonic Notify’s first-of-its-kind technology is integrated into a company’s existing mobile app, allowing the brand send multimedia content, like a song, coupon or advertisement, to any mobile device, or likewise, trigger an action on any mobile device. Launched in 2011, Sonic Notify’s technology uses advanced decoding algorithms and readily available, low-cost hardware to transmit imperceptible audio signals, opening up an array of new possibilities for brands, retailers, artists, broadcasters and large-scale event organizers to connect with their target audience using presence-based content. Sonic Notify is based in New York City, NY and was borne from the successful technology development firm Densebrain, as a collaboration between engineer Alex Morgan Bell and Densebrain founder Jonathan Glanz. For more information, visit www.sonicnotify.com.

Mojiva, the Mobile Ad Network and Mindshare Facilitates Insurance Provider’s Strategic Mobile Campaign

NEW YORK — Mojiva (www.mojiva.com), the mobile ad network that specializes in making “big idea,” cross-platform mobile strategies come to life at scale, today announced a multi-execution ad campaign with American Family Insurance (www.amfam.com) that emphasizes engagement and awareness with mobile audiences. The leading insurance provider offers auto, homeowners, life, health, business and farm/ranch insurance in 19 states. The campaign, which will run through February and is facilitated by Mindshare, includes mobile web and app buys on the Mojiva network and is highlighted by a sponsorship with a leading social gaming application.

The innovative American Family Insurance mobile campaign has three key executions for targeting all consumers 21+ who are on-the-go and looking for insurance:

· In-App Sponsorship – Through the highly integrated in-app sponsorship between AmericanFamily Insurance and a major social gaming application, players are alerted to a “word of the day” through Facebook and twitter profiles along with text and interstitial advertising in-app. Once the word is played, they are awarded with tips and tricks to help raise their scores when playing the game. American Family Insurance selected relevant words to elevate brand awareness while encouraging interaction.

· Request a Quote – With consumer convenience in mind, American Family Insurance provided consumers with the ability create a calendar reminder to contact agents to request a quote at a later date. This execution encapsulates the focus on making insurance easy and accessible while also leveraging the multi-function capabilities of mobile.

· Survival Guide – With recent extreme weather events, the survival guide execution provides consumers with tips on what to do during a natural disaster, which can be captured by using the phone’s screen shot functionalities, to save for later. The ad unit gives consumers the ability to contact an agent for additional assistance. The intent of this rich media piece was to add value to the user experience and make it easy for them to take the next step in buying insurance.

“With this campaign, we worked with American Family Insurance to identify mobile as a key medium for engaging in-market consumers, because thinking about insurance and actively pursuing a quote can happen almost anywhere,” said Christophe Dilworth of Mindshare.

“Mobile expands our campaign’s reach and influence, while offering an effective way to target appropriate audiences,” said Stephanie Oslie of American Family Insurance. “Because of mobile marketing’s strong demographic and geographic targeting capabilities, we can identify consumers in need of insurance products and services with ease.”

“We are seeing more and more companies from vertical markets such as insurance allocating a higher percentage of their media mix towards mobile as they begin to understand the potential reach, value and brand benefits of influencing target audiences on mobile devices,” said Tony Nethercutt, General Manager of North America for Mojiva. “American Family Insurance and Mindshare are making mobile an important component of their campaign and being extraordinarily creative in both executions and strategy.”

Crisp Media and Theorem Creations, who are members of the Mojiva Mobile Creative Alliance (mojivamca.com), were selected to develop the three different rich media creative executions.

About Mojiva
Mojiva (www.mojiva.com) is a mobile ad network, which reaches more than one billion devices globally and represents 8,000 mobile publishers and apps. Through deep and open integration with all major rich media providers and ad servers, Mojiva provides ad agencies with every imaginable mobile media execution across mobile web sites, apps and devices. Founded in May 2008 and based in New York City, Mojiva is led by ateam of advertising and media veterans from Google, Doubleclick, Yahoo!, Microsoft, AOL and AdMob, with more than 100 years of collective experience in mobile marketing and technology.Mojiva is an independent mobile ad network operating under parent company Mojiva Inc., which has a total of $35 million venture funding from Pelion Venture Partners, Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments and Shamrock Capital.

The game may be over but the talk about the Super Bowl 2012 ads goes on. Social video ad company Sharethrough (www.sharethrough.com) has just released some interesting findings: the extended cuts and teaser videos for the Super Bowl actually generated nearly five times as many views as the actual ads themselves.

The graphic below shows that the teasers and extended cuts have reached ~55 million views (and counting!) while the actual TV ads recorded ~12 million views.

Allan Johnson, Content Strategist at Sharethrough, has kindly agreed to give us further insights.

Otilia Otlacan: What are the main drivers behind such a discrepancy and behind the viral quality shown by most Super Bowl ads?

Allan Johnson: The discrepancy has a lot to do with expectations. What’s great about Super Bowl spots is that people are conditioned to experience them as content they want to watch, not interruptive ads. People expect them to be good because historically, they are. They have big budgets and big cameos, and there’s way more creative freedom offered to the agencies producing the spots. Brands set out to entertain as a priority. Still, everyone knows that the spots themselves are going to have to be :30 or :60 in order to air on TV. So if you know the content is going to be great and there can be an extended cut which might run another 47 seconds longer, but which tells a story unconstrained by the :30 intervals, then viewers naturally know that the extended cuts will be the more entertaining format. Viewers are smart. Watch the Seinfeld ad that was edited for the Super Bowl and then watch the extended cut and it’s clear that the extra time makes a big impact in being able to properly set up the jokes.

Otilia Otlacan: What is the shelf life of a Super Bowl ad, can you comment on how quickly the online buzz vanishes post-game?

Allan Johnson: For a truly viral ad that really impacts the culture, the shelf life of a Super Bowl spot can last for months, even years. Probably the best, most recent example of such a spot was last year’s “The Force” for VW. That spot continues to perform exceptionally well. In addition to still being used on TV, it has steadily added millions of views each month and has collected over 50 million as of today. It will be interesting to see if such an impactful spot exists from this year’s crop. Both the Seinfled Acura spot and the Ferris Bueller Honda spot are showing signs of long lives. “The Bark Side” also looks as if it might stay relevant for month’s to come. “The Bark Side” is currently outperforming VW’s actual Super Bowl spot, “The Dog Strikes Back,” by 2 to 1, even though it was released as that spot’s teaser.

Otilia Otlacan: The top 5 most viral Super Bowl ads of 2012 were all car commercials. Is this a coincidence, have these campaigns been managed better, or is there an organic affinity between cars and the Super Bowl?

Allan Johnson: This was clearly a dominant year for the auto industry. What’s interesting to note, is that just 5 years ago, Audi was the only car manufacturer even advertising in the Super Bowl. They’ve come a long way fast. I think their preeminence was a direct consequence of VW’s success last year with “The Force.” That was such a runaway success that all their direct competitors in the auto industry felt that they needed to catch up, and it turned into an arms race. It’ll be interesting to see what happens next year. Will the other industries feel left in the dust themselves and come back with a vengeance? I wouldn’t be surprised to see this happen.

About Sharethrough
Sharethrough provides brands with a repeatable, scalable and transparent approach to distributing video content that guarantees viewership and maximizes shared engagement. Sharethrough drives engaged audiences for brand videos through its social video ad products, unique publisher network and proprietary targeting and optimization tools. Sharethrough is used by many of the world’s leading brands, including Sony, Microsoft, General Motors, Victoria’s Secret, Nestle and LEGO, as well as top agencies such as Pereira & O’Dell, Universal McCann, Evolution Bureau and Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. Founded in 2008, Sharethrough is a privately held company based in San Francisco, Calif. For more information about Sharethrough, please visit www.sharethrough.com.

White paper outlines the best and worst metrics for optimizing display media campaigns

SALT LAKE CITY – mediaFORGE, a dynamic display media provider, released a white paper detailing its position on why optimizing campaigns for impressions, post-impression attribution, and click-through rate (CTR) does not give an adequate understanding of campaign performance, and how post-engagement is able to substantiate performance with much more meaningful results.

Given the influx of media coverage around online ad measurement, and the creation of the “Making Measurement Make Sense” (3MS) initiative by IAB, ANA, and 4As, it’s clear that advertisers are consensually dissatisfied with current performance metrics. What’s less clear is how to identify the best solution.

mediaFORGE’s white paper was written to empower advertisers to make the right decisions when exploring campaign metrics amidst the growing clamor of proposed solutions.

“Optimizing campaigns is about much more than identifying a metric to report against,” explains mediaFORGE CEO, Tony Zito. “It also determines the design of your campaign, including who you’re targeting and how. It’s important that advertisers understand the implications of the metrics they choose, and we hope this paper will give them a step in the right direction.”

The full whitepaper can be downloaded from the mediaFORGE website at mediaFORGE.com/resources. Some of the paper’s key conclusions include:

- Limited viewable ad inventory challenges validity of attributed view-through conversions.

- Narrowing target audience to optimize campaigns for clicks leads to substantial opportunity cost.

- Campaigns should be optimized for engagement to maximize yield.

- Tracking ad engagement validates that impressions were viewable.

- Clicks are not the exclusive indicator of purchase intent.

About mediaFORGE

mediaFORGE is a dynamic display media company that delivers a personalized and interactive ad experience designed to capture prospects and increase revenue. Its pioneering shared-revenue model charges marketers according to measured engagement that can be attributed to incremental revenue – never for impressions or view-throughs. With mediaFORGE, online marketers can employ the best aspects of display advertising with a low-risk business model, transparent data reports, and best-in-class account managers, making it the most compelling and efficient paths to optimal return on ad spend (ROAS). For more information, visit mediaFORGE.com.

CPG Brand Website Visitors Spend 37% More on the Brand and 53% More on Product Category in Retail Stores

Website Features that Attract Visitors Include Compelling Brand Value Messages Updated on a Frequent Basis Along with Content that Engages Visitors

RESTON, VA – A groundbreaking study from Accenture (NYSE: ACN), comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), and dunnhumbyUSA aimed at helping consumer packaged goods (CPG) marketers better understand the link between consumers’ usage of brand websites and their in-store brand buying behavior found that visitors to CPG brand websites buy 37% more in retail stores than non-visitors to the brand site. The study, Are Your CPG Brands Maximizing the Return on Your Digital Investment?, also concluded, that to maximize impact, website content needs to be updated regularly and contain brand value messaging that both engages visitors while also providing compelling reasons for them to purchase the brand at retail.

“CPG marketers currently invest millions of dollars in their brand websites, and the results of this study confirm the importance of this investment. Brand websites can attract and influence the behavior of the most valuable segments of any brand’s franchise,” said comScore vice president Mike Zeman. “But it’s clear that the content and utilities on these sites need to be highly engaging if they are to attract a meaningful numbers of visitors. Marketers who do this successfully stand to gain an attractive return by growing their brands’ sales in retail stores.”

Brand Website Visitors are Heavier Buyers of the Brand and Category at Retail

The study found that visitors to CPG brand websites are valuable and frequent buyers of the brand in retail stores, completing 41 percent more transactions than non-visitors. As a result, brand websites are able to attract heavier-than-average brand buyers, who spend 37 percent more on the brand in retail stores than non-visitors. Website visitors also are also heavier buyers within a brand’s product category, spending 53 percent more category dollars than non-visitors.

John LaRocca, Vice President, Strategic Partnerships at dunnhumbyUSA, noted: “The Accenture / comScore / dunnhumbyUSA research highlights the significant yet underutilized potential of brand websites and digital communications as key drivers for building customer loyalty and preference for CPG brands. Since website visitors have higher affinity to the brand and the overall product category, there is an opportunity for brand marketers to drive loyalty through personalizing the website experience, catering to the preferences of their best customers.”

Compelling Features of Successful Brand Websites

The length of time that visitors spend on a brand’s website was found to be a key determinant of their likelihood to buy the brand in retail stores. The study identified three important characteristics of brand websites that are associated with a higher likelihood that visitors will buy the brand in retail stores:

1. Brand value messaging that provides a persuasive reason for a website visitor to buy the brand

2. Fresh content updated on at least a weekly basis, such as “pulse surveys”, user generated reviews, status on weight loss plans, etc.

3. Content that engages visitors. This can include promotions, philanthropic appeals, demonstrations, live chat, apps and games.

Jerry Lohse, senior director, Accenture Interactive said, “Marketers who create compelling CPG brand website experiences for consumers are extremely effective in driving incremental and profitable in-store sales.” To illustrate his point, Lohse said, “Analysis shows that consumers visiting the best of the ten CPG brand websites evaluated in the research study, spent over 200 percent more on the brand than non-visitors. Moreover, the research shows that the price paid per unit of the brand at the best of the ten CPG brand websites in the study was two percent more than for non-visitors in brand.”

Research Study Design

The study was based on an integrated panel of one million U.S. Internet users who have given comScore explicit permission to have their online activities continuously measured and matched to their in-store brand buying behavior provided by dunnhumbyUSA. This integrated panel provided a single-source, privacy-protected data mart containing each panelist’s online activities and their in-store buying behavior. Using the comScore-dunnhumbyUSA database, the study examined ten individual food and household product brands with annual sales between $40 million and $3 billion. These brands had at least 100,000 unique visitors to their websites and as many as 2.3 million per month. The study covered the time period from September 2010 through February 2011. Leveraging comScore’s knowledge of the digital user, dunnhumby’s shopper understanding, and Accenture’s experience in operating and maintaining consumer packaged goods websites, the study quantified the linkage between CPG brand buying at retail and digital behavior by comparing the in-store purchase behavior of website visitors and non-visitors and identifying the common components of successful CPG brand websites. For website performance scoring criteria, the Accenture Web Evaluator was used for this survey. The Accenture Web Evaluator provides a comprehensive assessment of how well companies use their websites to attract and retain customers, support and reinforce their brand, deliver services and generate sales.

The research was conducted with the endorsement of the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) and the Food Marketing Institute (FMI), and the results were presented January 29th at their joint board meeting in Orlando. “Creating a better understanding of the relationship between a brand’s online presence and real-world shopping is important, relevant and timely to our membership and their future growth potential,” noted Denny Belcastro, Executive Vice President, Industry Affairs and Collaboration, GMA. Patrick Walsh, Senior Vice President, Industry Relations, Education and Research, FMI, added, “Finally some tangible observations pointing to a return on our members’ brand digital spend… looking forward to the next phase that adds social media as well.”

Additional Information

To obtain a copy of the study report, Are Your CPG Brands Maximizing the Return on Your Digital Investment? please visit any of the following links:

- www.accenture.com/us-en/Pages/insight-cpg-brands-maximizing-return-digital-investment.aspx

- www.comscore.com/cpg_brands_maximizing_return_digital_investment

- www.dunnhumby.com/us/cpg-brands-maximizing-return-digital-investment

A follow up study is planned for 2012 to help CPG brand marketers better understand the difference between brand websites, social networks and other digital marketing channels, including display advertising, in their ability to reach specific types of in-store brand buyers. CPG brand marketers interested in participating in this research study should contact the following:

- Mike Gorshe, Senior Director, Accenture Consumer Goods & Services at michael.a.gorshe@accenture.com or (312) 693-5818

- Mike Zeman, Vice President, comScore CPG Marketing Solutions at mzeman@comscore.com or (312) 775-6630

- John LaRocca, Vice President, Strategic Partnerships, dunnhumbyUSA, at john.larocca@us.dunnhumby.com or (513)-632-0613.

Deadline to participate is March 31, 2012.

About Accenture
Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with more than 244,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the world’s most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. The company generated net revenues of US$25.5 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2011. Its home page is www.accenture.com.

About comScore
comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) is a global leader in measuring the digital world and preferred source of digital business analytics. comScore provides syndicated and custom solutions in online audience measurement, e-commerce, advertising, search, video and mobile and offers dedicated analysts with digital marketing and vertical-specific industry expertise. Advertising agencies, publishers, marketers and financial analysts turn to comScore for the industry-leading solutions needed to craft successful digital, marketing, sales, product development and trading strategies. For more information, please visit www.comscore.com/companyinfo.

