BrightTag ONE(TM) Digital Marketing Integration Platform Receives Broad Industry Support

CHICAGO, IL--(Marketwire - Oct 17, 2011) - BrightTag, Inc., today announced the first wave of partners for its BrightTag ONE digital marketing integration platform. BrightTag is the first company to link site owners with the large and expanding ecosystem of digital service providers in real time through a server-to-server direct connection rather than through third-party code delivered through the browser. The BrightTag ONE platform replaces obstructive layers of third-party data collection code -- or "tags" -- on websites with a single, integrated cloud-based data server.

BrightTag ONE is predicated on the company's belief that the current method of collecting valuable first-party website data, built on individual pixels and complex JavaScript tags loaded through the browser, has become slow, unstable and unscalable. BrightTag's new approach tackles these issues by eliminating legacy browser-based tracking code while ensuring complete data collection.

"BrightTag's data integration model can address a major problem in digital marketing," said Bruce Biegel, Managing Director, Winterberry Group. "There's a large and rapidly increasing landscape of companies bringing innovation to the marketplace, but that innovation has come at a growing price as data needs to move between first and third parties. Server-to-server integration is a solution that promises to make digital marketing faster, cleaner, more transparent and more valuable for all parties."

The initial members of the BrightTag ONE Partner Program being announced today -- all of which have connected to the ONE platform -- represent a wide cross-section of third-party digital marketing and analytics companies. The ONE platform gives BrightTag's outstanding client roster of global brand leaders in retail, travel, consumer packaged goods, financial services and education immediate access to BrightTag Partners and the services they provide, promoting innovation and delivering richer ROI for marketers and advertisers.

"Overburdening pages with pixels has created performance problems for site owners and advertisers," said Bill Demas, chief executive officer of Turn. "By replacing third-party tags and disseminating the data advertisers need, BrightTag offers an effective approach to addressing this problem. This partnership is perfectly aligned with Turn's open ecosystem approach, and we are excited to show our joint customers how this technical integration can improve their digital advertising campaigns through data."

BrightTag site owner and marketer clients can "see" what is happening to their data in real time, putting them in control over what is collected and shared. BrightTag ONE's integrated, server-to-server platform allows site owners to eliminate the clutter and overhead of third-party tracking code to serve clean data directly from the cloud. BrightTag ONE is compatible with the most complex configurations and is fully backwards-compatible with legacy tracking tags when clients need a hybrid approach.

"BrightTag has set out to modernize our industry's underlying data connectivity infrastructure. The BrightTag ONE platform provides clients with transparency around data collection and tools for controlling how their proprietary and valuable data is shared amongst their many partners," said Marc Kiven, BrightTag's founder. "Our clients are not asking us for ways to better 'manage' all of the tracking tags that litter their sites; rather, they want help removing these tags from their sites in order to deliver a better user experience and respect the privacy choices of their customers. The partners mentioned here today have joined us in improving how the digital marketing industry works."

Michael Katz, CEO of interclick, commented: "As our industry grows and develops new capabilities, so does the complexity and the problems complexity brings. The BrightTag ONE platform mitigates complexity by allowing marketers to remove tracking tags from the browser and decide what to do with data generated on their sites. Server-to-server data integration is the best approach we've seen to improve the customer experience and benefit every entity along the digital marketing value chain."

"We see a great upside when we activate the Aggregate Knowledge Media Intelligence Platform with BrightTag clients," said David Jakubowski, CEO of Aggregate Knowledge. "BrightTag clients can leverage their BrightTag implementation to avoid the time-consuming site tagging process and get immediate access to AK for accurate and actionable audience insights. Everyone wins."

The BrightTag ONE Partner Program
BrightTag's ONE Partner Program, whose first members are being announced today, is designed to benefit digital marketing services providers by expediting activation of new clients, enhancing data collection capabilities and providing meaningful performance benefits for members' clients. ONE Partner companies represent a broad set of capabilities across the entire digital marketing industry including ad networks, data management platforms (DMP), demand side platforms, search, retargeting, attribution, social targeting, and analytics.

The following outstanding organizations -- listed alphabetically -- are among the many BrightTag ONE Partners providing clients with the full benefits of server-to-server integration through the BrightTag ONE platform:

• Adometry -- leads the industry in online ad verification and Ad Analytics™ attribution management, delivering actionable insight to improve the performance of online advertising
• Aggregate Knowledge -- a leading (Software as a Service) SaaS audience and campaign analytics company
• Buysight -- a leading retargeting and customer acquisition performance marketing company
• Chango -- the leading provider of search retargeting, combining the power of search with the scale of display
• CPX Interactive -- one of the largest global online ad networks serving more than 1 billion daily ad impressions across more than 60 countries
• DataXu -- the leading multi-channel demand side platform (DSP) for digital marketing management
• HookLogic -- powers e-commerce media, a revolutionary way for brands and shoppers to connect in and around the e-commerce environment
• interclick (NASDAQ: ICLK) -- a leading provider of digital advertising technology and services
• Legolas Media -- an innovative digital advertising marketplace for premium advertisers and publishers to trade audiences in a guaranteed and transparent manner
• LucidMedia -- the most comprehensive and transparent digital advertising management platform for targeting and optimizing display campaigns
• Marin Software -- provider of the leading online advertising management platform for advertisers and agencies
• mediaFORGE -- a leader in digital display advertising that embraces qualitative, not quantitative, performance measurement, instilling unparalleled confidence in ROI
• MediaMath -- the leading provider of digital media trading technology and services
• Specific Media -- a digital media company driving viewership for content owners, engagement for brands and relevance for consumers
• Turn -- the digital advertising industry's only open, enterprise-level marketing platform that delivers exceptional campaign performance and real-time audience insight for cross-channel engagement
• XGraph -- the first social targeting platform to use multi-graph data analysis to target Connected Audiences™ for optimal ad performance, at scale
• [x+1] -- helps marketers connect with consumers in more meaningful, actionable ways, delivering content and offers where they're most relevant

The BrightTag ONE Partner Program is open to providers of digital marketing and analytics services on a global basis. For more information about the program, contact Scott Grossman, BrightTag SVP of Business Development, at partners@brighttag.com or visit www.brighttag.com/partners.

About BrightTag
BrightTag is redefining the way data is collected and shared across the digital marketing ecosystem. With the BrightTag ONE™ integration platform, marketers have complete ownership and control of data gathered on their websites combined with freedom and flexibility to innovate by working with any third-party digital service provider. ONE, the company's cloud-based integration platform, provides a connectivity layer between first-party data and the marketing and analytics services supporting the site. BrightTag's clients include many of the world's top brands and hundreds of online marketing and analytics providers continue to integrate their technology with the BrightTag ONE platform. Headquartered in Chicago, BrightTag is funded by New World Ventures, TomorrowVentures, EPIC Ventures and I2A Fund. BrightTag was named by VentureWire and an independent board of review at Dow Jones as one of the 50 most innovative technology companies of 2011 and a member of the FASTech50. For more information, visit www.brighttag.com.