Connexus to merge With Epic Advertising

Independent ad network to combine with leading global performance network and search marketing company

NEW YORK – March 24, 2010 – Connexus Corporation, owner of Traffic Marketplace, an online ad network and social media company, and Epic Advertising, a privately-owned performance network and search marketing company, today announced their intent to merge.

The two companies will combine to form one of the largest private digital media companies globally, offering advertisers and publishers the ability to access display, search and social media internet traffic from over 225 countries and territories around the world.

Traffic Marketplace is a top 10 comScore ranked ad network while Epic works with more than 45,000 advertisers and publishers in the United States and internationally. Together, they reach over 80% of the US internet audience.

The combined company will provide a full spectrum of digital marketing services, from brand building to customer acquisition. Moreover, by combining both technology platforms, the company expects to deploy a tightly integrated demand-side ad platform for its clients, creating the most efficient means to access target audiences across all forms of digital distribution channels including search, display, social media, video and mobile.

The combined companies will focus on building integrated campaigns for advertisers and marketers that utilize a multi-channel approach and leverage intent data from a variety of sources to improve relevance.

Don Mathis, CEO of Epic Advertising explained: “Delivering successful digital advertising campaigns requires scale, technology and execution. Integrating our technology architectures will provide the combined company with an unparalleled demand-side ad platform capability. Moreover, we will be the leading private player of scale in the sector, and that matters: scale is reach and scale begets data. And data begets relevance for the advertisers’ campaigns.”

The Traffic Marketplace technology platform integrates data from multiple sources to increase relevance for its advertisers, with a specialty in correlating intent-based data to improve its targeting and analytics. Epic’s technology leverages a patent-pending approach to improving the effect of branding focused campaigns on customer acquisition programs. Together, the companies will be unmatched in providing relevance and performance for their advertisers and publishers on a global basis.

“We’re combining two market leaders,” said Connexus CEO Art Shaw. “Traffic Marketplace has been helping Fortune 500 companies build brand awareness and acquire customers by targeting consumers online, and Epic is the dominant player in customer acquisition for a range of advertisers. Both companies will continue to grow their core competencies, while we combine our data and technology to increase relevance across all our businesses. In addition, as experts in understanding consumer trends, we will continue to aggressively expand our reach internationally and within emerging social, video and mobile markets.”

The combined entity has offices in Los Angeles, New York, Toronto, London, San Francisco, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit and the Silicon Valley.

Source: Epic Advertising