About dunnhumbyUSA
dunnhumby is the leader in personalizing the world’s experience of retailers and brands. Analyzing data from over 350 million people in 28 countries, we help companies put customers at the center of every decision. We use our insight to improve customers’ experience of stores and communications to earn their lifetime loyalty. Our work with some of the world’s biggest retailers and brands has demonstrated that companies which deliver value to customers through personalization become and stay their customers’ first choice. This strategic approach to putting the customer first in business improves our clients’ like-for-like sales and profit margins – or, put simply, their brand value. dunnhumbyUSA is a joint venture of The Kroger Company and London-based dunnhumby. Employing more than 1,900 people in 30 offices in Europe, Asia and the Americas, dunnhumby serves a prestigious list of companies including The Kroger Co., Tesco, Coca-Cola, General Mills, Kimberly-Clark, Macy’s, Panera Bread Company, PepsiCo and Procter & Gamble. dunnhumby also includes the word of mouth marketing experts BzzAgent and price optimization company KSS Retail. For more information, visit www.dunnhumby.com.

Leading Search Syndication Network Boosted By Direct Advertiser Growth

NEW YORK – Powered by increased spend from direct advertisers, adMarketplace, the leading search syndication platform, posted its fourth consecutive record quarter as revenue increased 78% in the fourth quarter over the same period in 2010.

“The Internet’s largest search advertisers are demanding search performance at scale outside of the major engines and these results show that adMarketplace delivers,” said Chief Executive Officer James Hill.

Direct advertiser spend increased 115% year over year while the average cost-per-click increased 44% from the year-ago quarter. This was driven by exceptional performance on adMarketplace’s platform.

adMarketplace published three case studies in the fourth quarter documenting outstanding performance results that it delivered to Volvo, ADT and CreditCards.com.

“We are seeing increased budgets from 85% of our direct advertisers who pass us sufficient, relevant performance data,” said Adam Epstein, President and Chief Operating Officer. “This gives us the ability to scale our search syndication platform.”

adMarketplace expects continued growth in 2012, aggressively hiring engineers and salespeople. The company hired 25 new employees in Q4.

adMarketplace’s success comes amid mixed results from the other major search syndication networks. In their recent fourth quarter results, Google reported a paltry 15% gain in network revenue and Yahoo reported that search revenue declined 3%. Last week, InfoSpace purchased TaxACT for a reported $285 Million, diversifying itself away from its search syndication business.

About adMarketplace: The Internet’s largest marketers and agencies rely on adMarketplace to deliver search performance outside of Google, Bing, and Yahoo. With over 250 million searches each day across distribution channels worldwide, and backed by powerful, easy to use tools and expert account specialists, adMarketplace is the leading platform for search syndication advertising.

- Mobile Content & Access Was Largest Mobile & Social Media Sector in 2011 at $39.2 Billion, with Revenues from Business Segment Accounting for 58% of Total

- Mobile Advertising & Marketing was Fastest Growing Sector in 2011, Expanding 53.7%, Led by Advertising Segment’s 60.9% Growth

- Online Social Media Was Smallest Industry Sector at $2.83 billion, with Social Networks the Largest and Fastest Growing Segment

STAMFORD, Conn. – Total U.S. mobile & social media revenue – including consumer and business access, content, advertising and marketing – increased 30.2% to $45.38 billion in 2011, according to new data released by PQ Media (www.pqmedia.com), the leading provider of media econometrics. Mobile & social media revenue rose at a compound annual growth rate of 28.7% from 2006-2011, and is expected to grow at an accelerating 30.8% annual rate in 2012, according to the PQ Media U.S. Mobile & Social Media Forecast 2012-16.

PQ Media released the new U.S. Mobile & Social Media Forecast 2012-16 last week at MediaPost’s Mobile Insider Summit in Key Largo, FL, where CEO Patrick Quinn provided attendees with an exclusive State of the Industry presentation. A free executive summary and table of contents, as well as the full report for purchase, are available here. PQ Media’s new Forecast goes well beyond other mobile & social media research reports, most of which track only advertising spending. PQ Media for the first time collected, analyzed, defined, segmented and forecast the entire mobile & social media landscape, providing the most comprehensive and detailed perspective on the fastest-growing communications industry segment.

PQ Media identified 3 broad sectors of mobile & social media – mobile advertising & marketing, mobile content & access, and online social media. Within the three sectors, there are seven segments – mobile advertising, mobile marketing, consumer mobile content & access, business mobile content & access, social networks, blogs, and podcasts. Further, PQ Media identified 44 distinct revenue streams, such as mobile search advertising, mobile coupon marketing, paid mobile video downloads, business data access fees, social network advertising, blog marketing, and podcast business content, among many others.

Mobile content & access was by far the largest industry sector in 2011 with revenue of $39.17 billion, up 27.8%, as the business segment accounted for 58% of the total and the consumer segment, 42%. Mobile advertising & marketing was fastest growing sector in 2011, expanding 53.7% to $3.39 billion, as the advertising segment soared 60.9% and marketing surged 46.2%. Among the fastest growing mobile ad revenue streams were in-game, search and video. The marketing segment will grow faster than advertising from 2012-16, fueled by the location-based, coupons and marketing apps revenue streams, according to the PQ Media U.S. Mobile & Social Media Forecast 2012-16.

“The mobile media sector alone reached the $1 billion revenue mark faster than any communications industry in history in 2008, taking only five years compared with 16 for the internet,” said PQ Media’s Quinn. “Mobile will also reach the $100 billion mark in 2015 faster than any other communications industry, driven by several key growth drivers, including strong growth in overall mobile device penetration, the transition to smartphones and tablets, the torrent of new mobile content launches and the continued growth of consumer and business time spent with mobile media.”

Meanwhile, online social media was the smallest sector of mobile & social media in 2011, with $2.83 billion in revenues, but grew at a very strong 42.1%. Social networks was the largest and fastest growing segment by far, increasing 45.9% to $2.28 billion in 2011, according to PQ Media.

Together, mobile & social media accounted for 4.1% of overall communications industry revenue in 2011, up from only 1.3% in 2006. Eleven of the 44 mobile & social media revenue streams exceeded $1 billion in 2011, and 23 will do so by the end of 2016, according to the PQ Media U.S. Mobile & Social Media Forecast 2012-16.

About PQ Media

PQ Media (www.pqmedia.com) is the leading provider of global media econometrics and pioneer of emerging media research. PQ Media’s proprietary econometric research methodology and custom consulting services deliver actionable strategic intelligence to help its clients grow their media, entertainment and communications businesses. PQ Media partners with private equity firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson on the VSS Communications Industry Forecast, the U.S. industry’s benchmark for spending, consumption and growth data for 25 years. For more information, contact Gabriella Kallay at gkallay@pqmedia.com, Tabor Ames at tames@pqmedia.com, or call 921-0368.

With Facebook’s Timeline rolling out to all 800 million users, SodaHead.com, the web’s largest opinion based community, polled its users to get their thoughts on the new design. In a landslide, 70% of poll respondents stated that they did not like Timeline and hoped that Facebook would “lose it.” Only 20% indicated that they liked it, while 10% said that they were not Facebook users.

While 30% of users between ages 18 and 24 like Timeline, only 10% of those over 65 were happy with the new design. When broken down by gender, men and women had exactly the same opinion – 77% dislike Timeline, while 23% like it.

Full poll results can be seen at: http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/public-opinion-rejects-facebook-timeline-infographic/question-2429779/

About SodaHead
SodaHead (www.SodaHead.com) is the premier opinion-based discussion community where visitors discover, debate, and discuss today’s hottest issues.  Millions of SodaHeads share their unique views on hot topics, breaking news, and controversial issues and a diverse panel of staff writers provide original and exclusive content daily.  Users create personal profiles and engage with fellow members around shared interests.  Our site offers a wide variety of interactive features including slide shows, profile creation, groups, message boards, and original content.  SodaHead is also the best in class poll widget provider powering the polls for ABC News, Good Morning America, Shepard Smith at Fox News and many others. For more information on SodaHead, visit http://www.SodaHead.com

Bizo (www.bizo.com) has just announced a major new executive hire – Frannie Danzinger as Director of Market Development – and a fantastic growth of over 130%  in 2011. We have spoken to Russell Glass, Bizo’s CEO, about business audience targeting and how it supports Bizo’s recent growth.

Otilia Otlacan: Bizo has recently been ranked the #4 fastest-growing company in the Bay Area, in an industry that is insanely competitive. What are Bizo’s main growth drivers and what sets it apart from the competition?

Russell Glass: We’ve really seen our business grow, entering 2012 at an $18M+ run-rate and 6 consecutive months of accelerating growth. There are a few factors fueling the kind of hyper-growth we’ve experienced since we started the company in 2008. At a macro-level, we’re all consuming most of our information online so it’s inevitable that advertising dollars would flow online to keep up with the eyeballs. Across the 400+ brands that we support, we’re seeing a very tangible and significant shift of dollars online where ad spend can be better targeted and more effectively deployed, measured and tracked.

Against this backdrop, Bizo’s focus, platform and the team we’ve built have separated us from the pack. We uniquely focus on helping marketers reach very specific business audiences across the web. Given that business professional audiences are among the most affluent, educated, and influential online, this generally makes Bizo not only a top performing channel for any B2B brand but for any B2C marketer looking to reach high-net-worth audiences.

And, the platform we’ve built is fueled by business demographic data on more than 80% of business professionals in the US, which gives our advertisers the kind of precision and reach they can’t get elsewhere.

But, the real key to our success is our people. We’re approaching 60 employees, about double the staff we had this time last year. Hiring the right people to support this growth isn’t easy, but I’ve had as my consistent top priority to make sure we maintain this A-level team and strong, positive culture that we’ve built which, at the end of the day, is probably our most potent differentiator.

Otilia Otlacan: It’s all about audience targeting these days, or so it seems. What kind of publisher is advantaged in this ever changing media buying landscape and what can publishers do in order to facilitate audience buys on their properties?

Russell Glass: Audience targeting data is of course a win for marketers, but is arguably just as valuable and creates huge opportunities for publishers of just about any shape and size. Over 2,000 business publishers have partnered with us to get a better handle on the demographics of their own web audiences and to leverage our platform to enable their advertiser clients to more precisely target audiences on their web properties – and across the web. This is creating an upsell opportunity in every conversation a publisher has with an advertiser, and is increasing and diversifying a publisher’s online revenue streams.

Otilia Otlacan: Your company, Bizo, specializes in reaching and engaging business professionals. What are some of the challenges you are facing when working with this audience?

Russell Glass: The key to a successful display campaign is putting the right message in front of the right audience – at scale. Since we’ve now collected and organized rich, anonymous demographic data on over 100 million business professionals, our platform has the inherent scale to drive success for most marketers looking to reach different segments of business audiences. It’s only when a marketer’s target audience becomes overly granular (e.g., CFOs in the Pharmaceutical Industry in Wyoming) that there may just not be enough unique individuals of a certain profile for audience-targeted display advertising to be effective. That can be a challenge because the marketer knows we can do it, but we have to push back and tell them that there’s simply not enough scale to be worthwhile.

Otilia Otlacan: For our curious hardcore ad ops readers, please tell us something about the ad platform and the tools you are using and about the typical day in your ad ops team.

Russell Glass: The platform that ties all of our activities together is BAMP, our proprietary Business Audience Marketing Platform. We recently moved our ad server of record to AppNexus from DFP. In fact, all of our advertiser campaigns and managed publisher inventory are also run through AppNexus, and our primary source of RTB inventory is also AppNexus. We use Simpli.fi for keyword retargeting and Adap.tv and BrightRoll for pre-roll inventory.

For billing, pacing, and reconciling we use a home-grown application built on salesforce.com’s Force platform. We call it the Silver Bullet.

To ensure and monitor our advertisers’ brand safety, we use a combination of a blacklist of domains (4 years’ worth of domains we’ve seen that we don’t want our ads on), AdXpose and Proximic brand safety segments.

As with most ad ops teams, there is no “typical day.” We try to staff our team with smart people that really love solving the problems that come along with online advertising. Each member on the team has to be well versed in trafficking and buying RTB media on multiple platforms, creative QA, retargeting and conversion pixel placement, campaign optimization, and pacing and reconciliation.

Otilia Otlacan: I’ve filled in my bizographic information at http://www.bizo.com/businessProfessionals/your_bizo_cookie and noticed that the ad inventory for international audiences appears to be rather limited. Do you have plans on chasing non-US audiences and if so, do you have any partners lined up?

Russell Glass: We currently reach business professional audiences with scale in U.S., Canada, and the UK. We plan to build out our non-U.S. audiences more aggressively in the future since many of the brands we support are global, so there is a clear opportunity to extend our capabilities into other regions. That said, we believe we’re still just scratching the surface of the market opportunity for Bizo in North America and that remains our focus today.

Otilia Otlacan: Last but not least, is there anything else you like to share with us?

Russell Glass: One area you’ll see us diving into more aggressively this year is working with consumer brands to reach the business audience. In addition to brands using Bizo to target high-net-worth individuals, we’re also seeing increased demand from consumer brands who want to reach businesspeople in general. With more disposable income, this audience is more likely to purchase many different types of consumer products, from cell phones to financial services.

To this end, last year we collaborated with comScore to marry Bizo’s unique bizographic data with comScore’s insights into the online behavior of consumers. The comScore Bizo Index gives marketers additional insights into Bizo’s audience segments as desirable and effective consumer purchasing segments. For example, a marketer for a telecommunications company can use these insights to target their ads at Bizo’s “Small Business Professional” audience, which is shown to be 161% more likely to purchase mobile phones and plans online than the average U.S. Internet user. Here are some other interesting data points: our Tech Professional audience is 580% more likely to buy computer hardware online, and our Marketing audience is 112% more likely to visit airline sites.

These are just a few examples – we’ve uncovered powerful connections between consumer behavior and Bizo’s business audience segments across a wide range of product and service areas, so we’ll be working to further explore these opportunities this year.

About Bizo
Bizo is how marketers reach and engage business professionals, wherever they travel online. Bizo can precisely target more than 100 million professionals around the world, including more than 80 percent of the U.S. business population. This unprecedented reach and targeting gives marketers cost-effective access and insight into business professionals – the most valuable online audience segment. Simply put, Bizo knows business audiences. More than 400 leading brands including AMEX, Monster, Salesforce.com, Microsoft, and FedEx count on the precise display ad targeting, social media measurement, and deep audience analytics that the Bizo Audience Marketing Platform provides to successfully execute their branding and direct response initiatives.

For more information on Bizo, or for a free look at the Bizographic make-up of your website audience, visit www.bizo.com.

CRM Agency Named in Ad Age’s Annual A-List Issue

COLUMBIA, Md. – Merkle (www.merkleinc.com), a leading customer relationship marketing (CRM) firm and the nation’s largest privately-held agency, announced it has been named in Ad Age’s Agency A-List Issue (January 2012) as one of the Ten Agencies to Watch. The special annual issue honors the best shops in several categories, based on the quality and effectiveness of their work – regardless of discipline or specialty.

The rankings are reported in several categories, using evidence of business success for the agency as conveyed by revenue growth, income growth and new business wins. In selecting the rankings, Advertising Age assessed factors like channel innovation, intellectual property ownership, product influence or creation, solution creativity and measurable results. Heavily considered was how effectively the agency has delivered strong results for its consumer-marketing clients. As the only CRM agency highlighted in the “Agencies to Watch” category, Merkle was cited for its advances in collecting and optimizing consumer behavioral data to increase customer loyalty and lifetime value; and for its digital intelligence and innovation.

“It is a tremendous honor to be recognized by Ad Age,” said Merkle president and CEO, David Williams. “We have been working hard to create a leadership position in the CRM agency space. Our ranking as an agency to watch validates the belief that by developing customer strategy as a business strategy, we help our clients build sustainable competitive advantage.”

Merkle’s systematic evolution from database marketing firm to full-service CRM agency has been chronicled over the last several years with consistent 20%+ revenue increases and employee expansion. Today, the company is comprised of more than 1500 employees, with 2011 revenue of $304 million and growing. More than 150 leading brands employ Merkle’s solutions to drive their integrated CRM strategies and maximize the value of their customer portfolios.

About Merkle

Merkle, a customer relationship marketing (CRM) firm, is the nation’s largest privately-held agency. For more than 20 years, Fortune 1000 companies and leading nonprofit organizations have partnered with Merkle to maximize the value of their customer portfolios. By combining a complete range of marketing, technical, analytical and creative disciplines, Merkle works with clients to design, execute and evaluate integrated customer marketing programs through a connected CRM strategy. With more than 1,500 employees, the privately held corporation is headquartered near Baltimore in Columbia, Maryland with additional offices in Boston; Chicago; Denver; Little Rock; Minneapolis; New York; Philadelphia; Pittsburgh; Seattle; San Francisco; Hagerstown, MD and Shanghai. For more information, contact Merkle at 1-877-9-Merkle or visit www.merkleinc.com.

