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Independent Performance Assessment Validates Accuracy of Akamai’s IP Location Service


WEBWIRE

Akamai demonstrates 100 percent accuracy when determining IP addresses at country level; and at state and city level within United States


CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM), the leader in powering video, dynamic transactions and enterprise applications online, today announced the results of an independent performance assessment of its IP location service conducted by Gomez, Inc., a leader in Web application experience management. The Akamai IP location service provides a range of insight for content providers about an Internet end user’s geographic location including country, state, city, zip code, area code, as well as device type, connection type, and actual connection speed, among others.

Gomez, leveraging its global network of more than 100 tier one Internet backbone measurement nodes, completed an independent audit of the Akamai IP location service on June 30, 2009. The complete report and findings are available for download at www.akamai.com/gomez.

Results from the Gomez audit show that Akamai achieved 100 percent accuracy - providing an exact match for every IP address - at the country level on a global scale, and at the state and city level within the U.S. Akamai also achieved 97.22 percent accuracy when determining IP addresses at the city level across the globe.

“Using a pool of IP addresses from around the world, Gomez determined that the Akamai service appears to be most effective at anonymously validating IP addresses located on end-user networks used for home and office connectivity,” said Matt Poepsel, Vice President at Gomez. “This aligns with the method used by Akamai to build its IP location database, which integrates non-personally identifiable IP address information from service providers with information gathered from other Akamai edge services. In the U.S., for example, Akamai was able to accurately identify 100 percent of the Gomez public measurement locations to the state and city levels.”

The Akamai IP location service is designed to allow content providers to control and customize the content they deliver to visitors as determined using the IP address from where the request originates, based on their location, device, connections and other attributes.

“The ability to characterize site traffic by geography, bandwidth, and device type has been an important component to the success of our customers’ business models,” said Harald Prokop, Senior Vice President of Engineering at Akamai. “With our global network of more than 50,000 edge servers and continual mapping of the Internet, Akamai has an exceptional ability to share real-time network knowledge for the delivery of relevant content.”

Akamai customers leverage its IP location service for multiple use cases, including:

* Marketing - create a personalized end-user experience by delivering geographically-targeted information, such as language, pricing, advertising, shipping instructions
* Fraud Protection - identify patterns for proxy hijacking of banking and retail transactions
* Mobile Device Detection - tailor content based on end users’ device
* Rights Management / Compliance - comply with the digital rights of licensed content and meet regulatory compliance restrictions on software downloads
* Security - monitor access to corporate networks


ShopLocal, a leader in multi-channel shopping and advertising services, enables more than one hundred of the nation’s top retailers to deliver highly interactive, targeted and localized promotions to shoppers via the Internet, mobile phones and any other digital environment. With www.ShopLocal.com, the Company’s consumer site, users can find millions of products and up-to-date weekly sales, deals, and coupons for consumer electronics, apparel, home and garden, groceries and more.

“ShopLocal uses Akamai to identify, by IP address, the location from which an end user is accessing our site,” said Edward McLaughlin, Senior Director of Technology at ShopLocal. “This technology has been instrumental for us to automatically present content and localized promotions best suited for the location of our Client’s end users. Our Client’s customers expect a very personalized experience, so the accuracy of Akamai’s IP location data is paramount to the success of their online offerings.”

“Our Clients that leverage automatic IP location data see a 13 percent increase in conversion rate of first-time visitors compared to clients that require their first-time visitors to provide their location by entering their zip code manually,” said Loch Rose, Vice President of Analytics at ShopLocal.

Burst Media (www.BurstMedia.com) is a leading provider of advertising representation, services and technology to independent Web Publishers. Burst Media enables advertisers to reach finely segmented, engaged consumers as they visit Burst’s extensive number of interest-based sub-channels. Through its Burst Network and Burst Direct units, the company represents one of the broadest and deepest offerings of interest-based websites online.

“Akamai’s IP location service, coupled with our use of their services for content delivery and global traffic management, has been vital to helping us better meet the needs of publishers using our adConductor technology and advertisers utilizing our media networks,” said David Stein, Chief Technology Officer of Burst Media. “At Burst, we work with our web publishers and advertisers to assure that advertising reaches the right audience, in the right place, at the right time. Akamai’s IP location service helps us do this by providing us with the ability to effectively target advertising based on country and state data as well as Metropolitan Statistical Area and Marketing Area.”

Akamai correlates geographic and network information to IP addresses, enabling the customization of content without compromising end user privacy. As part of Akamai’s site, media and application acceleration solutions, the IP location service is easily implemented and the data is automatically and continuously updated, ensuring that customers always have access to accurate, up-to-date information.



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