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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
New Pay-Per-Action Ad Network Allows Online Financial Websites and Blogs to Increase Revenue from their Web Pages
New York, NY, January 22, 2008 – Alacra, Inc., a leading provider of online business information solutions, today launched the Premium Content Ad Network (PCAN), a new pay-per-action advertising network. PCAN will allow online publishers of financial and business content to better monetize their websites.
The customized PCAN advertisements will highlight relevant business research - company profiles, investment, credit and market research – all available for purchase via the Alacra Store (www.alacrastore.com). At launch, EDGAR Online (Nasdaq: EDGR) (www.edgar-online.com), the leading provider of value-added business and financial information, and The Livermore Report (www.livermorereport.com) are the first two publishers to implement PCAN on their sites.
An example of a live PCAN ad unit offering financial documents related to General Electric can be seen at http://google.brand.edgar-online.com/?sym=GE
Alacra developed PCAN specifically for online publishers of business and financial content that are exploring ways to increase revenues from their sites. Currently, many of the contextual text ads served at most financial and investment sites aren’t relevant to the readers’ interests.
For example, a reader researching Apple on an investment site will often be served an ad for iPods or Apple accessories. However, that reader is interested in information on Apple’s stock and financial performance – not in purchasing an iPod. As a result, the reader is more likely to ignore those ads, resulting in less advertising revenue for the publisher. With PCAN, that reader would be served ads for relevant equity, credit, and financial research concerning Apple, Inc.
Pay-Per-Action Ad Network Offers Higher Revenues to Publishers As a pay-per-action advertising network, PCAN allows participating websites to receive a portion of the revenue generated by every transaction. When a reader clicks on a PCAN ad and purchases one of the millions of business and financial documents available in the Alacra Store, the online publisher can earn a share of each transaction for each click that leads to a purchase. The Alacra Store currently offers more than 16 million documents and reports from more than 45 publishers and content providers.
In addition, PCAN was designed to keep readers on the publishers’ sites. When a user clicks on a PCAN ad, a new browser window opens then takes them to the relevant business and financial research spotlighted in the ad. The user can easily purchase financial reports without ever leaving the publisher’s site.
“Online publishers -- from large, well established brands to bloggers -- have all spent time building their readerships by providing compelling content,” said Steven Goldstein, chairman and CEO of Alacra. “But it’s been difficult for them to monetize every page to its potential. We developed PCAN so publishers can offer their readers ads directly based on their specific interests – contextually relevant financial information. This is the first online ad network specifically for financial and business content.”
PCAN Delivers Targeted, Relevant Ads Based on a Web Page’s Content Utilizing proprietary entity extraction technology, PCAN scans the content of a site in order to deliver relevant ads. If a site is addressing General Electric’s strategies for 2008, for example, PCAN will offer business information and reports pertaining to General Electric. In addition, PCAN is customizable. Publishers can easily select specific content sources to include or exclude in the PCAN ads delivered. And the PCAN ads can be adapted to a site’s look and feel – offered as a standard text ad or incorporated into the site’s content.
PCAN allows financial publishers to increase their RPM – revenue per thousand page views – by serving up contextually and behaviorally relevant ads showcasing research specific to the company the user is analyzing. While most ad networks are consumer focused, providing ads that are product-oriented, PCAN ads deliver links to high-value credit and investment research to users who are researching potential investments.
“Our users rely on EDGAR Online to make smart investment decisions. “PCAN appealed to us because our users are looking for high quality business information. With PCAN, our users can see highly relevant financial research that’s available for easy and instant purchase via the Alacra Store. We’re also continuously reviewing how to maximize our site’s advertising revenues and PCAN provides us with another revenue stream for our site.” said Sue Bratone Childs, executive vice president and chief marketing officer for EDGAR Online.
Following the launch of PCAN, Alacra plans to soon release the Alacra Widget, which will enable bloggers and social network users to more easily participate in PCAN and deliver contextually targeted ads based on a blog’s content. For large sites, an API to Alacrastore.com is available, enabling increased flexibility.
About Alacra, Inc.
Alacra creates sophisticated online technology and services to help clients find, package and present business information. Financial institutions, professional service firms and other corporations have long used the same content sets to support clients, research deals and investigate market opportunities. The Alacra mission is to package this content and deliver it in a format that best meets each organization's precise needs.
Worldwide, more than 600 investment and commercial banks, management consulting firms, law firms, and other corporations, representing 50,000+ end users worldwide, use Alacra to effectively find and deploy business information in their daily workflow. For more information, visit www.alacra.com.
About EDGAR® Online, Inc.
EDGAR Online, Inc., www.edgar-online.com, is a leading provider of value-added business and financial information on global companies to financial, corporate and advisory professionals. The Company makes information and a variety of analysis tools available via online subscriptions and licensing agreements to a large user base.
For press inquiries and interviews, please contact:
Jeff Rutherford
Jay S. Winuk
Winuk Communications, Inc.
413-369-4128/jeff@jeffrutherford.com
845-277-1160/jay@winukpr.com