Innovative “App Engagement Program” Allows Brands to Reach Consumers Who Have Previously Downloaded Their Apps and Drive Sustained Usage

BALTIMORE – Millennial Media, the independent leader in mobile advertising, announced a new solution for advertisers to drive usage and engagement within their branded apps. The new “App Engagement Program” will allow brands to re-engage users who have previously downloaded their app, and use mobile display ads to drive them back to specific destinations inside the app. Advertisers who use the new solution will also gain unique conversion metrics, and the ability to retarget consumers with relevant messaging.

With the App Engagement Program, advertisers can anonymously identify consumers who have already downloaded their app, and use mobile display creative to deep-link these users back into the app. The deep-linking process will drive usage, and brands can leverage the initial interest that led to the app download to re-engage users and drive further interaction. As users are driven to different locations inside the app, advertisers will also gain unique intelligence on consumer behavior and will be able to track in-app transactions.

“Consumers now expect brand name companies to have a mobile app, yet it still takes a concerted effort from the brands to drive adoption,” said Jamie Fellows, SVP of Product at Millennial Media. “Brands need to make sure the experience is good, they need to make sure users are finding the app, and perhaps most importantly, they need to take steps to drive sustained consumer usage.”

For brands looking to drive initial adoption of their app, Millennial Media also offers the ability to run App Discovery campaigns and drive downloads via paid media. The Millennial Media platform reaches over 200M monthly unique users globally, providing advertisers an opportunity to efficiently drive downloads in a crowded market.

“Millennial Media has once again demonstrated its ability to both identify a major unmet need for mobile marketers and create a sound client-ready solution,” said Paul Gelb, VP, Mobile Practice Lead, Razorfish. “Improvements to retention and usage exponentially increase the value of an application and each new user. Advancement in this area opens up new opportunities for brands to generate unprecedented ROI from their investment in applications.”

For more information on the App Engagement Program and Millennial Media’s suite of advertiser solutions, visit http://www.millennialmedia.com/advertise/targeting/.

About Millennial Media

Millennial Media is the leading independent mobile advertising platform company. Our technology, tools and services help app developers and mobile website publishers to maximize their advertising revenue, acquire users for their apps and gain insight about their users. We offer advertisers significant audience reach, sophisticated targeting capabilities and the ability to deliver rich and engaging ad experiences to consumers on their mobile connected devices. Visit www.millennialmedia.com for more information.

Study Looks at Unique Characteristics of America’s Younger Consumers and Their Responses to Advertising across Platforms

RESTON, VA – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, released the report Next-Generation Strategies for Advertising to Millennials, highlighting the results from a recent comScore study that identifies the unique characteristics of the Millennial generation, commonly defined as persons born between 1981 and 2000. The study examined Millennials’ responses to different types of advertising, including TV and digital, compared to older generations, and how marketers can most effectively target this large and important segment. To download a complimentary copy of the report, please visit: http://www.comscore.com/Millennials.

“The 79 million Millennials in the U.S. have an estimated purchasing power of $170 billion dollars per year, making them a highly attractive segment for brands to target” said comScore vice president Bert Miklosi. “Their comfort-level with the Internet and technology in general makes the digital medium an ideal platform for reaching these individuals. But as is typical with younger people when compared their older counterparts, Millennials are generally more difficult to persuade via advertising, amplifying the importance of creative and messaging optimization in driving worthwhile returns from an investment in advertising to this segment. ”

Key findings highlighted in the report include:

- The defining characteristics of Millennials include their comfort-level with new technologies and cultural diversity, as well as being accustomed to on-demand access to entertainment, continual stimulation and extreme multitasking.

- Ad breakthrough via television advertising for Millennials was substantially lower than for older generations. However, Millennials demonstrated a higher propensity than other generations to retain a lasting impression of a television advertisement.

- Millennials tend to be less interested and more difficult to connect with, capture attention, impress, convince and entertain. Millennials also appear to be more price-sensitive, perhaps due to lower disposable incomes.

- Digital advertising performs better in relative terms among Millennials than does television advertising.

- Across generations including Millennials, the presence of key creative elements in advertising, coined by comScore as the Validated Drivers, were shown to relate strongly to successful advertising.

- Millennials are highly engaged with the content that they choose to view, within both television and digital environments. Engagement has been shown to amplify the effectiveness of advertising, so when targeting Millennials, it is important to utilize engaging content to help boost returns from investments in advertising.

To download a complimentary copy of the full report, Next-Generation Strategies for Advertising to Millennials, please visit: http://www.comscore.com/Millennials.

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

LiveRail for Advertisers Gives Agencies One Platform to Target, Deliver and Track Video Advertising

SAN FRANCISCO – LiveRail for Advertisers Gives Agencies One Platform to Target, Deliver and Track Video Advertising

LiveRail, provider of the world’s largest real-time online video ad platform, today announced the launch of LiveRail For Advertisers, a new ad serving product that makes video campaigns easier to execute, more effective, and more measurable.

LiveRail For Advertisers (LFA) is a brand new platform designed from the ground up for online video and eliminates many of the complexities associated with traditional, legacy technology. LFA streamlines workflows with its video-native tools and interface, dramatically reducing the workload and time associated in trafficking, launching and managing large, multi-publisher video campaigns. Agencies can now leverage LiveRail technology for consistent campaign delivery at scale across their entire media plan; including major broadcasters, portals, ad networks and exchanges.

Advertisers and agencies can also take advantage of LiveRail’s native data integrations (with partners like Affine) to target their video ads to the appropriate audience, content or domain within the publishers they buy from. LFA’s “zero wasted impressions” technology enables agencies to control and pace their campaign’s delivery, reducing wasted spend and ensuring that publishers only deliver within the plan. For the first time, agencies can now dynamically analyze media environments for every impression request, ensuring brand safety and appropriateness of the content/media, and restricting delivery in real-time where needed.

LiveRail for Advertiser’s MRC-accredited reporting and analytics give video ad buyers insight into how their ads are performing through a multitude of filters, dimensions, and video-specific performance metrics. LFA empowers marketers with the data to truly understand the impact and ROI of their video ads, across all the placements, on all publishers, networks and platforms they buy from, helping demonstrate the value of media spend and inform future media purchasing decisions.

“Because we sit at the hub of the online video ad ecosystem, we understand the needs of all parties involved,” said Mark Trefgarne, LiveRail CEO. “Our full- and self-service options let advertisers and agencies select the level of support they need so they can leverage our video expertise. By combining the world’s best video ad technology with the consultative support of industry experts, we believe that LFA will become an indispensible tool for all agencies serious about video.”

LiveRail For Advertisers is a third-party ad server for video. Advertisers and agencies utilizing LFA must maintain their own direct media relationships, as LFA cannot be natively used to access or purchase inventory. For more information about LiveRail For Advertisers, visit http://www.liverail.com/LFAPR.php

About LiveRail

LiveRail is the core technology at the heart of the online video advertising ecosystem. LiveRail solutions enable and enhance the monetization of internet-distributed video and handle over 2 billion video ad impressions per month for many of the world’s largest media and advertising clients. Founded in 2007, LiveRail’s senior team is led by its founders, Mark Trefgarne (CEO) and Andrei Dunca (CTO). LiveRail Inc is headquartered in San Francisco, California, with offices in New York, NY and Cluj-Napoca, Romania. LiveRail is backed by Pond Ventures.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – The NFL Playoffs are often an interesting test run for advertising during the Super Bowl. According to data released today from Ace Metrix, the authority of television advertising effectiveness, Apple, General Motors (Cadillac), Applebee’s, Nissan, and Google were the most effective advertisers during the past three weekends of playoff football.

Apple held the top two spots with their iPhone 4G commercial touting new camera features (Ace Score: 659) and Siri ad (Ace Score: 658). Cadillac zoomed alongside Siri with its ad demonstrating its braking systems, achieving an Ace Score of 658. Nissan’s Vision ad was the 4th most effective playoff ad (Ace Score 652), followed by Google’s Muppet ad (Ace Score 644).

Only 14 percent of ads to air during the 10 playoff games were new. Leading the new ads were Applebee’s “Under 550 Calorie” ad for steak, achieving an Ace Score of 640, and Chevrolet’s new “Happy Grad” ad for Camaro, which debuted during the NFC Championship to an estimated audience of more than 50 million with an Ace Score of 618.

“We expect to see many of these same advertisers in the Super Bowl, and it will be interesting to see how they adapt their playoff strategies to television’s biggest stage,” said Peter Daboll, CEO of Ace Metrix. “We are looking forward to seeing what General Motors introduces – they are hitting on all cylinders right now from an advertising perspective with strong scoring creative from their entire brand portfolio.”

Automotive ads represented the greatest share of playoff advertising at 27 percent. Restaurants accounted for 19 percent of playoff ads, followed by Telecommunications at 15 percent.

Ace Metrix will reveal the Top Ads of the Super Bowl on February 8th.

About Ace Metrix

Ace Metrix is the industry authority in measuring and understanding the impact of advertising creative. Through patent-pending Ace Score™ measurement technology, Ace Metrix collects and measures the consumer impact of every nationally breaking TV ad in near real-time. Through its Creative Lifecycle Management™ suite of products, Ace Metrix provides actionable creative analysis, from ideation through real-time in-market performance optimization, to many of the world’s leading advertisers and agencies. Ace Metrix works with leading global advertisers. For more information, visit www.acemetrix.com

Follow Ace Metrix on Twitter for additional insight: Ace_Metrix.

With Almost a Quarter of a Billion Unique Devices Reached in the US, Mojiva’s Global Saturation is Attributed to Growing Demand from Advertisers and Publishers for a Mobile Presence

New York – Mojiva, the mobile ad network that specializes in making “big idea,” cross-platform, mobile strategies come to life at scale, today announced a monumental achievement as the first mobile ad network to reach more than one billion unique devices globally each month.

Key findings and statistics from Mojiva’s rapidly growing mobile ad network include:
·       More than 45 Billion monthly ad requests, in 190 countries.
·       Reach of approximately 224 Million monthly unique devices in the United States.
·       The United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain and Italy achieved significant saturation of devices serving mobile ads to more than 33 Million, 10.6 Million, 5.5 Million, 6.4 Million, and 8.7 Million devices respectively.
·       Content partners on Mojiva encompass more than 8,000 publishers and apps.

The staggering growth of Mojiva’s ad network is attributed to the exponential usage of smartphones and tablets globally, as well as an increase in advertisers extending campaigns into mobile. In June 2011, research firm IDC predicted that vendors would ship more than 472 million smartphones globally in 2011. This has resulted in similar growth in mobile advertising, as eMarketer predicted that mobile ad spending will grow to $2.61 billion in the US alone in 2012.

“Mojiva’s achievement of this significant milestone underscores both the dramatically growing importance of mobile devices in online content consumption and Mojiva’s role as a key enabler in monetizing mobile media,” said Robert Coolbrith, senior research analyst at ThinkEquity. “We believe that mobile advertising will rapidly become a key component of large brands’ marketing mix over the next five years and that ad networks and tech-driven intermediaries such as Mojiva will help to accelerate this shift by driving efficiency and transparency across the mobile ad ecosystem.”

“Our primary goal is to help marketers deliver relevant advertising to the right mobile users within premium apps and mobile web content, and to make it worth the effort by delivering scale. This is no easy technical challenge. Surpassing one billion unique devices reached per month is indicative of the quality of our technology and our commitment to being leaders,” said Dave Gwozdz, CEO of Mojiva. “With this kind of reach across all types of tablets, smartphones, etc., marketers that want to reach the mobile consumer can move the needle in a hurry.”

The billion unique devices seen on the Mojiva mobile ad network aremade up of smart phones, feature phones, tablets and touch screen devices such as the iPod Touch, and data is from the month of December 2011.

About Mojiva
Mojiva (www.mojiva.com) is a mobile ad network, which reaches more than one billion devices globally and represents 8,000 mobile publishers and apps. Through deep and open integration with all major rich media providers and ad servers, Mojiva provides ad agencies with every imaginable mobile media execution across mobile web sites, apps and devices. Founded in May 2008 and based in New York City, Mojiva is led by a team of advertising and media veterans from Google, Doubleclick, Yahoo!, Microsoft, AOL and AdMob, with more than 100 years of collective experience in mobile marketing and technology. Mojiva is an independent mobile ad network operating under parent company Mojiva Inc., which has a total of $35 million venture funding from Pelion Venture Partners, Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments and Shamrock Capital.

“Earned media” is inconsistent and famously difficult to value. Jun Group (www.jungroup.com), the premier social video platform, has recently announced a study that provides simple metrics for valuing earned media – and clear evidence that social video programs consistently deliver earned media results. We have spoken to Mitchell Reichgut, Founder and CEO of Jun Group, who kindly shared some of his experience and thoughts on earned media measurement.

Otilia Otlacan: Earned media is notoriously difficult to quantify and value, even when digital. Why is that?

Mitchell Reichgut: Earned media is an outgrowth of “viral video,” which has always been a hit-driven phenomenon, not a consistent distribution strategy. Brands would be delighted when their video “went viral,” but little effort went into exploring the reasons why a video took off or the value of the results. Social video picks up where the viral dream left off. Essentially, it’s brand advertising that is targeted and shareable. Social video is paid media that drives consistent and significant earned media activity, all of which is measured and reported in real time.

Otilia Otlacan: Jun Group has recently announced a set of metrics to assist marketers in valuing earned media. Can you share with us what made you look so closely into this topic?

Mitchell Reichgut: As our targeting and sharing technology advanced, the earned media portion of our campaigns rose dramatically. Eventually it go to a level where we were consistently delivering things like recipe and coupon downloads, Facebook visits, clicks to brands’ Web sites, tweets, sharing, etc. We never charge for this activity, but our clients were increasingly asking us about its value. That was the genesis of the study.

Otilia Otlacan: Would you say that video content is more or less likely to generate earned media, by comparison to other content formats? Why?

Mitchell Reichgut: Video is far and away the most effective way to generate earned media – it’s visceral, emotional, and it’s easy to share. The biggest and most popular social advertising programs have all been video-centric.

Otilia Otlacan: In your experience, what makes a piece of video content a likely candidate to go viral?

Mitchell Reichgut: The most important thing to understand about “viral video” is that it is not an organic phenomenon. Videos that reach over 1 million users require a mass media component (i.e., AOL, Boing Boing, MSN, etc.). Even homemade videos that rise to prominence don’t do so on a peer-to-peer basis. They come to the broader public’s attention through a feature on one or more mass media outlets. The brand-sponsored videos that reach millions of people are the products of sophisticated and well-funded online media strategies. They may involve PR companies, media partnerships, or distribution firms like Jun Group. Outstanding creative is a critical component, but 48 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every 60 seconds, and being creative is by no means a guarantee of success.

Otilia Otlacan: Is there anything else you would like to share with us?

Mitchell Reichgut: Advertisers covet earned media for good reason – it’s perhaps the most powerful form of marketing available. We have deconstructed the myths around “viral video” and provided advertisers with reliable and consistent tools for driving these results. To us, it’s one of the most promising trends in online media.

About Mitchell Reichgut

Mitchell Reichgut is founder and CEO of Jun Group (www.jungroup.com), the premier social video platform. The company’s distribution technology delivers millions of monthly opt-in video views across social networks, mobile devices, premium content sites and YouTube. Jun Group distributes videos from 15 seconds to 3 minutes-long with exceptionally high completion rates and significant post-view activity, such as web site visits, coupon downloads, and store locator usage. The company’s analytics dashboard, Voyeur, provides real time data about views, shares, likes, tweets, ratings, comments, and geographic dispersal down to the state and town. Founded in 2005, Jun Group’s clients include Fortune 500 brands, major entertainment companies, and media and creative agencies

Prior to founding Jun Group, Mitchell headed up the New York interactive division of Bates Worldwide Advertising. As General Manager/Creative Director, he helped grow Bates Interactive into a 70-person integrated unit, with clients such as Perrier, Moet & Chandon, and Warner-Lambert.

Earlier, as Creative Director of the New York office of Think New Ideas, Mitchell supervised Web development for clients such as Budweiser, Chrysler, Sony, and Continental Airlines.

A graduate of Boston University’s College of Communications, Mitchell began his career as an Art Director at Grey Advertising where he created print and television advertisements for clients such as Procter & Gamble, Parker Brothers, and Stride Rite.

