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Company Also Updates Growth Figures as Economy
Puts a Spotlight on Simplified, Locally-Targeted Online Marketing

Reply.com (www.reply.com), a leader in locally-targeted online marketing, today began detailing new publisher tools, added categories and growth figures at ad:tech 2009, an interactive advertising and technology conference and exposition opening today in San Francisco.

“Taken together, today’s Reply.com news represents a clear, compelling and detailed ‘inside view’ of how the online advertising industry can thrive during a challenging economic period,” said Reply.com Chairman and CEO Payam Zamani.

Today’s announcements highlight why Reply! was named a hot company to watch in 2009 by top tech analyst firm Forrester Research, Inc. and why Reply! was selected as one of only 10 companies to participate in the ad:tech San Francisco press briefing.  The briefing is scheduled for April 21, 12:30 p.m. PDT, at the 3rd Alcove, 3rd Floor, Moscone West, across the hall from Room 3022.

The Reply! Marketplace is designed for businesses concerned about the complexity and cost of online acquisition, as well as the location and intent of consumers. Reply! Marketplace offers:

Enhanced Clicks™:

• Delivers Enhanced Clicks™, which represent a consumer in a specific geographic location who has expressed interest in a specific product or service
• Simplifies online acquisition by eliminating the need for special software, keyword management, text ads and expensive technology expertise
• Current categories: Real Estate, Home Improvement, New Cars, Used Car, Home Insurance, Auto Insurance and Mortgage. More categories launching monthly

Leads:

• Offers control over price, quality and volume to maximize results
• Allows you to easily set the price you will pay per lead and change anytime
• Employs auction-based, market-driven pricing
• Communicates quality through a real-time ratings system

Reply.com’s Marketplace, which debuted in 2008, has already brought on board a wide array of customers including: Chevrolet, Ford, Nissan, Audi, Detroit Trading Company, Market Leader, Coldwell Banker, RealEstate.com and Intelius.

Reply!’s ad:tech Agenda
Today at ad:tech 2009, Reply!—available at Booth #1544—is announcing additions to the Marketplace:

• Publisher Tools:  The only secondary click marketplace where businesses can earn a premium for turning raw clicks into Enhanced ClicksTM.  Reply! also offers hundreds of category-specific widgets for generating Enhanced Clicks™. Reply! is the only Marketplace that allows publishers to choose ads that fit their website design and audience to maximize their ROI.

• New Categories:   Reply! has expanded beyond the New Car and Real Estate categories into Home Improvement,  Used Car, Home Mortgage, Auto Insurance and Home Insurance.

• Updated Growth Figures:  Privately-held Reply.com anticipates extraordinary revenue growth in 2009 and has hired dozens of employees in the past four months—even in the face of a challenging economy.  At ad:tech, company execs will elaborate on this growth, share specific input on what is motivating current advertisers, and detail future plans to maintain and enhance these growth levels.

“Reply.com has made online marketing more relevant by localizing and simplifying it,” said Reply! Chairman and CEO Payam Zamani, “Moreover, Reply! has made it easier to reach the desired customer, in the precise location, without the complexity and waste of the old cost-per-click models.  But more broadly, we’ve changed online marketing by bringing these capabilities to businesses of all sizes.”

In its December 2008 report, Forrester Research, Inc. wrote, “Companies like Reply! are changing the value proposition of marketing on the Internet — moving from a focus on a model of mass aggregation and distribution of sales information like leads to more targeted, customized interactions. This represents one more step in delivering on the real promise of interactive marketing by allowing customers to monitor and measure the return on investment of their marketing dollars.”

According to an article in The San Francisco Business Times, dated April 3, 2009, Peter Burris, a principal analyst and research director at Forrester Research who interviewed Reply!’s customers, called Reply!’s inventions “just plain smart.”

About Reply!, Inc.
Reply.com is the leading online marketing platform for the acquisition of locally-targeted and category-specific consumers on a cost-per-click or cost-per-lead basis. By eliminating the need for complex and expensive online marketing infrastructures and large teams of experts, Reply.com makes Internet marketing available to businesses of all sizes. Reply! provides a highly-profitable alternative to online marketing solutions offered by major search engines and ad networks. To learn more about Reply!, visit www.reply.com.

Additional information is available at: http://blog.reply.com/

Contact:
Brian Bowman
Chief Marketing Officer
brian@reply.com
818-679-4269

Company Preps for New Announcements at ad:tech 2009

Reply.com (www.reply.com), a leader in locally-targeted online marketing, today announced that it has been profiled as a “hot company to watch” by a leading technology analyst firm.

