Chris Dessi - Vice President zanox, Inc

I've just gone ahead and registered to attend this years Ad:tech Miami, and I'm excited. I've been lucky enough to attend Ad:tech's in NY, San Fran and Chicago, but never in Miami. This should be a great event considering how the latino market has been exploding.

I'll be sure to offer a full rundown on the event.

Happy Earth Day!

After poking around online to see what people had to say about Earth Day, I found some really interesting ways in which we can participate beyond the simple recycling etc.

Plant a Billion Trees - On dollar - One Tree - One Planet.

On April 3rd they announced a plant a billions trees campaign.

http://www.plantabillion.org/

2008 has been filled with changes for the Dessi family. On January 7th I started my new job as VP of Advertiser Sales at zanox, Inc. In May my wife Laura and I moved into our dream town (Chappaqua) after buying a lovely Townhome. On April 14th the biggest and best change happened for our family. Talia Dessi came into the world at 5:02pm. She was 6 lbs, 8 oz, and 19 and 1/2 inches long. She's now home with us, and we're loving being new parents to this little Angel.

Here is my favorite photo of the little "muffin" as my father in law calls her.

My former employer AzoogleAds Re-Brands. This is a great step for AzoogleAds. I wish them the best of luck.


AzoogleAds Re-Brands as Epic Advertising
New Corporate Brand Identity Encompasses Broad Range of Performance Marketing Services

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Azoogle.com, Inc., the New York online performance-based advertising network, announced today that the company will change its corporate name to Epic Advertising, creating a single brand for its now fully integrated performance marketing businesses and services. The company will retain the AzoogleAds name as a unit of Epic Advertising, maintaining continuity as an industry-leading, performance-based ad network.

The re-branding will unify the company’s services under one name, strategy and vision for its performance marketing business, both in North America and globally. It also signals the completion of the integration of Bazaar Advertising, the search marketing firm acquired by the company and announced in October 2007.

Epic Advertising encompasses two main units focused on online consumer traffic acquisition: AzoogleAds and Bazaar Advertising. AzoogleAds continues to provide broad-based traffic acquisition services leveraging the company’s leading performance-based ad network business. Bazaar Advertising continues to provide search engine management and marketing services, specializing in keyword discovery, purchase and optimization of online search campaigns. Epic Advertising will market both units as an integrated suite of services to its advertisers, with a focus on direct response customer acquisition and performance marketing.

The Epic Advertising brand will also include the Epic Ad Center (EAC), a do-it-yourself tool-kit for small- to medium-sized businesses that automatically creates display, search and coupon ads on a performance basis. Advertisers are able to target their campaigns geographically, demographically and behaviorally using the ads.

Recently, the company announced its international expansion throughout Europe, Latin America and Asia-Pacific, and it expects the name change to facilitate that drive. The company plans to continue this expansion throughout 2008.

“This symbolizes an exciting evolution for our company,” says Don Mathis, President of Epic Advertising. “Until now we were known primarily for our performance-based ad services in North America via our AzoogleAds brand. Our new corporate name will help to showcase all of our services as a seamless offering to advertisers, highlighting our multi-channel approach to performance marketing. As our company moves forward as a global enterprise, we’re working to take performance marketing to the next level.”

About Epic Advertising:

Epic Advertising (www.EpicAdvertising.com), founded in 2000 as AzoogleAds, is an elite, global performance marketing company, providing advertisers with superior customer acquisition marketing services. Leveraging its industry-leading performance-based ad network under its AzoogleAds subsidiary, and its search engine marketing capabilities under its Bazaar Advertising subsidiary, Epic provides advertisers with direct response marketing services with a world-wide reach that are second to none.

Epic Advertising utilizes proprietary and patent-pending optimization and targeting technology, and leverages a network of tens of thousands of publishers, to generate extremely high volumes of top quality consumer traffic for its advertising partners. A pioneer in both the online performance marketing industry and in Internet advertising integrity assurance, Epic Advertising brings an intense focus on achieving the highest ROI yield, and scales its solutions by leveraging vast quantities of data, its proprietary targeting and search technologies, and its unparalleled industry expertise.