Mitchell wrote and directed The Scene, a 20-episode online drama that was viewed over 8 million times in 90 countries. He has published two national comic book series, and he recently wrote and produced an online drama entitled Stream, starring Whoopi Goldberg.

SARASOTA, Fla. – Could the click-ad era be drawing to a close? It certainly could be, if Obscene Jeans Corp. (OTCBB:OBJE) has its way. The company is exploring the development of new crowd-sourcing ad software and online technology platforms that could make online ads generate cash for both clients and consumers.

This new trend and related technology would enable OBJE’s clients to turn advertising campaigns over to their social networks, resulting in custom, peer-generated ads and campaigns that engage the online community they’re intended to attract. In addition to boosting clients’ brand awareness, this new kind of advertising would compensate social media superstars for designing creative ads and sharing them with friends.

By enlisting the very consumers that advertisers hope to attract, this type of software could result in a new generation of less intrusive, more engaging online advertising that pays consumers.

OBJE is making plans to help spur this evolution in advertising along by acquiring and joint venturing with innovative startups, getting them funded and leveraging their expertise to develop all-new platforms.

For more information on the company’s social media analytics initiative, please visit www.obsceneinteractive.com/investors.

Obscene Interactive is a division of Obscene Jeans Corp. that develops innovative technology tools to service the fast-growing social media and online content production sectors alongside companies such as Monster Worldwide (NYSE: MWW), LinkedIn Corp. (NYSE: LNKD), Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ: NFLX), and Groupon, Inc. (NASDAQ: GRPN).

About Obscene Interactive

Obscene Interactive (OTCBB:OBJE) is an emerging global developer of social media tools and applications. OBJE’s cutting-edge technology platform enables its titles to be accessible to a broad audience of consumers all over the world, supporting multiple platforms for universal appeal. Obscene Interactive is focused on delivering the best in social media solutions to the mass market. For investment information and performance data, please visit www.ObsceneInteractive.com/investors.

Partners from WORLDCOM PR Group’s Consumer Practice Group Point to Five Important Emerging Trends to Watch in New Report

NEW YORK – Social media has dramatically altered the way that agencies and their clients approach consumer engagement campaigns, and in most cases, changed the way in which businesses connect with their target audiences. WORLDCOM Public Relations Group (Worldcom), the world’s leading partnership of independently owned public relations counseling firms, recently asked its Consumer Practice Group partners to share insights on the evolving role of social media as a consumer engagement tool, as well as trends that will potentially change the way in which social media is incorporated into consumer outreach campaigns in 2012.

“Consumer PR, like all forms of public relations and marketing, is fundamentally changing as a direct result of social media and other disruptive online communications channels,” said Will Ostedt, chair of the Worldcom Consumer Practice Group and vice president at The Pollack PR Marketing Group in Los Angeles. “Consumers are expecting to receive and acknowledge communication that is only relevant to them — anything else is ignored or disregarded. The future of consumer PR is to find ways to make messages relevant to consumers and to reach them using the right channels.”

The discussion revealed five emerging trends partners from the (EMEA) European Middle East Africa, Asian Pacific and America’s regions all agree will dramatically effect their approach to consumer engagement campaigns on behalf of their clients.

Location, Location, Location: Worldcom’s Consumer Practice Group is seeing a shift to more localized social media programs that are better able to target consumers and key into their unique values and cultural circumstances. These programs are not only aimed at engaging consumers and encouraging them to share their “brand love” with others, but also encouraging them to share their dollars with their local retailer.

Filtering the Noise: Consumers are learning how to maximize social media tools to fit their personal needs, first and foremost, by eliminating noise. A fundamental need to filter information combined with emerging filtration systems such as Google+ in which the information one sees is increasingly determined by past behavior and/or personal desire, means organizations will have to continually find new ways to permeate permission-based news streams in order to be seen and heard. More importantly, organizations will need to make themselves and their content relevant to a more defined audience.

Depth Over Breadth: The onset of social media has sent most consumers scrambling to widen their social networks, in an effort to secure the most friends and followers in complete disregard of boundaries, privacy and relevancy to their interests and belief systems. Beginning in 2011, a noticeable shift occurred where the depth of consumer networks became more important than their breadth. As consumers increasingly look to better meet their thirst for information that is relevant to their interests and lifestyle, the Worldcom Consumer Practice Group sees consumers limiting their engagement to the people and brands that best connect with their personal lifestyle in the confines of niche social networks, customized specifically for their interests.

Mobile is the New PC: The dramatic and disruptive rise of smart phones, tablets, eReaders and computerized mobile devices over the past two years has fundamentally changed how consumers interact. The result of this disruption is that the modern consumer is always connected, interacting in real time and vetting the relevance of bite-sized information on an ongoing basis. The Worldcom Consumer Practice Group identifies that due to this dramatically upward trend of mobile computing, brands and products will also need to be connected at all times and deliver real-time response and interaction with their consumers.

Twitter Surge: The launch of Apples’ iOS 5 in 2011 was met with much fanfare as the new operating system’s “bells and whistles” delighted current Apple mobile users and served as the impetus for others to make the switch to devices running iOS 5. But, buried in all of the “Cloud” talk, is the fact that iOS 5 provides consumers with direct Twitter integration. Having the social network woven into the fabric of mobile OS’s should lead to a broadened acceptance of Twitter as a part of everyday functionality, and increase users’ activity on the service.

“As social media continues to evolve in 2012, communication pros have the best opportunity and the most relevant skill set to guide organizations to build meaningful consumer engagement versus being purely content pushers,” added Dawn Doty, co-chair of the Worldcom Consumer Practice Group and vice president/partner of Denver-based Linhart Public Relations. “As the new year begins, we encourage all communication pros to continue to muscle into the discussions that matter within their organizations to maximize the channels that now allow this authentic consumer engagement.”

About the Worldcom Consumer Practice Group

The Worldcom Public Relations Consumer Practice Group is a multi-national partnership of PR firms who cumulatively have the broadest experiences and expertise across the spectrum of consumer products and services. Partner agencies create a powerful professional entity, affording clients a local, national, and international industry perspective, resulting in a competitive advantage for clients.

About Worldcom Public Relations Group

Established in 1988, Worldcom Public Relations Group is the world’s leading partnership of independently owned public relations counseling firms, with 107 partner agencies worldwide, in 91 markets, in 46 countries, across six continents. With more than 2,100 employees, and revenue of more than US $260 million, partners collectively serve national, international and multi-national clients seamlessly, while retaining the flexibility and client-service focus inherent in independent local agencies. Through Worldcom, clients have on-demand access to in-depth communications expertise from professionals who understand the language, culture and customs of the geographic arenas in which they do business.

Ad industry veteran to lead strategic account development and media strategies for the world’s largest business audience marketing platform, joins company during a period of triple-digit run-rate growth

SAN FRANCISCO  – Bizo, the global leader in business audience marketing, today announced that Frannie Danzinger has joined the company as director of marketplace development.  A well-known creative media strategist with a local and national skill base in media research, strategic planning, media placement, creative idea development and media negotiations, Danzinger brings more than 20 years of experience in the business-to-business and consumer media environments to Bizo.

Prior to joining Bizo, Danzinger spent more than 14 years at gyro (formerly HSR Business to Business and GyroHSR), a leading business-to-business advertising agency. Most recently, she led gyro’s global media strategy practice as the senior vice president of media.  Danzinger was instrumental in gyro’s media business expansion, growing overall media revenue by more than 250 percent and building a global media team of 20.   Key media clients included Lincoln Financial Corporation, Dymo, Pitney Bowes and PNC.  Prior to this role, Danzinger founded ProMedia LLC, where she served as president and media director.  While running ProMedia, Danzinger was instrumental in establishing first-to-market media ideas for clients such as Flight Options, Avantair, Cleveland Grand Prix and Duke Energy, while exceeding expected ROI benchmarks.  Before launching ProMedia, Frannie was associate media director at Wyse Advertising in Cleveland.

Danzinger joins Bizo during a time of explosive growth for the company.  Bizo also announced today that the company ended 2011 with an annual run rate of over $18 million, increasing its year-over-year Q4 run-rate by 133 percent, and recorded its 6th consecutive month of accelerating growth.   Over 400 leading brands are now using the Bizo platform to reach their target audiences online, and the company also grew its targetable audience of online business professionals to 100 million uniques each month, through the addition of more than 800 new publisher partners including Forbes, Crains B2B, PC World and Thomson Reuters.   Last quarter, the company was ranked the fourth fastest-growing private company in the Bay Area by the San Francisco Business Times.

“Over the past few years, the brands we support have grown increasingly hungry for new and better ways to reach their audiences and build their brands online.  Given our position in the business audience marketing ecosystem, Bizo is uniquely positioned to help marketers access and reach precisely targeted business audiences at scale,” said Russell Glass, CEO of Bizo.  “Attracting heavy-hitting industry talent such as Frannie is a testament to the company’s momentum and the huge opportunity we see to extend our leadership in the market over the coming years.”

About Bizo

Bizo is how marketers reach and engage business professionals, wherever they travel online.  Bizo can precisely target more than 100 million professionals around the world, including more than 80 percent of the U.S. business population. This unprecedented reach and targeting gives marketers cost-effective access and insight into business professionals – the most valuable online audience segment.  Simply put, Bizo knows business audiences. More than 400 leading brands including AMEX, Monster, Salesforce.com, Microsoft, and FedEx count on the precise display ad targeting, social media measurement, and deep audience analytics that the Bizo Audience Marketing Platform provides to successfully execute their branding and direct response initiatives.

For more information on Bizo, or for a free look at the Bizographic make-up of your website audience, visit www.bizo.com.

A new infographic issued by Banyan Branch tells us more about the buzz around the Giants and the Patriots. The data was collected between December 30, 2011 and January 29, 2012.

Infographic:
-          Top: Summarizes mention of players names

-          2nd Down: Compares stats with twitter volume by player (yardage/points attained)

-          3rd Down: Volume of mentions of the team vs. the coach

-          Bottom: Word cloud of conversation for each team

Insights:
-          Quarterbacks captured the majority of the conversation buzz – most of which was football related (though Tom Brady also has some conversation around his personal life mixed in)

-          Tom Brady generated the most conversation and yielded more yards than Eli Manning

-          Receivers for both teams also generated a fair amount of buzz primarily due to their own activity on the channel and we did not see any correlation between the volume of Twitter traffic and statistical performance on the field

-          People like to talk about the Giants, but the Patriot players individually get more attention, including the coaches.

About Banyan Branch
Banyan Branch, based in Seattle, WA, is a full-service social media agency that provides end-to-end marketing services including strategy, creative, execution and analytics. With a holistic approach that integrates Strategy, Social Media Creative, Engagement and Research & Analytics, Banyan Branch delivers social media programs unmatched by smaller agencies, while providing more personalized service and quicker response than large-scale digital firms. Dozens of the world’s leading brands, including FOX, Viacom, Paramount, Hartz, Univision, Gilt Groupe, Microsoft and Windstar Cruises have partnered with Banyan Branch to implement a wide variety of social media campaigns. Any company ready to connect with its customers where they live and breathe, can contact Banyan Branch via www.BanyanBranch.com

Integration with Convertro’s Attribution Service Gives Advertisers a Greater Understanding of the Value of LiveIntent’s Publishers’ Exchange Inventory

New York – LiveIntent, the platform for buying and selling email ad inventory exactly like display, today announced it has integrated its services with advertising technology from Convertro, the leader in providing advertisers enhanced transparency into the effectiveness of their online marketing channels and optimization. This integration provides advertisers with a better understanding of the value of LiveIntent’s inventory within their overall digital media footprint.

Previous constraints in the email space only made it possible to track last click conversions or direct consumer behaviors back to email, but Convertro’s Multi-Attribution service allows advertisers access into every marketing touch that led to a conversion without limits on the number of touch points, cookie windows and other constraints. By partnering with Convertro, LiveIntent can now attribute an action back to an email ad placement, even if the consumer decides to shop around before converting into purchase.

“This integration was driven by our goal to provide advertisers with more knowledge and transparency into the impact of our email advertising offerings, ” said Jason Oates, President LiveIntent. “With Convertro’s unique attribution service, we can now prove to advertisers how effective their email advertising campaigns are by identifying how they impact the top (awareness) and bottom (conversion) of the sales funnel. This is important to brand and direct advertisers.”

“By tapping into Convertro’s technology, LiveIntent will now be able to prove to advertisers accurate contribution of email marketing efforts to best optimize their revenue from email ads,” said Jeff Zwelling, CEO and Co-Founder, Convertro. “Convertro strives to provide advertisers with transparency and in turn, give our customers the attribution they deserve.”

This integration is one of many strategic initiatives from LiveIntent, including new product offerings to its portfolio and personnel additions to accommodate the company’s rapid growth.

About LiveIntent
LiveIntent is the only company with a real-time display ad platform for email. LiveIntent works with advertisers, publishers and agencies to provide ad optimization, DSP / trading desk and exchanges capabilities. The company is venture-backed by Shasta Ventures, Battery Ventures, First Round Capital, Lerer Ventures and Grape Arbor VC. LiveIntent was founded in 2009 and is headquartered in NYC. For more information and a demonstration of the company’s technology in your own inbox, visit www.liveintent.com.

NEW YORK – “Earned media” is inconsistent and famously difficult to value. Jun Group (www.jungroup.com), the premier social video platform, today announced a study that provides simple metrics for valuing earned media – and clear evidence that social video programs consistently deliver earned media results.

“Earned media is no longer a viral video fantasy. It is now a viable paid-media strategy that consistently delivers measurable results for everyday brands,” said Mitchell Reichgut, founder and CEO of Jun Group. “We’ve taken the mystery out of earned media and replaced it with complete transparency and clear, tangible metrics.”

Jun Group defines earned media as a series of actions that users initiate after watching a social video. These post-view actions include Facebook page visits, brand page visits, store locator usage, coupon and recipe downloads, Tweets, e-mail shares, replays, and clicks to watch more videos – all of which are measured by Jun Group’s Voyeur analytics dashboard.

Jun Group’s study placed a monetary value on each action based on conservative industry data. A visit to a brand’s Facebook page, for instance, is valued at $1.00 in the study, which is on the low end of pricing for cost-per-click advertising.

Once the values were assigned, Jun Group analyzed 7.9 million social video views for brands across a number of vertical categories, such as CPG, health and beauty, sports, technology and luxury goods. Videos ranged from 15 seconds to 3 minutes-long and users opted-in to see them in exchange for virtual goods or currency.

Importantly, all of the earned media activity measured by the study was generated after users received their virtual rewards. “When you respect people, don’t interrupt them, and put them in control, they respond in a positive way,” Reichgut said. “It’s that simple.”

According to the study, Jun Group’s average social video campaign delivered 30.1 percent of additional media value above-and-beyond the media spend. In other words, clients that spent $100,000 with Jun Group in 2011 received over $130,000 of value on average.

Facebook page visits were by far the most popular earned media action, representing 62 percent of all post-view activity in the Jun Group study. Brand-specific actions, such as store locator usage, brand page visits, etc., were the next-most popular actions, accounting for 15 percent of the post-view activity. Surprisingly, Tweets were the least popular action, representing approximately one percent of the post-view activity.

About Jun Group
Jun Group is the premier social video platform. The company’s distribution technology delivers millions of monthly opt-in video views across social networks, mobile devices, premium content sites, and YouTube. Jun Group distributes videos from 15 seconds to 3 minutes-long with exceptionally high completion rates and significant post-view activity,
such as web site visits, coupon downloads, and store locator usage. The company’s analytics dashboard, Voyeur, provides real time data about views, shares, likes, tweets, ratings, comments, and geographic dispersal down to the state and town. Founded in 2005, Jun Group’s clients include Fortune 500 brands, major entertainment companies, and media and creative agencies. For more information, visit www.jungroup.com.

Sometimes it is lonely to be the CEO of the biggest independent advertising technology partner for publishers. The long view: my belief in standing behind the high quality publishers to make Internet advertising work at least as well as the best TV advertising – is a position not often shared. Yet I believe that we can make Internet advertising work brilliantly for high quality product launches and brand building. We won’t be stuck with text based CPC ads. We will show that the best sites can run fantastic graphical and video ads that sell great products.

I’ve been saying for months that the distinction between above and below the fold should go away, and I finally have company for my perspective. Good company: Comscore, Inc.

