John Battelle's Searchblog

IndustryBrains Expands Site-Specific Paid Listings
In Financial Category with the Addition of
The MotleyFool.com, Kiplinger.com, Zacks.com and Salary.com
 
NEW YORK (March 10, 2004)  IndustryBrains, the leader in site-specific contextually relevant advertising, announced today it has further expanded its financial vertical by partnering with The Motley Fool, Kiplinger.com, Zacks, and Salary.com.

The MotleyFool.com. Kiplinger.com, Zacks.com and Salary.com join a prestigious network of sites that include BusinessWeek and BankRate to offer financial advertisers site-specific and category-specific cost per click opportunities. A buy into the financial category results in exposure to 5 million monthly unique visitors across all six sites.

“Site specific targeting on premium sites has consistently proven to generate a lower cost-per-lead than programs utilizing a network model.” says IndustryBrains CEO Erik Matlick. “The addition of The Motley Fool, Kiplinger, Salary.com and Zacks Financial Network means that our advertisers will have access to the highest-quality audience on the web.” says IndustryBrains CEO Erik Matlick. “

We were able to point to the benefits of IndustryBrains almost immediately, from both a revenue and a partnership perspective," said Jeff Kaplan, General Manager, MotleyFool.com. "In the short period following the roll-out of IndustryBrains listings on MotleyFool.com, IndustryBrains has proven to have our best interest in mind while being able to generate additional revenue for our site.”

Unlike network driven paid listings programs, IndustryBrain’s technology is private-labeled by partner sites and is totally transparent to the user. This enables publishers to leverage their own brands to bring in advertisers who are willing to pay more for placement on a highly-regarded site.

"IndustryBrains provides an effective way for us to easily derive incremental revenue from our editorial pages and email newsletters," said Edward Kelleher, General Manager, Kiplinger.com. "They have created a unique product that helps us grow our business."

Users tend to trust paid listing results returned on branded sites they are familiar with. The result is more cost effective advertising performance. One U.S.-based client reported cost-per-lead acquisition using IndustryBrains to be only $7.00 vs. $48.69 using Overture and $21.49 using Google.

The Motley Fool, Inc. educates, amuses, and enriches more than 30 million people each month and is a leading provider of financial education and independent advice. Since 1993, The Motley Fool has been on hand to help people achieve financial independence across a wide variety of online and offline media channels including: its award-winning website at www.Fool.com ; its best-selling Simon & Schuster and self-published books (over 1.8 million sold); a nationally syndicated weekly newspaper column carried by more than 250 publications; and "The Motley Fool Radio Show," a joint venture with NPR.

Kiplinger.com , the companion site to Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine, is organized to help visitors learn, plan and meet their financial goals, as well as assist them in getting the most for their money. The site introduces investment basics, updates on the latest news, trends, tax, investment and product information, and gives visitors the tools they need to make the best decisions. Kiplinger.com is also a gateway to all of the company's products and services.

Founded in 1978, Zacks began processing, organizing and evaluating research produced by US brokerage firms. Today Zacks receives daily electronic data feeds and printed research reports on over 10,000 companies from over 185 brokerage firms, produced by more than 3,200 analysts amounting to over 500,000 pages of brokerage research. In addition, ZIR records 25,000 earnings estimate revisions and changes in broker recommendations weekly. This information is made available through institutional and non-institutional product lines and web sites, as well as www.zacks.com, and www.zacksadvisor.com.

Salary.com is the world's technology leader in compensation management. The firm's enterprise software helps companies manage their compensation expenditures with real-time, decision-ready data and analytical tools. Other Salary.com products include the widely syndicated Salary Wizard, which offers packages of data and analysis geared toward individuals, managers, and growing businesses.

Launched in 2002, New York-based IndustryBrains , is the only business performance based media firm that specializes in contextual site specific advertising. IndustryBrains offers custom publisher solutions for monetizing content and search pages. Real-time tracking and reporting allows publishers to easily manage advertiser relationships and optimize revenue. For advertisers, IndustryBrains offers contextual category placement on premium sites like Infoworld, ComputerWorld, PC Magazine, EETimes, Network Magazine and BusinessWeek. Advertisers bid for placement on site-specific categories that are related to their business. Listings are delivered whenever a customer performs a search on the specified terms throughout its network of 50+ premium sites.

George H. Simpson Communications
212.309.9068
georgehsimpson@att.net