MediaNews Group Northern California Selects Impact Engine as its Display Ad Platform Provider for Yahoo! APT

SAN DIEGO, CA - Impact Engine, the advertising technology company that pioneered display ad business optimization, announces the launch of 14 MediaNews Group sites on the Publisher Edition of its online display ad optimization platform. Impact Engine won the larger relationship after MediaNews Group corporate noted Monterey County Herald, one of the its largest sites, had recorded increase in spec ad production by 260%. The gains were without new hiring and required minimal training to derive the benefits of the Impact Engine platform.

“Transitioning to the Yahoo! APT serving system, we needed a certified partner that met the system’s specifications and guidelines,” said Steve Bennett, Advertising Manager at Monterey County Herald. “Impact Engine’s Yahoo!-certified ad creative ensured that deploying ads into the new APT platform was seamless.”

Impact Engine has been certified as a third-party rich media vendor by the Yahoo! Newspaper Consortium in March 2008, ensuring its place in an exclusive group to be able to serve ads through the Yahoo! APT platform.

“The MediaNews Group win is a prime example of how Impact Engine is delivering much needed efficiencies to the online display advertising marketplace,” said Neil Greer, the CEO of Impact Engine. “We are pleased MediaNews Group has expanded its relationship with us. As a pioneer of the Yahoo Newspaper Consortium, MediaNews Group has proven time and again they are a forward thinking company.”

Prior to launching Impact Engine, Monterey County Herald was challenged with limited programming resources and limited budget for hiring and training new staff. Additionally, their advertisers wanted more control over the success of their display ad campaigns. Impact Engine enabled Monterey County Herald to shift 100% of its display ad hosting burden to Impact Engine’s robust infrastructure and in less than 20 minutes, the newspaper was able to train its non-technical sales team on how to create and edit spec ads for their advertisers. Further, Impact Engine’s self service tools for online advertisers and publishers enabled the Herald to enable their advertisers to make changes to their own ad campaigns; thus, increasing campaign success and enhancing advertiser satisfaction.

Bennett said the simplicity of creating and editing example Display ads for advertisers within Impact Engine eliminated almost all customer sales objections, as the sales team was able to react to customers’ feedback and make real-time ad edits during client meetings. “Impact Engine’s online library offers a variety of industry templates which get our clients’ creative juices flowing,” Bennett added.

Impact Engine’s new MediaNews Group clients include newspapers throughout the San Francisco Bay area, such as Chico ER, Paradise Post, and Eureka Times-Standard, just to mention a few.

About Impact Engine
Impact Engine is the leading display ad business optimization company for the online advertising industry. The company is focused on delivering efficiencies, scalability and increased ROI to Publishers, Advertisers and Agencies alike. The firm was founded by an experienced team of interactive ad agency principals, rich media veterans, and software professionals. Impact Engine enables publishers, advertisers, ad agencies, and ad networks of all sizes to leverage the fast growth and opportunities presented within the online display advertising space.

About MediaNews Group
MediaNews Group is one of the largest newspaper companies in the United States situated throughout California, the Rocky Mountain region and the Northeast. MediaNews Group is privately owned and operate 54 daily newspapers in 11 states with combined daily and Sunday circulation of approximately 2.4 million and 2.7 million, respectively.

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Challenge:

• Sioux City Journal’s primary challenge was to efficiently sell online display ads to advertisers with smaller online advertising budgets than traditionally seen in print advertisement.
• Sioux City Journal had limited internal Flash design resources, and had trouble keeping up with demand for new ad creative.
• Getting ads from initial production to live publication on their website was a daunting nine-step process that took up to two weeks to complete.

Solution:

• Impact Engine revitalized Sioux City Journal’s display ad sales by enabling their sales team to generate dynamic spec ads prior to sales calls - without any technical knowledge of Flash.
• By creating personalized spec ads for each advertiser and editing them in real-time during the sales call, closing rates dramatically increased.
• Impact Engine’s online advertising operations support solution simplified the initial nine-step creation, publishing, and updating process into an easy, four-step system, completely bypassing the ad services department and leveraging non-technical resources.

Results:

• By using Impact Engine, Sioux City Journal’s advertising representatives were able to decrease the publishing process time by 44%.
• As a result of showcasing Impact Engine’s high-end rich media ad creative and real-time ad editing capabilities, Sioux City Journal anticipates an increase in the online spend of Lexus of Omaha, one of their largest advertisers, of 300%.

“Impact Engine has been key to the success of our online product, allowing us to provide state-of-the-art advertising solutions to our customers.” Rachel Porter Online Sales Manager, Sioux City Journal