A week ago I attended an event in New York City at which Comscore unveiled its new Validated GRP(TM) tool that rates the effectiveness of digital ads. Validated GRP takes the rating standards advertisers apply to TV advertising (Gross Rating Points) and establishes a similar metric that will apply to digital advertising. For advertisers, this is a metric to judge online campaign effectiveness–to make an apples to apples comparison between the effectiveness of TV and the effectiveness of online display and video ads.

In the development of its Validated GRP tool, Comscore conducted a  major study on the quality of campaign delivery  that allowed it to investigate discrepancies between expectations and reality when it comes to ad delivery. The full study, the results of which will be released in March, included twelve major brands with household names like Ford, Sprint, Kimberly Clark, and Kellogg’s.

To conduct the study, Comscore used the AdXPose technology it acquired earlier last year. The AdXPose team tipped us off in advance because we were already partnered with them. We got a sneak preview of the study’s highlights, which we are now free to share here.

In December 2011, Comscore measured 2,975 placements on 380,898 site domains — totaling over 1.7 million impressions, all delivered in iframes.

The conclusion? Something we, as an ad server and a advertising technology partner for publishers, have already observed: many ads are served, but not seen. That’s because web pages are no longer mostly short pages with static user experiences; they’re long pages with dynamic usage. Many use the increasingly popular “infinite scroll”. By the time an ad at the top of the page is served, the reader may have already scrolled by. Yet many ads further down may be very visible to the user. In Comscore’s own words:

“It’s not just an ‘above the fold versus below the fold’ issue. Sometimes people scroll down quickly to get to the content they want, and miss home page ads. In those cases, the action might be below the fold. Compelling ads can work in both places – but only if they’re visible.” Comscore found that 24% of ads above the fold were not visible.

While this is not great news for the advertisers who paid for those campaigns, It is great to see Comscore measure this for advertisers. And it’s why we developed the InView slider formats. Web pages, like the Huffington Post and Daily Mail are getting longer. And they are increasingly optimized for tablets where users are quick to scroll and therefore quick to skip past the top of the page to get to the content they want to read.

Comscore’s findings become very important, especially as online advertising moves from simple banner display ads to on-page video. And I believe it will move to great video ads for cars, cosmetics and movies etc right on the page. Right now, we’re selling the InView Slider ad unit with great confidence that it works for advertisers wherever you place it. It only appears if the reader is going to see it. The InView slider gives publishers a way to boost revenue, and gives advertisers a great way to guarantee to catch scrolling readers.

We’re also launching an in page video ad that will appear when the viewer is guaranteed to see it.

The InView slider has been quickly adopted by publishers since the summer because all the revenue for the publisher is additional and yet there’s no additional work involved.

We look forward to Comscore publicly presenting the full results of its study in March, and of course we are proud to be their partner in making advertising on the web as good as the best advertising on national TV.

About ZEDO

ZEDO, Inc. is a digital ad solutions company that offers products and services for a publisher’s premium, self service, and remnant inventory. Products include ad network optimization, innovative rich media formats for publishers’ direct sales teams, full featured ad serving, behavioral targeting data built into the ad server, an exchange-like platform for publishers to sell behavioral and DMA targeted inventory at high CPMs (see: www.zedoadnetwork.com), a self service platform to allow advertisers to buy directly from a publisher, outsourced ad ops and more. These products are integrated into one technology platform for publishers to choose from, or use seamlessly together. ZEDO has been in the internet advertising industry for over 10 years, and is the most successful independent ad server in the US. The company provides innovative solutions that boost revenues for Internet publishers. ZEDO is headquartered in San Francisco and has four development centers in Russia and India.

Reach out to ZEDO at http://www.zedo.com, or follow the company on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/ZEDOadsolutions) and Twitter (http://twitter.com/zedoinc).

DUBLIN – Research and Markets has announced the addition of the “Advertising: Global Industry Guide” report to their offering.

Advertising: Global Industry Guide is an essential resource from MarketLine for top-level data and analysis covering the advertising industry. It includes detailed data on market size and segmentation, textual analysis of the key trends and competitive landscape, and profiles of the leading companies. This incisive report provides expert analysis on a global, regional and country basis.

Scope of the Report:

- Contains an executive summary and data on value, volume and segmentation
- Provides textual analysis of the industry’s prospects, competitive landscape and profiles of the leading companies
- Incorporates in-depth five forces competitive environment analysis and scorecards
- Covers the Global, European and Asia-Pacific markets as well as individual chapters on 5 major markets (France, Germany, Japan, the UK and the US).
- Includes a five-year forecast of the industry

Highlights:

- The global advertising industry grew by 5.9% in 2010 to reach a value of $86,758.2 million.
- In 2015, the global advertising industry is forecast to have a value of $113,424.8 million, an increase of 30.7% since 2010.
- Food, Beverage & Personal/Healthcare is the largest segment of the global advertising industry, accounting for 25.4% of the industry’s total value.
- Americas accounts for 42.1% of the global advertising industry value.

Why you should buy this report:

- Spot future trends and developments
- Inform your business decisions
- Add weight to presentations and marketing materials
- Save time carrying out entry-level research

Key Topics Covered:

Global advertising
Advertising in Asia-pacific
Advertising in Europe
Advertising in France
Advertising in Germany
Advertising in Japan
Advertising in the United Kingdom
Advertising in the United States

Companies Profiled:

WPP Group plc
Omnicom Group Inc.
Publicis Groupe SA
The Interpublic Group of Companies, Inc.
For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/cbcfe5/advertising_globa.

Mobile Marketing Leader Shortlisted in the Most Sought After Awards Competition in the Global Communications Industry

Mobile World Congress 2012
KIRKLAND, Wash. – Hipcricket, the one-stop mobile marketing and advertising brand owned by Augme Technologies, Inc. (OTCBB: AUGT or “Augme”), announced that it has been named a finalist in the GSM Association’s (GSMA) 17th Annual Global Mobile Awards. Hipcricket was selected as a finalist in the “Mobile Marketing & Advertising Agency of the Year” category from a pool of more than 600 entries. It honors firms that are “spearheading the growth, adoption and evolution of mobile advertising”.

The award will be announced during Mobile World Congress to be held in Barcelona, Spain on February 28, 2012.

For seventeen years, the GSMA Global Mobile Awards have showcased cutting-edge mobile products, services and initiatives around the world. The “Mobile Marketing & Advertising Agency of the Year” category is new to this year’s competition.

“This news comes at an exciting time for our company, as we recently surpassed the 150,000 mobile campaign milestone and recorded a 76 percent increase in campaigns year-over-year,” commented Eric Harber, Chief Operating Officer of Hipcricket. “We’re honored to be named a finalist in such a prestigious competition where we are recognized for such accomplishments.

“Mobile advertising is a rapidly growing and important part of Hipcricket’s business. Key to our offering is our post-click engagement platform. Rather than looking at mobile advertising as a one-off, an increasing number of Hipcricket clients use our mobile advertising solutions as a means to move product and build awareness, but also to re-engage the user. Several have employed our Software as a Service (SaaS) platform and advertising solutions to grow their opt-in databases. An opted-in consumer is extremely important to our customers and commands higher premiums.”

As a full service mobile marketer, Hipcricket offers its technology platform and leverages all mobile channels to help brands engage with consumers anywhere at any time. The company creates multi-channel SMS and MMS campaigns, mobile websites, QR codes, and branded apps for its clients, which include Nestle, Macy’s, Miller Coors and The American Cancer Society.

“Reflecting the intensity of competition and innovation across the mobile ecosystem, we saw a record 600 entries and an exceptionally high quality field of contenders vying for this year’s Global Mobile Awards,” said Michael O’Hara, Chief Marketing Officer, GSMA. “It is a significant achievement to have made the shortlist, and our warmest congratulations go to all the nominees announced today. We look forward to the unveiling of the winners at the Mobile World Congress next month.”

About Hipcricket

Hipcricket, a brand of Augme Technologies (OTCBB: AUGT), is the one-stop mobile marketing and advertising solution for brands, agencies and media properties to engage customers, drive loyalty and increase sales. Hipcricket’s customers connect with consumers across every mobile channel, including SMS, 2D/QR codes, mobile websites, advertising networks, social media and branded apps. Its proven technology, strategic and marketing services and experienced account management teams have provided measurable successes across an industry-leading 150,000 campaigns for such clients as Macy’s, MillerCoors, Nestle, KFC, and Clear Channel. Hipcricket has also created the first comprehensive permission-based mobile ad network that taps into the buying power of the mass market with industry-leading capabilities to target customers via location and highly-specific demographic information across SMS, display, rich media and video.

Hipcricket is based in Seattle, Washington, with operations in New York, Atlanta, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and Tucson. For more mobile marketing and mobile advertising information, please visit www.hipcricket.com.

As Local Marketing Automation Goes Mainstream, ‘Local Web’ Needs National Brand Attention

BOISE, Idaho – Balihoo (www.balihoo.com), the premier provider of Local Marketing Automation (LMA) technology and services to national brands with local marketing needs, today announced the most significant local marketing trends and related key strategic initiatives for national brands in 2012. The insights are based on developments, research and observations working with national brands, such as Kohler, Pearle Vision, Geico and 1-800DOCTORS.com. Balihoo helps these companies raise visibility and increase sales through local outlets such as dealers, agents, distributors, retailers and franchisees.

“Local marketing is quickly emerging as one of the biggest opportunities in the shifting marketing landscape, delivering impressive results for national brands who rely on reaching consumers at the point of final preference and purchase,” said Shane Vaughan, vice president of marketing for Balihoo. “As this shift happens, marketers need to be prepared to execute their local campaigns across a growing, integrated ecosystem of new media and social channels – the Local Web – in order to deliver greater customer relevance, response and return on their marketing investment.”

According to the recently released 2011 CMO Council Report, “Localize to Optimize,” 30 percent of marketers have embraced local marketing automation software platforms and 27 percent are currently evaluating them. Further, BIA/Kelsey estimates the overall local advertising market growing from $136.3 billion in 2010 to $153.5 billion in 2015, representing a 2.1 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) and coinciding with a 14.4 percent CAGR for online/interactive ad revenue. Based on this data, Balihoo predicts Local Marketing Automation will become a mainstream marketing tool by the end of 2012.

Additional Balihoo predictions and recommendations for 2012 local marketing strategies include:

Continued Dramatic Increase in Localization of Media Channels. With the decline in effectiveness of analog media, marketers have new and improved options for reaching consumers at the local level on digital media. However, national brands must identify resource-effective processes for researching, buying and tracking localized media, and local affiliates will need education and training on the new channels.

National Brands Demand Integrated Marketing Analytics. While marketers largely believe that localized efforts are essential to business growth and profitability, only a small portion of them have a formal plan for monitoring their impact. Brands need to share their expectations with their vendors, partners and internal teams, and require integrated marketing metrics across all mediums, segments and geographies in order to enable enhanced decision making and budget justification.

Content Marketing Moves Downstream to Local Businesses. As social media and content marketing adoption continues to show growth and effectiveness, local businesses will look to their national counterparts for a regular stream of fresh content customizable with geographic details.

For the complete list of Balihoo Local Marketing Predictions for 2012, please visit our series of blog posts, starting here: http://bit.ly/ypJQ3t.

About Balihoo

Balihoo is the premier provider of Local Marketing Automation (LMA) technology and services to national brands with local marketing needs. By automating local marketing, Balihoo gives national brands unprecedented control over local marketing execution and the ability to control the customer experience closer to the point of purchase. Additional information about Balihoo is available at www.balihoo.com.

Talking Baby Returns with New Ad Campaign Focused on “Life Events”

NEW YORK – E*TRADE Financial Corp. (NASDAQ: ETFC) announced that E*TRADE Securities LLC will return to the biggest advertising event of the year with a new Talking Baby commercial slated to debut during the NBC television network broadcast of Super Bowl XLVI on February 5, 2012. This marks the fifth anniversary of the iconic E*TRADE Baby campaign. An additional new Baby spot will be debuted this weekend during the AFC and NFC conference championships.

The new Baby ad is part of an integrated multi-channel campaign that highlights the full range of products and services E*TRADE offers to help investors plan their financial future, available both online at etrade.com and through the firm’s growing network of financial consultants and retail branches.

“We’re thrilled to announce the E*TRADE Baby is back to make his fifth consecutive appearance in the big game,” said Nick Utton, Chief Marketing Officer at E*TRADE. “The Baby has become an iconic brand ambassador that has enabled us to capture the imaginations of investors and effectively showcase the benefits of our investment solutions in a memorable and entertaining way.”

The Super Bowl spot, one of a series of new ads planned for 2012, features the E*TRADE Baby interacting with people facing special life events that trigger a need to consider financial planning.

“As E*TRADE continues to evolve its strategy and service offering beyond trading to serve investors’ full range of financial needs both near- and long-term, so too has our marketing strategy,” said Mr. Utton. “Our evolved approach keeps our campaign fresh and engaging by featuring meaningful life events that people can easily relate to, and providing a unique Baby perspective on the E*TRADE investing solutions available to help them.”

According to a recent survey commissioned by E*TRADE, approximately one-in-three (32%) of those who plan to watch this year’s Super Bowl expect to communicate with others during the game via Facebook® and/or Twitter®. To maximize the investment and reach of the Super Bowl ad before, during and after the game, the campaign’s online presence will include:

A new viral video featuring “Top Ten Baby Moments”
Real-time updates from the Talking Baby on Facebook and Twitter
Redesigned YouTube® Brand Channel featuring E*TRADE’s most popular commercials and videos
In addition to the new Super Bowl spot, E*TRADE will launch a new series of Investing Solutions television spots in February, showcasing products, people and tools in a unique demo format that presents a compelling case for choosing E*TRADE.

The campaign was created by Grey New York, E*TRADE’s advertising agency of record since 2007.

“Super Bowl” is a registered trademark of the NFL and is used here for factual purposes only. NFC and AFC are registered trademarks of The National Football League. E*TRADE Financial Corporation and its affiliates are not affiliated with the Super Bowl or the National Football League.

About E*TRADE Financial

The E*TRADE Financial family of companies provides financial services including online brokerage and related banking products and services to retail investors. Specific business segments include Trading and Investing and Balance Sheet Management. Securities products and services are offered by E*TRADE Securities LLC (Member FINRA/SIPC). Bank products and services are offered by E*TRADE Bank, a Federal savings bank, Member FDIC, or its subsidiaries. More information is available at www.etrade.com.

Deal Gives Tremor Video Robust, Enhanced Reporting on Publisher-side Video Performance while TubeMogul Retains its Promise of Complete Transparency and Detailed Reporting to Advertisers

NEW YORK – Tremor Video, the largest independent online video advertising technology company, and TubeMogul, the fastest-growing media buying platform for video advertising, announced that Tremor Video has purchased InPlay, TubeMogul’s industry-leading video analytics for publishers. Tremor Video will integrate InPlay directly into VideoHub, its enterprise video platform, enabling a complete end-to-end video analytics solution for publishers.

InPlay helps publishers understand real-time engagement, viewership and performance data, and is relied on daily by hundreds of top media companies, video platforms and content creators. The transfer of ownership gives Tremor Video an industry-best set of publisher video analytics, allowing the company to give publishers and their partners the ability to measure, track, report and deliver on the signals driving the performance of video content.

TubeMogul, which started as a video measurement company for publishers, shifted its focus in the past year after launching the industry’s first demand side platform for video advertising. Although TubeMogul is divesting its publisher analytics, the real-time reporting tools developed for TubeMogul’s video advertising platform will be unaffected, giving clients uninterrupted access to audience, engagement and brand impact data by site and by ad.

The deal continues to enhance Tremor Video’s VideoHub suite of products, making insights gathered from more than 1 billion video streams available to help publishers understand how their videos are discovered, what drives engagement and much more. InPlay will be available to all publishers as part of VideoHub for Publishers, launching in Q1 2012.

“Publishers are demanding an analytics suite that provides a clear picture of how viewers are interacting with content in order to determine what creates the most value for advertisers,” said Bill Day, CEO of Tremor Video. “InPlay gives us industry-leading technology and a sound product that meets this market demand. By integrating with our existing VideoHub technology, Tremor Video can now offer our partners a view across the entire video landscape.”

“TubeMogul InPlay was built to help publishers better understand their viewers to drive deeper engagement, and it has largely delivered on that promise,” said Brett Wilson, Co-founder and CEO of TubeMogul. “As we shift our focus from publishers to brand advertisers, this deal helps us align our capabilities with the needs of marketers, while ensuring they get the transparency and reporting they have come to expect.”

