ADSDAQ Exchange Agency Trading Desk™ Launched by ContextWeb

For the First Time Buyers Can Assess Contextual Performance Across All Display Ad Spending; Participating Agencies Control Billions in Digital Media Spend

NEW YORK CITY (March 19, 2008) ContextWeb, Inc., a leading contextual advertising company and operator of the ADSDAQ Exchange, today announced the ADSDAQ Exchange Agency Trading DeskTM: a technology platform that will enable media buyers to see how their online ad campaigns are performing and - with the push of a dashboard button - buy more inventory in the better performing contextual areas and offer to sell inventory that is underperforming. The ADSDAQ Exchange Agency Trading Desk can track campaigns running outside of the ADSDAQ Exchange system, giving media agencies an efficient and effective way to track campaign performance against more than 386 contextual categories of inventory.

Nothing like Agency Trading Desk is offered by any other company in the online advertising space. Six agencies, including Omnicom's OMD and WPP's GroupM, are participating in the invitation-only beta program. Collectively, the beta agencies represent billions of dollars in annual online display ad spending. The ADSDAQ Exchange Agency Trading Desk will be provided at no cost to agencies participating in the ADSDAQ Exchange and provide actionable analysis of how their campaigns are performing online. As particular contextual categories (such as luxury autos, home repair, adventure travel or mutual funds) provide superior performance for any given campaign, media buyers can immediately acquire additional inventory in that category on the ADSDAQ Exchange simply by hitting the BUY button. Likewise, when other category inventory is not supporting a particular campaign, media buyers can hit the SELL button and offer the remaining inventory for sale on the ADSDAQ Exchange at a price they control.

"Agencies face the challenging issues of efficient media spend and access to actionable insights in a time of audience fragmentation. They will use the ADSDAQ Exchange Agency Trading Desk to associate performance to context across all of their digital campaign media spend," says Anand Subramanian, CEO of ContextWeb, Inc.

Using the same real-time contextual engine that powers the company's media business, a digital agency can use the ADSDAQ Exchange Agency Trading Desk across media buys on portals, ad networks and site specific buys to break down buys into content categories and associate campaign performance with those categories. Once a buyer or analyst receives this analysis, the agency can-with the push of a button-buy more of the inventory that is working for a given campaign and offer to sell any inventory that is underperforming their expectations. "ContextWeb may have found a formula to deliver the best type of insights-ones that are both actionable and because they are standardized to context-repeatable at scale," says Rob Norman, CEO, GroupM Interaction Worldwide, a division of WPP and one of the program's beta partners. "The goal of ContextWeb's ADSDAQ Exchange is to eliminate barriers in this fragmented marketplace so advertisers can buy and sell inventory based on continuous learning and publishers can unlock the true value of their inventory," concludes Mr. Subramanian, CEO of ContextWeb, Inc. "The ADSDAQ Exchange Agency Trading Desk is a crucial part of making this a reality."

How It Works

The ADSDAQ Exchange Agency Trading Desk utilizes a real-time, page-level contextual engine that is patent-pending and has been in commercial production since 2000. By determining the context of every ad impression inside a campaign placement and across an entire digital ad campaign, an agency can tie performance measures to one of 386 categories present in ContextWeb's contextual taxonomy.

The contextualization and analysis is available in real-time. Once the agency completes its assessment, it can choose to buy additional inventory in a certain category or offer to sell specific category inventory that is not working on a given campaign. The service operates separately from the company's media business. ContextWeb's ADSDAQ Exchange is the only online exchange where both advertisers and publishers have complete control. The Exchange's patent-pending, page-level contextual technology offers advertisers efficient pricing and extensive reach, making inventory on the Exchange "brand-safe" and comparable to a site specific or portal buy.

The ADSDAQ Exchange ranks among the top 20 ad supported properties, according to comScore Media Metrix, and reaches +93 million monthly unique visitors (February, 2008). The Exchange includes more than 350 advertisers, including 9 out of the top 10 marketing organizations, and more than 5,000 publishers. In 2007, Deloitte's New York Region Technology Fast 50 recognized ContextWeb as the 17th fastest growing company in the New York area. The company's investors include leading venture capital firms Draper Fisher Jurvetson ("DFJ"), DFJ Gotham Ventures and Updata Partners.

ContextWeb, Inc.
Biff Burns
917-408-6106
bburns@contextweb.com

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