Kenshoo and AdBrite have announced an integration between the KENSHOO SEARCH(TM) Automation Platform and AdBrite’s Comprehensive Online ad network.

This new partnership allows search engine marketers to efficiently extend their campaigns to run in non-search inventory such as display ad units.

The collaboration will enable consolidated purchasing, reporting, optimization, and de-duplication of cross media advertising with the ultimate goals of unified tracking and optimization across all media channels. This move makes online advertising easier and more effective by integrating Kenshoo’s dominant Search SEM Technologies with AdBrite’s high-reach, high-quality ad marketplace.

KENSHOO SEARCH(TM) is a 3rd generation SEM platform that focuses on Quality Management(TM). The platform encapsulates a collection of advanced SEM tools designed to work together to give campaign managers a true cross channel management and optimization system. The system does not focus on a single aspect of campaign optimization, like bid management; rather it incorporates each aspect of SEM campaigns as they interact with each other to best improve overall quality of Search Engine Marketing.

AdBrite is a leading online advertising network, reaching 85 million US users each month and serving ads on over 50,000 websites. AdBrite recently launched an Open Targeting Exchange (OTX), a new approach to ad targeting that delivers superior yield and advertiser effectiveness by leveraging multiple targeting methods and algorithms. Each time a page is viewed on an AdBrite publisher’s site, OTX scans multiple eligible targeting algorithms to determine the most relevant and valuable advertisement for the given site, user, and geography. AdBrite also recently announced an exclusive multi-year online advertising partnership with Live Nation (NYSE: LYV), the world’s largest live music company.

AdBrite is the Internet’s Ad Marketplace. The company makes it easy to buy and sell advertising online, giving advertisers and publishers more transparency and control than any other ad network. With banner and text ads, as well as innovative formats like BritePic, InVideo and Full Page Ad, AdBrite has created a simple and more effective advertising marketplace for advertisers and publishers of all sizes. In January 2008, AdBrite ads reached 85 million unique users in the U.S. (comScore). AdBrite was founded by Philip Kaplan and Gidon Wise in 2002 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California. AdBrite is backed by venture capital firms Sequoia Capital, DAG Ventures, and Mitsui Ventures. http://www.adbrite.com/.

Kenshoo (http://www.kenshoo.com) is a provider of end-to-end search marketing automated technology for advertisers and agencies worldwide. The company’s flagship product KENSHOO SEARCH(TM) provides automated Quality Management (TM) for cross-platform search campaigns.

Kenshoo is backed by venture capital firms Sequoia Capital and Arts Alliance. http://www.kenshoo.com.

The Truveo Developer Challenge is offering $100,000 in prizes for new video search applications.

TopCoder(R), Inc., has recently announced the Truveo Developer Challenge. With a prize pool of $100,000, developers will compete to build customized applications that use Truveo’s open API for video search available at developer.truveo.com.

Truveo is the world’s leading video search engine with an index containing over 170 million videos that is continuously updated, cleaned and expanded to include the latest videos from the most popular video destinations on the Web. Competition details are available at www.topcoder.com/truveo and Truveo can be accessed at www.truveo.com.

Truveo is the leading video search engine on the Web, and powers many of the Web’s most popular video destinations, from AOL, Microsoft Corporation, CNET’s Search.com, to hundreds of other web sites and applications worldwide. Across the network of websites it powers, Truveo reaches an audience of over 70 million users every month.

AOL has teamed up with TopCoder to put the Truveo Open APIs in the hands of the best developers in the world. Now it’s your chance to show us what you’ve got for a piece of $100,000 in prize money. We will award nine (9) $10,000 prizes and twenty (20) $500 prizes for the most creative, successful and ingenious submissions.

To enter, view all contest rules and details online at www.topcoder.com/truveo. Showcase your application on your own site or blog, or any one of the social network sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, Bebo, Cyworld, Skyblog, Hi5, Orkut, or Live Journal. Passing submissions will be showcased on the AOL Developer Network and TopCoder as well.

Submissions must be received by July 21, 2008 and winners will be judged on innovation, actual usage statistics, best use of the Truveo search functionality and popularity as voted upon by both Truveo and the TopCoder member community. Winners will be announced in a joint press release by Truveo and TopCoder on July 31, 2008.