The InPlay acquisition is the latest in a series of deals for Tremor Video. The company’s other recent purchases include ScanScout in November, 2010 and mobile ad platform Transpera in February of this year. Tremor Video plans to continue to be acquisitive, fueled by $37 million in funding raised earlier this year.

TubeMogul is also seeing tremendous growth, with recent partnerships in the connected TV, mobile and social space as well as new contracts with major agency trading desks worldwide. The company was recently named the seventh-fastest growing independent company in the San Francisco Bay Area, spanning Silicon Valley and beyond.

About Tremor Video

Tremor Video (www.tremorvideo.com) provides in-stream video advertising solutions to Fortune 1000 brand advertisers and top tier publishers. Widely regarded as the leader in online video advertising technology, the company leverages its award-winning decisioning engine, innovative video ad formats and publisher technology to deliver the campaign results and scale advertisers should expect from digital video. Tremor Video is the only video ad platform that can provide 100% brand safety by scanning and categorizing every single video stream before an ad is ever served. In addition, Tremor Video’s award-winning SE2 technology gets smarter at finding and engaging viewers with every ad served, enabling the company to welcome and encourage pay-per-engagement pricing. Founded in 2005, Tremor Video is backed by top-tier investors, including Canaan Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson Growth, General Catalyst, Keating Capital, Meritech Capital Partners, Time Warner Investments, and W Capital Partners.

VideoHub, a division of Tremor Video, is a first of its kind analytics console that helps marketers and agencies monitor the complex video ecosystem to dynamically match ads with content and viewers, deliver upon marketing goals, and maximize brand impact. Unlike traditional video management platforms, VideoHub focuses on effectiveness and delivers real-time analytics for deep transparency across ads, content, viewers, and performance. To request a demo, visit videohub.tv.

About TubeMogul

TubeMogul is the only video marketing company built for branding. As a demand side platform for video, TubeMogul integrates real-time media buying, ad serving, targeting optimization and brand measurement into its PlayTime platform. Over half of the Fortune 500 use TubeMogul to simplify the delivery of video ads in any format, optimize the impact of their brand message and maximize the effect of every dollar they spend.

Founded in 2006, TubeMogul is based in Emeryville, CA with offices in New York, London, Chicago, Los Angeles, Toronto and Sydney.

comScore Reports Premium Publisher Network Reaching Nearly 500 Million Unique Users Worldwide

Emeryville, CA – Tribal Fusion, the global online advertising provider owned by Exponential, is the world’s second largest source of display advertising, according to comScore’s December 2011 rankings of the leading global display networks. The measurement service reported that Tribal Fusion’s premium publisher network reached more than 490 million unique users globally, behind only Google (1.2 billion) and just head of AOL Advertising (477 million), which includes its Advertising.com ad network subsidiary.

Tribal Fusion says the new ranking reflects its growing global presence and increased demand from brand advertisers for campaigns that take advantage of its rich-media capabilities to offer more engaging creative executions at scale

“Brand advertisers across the globe are increasingly looking for new ways to leverage digital media to connect with their prospective customers and are looking for the same kind of high-impact and emotionally engaging creative messaging that they get from traditional TV advertising,” says Dilip DaSilva, founder and CEO of Tribal Fusion and parent company Exponential.

“Online advertising has primarily been focused on bottom-of-the-funnel acquisition and conversion of customers. But as brands are realizing that their potential customers are spending an increasing amount of time on digital media relative to traditional channels such as television, they are looking for opportunities to drive brand awareness and perception via digital media.

“Our premium publisher network is an essential part of our Advertising Intelligence Platform, and is critical for driving audience insight and large-scale reach that helps brand advertisers learn about and reach their prospective customers. And beyond just reaching their prospective customers, our tight integration with our publishing partners, allows brands to connect at scale with prospective customers using high-impact, engaging messaging,” adds Mr. DaSilva.

Founded in 2001, Tribal Fusion has expanded across the globe and now operates offices in 37 locations worldwide including the United States, Canada,  Mexico, Brazil, United Kingdom, Spain, Germany, France, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, South Africa, India, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand.

“Digital media can be accessed by visitors in any country, as a result most premium publishers attract a global audience,” concludes Mr. DaSilva. “Through our ability to monetize publisher inventory in so many countries, we have now become the partner of choice for premium publishers in every country.”

Tribal Fusion (www.tribalfusion.com) is a global online advertising provider that drives sales for the world’s top brands by helping them learn about, reach and engage their online audiences more effectively.

We combine our premium publisher network, advanced online ad technology and integrated audience data on a single platform to deliver audience insights, targeting and creative solutions that transform the way brands connect with their prospective customers.

Tribal Fusion reaches almost 500 million monthly unique users, was founded in 2001 and is part of the Exponential Group of online businesses – a technology-enabled media services company headquartered in Emeryville, California with operations in 37 locations worldwide.

New York – LiveIntent, the platform for buying and selling email ad inventory exactly like display, is now supporting the Digital Advertising Alliance’s (DAA) consumer notification offering, AdChoices. This self-regulatory service is being deployed by LiveIntent to support consumer awareness and choice in online advertising. Consumer privacy and control is a top concern for LiveIntent, and complying with the Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising (OBA) is a priority.

LiveIntent’s technology serves ads into a publisher’s email newsletters. When the user opens an email sent by any standard email service provider (ESP) that contains a LiveIntent ad tag, LiveIntent’s server delivers that reader the most relevant ad in real-time, right to their inbox, based on the user’s device, location, time of day and more. LiveIntent allows publishers to extend their premium display inventory into email and achieve 100 percent sell-through, all while maintaining full control of their inventory.

Now, all ads served by LiveIntent technology may contain the AdChoices logo. Clicking on the logo will bring users to the LiveIntent AdChoices page that explains why that ad was served to them and how they can opt-out of future ads from LiveIntent. There, users will also be able to read about LiveIntent’s privacy policy as well as visit the Network Advertising Initiative and the Digital Advertising Alliance to see their opt-out choices from other participating companies.

“At LiveIntent, we’re committed to being fully transparent and notifying users of their choices,” said Matt Keiser, CEO, LiveIntent. “Consumers have the right to know they are being targeted for ads and making them aware of this trackingwill strengthen advertiser-consumer trust in the long term.”

LiveIntent for Publishers (LFP) enables publishers to insert LiveTags into their newsletter templates to serve direct sold and LiveIntent exchange campaigns into emails newsletters, to monetize and maximize the yield of their newsletter inventory. LiveIntent for Advertisers (LFA) give marketers the ability to target and deliver ads to relevant audiences, on email open while optimizing results.

“We strive to be fully transparent to our readers and all consumers,” said Brian Riback, E-Marketing Strategist for The New York Daily News. “As our readership grows, we want to continue to protect consumer privacy and remain completely supportive to our readers, whether we reach them on the desktop, tablet or mobile.”

“Maintaining a rock-solid relationship with our customers is paramount as we look to keep the highest standards of choice in how they consume ads every day,” said Paul Rostkowski, President of Varick Media Management (VMM).  “Having LiveIntent be AdChoices-compliant gives us the assurance and confidence in their process of delivering our ads to the people who want to see them.”

About LiveIntent
LiveIntent is the only company with a real-time display ad platform for email. LiveIntent works with advertisers, publishers and agencies to provide ad optimization, DSP / trading desk and exchanges capabilities. The company is venture-backed by Shasta Ventures, Battery Ventures, First Round Capital, Lerer Ventures and Grape Arbor VC. LiveIntent was founded in 2009 and is headquartered in NYC. For more information and a demonstration of the company’s technology in your own inbox, visit www.liveintent.com.

Renewal of MRC accreditation demonstrates VINDICO’s commitment to building trust in online video advertising

NEW YORK – VINDICO, the leading online video ad management platform, announced the renewal of their Media Rating Council (MRC) accreditation, which was initially granted in June 2010. Through this MRC accreditation renewal, VINDICO continues to demonstrate its commitment to building trust in online video advertising.  The accreditation will continue to benefit the global brands that work with VINDICO, as well as institute a benchmark for success in the industry.

Established to ensure audience measurement research is valid, reliable and effective, the MRC accreditation process requires companies to undergo rigorous third-party audits to guarantee compliance with industry standards. VINDICO’s accreditation indicates its video advertising platform is compliant with the MRC’s standards for Media Rating Research and the applicable guidelines published by the Interactive Advertising Bureau. MRC members include leading media and technology companies, such as AOL, Microsoft, CBS and FOX, among others.

“VINDICO has taken strides to make online video as trusted and easy to work with as any other measured media,” said George Ivie, CEO and Executive Director of the Media Rating Council. “Renewal of its MRC accreditation further solidifies VINDICO as a quality leader in the industry.”

VINDICO has deep market penetration, serving almost forty percent of all online video ads in the United States. The company provides video advertising management solutions to over 200 brands through their leading agency groups such as GroupM, Havas, IPG, Publicis and Omnicom. The VINDICO solution reduces complexity for advertisers by providing an efficient and reliable way to serve video ads across multiple networks.

“Video advertising is one of the advertising industry’s fastest growing categories, with eMarketer estimating that online video ad spending in the U.S. will reach more than $7 billion in 2015,” said Matt Timothy, president of VINDICO. “Renewal of MRC accreditation reinforces our commitment of giving advertisers the confidence they need to make larger investments in online video and demonstrates our data remains up to the MRC’s rigorous standards.”

About VINDICO
As the first ad management platform dedicated exclusively to video, VINDICO allows advertisers to serve, track and measure all of their online video ad activity. Since 2006, VINDICO has been the gold standard in online video platforms, providing standardized reporting and analytics for the online video industry. The power of online video isn’t just the audiences it reaches and how it reaches them. Its strength also derives from its ability to track an ad campaign and precisely measure the campaign’s effectiveness. For more information, please visit http://www.vindicogroup.com or follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/VINDICO_Group.

About MRC
The MRC is a non-profit Industry association established in 1964 composed of leading television, radio, print and internet companies, as well as advertisers, advertising agencies and trade associations whose goal is to ensure measurement services that are valid, reliable and effective. Measurement services desiring MRC accreditation are required to disclose to their customers all methodological aspects of their service; comply with the MRC Minimum Standards for Media Rating Research; and submit to MRC-designed audits to authenticate and illuminate their procedures. In addition, the MRC membership actively pursues research issues they consider priorities in an effort to improve the quality of research in the marketplace. Currently approximately 70 research products are audited by the MRC. Additional information about MRC can be found at www.mediaratingcouncil.org.

#RTTS12: The Future Is Happening Now

LOS ANGELES – the Rubicon Project, the online advertising technology company, reveals details for its Real Time Trading Summit (#RTTS12) in New York City. On February 15th at 8:00 a.m. EST at the Hudson Hotel, the Real Time Trading Summit will convene leaders from across the advertising ecosystem to discuss and reveal the opportunity of automated ad trading for comScore 500 publishers and their advertisers.

Attendees will include executives from top media companies, agencies and leaders in the advertising technology ecosystem. With a stellar speaker lineup delivering actionable insights, the Real Time Trading Summit will bring attendees and their business into the new world of Real Time Trading. The Summit will feature “The End of Advertising,” a conversation between Michael Wolff, contributing editor for Vanity Fair, Wired and British GQ and Jay Sears of Rubicon Project.

The Real Time Trading Summit will feature visionaries, industry experts and advertising leaders including:

Michael Wolff, author of Burn Rate & contributing editor, Vanity Fair, Wired and British GQ
Joanna O’Connell, Senior Analyst, Forrester Research
Tim Gentry, Head of Optimisation & Effectiveness, Guardian News & Media
Frank Addante, CEO & Founder, Rubicon Project
Randall Rothenberg, President & CEO, IAB
Vikram Somaya, VP, Global Operations and Audience at Thomas Reuters
Roland Cozzolino, CTO, MediaMath
JT Batson, President, DDS Digital
And more to be announced.

Real Time Trading Summit is an invite-only event. The content will be focused on helping educate and facilitate conversations among the comScore 500 publishers. To request an invitation or find out more information, please visit: http://www.regonline.com/realtimetradingsummit

About the Rubicon Project

the Rubicon Project launched in 2007 with a mission to automate buying and selling across the $80 billion global online advertising industry. REVV, the company’s real-time trading platform, has executed nearly two trillion trades for more than 450 of the largest properties on the Internet. REVV helps Comscore 500 publishers like Time Inc., News International and CareerBuilder make more money by optimizing their ad revenue, eliminating unnecessary ad operations costs, protecting and growing their direct sales channel and ensuring their sites’ visitors are safe. Today, REVV analyzes more than 1 trillion bids resulting in more than 100 billion successful and protected trades each month from more than 52,000 advertisers using 700 buying channels (ad networks, exchanges and DSPs). Ad buyers turn to REVV for single point real-time access to the #1 network reach of users (650 million uniques as ranked by Quantcast) across premium inventory and audiences. Headquartered in Los Angeles, with offices in New York, Seattle, London, Paris, Hamburg and Sydney, the company is backed by $60 million in funding from Clearstone Venture Partners, Mayfield Fund, IDG Ventures Asia, Comcast Ventures and News Corporation.

Veteran Ad Network Leader Adds Technical Depth

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Jumptap, the leader in targeted mobile advertising, announced that Bob Hammond has joined the company as Chief Technology Officer. Hammond will oversee engineering and technology efforts for the company, with a focus on scaling all aspects of Jumptap’s platform and extending the company’s lead in mobile audience targeting.

Hammond is a well-known digital media technology leader and brings more than 24 years of experience in the advertising, technology and media industries. He comes to Jumptap from Vibrant Media, a NY-based online ad network. There, Hammond served as SVP of Technology and oversaw more than 50 engineers and led all aspects of technology for the more than $100M ad network.

“Bob has been a trail blazer in the ad network and technology areas for years, and has witnessed the development of supply/demand management, Real Time Bidding and algorithmic buying in display and video ad networks alike,” said George Bell, CEO, Jumptap. “His experience guiding ad networks at all stages – start-up, hyper-growth, and scaling for stability – will provide great insight for Jumptap. Bob is a born leader with enthusiasm to burn, and we’re delighted to have him join the team.”

Prior to Vibrant Media, Hammond served as VP of Engineering at Yahoo! following the company’s acquisition of Maven, a video ad network where Hammond was SVP of Engineering for three years. In his role at Yahoo!, Hammond managed and oversaw engineering for the company’s Video Platform and Syndication Group, including management of core development teams, product QA, product UI design, and technical documentation for the Maven product line. Before Maven, Hammond spent more than six years at Mirror Image, serving as Chief Technology Officer for the final three.

“It’s clear that mobile is the frontier of advertising innovation,” said Bob Hammond, CTO, Jumptap. “Jumptap is a leader with superior targeting that creates the relevancy needed to make mobile advertising successful. I’m thrilled to be joining such a high growth and technology driven environment.”

About Jumptap

Jumptap is the leader in targeted mobile advertising. Reaching 95 million mobile users in the U.S. and 142 million mobile users worldwide, Jumptap uses its extensive technology portfolio, as well as industry-first partnerships with third- party data providers, to understand mobile audiences better than any other ad network and provide intelligent targeting with scale. Through its large network of premium publishers and apps, and constant campaign optimization, Jumptap delivers the best ROI for advertisers and highest yield for publishers and developers. Jumptap has pioneered mobile advertising privacy standards and is committed to unlocking mobile opportunities for all parties through its ongoing industry research, such as its Understanding Mobile Audience series and monthly MobileSTAT reports. Visit http://www.jumptap.com and http://www.jumptap.com/blog for more information; join our Facebook community, follow us on Twitter at @Jumptap and check out our latest ads at the Jumptap Ad Gallery http://www.jumptap.com/gallery.

Brand-focused mobile ad network experiencing tremendous growth with plans for global scale

SAN FRANCISCO – Greystripe, a division of ValueClick Inc. (Nasdaq: VCLK), is announcing impressive expansion within the company, strengthening its position as the go-to mobile ad network for brand advertisers in North America and Europe. Since May, the company has doubled its team and opened four new offices in the U.S. while expanding its presence in Europe.

The largest brand-focused mobile ad network has doubled the size of its sales, engineering and operations staff, allowing it to offer innovative new products to its base of thousands of brand advertisers, agencies and mobile publishers.