Epic Advertising is headquartered in New York, with offices in Toronto and San Francisco. The company is privately held and backed by private equity firms TA Associates and Stripes Group.

zanox is the only global player that offers a Global Alliance Partnership. This cooperative approach to performance based online marketing is unique, and certainly not something that his common in the US. Most of our competition depend greatly on protecting their publisher base, seen by most as the Holy Grail of performance networks. Zanox takes a cooperative approach, and is able to woo larger brand advertisers by providing transparency, and offering global reach via their GAP partnerships worldwide. This unique platform allows zanox to easily penetrate international market by identifying, and cooperating with major competitors in each market. Zanox is the only performance based marketing network offering an indirect sales solution for third party cooperation with international ad networks. The GAP partnership offer participating networks exposure to advertisers and publishers in 30+ countries, 200 currencies and instant access to a portfolio of 200 international advertisers and campaigns. We've been successful in executing this partnership in the US, UK, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, South Africa, Asia, and Australia.

A Shameless plug of my article that appeared yesterday in DM News.

Christopher Dessi
VP of advertiser sales, North America, Zanox

Some advertisers flinch at the idea of affiliates generating results on their behalf. No matter what doubts you may have about affiliate marketing, the exciting reality is that it has proven to be effective.

If you don't employ affiliate market­ing tactics in your e-marketing strategy, you're missing out on new markets and a guaranteed expanded workforce at no cost. For example, if you decide to partner with a network that offers inter­national affiliate reach – you now have an instant international e-marketing strategy. Similarly, if you allow search affiliates to proactively bid on search words – you've now just penetrated the search market, without internal staff and at zero cost to you.

Once you have decided to leverage affiliate marketing, the next step is to select a preferred partner. If you ask these four questions before you move forward, you'll find an affiliate market­ing partner that is significantly more valuable to your organization.

First, is your affiliate network trans­parent? As larger brand advertisers start to spend more money with networks, a real need for transparency has emerged.

Ask if you are obligated to pay for the conversion when a pixel fires. Savvy networks rely on delayed confirmation of a pixel firing. Then, look for a part­ner that offers international reach.

Finally, ask your potential partner if it will allow your company to work with other affiliate networks. If a partner is attempting to lock you into a contractual obligation of exclusivity, they're only limiting your market reach

This past Thursday I had the privilege to attend the IAA's Global Marketing Summit at the Roosevelt Hotel in NYC.

The speakers were a "Who's Who" in global advertising. Lisa Caputo - CMO, Citi (who's bio had my head spinning)..Scott McCune VP and Director, Integrated Marketing, Coca-Cola - David Stern Commissioner, National Basketball Association to name a few.

The highlight for me was a dynamic speaker full of energy and insights that kicked the day off with a speech that still has me thinking. David Verklin CEO Aegis Media Americas. Usually at events like this people in such high ranking positions have a tendency to fall into one of two categories (in my mind anyway). They either lull you into a 25 minute sales pitch for their company, or play it safe and present a case study that you know they barely had any influence in.

David did neither, and to say that I appreciated this may be the understatement of the year. This gentleman was engaging (not easy as the first speaker of a long day of presenters), and provided so much content in his speech that the audience was frantically scribbling away as he spoke (when was the last time you could look around a room and actually see people taking note).

The intent of David's talk was to discuss "Engagement." He not only offered practical insights but also challenged the audience to learn more, educate themselves, and push their companies to be knowledgeable about what is currently happening in the online media world. I was delighted!

David's talk revolved around 5 points:
1. Timing
2. Targeting
3. Emotion
4. Geography
5. Content

He mentioned a few companies that his agency is engaged with that are at the cusp of something very powerful. Joost being at the center. He also touched on Ecostar and some of the exciting things they're doing with his agency. David also acknowledged some of the pitfalls of agencies being able to engage consumers (Big Brother syndrome). But he was highly optimistic that consumers will react well to receiving an appropriate message when they're engaged.

He classified engagement as reaching your user when they are highly interested in what is presented to them.

His speaking style was impressive, his message appropriate, and his ideas fresh and exciting.

Thank you to Mr. Verklin from someone that is always looking for the next best thing. I have a tendency to expect the worst when listening to certain speakers, and he proved himself intelligent, engaging (I was looking for the content he provide...mission accomplished)...and entertaining.

Thank you Mr. Verklin, I'll look forward to hearing you speak again, and I'll certainly research Joost, and Ecostar even further.

US Online Advertising:
Resilient in a Rough Economy
Summary

Even with the Olympics and presidential election campaigns on the horizon, overall ad spending in the US is in the doldrums. Except online. US Internet advertising will not only be more resilient than traditional media, it will grow. In fact, in 2009, 10% of all US ad dollars will go online.


The US Online Advertising report analyzes the factors that are contributing to the continued growth of the Internet channel in tough economic times.

Even as the growth rate declines through 2009, overall Internet ad spending increases will remain in positive territory—in the mid-teens or higher through 2011.

This growth, even if less than in years past will surpass all other major media.