This news comes just days before Reply! unveils its latest news at ad:tech 2009, an interactive advertising and technology conference and exposition in San Francisco next week.

Forrester Research profiled Reply! in its “Hot Companies to Watch” for 2009 – “Profiles Of Emerging Companies And Technology Trends That Tech Vendors Need To Know About,” by Chris Andrews.

In the series, Forrester highlights innovative vendors and technology trends to help clients identify the “next big thing.”  According to an excerpt of the report:

“Reply! runs an online marketplace for lead generation that uses a similar business model to Google’s AdSense product. Using the Reply.com Web site, companies are able to identify the characteristics of the business leads they need—such as leads segmented by geography or by user—and determine, in advance, the maximum price they are willing to pay for those leads. The Web site uses an auction-style format to link buyers and sellers, creating an automated marketplace for targeted lead purchases. While most online lead generation companies still operate with a pay-per-click model, Reply!’s service allows users to pay for each lead that they purchase.

Why it’s important. Companies like Reply! represent an increasingly important area of technology marketing called “community marketing”—a new discipline for matching buyer business needs with the capabilities of technology vendors. By leveraging Web 2.0 capabilities, these marketing vendors give marketers stronger targeting capabilities and more control over their marketing purchases. Companies like Reply! are changing the value proposition of marketing on the Internet—moving from a focus on a model of mass aggregation and distribution of sales information like leads to more targeted, customized interactions. This represents one more step in delivering on the real promise of interactive marketing by allowing customers to monitor and measure the return on investment of their marketing dollars.”

According to an article in The San Francisco Business Times, dated April 3, 2009, Peter Burris, a principal analyst and research director at Forrester Research who interviewed Reply.com’s customers, called Reply!’s inventions “just plain smart.”

“Reply! is honored to be recognized by such a prestigious research firm,” said Reply.com chairman and CEO Payam Zamani. “Reply! has thrived during a downturn precisely because of the ROI our services deliver.  More importantly, we are well-positioned to thrive in the future, because high-ROI marketing never goes out of style.”

“More efficient advertising is the priority for all customers in tough times and—even more so—in good ones.  That’s what stakeholders expect, and that is the story we’re evangelizing now, at ad:tech and well beyond.”

Reply!’s ad:tech Agenda
Next week at ad:tech 2009, Reply!—available at Booth 1544—will be detailing new online advertising tools and market categories, and meeting privately with bloggers, journalists, and analysts to discuss recent and expected growth levels and customer trends.

About Reply!, Inc.
Reply.com is the leading online marketing platform for the acquisition of locally-targeted and category-specific consumers on a cost-per-click or cost-per-lead basis. By eliminating the need for complex and expensive online marketing infrastructures and large teams of experts, Reply.com makes Internet marketing available to businesses of all sizes. Reply! provides a highly-profitable alternative to online marketing solutions offered by major search engines and ad networks. To learn more about Reply!, visit www.reply.com.

Additional information is available at: http://blog.reply.com/

Contact:
Brian Bowman
Chief Marketing Officer
brian@reply.com
818-679-4269

Reply! will have a major presence at April 21-23, 2009, Moscone Center West, San Francisco, Booth #1544. For more information on this event and to request a VIP Pass, please contact business development at: BizDev@Reply.com.

At ad:tech, we are co-sponsoring a VIP Mix+Mingle event coordinated by Moss Networks, with adknowledge, GenieKnows and AdManage. This exclusive event will be filled with networking, deal-making, and a truly VIP experience.

It will be held at one of the hottest new venues in San Francisco, the upscale INFUSION LOUNGE. This breathtaking nightclub creates the perfect backdrop for an unforgettable night filled with cocktails, live music, and networking amongst colleagues.

To help promote the event, Moss is using social networking. You can check out the new Facebook page and become a fan!  Also, feel free to follow Moss on twitter to get all the latest updates. 

• Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/event.php?eid=57253046324&ref=mf

• Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mossnetworks

• The official ad:tech blog has posted our event: http://www.adtechblog.com/ 

• MediaPost.com has also listed the event in their event directory

You’ve all seen it… You drive past your local car dealership that’s been in the community for longer than you’ve had a driver’s license and *poof!*  The next day it looks like a ghost town.  Anyone who’s traveled out of Oakland International Airport recently has probably noticed that the brand new, multi-million-dollar dealership that was built right off the Hegenberger exit with a three-story, state-of-the-art facility only a few months ago, is now completely vacant.  This is only one of the 3,800 dealerships reportedly expected to shut down by the end of 2009.  I hate to admit it and I don’t even know if I’m old enough to say this, but times have changed.