The Truveo Video Search APIs come in four flavors: XML, AJAX, Flash and Ruby. The XML API allows users to submit REST-style queries and receive XML-formatted results to standard HTTP GET requests. The AJAX API runs in the browser and lets client applications access video search results directly from JavaScript. The Flash API runs in Macromedia Flash and allows Flash applications to access video search results. The Ruby API is a mapping of the XML API for use in Ruby programs.

Digitalsmiths Corporation and LiveRail have completed a product integration to offer current and prospective customers–Digitalsmiths will provide video/audio recognition technology via their VideoSenseTM, AdIQTM and AdSafeTM products for automated contextual ad targeting for video, and LiveRail will provide video-overlay ad-selection, campaign management, optimization and reporting technology.

Customers of both companies now enjoy seamless integration with the other. The combination of contextual advertising, campaign management, ad-serving and optimization solutions creates superior value for advertisers and publishers. With this offering, customers will enjoy more highly targeted ads, a higher level of engagement with the consumer, increased advertising inventory and enhanced revenue streams.

LiveRail’s opt-in ad-preview model fits hand in glove with VideoSenseTM. The combination of the complimentary solutions enables publishers to show relevant advertising targeted to each viewer through a unique mechanism that invites viewers to engage with ad content when they choose. Advertisers only pay when a user definitively chooses to watch their ad, resulting in more meaningful ad views, and more valuable results.

When a viewer watches an online video, LiveRail serves a series of highly targeted, relevant ad-previews underneath the main content. If at any point a viewer sees an ad that interests them, they can click the preview, watch the ad and then return to their content when the ad ends. LiveRail will use Digitalsmiths’ VideoSenseTM to prioritize which ads to offer viewers based on a large number of carefully selected criteria, including the ad’s relevance to the content, its popularity as rated by other viewers with similar viewing habits, and each advertiser’s ad frequency and budget guidelines.

Digitalsmiths Corporation is the company behind VideoSenseTM, the first universally compatible and broadband video contextual ad-matching system. Digitalsmiths is based in Raleigh-Durham, N.C., with offices in Los Angeles. The privately held company is backed by a group of venture capitalists including The Aurora Funds and Chrysalis Ventures. For a demonstration of VideoSense or to schedule a briefing on the application of contextual video ad targeting to your business, please visit: www.digitalsmiths.com.

LiveRail is an ASP model adserving platform that serves overlay and ticker format ad units in media player environments allowing web publishers to supplement or replace pre-roll formats while maximizing revenue for all plays of their video streams. LiveRail’s end-to-end solution provides relevant ad-matching, ad-serving, campaign management and campaign & creative optimization to ensure the best user experience and maximize revenue for the publisher. Based in the UK, LiveRail has offices in San Francisco. Visit www.liverail.com.

blinkx, the world’s largest video search engine, has partnered with Utarget, the leading UK online video advertising network, to put video advertising around its video content. Utarget will focus on monetising blinkx’s video inventory including ITN News and ITN Celebrity.

eMarketer currently projects the United States’ online video advertising market will grow from US$775 million this year to US$4.3 billion by 2011.

Utarget launched the UK’s first video advertising network, UtargetTV, in June 2006. It has grown the network to more than 125 sites and delivered 9.6 million video ads in August 2007 including major TV-advertiser brands such as Coke, Halifax, Shell and Smirnoff.

blinkx, named this year as one of Time magazine’s Best of the Web and a Business 2.0 Disruptor, is the world’s largest video search engine with more than 14 million hours of searchable audio-visual content and has over 200 media partnerships in place.

blinkx (London AIM: BLNX) is the world’s most comprehensive video search engine. Today, blinkx has indexed more than 14,000,000 hours of audio, video, viral and TV content, and made it fully searchable and available on demand. blinkx’s founders set out to solve a significant challenge – as TV and user-generated content on the Web explode, keyword-based search technologies only scratch the surface. More information is available at http://www.blinkx.com.

Founded in 2000, Utarget Networks is one of the UK’s leading advertising networks(*) and the market leader in online video advertising. In 2007 Utarget received investment from Foresight Partners, a leading media venture capital fund. Utarget Networks offers a unique combination of high impact advertising formats, volume audience reach and precision targeting. Its success is based on delivering consistently high performing online advertising campaigns for major brands and direct response clients.

((*)No 4 in UK: 2007 NMA Marketing Services Guide)

http://www.utarget.co.uk