Over 1,000 Publishers, Leading Ad Network Embrace New Online Syndication Model

Fair Syndication Consortium Shows Rapid Growth as Publishers and Ad Networks Move to Ensure Appropriate Compensation for Content Creators


NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwire - July 22, 2009) - The Fair Syndication Consortium announced today that over 1,000 publishers and more than 50 percent of top U.S. newspaper publishers have joined charter members Thomson Reuters, Huffington Post, Politico and Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA). Additionally, AdBrite® has agreed in principle to work with Attributor to further the Consortium's goals.

The Fair Syndication Consortium was established in late April 2009 to rally publishers around a new syndication model built on Attributor's freely available FairShare service. The Consortium has rapidly grown to include more than one thousand publishers encompassing a diverse set of content owners including: national and local newspapers, domestic and international wire services, professional and amateur bloggers, magazines, lyricists, recipe creators, online reviewers, and poets.

Through its support of the Fair Syndication Consortium, AdBrite will provide publishers with a new syndication model to allow content monetization.

"As one of the largest multimedia news organizations in the world, we find value in everything from subscription to ad-based monetization models," said Chris Ahearn, President of Media at Thomson Reuters. "The Fair Syndication usage model is an important step forward in creating a thriving and sustainable commercial environment for our News Agency and Reuters.com publishing businesses, as well as our peers in the publishing world."

"We see the Fair Syndication Consortium as an opportunity to increase monetization for original content while providing our publishers with an opportunity to leverage premium content on their sites," said Iggy Fanlo, CEO at AdBrite.

"Fair Syndication offers a revolutionary way to syndicate content on behalf of publishers of all sizes leveraging the existing systems and infrastructure in place today," said Jim Pitkow, Attributor CEO and co-founder. "To see such rapid and broad support for new syndication models is overwhelming and bodes well for establishing new rules and business models for the online content economy."

Notable Fair Syndication Consortium participants include: A.H. Belo, Boston Globe, Community News Holdings, Condé Nast, The Dallas Morning News, Deutsche Press-Agentur, E.W. Scripps, Gawker, Huffington Post, Lee Enterprises, Magazine Publishers of America, McClatchy News Group, Media News Group, Morris Communications, News Canada, Newsweek, The New York Times, The Oklahoman, Politico, Thomson Reuters, The Washington Post, plus hundreds of other top publishers.

About the Fair Syndication Consortium

The Fair Syndication Consortium is a group of publishers, including charter members Thomson Reuters, Huffington Post, Politico, Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA) and the Magazine Publishers of America (MPA), which supports an open and fair online content economy. Founded in 2009 by Attributor Corporation, the consortium is innovating ways to fully compensate those who create valuable content while appropriately rewarding those who aggregate, republish and monetize. For more information, or to join the Fair Syndication Consortium, visit: www.fairsyndication.org. For more information or to join FairShare, visit www.fairshare.cc.

About AdBrite

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 exchange. With banner and text ads, as well as innovative formats like BritePic and Full Page Ad, AdBrite has created a simple and effective advertising exchange for advertisers and publishers of all sizes. AdBrite was founded by Philip Kaplan and Gidon Wise in 2002 and is headquartered in San Francisco, Calif. AdBrite is backed by venture capital firms Sequoia Capital, DAG Ventures, Artis Capital and Mitsui Ventures. AdBrite, BritePic, Full Page Ad and The Internet's Ad Marketplace are trademarks of AdBrite, Inc. For more information, visit http://www.adbrite.com.

About Attributor

Attributor is a privately held technology company headquartered in Redwood City, Calif. Its content monitoring and programming platform enables publishers of all sizes to build value with their text, image and video content wherever it appears on the Internet. Attributor's customers include The Associated Press, The Financial Times, Deutsche Presse-Agentur and Turner Broadcasting, Inc.

Contact Information: Media Contact For Attributor LaunchSquad Amy Neal 415.625.8555 attributor(at)launchsquad(dot)com