A wise man once told me that the definition of “insanity” is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result.  I’m not sure where this definition came from (anyone know?), but it’s true.  If you ask me, retail auto dealers have two choices:

• The first choice they can make is to bury their heads in the sand, keep everything status quo, and hold their breath waiting for things to get better.  Dealers can continue the same Internet marketing strategies, measuring results by the same metrics and, hoping that we’ve seen the worst of it, take the Annie approach–keeping their fingers crossed that the market will pick up “tomorrow.”  Tomorrow never comes.
• The second choice they can make is to accept the fact that we’re facing challenging times, and start figuring out what they can do about it.  They make decisions to change their marketing strategies in correlation with the economic climate.  They realize that the days of a 15% closing ratio may be in the past for now, and that if you’re doing 5-8%, you’re still doing a great job.  Don’t mistake this for accepting mediocrity, folks.  I call it working hard, but working smarter. 

Many dealers have recently reached out to us, asking how they can improve their results with all of their Internet prospects.  A trend that’s been catching on lately is reevaluating their territories, meaning the geographic areas from which they’re pulling consumers.  You know that cross-sell report that the manufacturer sends you every month?  C’mon, sure you do. It’s that report that you immediately place in your circular file as soon as it comes across your desk. 

Cross-sell report… Who needs it?  You do, and so do we.

As every dealership knows, a cross-sell report gives them an enormous amount of data, such as who bought cars, what dealerships sold them, where the customers live, and even what banks the deals were financed through.  Dealers can tell how many sales they lost from their own backyard to their competitor, and this section of the report is usually called the “pump-in/pump-out” report.  Some of our most successful automotive clients have been using their cross-sell report to strategize on their third-party lead territories, and it’s working.  Based on dealer feedback, we’re finding that while a 50-mile radius around the dealership used to make sense even a year ago, it’s no longer the smart way to buy leads.  Plainly stated, just because that territory worked for you in the past, doesn’t mean it works today.

Ben Gensch at Parks Chevrolet in Augusta, Kansas, recently found success in changing his territory.  “Because of a struggling economy, our dealership was forced to make adjustments to our advertising campaigns and strategize new ways to maximize our exposure without compromising excess spending,“ Ben states.

“Having the right mix of key ingredients is the solution to a more profitable Internet department.  One of those ingredients is purchasing third-party leads.  Historically, we were targeting a 75-mile radius that generated many leads, but also created busy work that produced minimal sales and lacked efficiency. We decided the only way to maximize our opportunities was to narrow our target zones and focus on key zip codes that were historically making us money. “

Ben looked at his cross-sell report and realized that the majority of their recent sales were in their target PMA.

“As we all know, most dealers have been forced to get more aggressive on price, therefore making it a ‘buyer’s market,’ especially on new vehicles. Research indicated many surrounding dealers are fighting for the same customer, and all were within a few hundred dollars of each other.  The dealership that is closest usually wins the sale.  Ever since we looked at our cross-sell report and decreased our target zone to a 10-15 miles radius, our opportunities for closing those customers became significantly higher. The end result was a better return on investment, higher gross sales, and better CSI.“

Some dealers may choose to limit their territories to areas in which they’re already doing well, while others may choose to go after the areas in which they’re losing business.  I suggest they do both.

Is it time you reevaluated your coverage areas for your Internet marketing?  Absolutely.  Dig that cross-sell report out of the trash, start using it for what it was designed for, and let your third-party lead providers know where they should be generating leads for you.  Times have changed–so should your marketing strategies.

Good selling.

 According to this Google post, they have improved their GPS-like capabilities to overlay local search results on a map.  Google guesses your location, then provides a set of search results based on your IP address and uses their best guess to return appropriate searches.   The purpose of the feature is to assist with searches like restaurants, dentists, flowers, etc.

