NewsGator’s ‘AdBurner’ Streamlines Online Advertising for Premium Publishers

Turnkey solution optimizes ad placement, management, and revenue across any platform to capitalize on burgeoning inventory

DENVER — NewsGator Technologies announced today, along with key partners, AdBurner, a program designed to provide a turnkey advertising-based solution for premium publishers that allows them to optimize ad revenue around key web 2.0 technologies with no incremental effort on the publishers’ part.

AdBurner is aimed at optimizing the CPM for, and process of, inserting and managing advertising into NewsGator’s publisher products suite, including services as diverse as widgets, related content, and iPhone applications. The initiative is built around best of breed advertising partners Technorati, Admeld, Gigya, Medialets, and Tremor Media.

A significant roadblock for media companies attempting to monetize social media and mobile applications has been the lack of process standards and optimization methods for inserting and tracking ad placements. NewsGator’s announcement today brings welcome relief to media clients struggling with explosive inventory growth and literally hundreds of online ad networks complementing their own internal ad sales efforts.

With AdBurner, NewsGator’s premium publisher clients can choose to monetize via high value display ads, video pre-roll and overlays, widget ads, and iPhone display ads through an integrated process engine and a single management console. In addition to managing ad units inserted into products that NewsGator provides to publishers, the process integration extends to unrelated online ad inventory.

“We have heard loud and clear from our clients that lack of inventory is not the problem they have, it’s selling the inventory they already control along with the additional inventory we are creating for them,” said JB Holston, CEO and President of NewsGator. “What we are providing to them are pre-packaged integrated ad placement scenarios that can be used across a range of products, covers their entire inventory, and does so in a manner that is fully transparent and optimized to deliver the highest ad value per placement.”

Among the partners identified today are:

Technorati: Technorati Media, an advertising network of blogs and social media sites, is a dramatic departure from traditional online ad networks that places brands at the center of the global online conversation and offers better contextualization of advertising payloads to content. “This initiative aligns Technorati’s clients with news from a variety of sources across the tail to be delivered in innovative ways to online readers,” said Richard Jalichandra, CEO of Technorati. “NewsGator brings a top tier client list and proven media syndication technology that is a perfect fit for Technorati Media.”

Admeld: The leading publisher and ad network optimization specialist with deep experience managing online ad inventory in a transparent manner that drives positive unit economics. “We are very pleased to be working with NewsGator and their high quality publisher partners,” said Michael Barrett, CEO of AdMeld. “A NewsGator and AdMeld partnership will drive higher revenue for participating publishers.”

Gigya: The leading widget distribution platform and network for brand advertisers, Gigya has a proven monetization model for widget publishers. With its unique and innovative widget advertising solutions, Gigya is delivering large-scale social advertising campaigns for top brands like Wal-Mart, Nike, Kraft, JCPenney, and many others. “Monetization is a major challenge for publishers of distributed content, so we’re pleased to be working with NewsGator to deliver comprehensive widget monetization solutions to their publisher clients,” said Ben Pashman, VP Sales and Business Development at Gigya.

Medialets: A pioneering analytics provider and premium iPhone ad network, Medialets has rapidly become the leader for brands and application developers looking for measurable advertising solutions as well as behavioral usage metrics. Their full-screen interactive ad format leverages all of the capabilities of the iPhone, enabling a rich and engaging experience for users, as well as providing comprehensive measurement for advertisers and publishers. “Medialets is excited to work with NewsGator on this program,“ said Eric Litman, Chairman and CEO of Medialets. ”They have set a great example with the fabulous NetNewsWire application for the iPhone and Apple computers, and are building on their cross-platform success with this comprehensive publishing solution for top media brands. Medialets offers a compelling approach to monetizing mobile applications and we are looking forward to providing the premier mobile advertising solution for NewsGator’s clients.”

