New Akamai Service Enables Online Publishers to Better Monetize Their Advertising Inventory

* First offering within Company’s new Advertising Decision Solutions line helps publishers develop new ad strategies, improve campaign effectiveness, and increase revenue


CAMBRIDGE, MA .- Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM), the leader in powering rich media, dynamic transactions and enterprise applications online, today unveiled its Insight for Publishers service (www.akamai.com/insight), a real-time solution that helps online publishers develop new ad strategies in order to better monetize their advertising inventory. Insight for Publishers is available immediately for all U.S.-based Akamai customers.

As part of the Company’s recently announced Advertising Decision Solutions line, Insight for Publishers enables online content providers to more easily identify in real-time and sell their most valuable audiences across their owned and operated properties. Unlike other ad targeting solutions, Insight for Publishers can be enabled without costly and time consuming manual page changes, leading to faster time-to-market and stronger ad revenue strategies.

“Akamai is helping our customers act on valuable audience intelligence right away- enabling publishers to provide advertisers with better access to meaningful consumer segments, thus driving increased advertising revenue,” said Mike Afergan, Akamai’s CTO and senior vice president of Advertising Decision Solutions. “Providing a quick and easy way to gain in-depth knowledge about a site’s audiences, from simple browsing activity to sophisticated custom behaviors, this service provides valuable cross-site audience intelligence for publishers to make smart advertising decisions.”

Quick, Seamless Implementation Reduces Time-to-Readiness, Improves ROI
Insight for Publishers enables customers to use their existing Akamai configuration to package and sell audience segments. This simple integration of anonymous data with their existing ad logic allows customers to act on behavioral data in real time for instantaneous targeting of ads, increasing their overall cost per thousand impressions (CPMs). In addition, the Akamai product gives publishers the ability to generate audience segments without the use of pixels. This simpler technology removes the key technical barrier of pixel tagging and can allow for more accurate targeting capabilities, quicker turnaround on advertising campaign launches, and a higher ROI on advertising investments.

Leading Publishers among Early Adopters
Internet conglomerate IAC has leveraged Akamai’s content delivery services for several years. IAC Advertising Solutions (IAC/AS), a division of IAC, is an early customer of Akamai’s Insight for Publishers. IAC/AS tested and now relies on Akamai’s solution to help bundle its audience into desirable targeted segments across Web properties like Evite and Citysearch, and the new IAC Network of 24+ leading and emerging sites.

“The Akamai solution is faster and more efficient to implement than any other behavioral targeting product,” said Ali Mirian, director of product management at IAC/AS. “It’s easy for us to unify disparate data and, it’s almost implementation-free on the advertiser side. Akamai brings us speed to market and robust, precise targeting.”

As one of the nation’s largest diversified media companies, Hearst Corporation has ownership of leading daily and weekly newspapers, magazines, cable networks, Internet businesses, and television production companies. When selling advertisers access to key demographics across multiple sites, Hearst’s goal is to increase the value of their ad products and inventory. Already using Akamai to deliver content for their many sites, Insight for Publishers provided an easy solution to gather anonymous data on users to improve CPMs.

Benefits to Publishers

* Increase ad revenue—Insight for Publishers provides a view into audience composition and anonymous browsing behaviors across site properties to drive more targeted and creative ad strategies, and to increase the value of non-premium site inventory
* Launch new campaigns fast—Very limited set-up time lets publishers launch ad targeting strategies faster and more cost effectively.
* Make precise audience decisions—Insight for Publishers can act on behavioral data in real time to make instantaneous ad targeting decisions by integrating with the publisher’s existing ad logic.
* Integrate with your existing ad server—Insight for Publishers is completely media-and technology-agnostic.
* Leverage social media—Audience insight can translate to immediate value within user-generated content communities.
* Maintain personal privacy—Insight for Publishers relies solely on anonymous and non-personally identifiable end user information, maintaining the integrity of data and privacy policies.



About Advertising Decision Solutions
Akamai’s Advertising Decision Solutions are designed to help buyers and sellers of online advertising create attractive audience segments with the necessary scale to achieve better results from campaigns and investments. As a result, publishers will be able provide advertisers with better access to relevant consumers, strengthening the relationship with those advertisers and driving increased advertising revenue. In addition, advertisers will benefit by seeing greater return on investment and improved ad campaign performance, while cutting waste from their ad budgets by reaching their intended audience at the right time. Finally, consumers, often faced with irrelevant online advertising clutter, will enjoy greater advertising relevance and continued growth in the amount of content that is available for free because it is supported by advertising.

The Akamai Difference
Akamai® provides market-leading managed services for powering rich media, dynamic transactions, and enterprise applications online. Serving the world’s most recognized brands across diverse industries, Akamai has revolutionized how online publishers can monetize their content, and how online advertisers can expand their customer reach. Transforming the Internet into a more viable place to inform, entertain, advertise, interact, and collaborate, Akamai’s global network of tens of thousands of distributed servers provides the scale, reliability, insight and performance for businesses to succeed online. To experience The Akamai Difference, visit www.akamai.com.