I feel the need to rehash some our previous post that laid out issues with Google AdWords and Geo-Targeting.  We all know that Google offers the most widely-used solution for search and cost-per-click advertising (AdWords). But when it comes to local advertising and geo-targeting—especially by the smaller advertisers—Google has huge challenges:

1. Google is far-from-perfect when it comes to geo-targeting. In fact, our data shows that when we geo-target, only about 50% of the traffic comes from the intended geography.  We frequently purchase county, city, zipcode, and zipcode+radius. Google relies on IP filtering, and the problem with IPs is that they are frequently wrong and don’t represent the geography where the user is located.
2. Google is complicated, and it takes experts and an expensive infrastructure to become SEM-ready, especially if you integrate geo-targeting. This may be fine for large advertisers, but not every company can make that investment in technology and personnel.
3. Geo-targeted clicks on Google are practically cost prohibitive. This is especially true for small advertisers with little to no history using AdWords. A national click for Chevrolet or Window Replacement may cost Reply! less than $1.00, but the same click—if geo-targeted for San Diego—may cost us as much as $5.00. On top of that, given the account history with Google, our sophisticated landing pages, and the associated quality scores we enjoy, we receive substantially lower minimum bids than new and smaller advertisers.

The fact is, to date, the online advertising platforms (including ad networks and ad exchanges) have done a less-than-adequate job enticing locally-targeted advertisers to move online. Up to this point, online acquisition processes are simply inefficient and too complicated for non-experts.

So here is the Reply! solution:

1. We offer the consumer the opportunity to better define their search. For example, if the consumer is searching for “Chevrolet” and has come to us from Google, we ask them to tell us the type of car they are interested in and their location. Simple. We need this in order to deliver the consumer to a much more relevant page that has perfect geo-targeting and qualifies the consumer as intentful.
2. Better yet, any business currently acquiring consumers online can take advantage of Reply!’s Click Marketpalce. If a business acquires a consumer outside their serviceable area, they can redirect the click through our platform and recover their advertising investment. To the consumer, the experience is seamless and they can be guaranteed of landing on a website where they have the best ability to receive the product or service in which they are most interested.
3. Using the Reply! Marketplace, advertisers are able to bid for a click or lead. Given that we generate category-specific traffic, the advertiser has no need to manage keywords or complex technology. They simply tell us if they want clicks or leads, specify the geography, and provide their desired bid and budget. This setup takes no more than three minutes, and results in highly-efficient and profitable access to precisely-targeted online consumer traffic.

Reply!’s solution helps the consumer gain access to the most relevant result, and helps the advertiser gain access to category-specific and locally-targeted traffic.  We have spent almost two years developing the platform for clicks and leads, and have filed over seven patents, with full belief that our solution can act as a catalyst to moving significant dollars from offline to online.  With our more-efficient platform we can drive higher profits—while eliminating advertising waste—for all those involved.

In fact, Peter Burris, a Forrester Research analyst of information technology has recently been interviewing Reply!’s customers, and described Reply!’s inventions as “just plain smart.”  Furthermore, Reply! was recently covered by Forrester in their “Hot Companies To Watch: Q4 Update, Profiles Of Emerging Companies And Technology Trends That Tech Vendors Need To Know About,” by Chris Andrews.

Reply! received a wonderful writeup in the San Francisco Business Times.  The article, “Reply.com’s online sales lead system tallies big growth,” was written by Patrick Hoge.

The article highlights the growth we have experienced in the past year, stating, “Zamani says in seven months that despite the hardship hitting his two main verticals, the system has helped grow his business at Reply to the point where he expects to have $40 million in revenue in 2009, versus $24 million in 2008. As a result, Reply has hired 30 people since December, bringing its total headcount to about 100.”  Our growth is encouraging and was accomplished in Autos and Real Estate, two verticals that have been heavily impacted by the macro-economic downturn.

Ray Fenster, the ecommerce director for the Lindsay Automotive Group in Alexandria, Va. (and a Reply! user),  says that the Reply! Marketplace is “a total departure from the traditional third-party lead generation process.” Ray mentions that Reply! provides controls unavailable from any other lead provider or lead system.  He uses Reply! to select leads for specific car models within specific geographic zones generated within specific time periods.  With the controls we provide, if leads become unprofitable, a buyer simply changes their campaign to eliminate pieces that don’t work.  A goal with the Reply! Marketplace is to provide controls found in paid search (SEM/PPC), but with ease-of-use that allows a small- to medium-sized business to maximize their financial retuns.

According to Ray,  “It gives you a tremendous amount of flexibility in what you need to do to make yourself successful.”  In fact, Ray admitted to keeping Reply! a secret so competitors won’t drive prices up—consider the secret revealed.

The article goes on to state that Peter Burris, a Forrester Research analyst of information technology who has been interviewing Reply!’s customers, described Reply!’s inventions as “just plain smart.”  In fact, Reply! was recently covered by Forrester in their “Hot Companies To Watch: Q4 Update, Profiles Of Emerging Companies And Technology Trends That Tech Vendors Need To Know About,” by Chris Andrews.

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