Tremor Media: Tremor Media provides advertisers with in-banner and in-stream video advertising opportunities on top-tier sites and offers publishers a full suite of products and services to monetize streaming video and maximize ROI. “Tremor Media and NewsGator have been working together to deliver high quality, high value video pre-roll to NewsGator clients,“ said Jason Glickman, Tremor Media’s CEO. ”This initiative builds on the success we have had with NewsGator around delivering video monetization for widgets and non-viral distributions by offering our respective publishers a compelling pre-integrated approach to monetization of their inventory"

The AdBurner program is available immediately for existing NewsGator clients.

About NewsGator
NewsGator Technologies helps enterprises and media companies leverage social computing solutions to deliver real business value. The company’s enterprise social networking and widget services are in use by hundreds of the world’s most recognized brands, including Biogen Idec, CBS, CNN, Discovery, National Geographic, Procter & Gamble and USA Today. NewsGator Social Sites and Enterprise Server give enterprises better ways to collaborate, share content, expand employee knowledge and improve productivity. NewsGator Widget Services enable media and brand companies to better engage their audiences and extend the value of their brands through viral syndication of content. NewsGator also offers free, award-winning RSS aggregators for the Web, desktop, mobile devices and e-mail clients. For more information, visit www.newsgator.com.

About Technorati
Technorati collects, organizes, highlights and distributes the online global conversation; and surfaces this content to millions of consumers. Founded as the first blog search engine, Technorati has expanded to a full service media company providing services to the blogs and social media sites and connecting them with advertisers who want to join the conversation, and whose online properties introduce blog content to millions of consumers. www.technorati.com

About Admeld
AdMeld (www.AdMeld.com) helps premier online publishers optimize their unsold, remnant and other “discretionary” inventory. AdMeld’s innovative technology platform is a scalable, effective solution to generate the highest possible yield from each impression and eliminate the costly burden of managing ad network and exchange relationships. Built from the ground up to serve publishers with complex needs, AdMeld provides different enterprise-level solutions to fit client needs, is 100% transparent, and never pools inventory from multiple publishers. Founded in 2007 by Benjamin Barokas and Brian Adams, AdMeld is led by Michael Barrett, an experienced leader of premier new media companies. Major investors include Spark Capital and The Foundry Group.

About Gigya
Gigya’s technology makes it easy for people to share content across platforms, providing publishers and marketers with powerful tools for increasing audience reach and engagement. Reaching more than 160 million people each month, Gigya’s innovative widget advertising network enables marketers to engage consumers in social environments. The company’s Wildfire and Socialize products enable publishers to syndicate and track their content across more than 60 unique platforms, and to integrate their own websites with popular social networks like MySpace and Facebook. Publishers and advertisers including CNET, Disney, DoubleClick, Electronic Arts, Hyundai, Levis, RockYou!, Unilever and Walmart choose Gigya to power their content sharing initiatives.

About Medialets
Medialets is a New York-based premium advertising network and analytics provider for native applications built for next generation mobile platforms such as iPhone and Android. Medialets works with agencies and brands to define and deploy innovative ad campaigns that tap into all of the capabilities of the iPhone, as well as promoting branded applications on a cost-per-install basis. Medialytics, Medialets’ free analytics and reporting solution, is the leading analytics and advertising solution for the world’s most downloaded iPhone applications. Medialets is a privately-held company with offices in New York, NY and San Francisco, CA.

About Tremor
Tremor Media is the leading online video advertising network providing advertisers with both in-banner and in-stream video advertising opportunities on over 1,400 top-tier publisher sites with more than 136 million unique visitors per month and is ranked #4 in comScore’s VideoMetrics AdFocus report. Tremor also offers the Acudeo Video Monetization Platform for publishers, a full suite of products and services to monetize streaming video and maximize ROI. Tremor’s full service solutions offer the necessary tools for advertisers and publishers to utilize online video advertising as a powerful interactive medium. For more information visit: www.tremormedia.com