As part of the expansion of its team, Greystripe has opened new sales offices in Atlanta, Seattle, Minneapolis and Phoenix. They are also announcing nine new executive hires. These new hires are:

Brian Pearlman, senior account executive, from Millennial Media
Ryan Bleich, senior account executive, from AOL
Chris Backschies, regional sales manager, from WeatherBug
Terah Bocchi, senior account executive, from Belo Phoenix
Jeff Margolis, senior account executive, from Adfusion
Bill Kramer, regional sales manager, from quadrantONE
Josh Parker, account executive, from Specific Media
Matt Sexton, regional sales manager, from RadiumOne
Ken Yonan, regional sales manager, from Specific Media

“We’re excited to grow our team and continue expanding in the coming year,” said Kurt Hawks, vice president of operations for Greystripe. “In 2012, we look forward to using this growth to reach advertisers in every significant U.S. market, continue innovation and push the envelope by creating the best in brand advertising for mobile.”

In 2011, Greystripe launched two new mobile ad units: video advertising and its popular Ad Boosters. Both have seen impressive results. Over 55 brands have run mobile video ads, delivering over 200 ad creatives. On average, 50 percent of consumers have watched the entire video ads, with click-through rates between 1 and 3 percent. Ad Boosters are a next generation ad format featuring social media integration, local content and deals. These Boosters make mobile advertising more relevant and valuable to smartphone users and have shown a 300 percent increase in click-through rates compared to similar ads without the Boosters.

After officially launching in Europe in February through a series of partnerships, Greystripe hired Tim Scoffham to head EU mobile growth. Scoffham came to Greystripe from 4th Screen Advertising, where he was the commercial head. The company has now established a direct European presence in the U.K., France, Germany, Spain and Sweden.

To find out more about Greystripe, visit www.greystripe.com

About Greystripe:

Greystripe, a division of ValueClick, Inc. (Nasdaq: VCLK), is the largest brand-focused mobile advertising network in the US by reach. Greystripe delivers the highest engagement and most sophisticated targeting for brand marketers, the maximum revenue for publishers and app developers, and the best ad experience for users. Greystripe’s proprietary advertising platform serves billions of rich media impressions to over 40 million users of touch-driven devices through more than 3,500 application titles and mobile websites across all major mobile platforms.

For more information, please visit: http://www.greystripe.com

About ValueClick, Inc.:

ValueClick, Inc. (Nasdaq: VCLK) is one of the world’s largest digital marketing companies. Through a unique combination of data, technology and services, ValueClick increases brand awareness and drives customer acquisition at scale for the world’s largest advertisers, and maximizes advertising revenue for tens of thousands of online and mobile publishers. ValueClick’s brands include Commission Junction, ValueClick Media, Dotomi, Greystripe, Mediaplex, Smarter.com, CouponMountain.com, Investopedia.com, and PriceRunner. The Company is based in Westlake Village, California, and has offices in major advertising markets worldwide. For more information, please visit http://www.valueclick.com.

Industry Veteran Supports Company’s Move to Redefine Effective Engagement

NEW YORK – Solve Media, the TYPE-IN advertising company, today announced it has added Ian Schafer to its Board of Directors. Mr. Schafer is the founder and CEO of Deep Focus, a full-service digital engagement agency. Formerly a vice president of new media at Miramax Films, he is one of the most influential voices in the industry, and a recognized leader in interactive marketing and social media. He will provide senior counsel to Solve Media executives as the company continues to change how brands and publishers advertise online.

“The future of advertising lies with innovative and creative approaches like Solve Media’s TYPE-IN that can capture a user’s attention in a powerful yet unobtrusive way, and deliver measurable results in lift, recall and participation rates,” said Mr. Schafer. “Solve Media has grown quickly because they are addressing a critical market need. I look forward to helping Solve Media reach its next stage of growth.”

Mr. Schafer has received a number of industry recognitions including being named a ‘Media Maven’ by Advertising Age and one of Adweek’s“Young Ones.” He also serves on the executive board of the Social Media Advertising Consortium. He joins Chris Fralic and Scott Johnson on Solve Media’s board.

“As one of the industry’s foremost experts, Ian has an uncanny ability to anticipate trends in the creative and media agency landscape,” said Ari Jacoby, CEO of Solve Media. “His leadership, knowledge and strategic insight will be invaluable as Solve Media continues to seek innovative and impactful ways to drive true engagement for brands.”

Since its launch in 2010, Solve Media’s TYPE-IN platform has been delivering performance-based campaigns for leading brand advertisers seeking superior engagement, awareness and recall. Unlike traditional engagement metrics that essentially measure ad exposure, TYPE-IN ads create lasting memories that benefit brands beyond clicks and drive loyalty and sales. The company’s approach has attracted more than 3,000 publishers and leading advertisers, including Toyota, Microsoft, Universal Pictures and AOL.

ABOUT SOLVE MEDIA

Solve Media was founded by veteran entrepreneurs and technologists focused on innovative Internet advertising solutions. The Company’s proprietary online advertising system, the TYPE-IN™ was designed to create new and highly effective opportunities for brands to advertise online. The platform leverages CAPTCHA authentication for brand messaging to bring unprecedented consumer engagement. With the platform, Solve Media: guarantees brand message delivery and increases recall rates and return on investment for advertisers; creates new revenue opportunities for publishers; and simplifies the authentication process for consumers. Backed by First Round Capital, New Atlantic Ventures, AOL Ventures and prominent angel investors, Solve Media is based in New York City and Philadelphia. http://www.solvemedia.com

McLean, Va. – USA WEEKEND announced today several key executive appointments. Dave Hunke, president and publisher of USA TODAY, will now assume the additional role of publisher of USA WEEKEND. He replaces Chuck Gabrielson, who after more than 35 years with Gannett Co. Inc., announced his retirement today.

Michael O’Brien, formerly vice president of advertising for USA WEEKEND, has been named executive vice president/general manager for USA WEEKEND with responsibility for advertising sales and newspaper relations.

Heather Frank, previously vice president of consumer media for USA TODAY, has been named editor-in-chief of USA WEEKEND. O’Brien and Frank will both report directly to Hunke.

The USA WEEKEND marketing staff will be incorporated into the USA TODAY marketing team reporting to Sandra Micek, senior vice president of marketing for USA TODAY.

“USA WEEKEND is a key publication in our portfolio and I look forward to exploring ways to expand its potential. Michael and Heather bring vast experience to their new roles and will play a large part in the USA WEEKEND executive team that will position us well for the future,” said Hunke.

O’Brien, based in Chicago, joined USA WEEKEND in 2002 as account executive/Midwest and was   promoted to advertising manager/Midwest in 2004 and advertising director/Midwest in 2007. He was named vice president of advertising last year. Previously, he held positions with Time4Media, McGraw Hill and Cahners Business Information. O’Brien is a graduate of Barat College.

Frank joined USA TODAY in 2010 as general manager of Your Life and was later named vice president of consumer media in 2011. Previously, she led the content programming and operations teams for RevolutionHealth.com. Prior to that, she was the editor-in-chief for Meredith Corporation’s women’s lifestyle sites. From 1997 to 2003, she was an executive at America Online, where she led editorial teams in developing programming in response to popular culture and current events. Prior to joining AOL, Frank was the general manager for new media at WHERE magazines. Frank is a graduate of Newcomb College.

USA WEEKEND is a national weekly newspaper magazine with 22.6 million circulation and 49 million readers in print and online.  It is distributed through more than 800 newspapers. Awarded for its journalism and design, USA WEEKEND focuses on social issues, entertainment, health, food and travel. It has an expanded presence in the social media arena with active participation on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. USA WEEKEND is a Gannett Co. Inc. (NYSE: GCI) publication.

YuMe-Nielsen Study Reveals How Major Consumer Healthcare Brand Increased Reach by 14%, Frequency by 18%, and Decreased CPMs by 11% with a Combined TV and Video Campaign

REDWOOD CITY, CA – YuMe, the operating system for TV 2.0, today announced the results of a joint study with Nielsen, which quantifies the true impact of online video when combined with a major CPG TV advertising campaign:  reach, frequency, and recall increase substantially even as the CPM rate decreases. The results offer a compelling look at how brands can effectively and easily reach more viewers with a complementary, TV 2.0 media mix of TV and online video. Planning across both media as part of a single holistic campaign delivers an impact and return on investment which dramatically exceeds that of TV alone.

For this study, YuMe utilized Nielsen TV/Internet Fusion to assess the impact of a $500,000 online video ad buy for a PHD client’s $2.6 million TV flight. The flights ran concurrently throughout September 2011. Results show that a $500,000 spend on the Connected Audience Network, YuMe’s premium, in-stream video ad network, increased reach against the targeted 35–54 age demographic by 7 percentage points. In addition, more than 6 million people in the target demographic were not reached by the TV schedule alone, and were picked up only when online video was added to the schedule.

A high level summary of key findings from the YuMe-Nielsen study highlights the many benefits of a TV 2.0 campaign strategy:

•    Content present on multiple media extends reach:  YuMe online video increased reach for the targeted 35–54 age demographic by 7 percentage points when complemented by a TV flight. In addition, nearly 9 million people were exposed to the campaign on multiple screens.

•    Average frequency across screens increases:  The number of respondents exposed to the PHD campaign three or more times increased by 31 percent, while those exposed to the campaign six or more times rose by 52 percent.

•    Low eCPMs for online video drive substantial cost efficiencies:  Although less than one-sixth the cost of the TV schedule, the $500,000 spend invested in the YuMe Network drove an increase of 34 percent in gross rating points (GRPs) from the original TV schedule. The efficiency of the online video spend was nearly double that of the concurrent TV spend and the cost per point (CPP) was reduced by 11 percent.

•    Brand and message recall improves with YuMe:  Impression-per-impression, YuMe online video outperformed TV in terms of both brand and message recall compared to the campaign TV norm. Results of a Nielsen TV Brand Effect analysis showed an increase of 22 percent for brand recall and 31 percent for message recall one day post-exposure.

•    YuMe outperforms online video ad network norms:  YuMe’s Connected Audience Network outperformed its peers in both brand and message recall, demonstrating an increase of 33 and 50 percent respectively seven days post -exposure.

“We know our consumers are watching multiple screens throughout the day and sometimes watching more than one screen at a time,” said Kelley Train, PHD. “Because of this fact, we are constantly pushing our media to be more about reaching the right audience versus the platform in which the ad is being delivered. Utilizing both TV and YuMe’s video network as complimentary partners, we were able to achieve valuable additional reach, efficiency and effectiveness for our client.”

As consumers diversify their entertainment activities across an array of connected devices, it becomes more difficult for advertisers to maximize reach on a single platform. By complementing a schedule of TV ads with a concurrent online video flight, advertisers can reach consumers whether they are watching TV or online video to increase scale and reinforce the brand’s message.

“TV and digital ad planners can no longer operate in a vacuum in which online video advertising remains a silo apart from TV spend, because it fails to account for the fact that audiences are no longer stationary,” said Ed Haslam, Vice President of Marketing for YuMe. “Dual-platform campaigns offer demonstrable value and greatly outperform a TV-only campaign while improving overall cost efficiency.”

For more information, and to download the full report on the YuMe-Nielsen study, please visit www.yume.com/content/whitepapers.

About YuMe
YuMe is the software infrastructure provider powering digital video and the next generation of television with its operating system for TV 2.0. Its video advertising technology and services seamlessly connect advertisers, app developers, content distributors, consumer electronics manufacturers, and publishers across the globe. YuMe’s patent-pending Relevance Engine powers 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. 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, Intel Capital, Khosla Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Samsung Ventures, and Translink Capital. For more information, visit www.YuMe.com, follow @YuMevideo on Twitter (www.twitter.com/YuMevideo), or like YuMe on Facebook at www.facebook.com/YuMevideo.

San Francisco – Krux (KruxDigital.com), the technology leader in cloud-based consumer data solutions, today announced a major new platform release and shared details on its market position coming out of 2011, including considerable gains in audience reach, global expansion, and widespread adoption of its technology.

Krux delivers cloud-based infrastructure that enables websites to capture, control, and connect consumer web data across screens and sources.  Krux’s platform helps companies put that data to work delivering safer, smarter, cooler, faster web experiences.  Earlier this month, Krux released a major update to its platform, delivering a revamped user interface, sub-50-millisecond audience segment processing, comprehensive prediction and optimization analytics, and the next generation of its audience-authoring engine.  Two new capabilities, Social Analytics and Social Segments, give Krux users the ability to harness the value of social data by uncovering precise indicators of affinity that enable more customized, more relevant content, commerce, and advertising experiences.

Dozens of clients and partners have adopted Krux technology, including leading media companies such as The Wall Street Journal Digital Network and NBCUniversal.  Further, the company continues to expand its global footprint, with additions to its client roster including major European media companies, such as Financial Times and Sanoma, and the Japanese publisher Recruit.  Krux is also driving key partner relationships outside the US, such as the recent integration of its technology with the leading European Supply-Side Platform, Improve Digital.

One of the key drivers of the rapid adoption of Krux solutions is the increased focus on transparency and control when it comes to how companies manage consumer web data.  A number of Krux clients have recently reported on their success with the company’s data protection technology, Krux Data Sentry.  As Peter Naylor, EVP Digital Media at NBCU explained, “With a network as broad and diverse as NBCU, combined with the partnership complexity that comes with running the Universal Ad Platform, I sleep much better at night knowing we have Krux in our corner and a solution like Data Sentry protecting our most critical asset: our audience data.”

Most important, as of January 2012, the company saw its global reach grow more than 300% over the course of the previous year.  Through widespread adoption of Krux’s solutions by leading premium publishers around the globe, such as The New York Times, Recruit, Financial Times, and The Wall Street Journal, Krux has rapidly become the Internet standard for web data protection.  Having developed durable reach of more than 200 million Internet users worldwide, Krux is ideally positioned to drive further adoption of its end-to-end services for consumer data management.  Today, anyone with a website can put data to work making every content, commerce, and advertising interaction feel more personal and more relevant.  Through its growing client, partner, and user reach, Krux supports this shift to a more personal web.

“I’m thrilled to see 2011 investments in our team, our technology, and our US and EU market presence catapult us into 2012,” said Tom Chavez, co-founder and CEO of Krux Digital.  “We’re deepening partner relationships and adding to our client roster almost daily, all while continuing to advance our technology lead, delivering cloud-scale Big Data solutions for some of the consumer web’s most pressing challenges.”

About Krux:
Founded in 2010, Krux delivers data fabric for the consumer web.  The company’s platform helps websites capture, control, and connect data across screens and sources.  With Krux, companies deliver cooler, safer, faster, smarter web experiences.  With Krux, consumers gain confidence that their favorite websites are operating under the plain light of day.  Dozens of website operators in the US, Europe, and Asia have adopted Krux technology, including companies like NBC Universal, Sanoma, Recruit, Financial Times, and The Wall Street Journal Digital Network.  Find out more at www.kruxdigital.com.

With the Super Bowl just around the corner, BlueKai, the world’s only complete platform for data management, analysis and acquisition, has pulled together an interesting infographic that segments certain groups of Super Bowl fans.

For example, BlueKai found that:

- golfers and owners of full-size vehicles are highly likely to watch the game;

- sales professionals, husbands of single family households and sci-fi movie lovers are very likely to watch the game;

- those on the market for an Amazon Kindle are likely to watch the game.

Another interesting observation is that, although the Super Bowl ad spending has been decreasing in the past years, the percentage allocated to the Super Bowl from the advertisers’ annual budget is climbing steeply.

See below the infographic put together by BlueKai.

NEW YORK – Digital advertising company CPX Interactive today announced the first in a series of new product launches set for early 2012, CPX IP (Cookie-Free) Targeting. CPX will leverage its unparalleled online reach and a previously announced partnership with predictive data solutions company Semcasting to create a powerful new offering that plugs seamlessly into its own proprietary global distribution engine, enabling IP audience targeting that is more accurate and scalable than cookie-based targeting.

IP-based targeting has significant advantages over the more traditional targeting models. The process segments US residents into approximately 5.2 million IP zones and then scores these zones based on 120 demographic variables culled from every manor of public record. It also provides more than three times the potential reach of cookie-based platforms and is 77 times more accurate than traditional zip code geo-targeting. With its vast reach and ability to target online audiences down to a granular level, CPX can match offline public record information with the online IP address zones tied to the specific buildings associated with the data and can then target these IP zones with specific advertiser creatives.

“Utilizing our online reach of more than two billion daily ad impressions and our ability to target IP addresses directly, CPX is in a unique position to expand the scope and granularity of audience targeting,” said Jonathan Slavin, Chief Revenue Officer of CPX Interactive. “By integrating Semcasting’s data, we can now offer our agency and advertiser partners the ability to link detailed user demographics to precise locations and create next-level audience modeling and look-alike targeting, all at better than an 80 percent match rate against not only our own direct traffic, but also against RTB and exchange traffic.”

“Semcasting’s ability to connect our industry-leading public data to more than 1.4 million home IP zones and 3.8 million business IP zones in the US means advertisers and their agencies now have a way to leverage their existing investments in customer and marketing intelligence to plan their online campaigns. Semcasting’s data and analytics capabilities combined with CPX’s ability to deliver messaging directly to these IP zones at massive scale makes this a synergistic partnership. CPX is an ideal distribution partner for us,” said Ray Kingman, CEO of Semcasting.

About CPX Interactive

CPX Interactive is a digital advertising company consistently serving more than two billion daily ad impressions. Its global distribution engine includes both a private marketplace of more than 4,000 quality publisher sites and an on-demand network with access to virtually every major aggregator of digital media. CPX campaigns are churned through a continuous cycle of planning, execution, optimization, reporting and analysis – each leveraging the company’s unparalleled scalability. CPX has proven success with more than 300 major brands worldwide. For more information, visit http://www.cpxinteractive.com.

About Semcasting

Semcasting is a supplier of predictive data solutions that help marketers, agencies and ad networks target online and offline customers. IP Audience Zones was built with the same predictive modeling technology used in the development of Semcasting’s premium data. It contains detailed, publicly available and modeled information on more than 227 million individuals–mapped as demographic zone clusters to IP Addresses. Semcasting data is licensed to data compilers and ad networks and is used by hundreds of public and private companies each month for targeting T&E, finance, retail telecommunications, and political campaigns.

Digital content leader unveils new Cost per View video advertising technology, delivers guaranteed quality views along with social sharing and advanced tracking

LOS ANGELES – Break Media, a leading creator and publisher of digital video content for men, today announced its Social Video Accelerator, an innovative new advertising technology which combines guaranteed video distribution with a suite of social analytics that maximize viral pass-along of advertiser content. The new unit is designed around the growing trend of Cost per View (CPV) advertising.

While demand for the CPV model increased among advertisers in 2011, thus far, publishers and networks have struggled to match it. YouTube has previously predicted that by 2015, more than 50 percent of online video campaigns will include inventory sold on a CPV. A recent study performed by Break Media and Advertiser Perceptions found that although 40 percent of advertising campaigns now use CPV in some fashion—a two-fold increase over the previous year—17 percent of advertisers stated they would select it as their preferred pricing model for video if more publishers and networks offered it.

The Social Video Accelerator will debut across the Break family of sites, which includes Break.com, the web’s largest comedy video site, and the Break Media network, which now reaches more than 120 million unique viewers each month. The technology is designed to distribute both advertiser assets such as trailers and videos as well as branded entertainment created in partnership with Break Media’s award winning in-house Creative Lab.

“The Cost per View video pricing model made huge strides within the industry this past year, with a number of advertisers citing it as their preferred model,” said Andrew Budkofsky, EVP of sales and partnerships for Break Media. “While this emergence has opened up an entirely new battleground for advertising dollars, advertisers must demand a solution that delivers a guarantee of quality, relevant context and targeting above and beyond simply counting numbers of views in order for their campaigns to be effective.”

“With the amount of competition for attention and eyeballs, we’ve looked for partners who can help us build a quality audience and guarantee our video content will reach it,” said Simone Deocares-Lengyel, media director at KD&E, the agency for Take-Two Interactive which runs multiple trailer release campaigns a year. “Being able to purchase against a guaranteed CPV and track both paid media as well as earned media presents a huge opportunity for us to distribute our content in the most meaningful way possible.”

The Social Video Accelerator is available now. For more information on all Break Media advertising units, visit us online or contact sales@breakmedia.com.

About Break Media:

Break Media is a leading creator, publisher, and distributor of digital entertainment content including video, editorial, and games. The company’s properties include the largest humor site online—Break.com—as well as Made Man, Game Front, Holy Taco, Screen Junkies, Cage Potato, All Left Turns, Chickipedia, and Tu Vez. The Break Media Creative Lab is an in-house production studio creating original videos that range from award-winning branded entertainment to celebrity-driven web shorts to viral one-offs. The Break Media Network represents hundreds of publishers as one of the largest video advertising networks online, reaching more than 120 million visitors each month. For more information, visit www.breakmedia.com.

vCE Represents Unique Measurement Solution that Improves Overall Transparency, Accountability and Monetization in the Digital Advertising Market

RESTON, VA – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today announced the launch of its Validated Campaign Essentials™ (vCE) product, a new measurement solution for validating digital ad delivery. vCE enables a holistic view of campaign delivery and a verified assessment of ad-exposed audiences via a single, third-party source. Unlike existing single-point solutions, it provides an unduplicated accounting of impressions delivered across a variety of dimensions, such as ads delivered in-view, in the right geography, in a brand safe environment and absent of fraudulent delivery. A U.S.-based vCE Charter Study involving 12 national premium brands found that, in many cases, ads are delivered but not in-view or on target and therefore never have a chance to make an impact.

“The display advertising market today is characterized by an overabundance of inventory, often residing on parts of a web page that are never viewed by the user. This dilutes the impact of campaigns for advertisers and represents a drag on prices to publishers,” said Dr. Magid Abraham, President and CEO of comScore. “Conversely, some ads below the fold are quite visible and deserve more credit. comScore’s introduction of vCE signals an evolution in digital advertising that will bring greater transparency and accountability to the market. Ultimately, this type of third-party validation will help identify and appropriately price the proportion of online ad inventory that delivers value, improve buying and selling decisions, and instill more confidence and trust in the industry.”

vCE enables a comprehensive, holistic view of validated impressions, which can be expressed as ‘validated gross rating points’, or vGRPs. This new metric reflects measurement of ads that were not only delivered, but that had an opportunity to have an impact on consumers. Validated impressions are also the basis for vCE’s campaign audience reports, which include reach and frequency, comprehensive demographics, and behavioral segments only for people with a valid exposure.

vCE Charter Study Findings
To better understand the quality of ad delivery today, comScore conducted a U.S.-based vCE Charter Study, which involved 12 national brands, 3,000 placements, 381,000 site domains and 1.7 billion ad impressions. Select advertisers from the charter study include Allstate, Chrysler, Discover, E*TRADE Financial, Ford, General Mills, Kellogg’s, Kimberly Clark, Kraft, and Sprint. All of the impressions analyzed in the study were delivered in iframes and none required publisher site pixels.

Topline study results are included below, and a full whitepaper with detailed insights and analysis will be published in March 2012.

- Across all charter campaigns measured, 69 percent of the ad impressions were classified as being ‘in-view.’* The remaining 31 percent were delivered but never seen by a consumer, a likely result of a consumer scrolling past the ad before it loaded or a consumer never scrolling the ad into view. In-view percentages varied by site and ranged from 7 percent to 91 percent.

- An average of 4 percent of ad impressions were delivered outside the desired geography, but individual campaigns ran as high as 15 percent. In many cases, ads were served in markets where the advertised product is not sold, meaning wasted ad spend and sub-optimal effectiveness results.

- 72 percent of Charter Study campaigns had at least some ads running next to content deemed “not brand safe” by the advertiser, meaning that the content is deemed objectionable by the brand. This type of unsafe delivery has the potential to damage the brand, creating a difficult situation for all members of the digital advertising ecosystem.

A separate UK-based vCE Charter Study is in progress, with enrollment currently underway. To learn more about participating in the study, please contact Mike Shaw ( mshaw@comscore.com), Head of EMEA Advertising Effectiveness Products. vCE is available in the U.S. immediately and will be gradually rolled out in international markets throughout the first quarter of 2012.

*In-view parameters are consistent with those that have been recommended by an industry consortium called the ‘Making Measurement Make Sense’ initiative, consisting of the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), the American Association of National Advertisers (4A’s) and the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB.) These parameters say that at least 50 percent of the advertisement must be viewable for at least 1 second in order to be considered in-view.

Industry Leaders on vCE and vGRP

“One big issue with internet advertising is that not all ads that are served end up being seen. This is a core issue raised by the Making Measurement Make Sense (3MS) initiative. In order for marketers to have the same confidence in the digital channel as they do in TV, we need measurement around the visibility of ads. What comScore is doing with the vGRP initiative based on validated impressions is an important step in that direction.”
–– Mike Donahue, EVP, Strategic Partnerships, 4As

“At Kellogg’s we are continually seeking to improve the overall effectiveness of every media dollar spent. Key to enabling our decisions is understanding who each impression reaches, how visible our ads are, and where the greatest efficiencies exist. Being able to validate our media delivery through a single source with vCE creates opportunities for both near real-time optimizations as well as enhanced future planning.”

––Aaron Fetters, Associate Director Global Digital Strategy and Analytics at Kellogg Company

“comScore’s new validated Campaign Essentials product is a step forward in addressing several fundamental issues surrounding the current state of counting online ad impressions. comScore’s introduction of validated ad impressions and vGRPs is aligned with the 3MS recommendations of moving the industry to a viable impression standard. vCE is an innovative solution that adds a level of transparency that is welcomed.”

—John Kahan, GM, Business and Customer Intelligence, Microsoft’s Online Services Division

“It is critical that we can understand the extent to which ads delivered on our sites are actually viewed by the intended audience. This type of insight allows us to improve our relationships with consumers and our advertising partners. comScore’s vCE is a welcome innovation, and I am particularly excited about how this measurement solution can help us optimize our site content and the advertising that we deliver on it.”
–– Scott McDonald, Senior Vice President, Research & Insights, Condé Nast

“The inclusion of vCE within the overall comScore suite of tools will offer us another metric to provide to our clients with the type of data they require and have been seeking for many years. They want to know that the money they are spending online is doing its job and will actually have a chance to make an impact. This type of third-party, holistic validation is a great start to do just that and is a win for all parties in the industry. Once standards are in place this can and will serve as a new currency in the marketplace.”

–– Julian Zilberbrand, SVP Global Digital Director, Technology Activation Group, Starcom Mediavest Group

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

One-day event being held in collaboration with the Online Marketing Summit (OMS)

SES Accelerator San Diego 2012; Online Marketing Summit 2012
SAN DIEGO – The SES Conference & Expo has announced a one-day event in San Diego, the SES Search and Social Accelerator. This event is being held in collaboration with the Online Marketing Summit (OMS) and will take place from 8:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, February 9, 2012. The SES Accelerator is aimed at experienced marketing and advertising professionals who have been in the industry for 3 to 5 years. For more information or to register to attend SES Search and Social Accelerator or Online Marketing Summit, visit: http://sesconference.com/accelerator/.

The sessions at the SES Accelerator will consist of three concurrent tracks beginning after the keynote on Thursday and continuing through to 5:30 p.m., and then followed by SES’ traditional Black Hat/White Hat Unconferenced session. Topics will focus on search, social and analytics and sessions will feature the top experts in these fields.

The event’s opening Spotlight Session, “Optimizing Humans! The Art of Data-Driven Social Marketing,” will be given by Marty Weintraub, the CEO of aimClear. The online marketing agency has managed Facebook ad campaigns generating over 10 billion impressions internationally for clients including MarthaStewart.com, Siemens, Second Life and Budget Direct. Weintraub has written extensively for respected Internet marketing trade publications and is the author of the book Killer Facebook Ads.

When asked about his Spotlight Session, Weintraub remarked, “Wondering how to explode your social media strategy? This keynote presentation focuses on immediately actionable paid and organic social tactics marketers can use for enhanced demographic research and data-driven community outreach.”

“We’re thrilled to be working with OMS to deliver a highly compelling day of online marketing best practices,” said Mike Grehan, the Global VP of Content for SES parent company Incisive Media. Grehan, who will be delivering the day’s opening remarks prior to Weintraub’s keynote speech, continued, “We anticipate our attendees will embrace a day of free idea exchanges on the subject of internet marketing but, unlike our other events, there will be no exhibitor floor or vendor sales. The focus will be strictly on actionable education for today’s experienced marketing and advertising professionals.”

To register for SES Accelerator, complete the registration form.

About SES

Incisive Media’s SES Conference & Expo is a leading global conference and training series focused on search engine marketing. Other Incisive resources include ClickZ, which provides digital marketing news, information, commentary, advice, opinion, and research and Search Engine Watch, which covers news and information about search, analysis of the search engine industry, and offers tools for improving search marketing effectiveness. For more news and event updates visit the SES press room.

Incisive Media is a leading global provider of specialized business news and information in print, online, and in person. The company’s principal markets include financial services, legal services, commercial real estate, marketing services, and risk management. Incisive Media’s market-leading brands include Accountancy Age, Computing, Investment Week, Legal Week, Post, Risk, and SES Conference and Expo. For more information, visit www.incisivemedia.com.

About Online Marketing Summit

Online Marketing Summit (OMS) offers an educational environment that facilitates incredible learning, networking and collaboration opportunities amongst marketers, executives and digital professionals. OMS is singularly committed to its mission to educate marketers on the emerging best practices of online marketing through a professional development conference and exhibition. More than 12,000 marketers have learned, collaborated and networked at OMS events over the years. For more information, visit www.onlinemarketingsummit.com.

For a newspaper publisher, everything starts and ends with revenue. As print has moved online, more and more of that revenue has had to come from online display advertising. Yet advertisers are reluctant to spend money on media buys they can’t measure. This has produced a problem at both ends of the equation: newspapers have lost revenue, and advertisers have lost confidence in their media plans.

That is because historically, the value of online ads to advertisers has been judged by where and how many times they were served. But there’s a big difference  between whether an ad is served online and whether it is actually seen by a reader rapidly scrolling down the page, as startups like AdXPose have pointed out. Increasingly advertisers will want to know if their ads are seen.

We’re on it. Last year, we partnered with AdXPose, which was acquired by comScore. Now we can document for our partners when we serve an ad and it is seen. comScore has shared with us numbers that validate our intuition that above and below the fold have become meaningless because of reader habits, and that new ad units can help generate new revenue for publishers.

For example, last year  one in four ads above the fold was never seen, and 32% of  all ads were delivered but never seen. This means ads below the fold, while traditionally less costly, were almost as effective as those in the traditional “best” spots above the fold.

Because we have been serving ads for over a decade, we were in a position to spot this early, and to do something about it.

We’ve come up with some new, best-in-class products that can be used by any publisher, whether they use our ad server or any other. They’re aimed at creating additional revenue for publishers, while assuring brands and advertisers their ads will be seen (we can prove it) in a brand-safe environment. As far as we know, we’re the first to do this.

We started as the infrastructure for our publisher partners when we served the ad. As we evolved, we became more of a full service outsourced ad operations company. This enabled us to learn more about how online advertising technology really works to help marketers, and therefore to help publishers.

This year, we have begun to launch new best-in-class products for all publishers whether they use our ad server or not. The best-in-class InView format, for example, will appear only if we know the user will see it – and that can be measured. This InView product is designed to meet the new ways readers consume publications.

We will also offer other best-in-class products for all publishers (regardless of which ad server they use). “TVAds OnPage” is a best-in-class video ad format. Ad Ops services from ZEDO are also best-in-class because we are a US company with high standards and because as the only ad ops company that builds an ad server we are a true technology expert that can run any ad server perfectly.

During the course of this year, we will roll out three more products for all publishers that are best-in-class.

We continue to move forward in product development, knowing we operate in a very fast-moving environment and we must continue to prove our value.

About ZEDO

ZEDO, Inc. is a digital ad solutions company that offers products and services for a publisher’s premium, self service, and remnant inventory. Products include ad network optimization, innovative rich media formats for publishers’ direct sales teams, full featured ad serving, behavioral targeting data built into the ad server, an exchange-like platform for publishers to sell behavioral and DMA targeted inventory at high CPMs (see: www.zedoadnetwork.com), a self service platform to allow advertisers to buy directly from a publisher, outsourced ad ops and more. These products are integrated into one technology platform for publishers to choose from, or use seamlessly together. ZEDO has been in the internet advertising industry for over 10 years, and is the most successful independent ad server in the US. The company provides innovative solutions that boost revenues for Internet publishers. ZEDO is headquartered in San Francisco and has four development centers in Russia and India.

Reach out to ZEDO at http://www.zedo.com, or follow the company on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/ZEDOadsolutions) and Twitter (http://twitter.com/zedoinc).