Chris Dessi - Vice President zanox, Inc

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.

Starting on January 7th I begin an exciting journey as the VP of Ad Sales at the only multinational ad network Zanox, Inc.

I loved working with the team at AzoogleAds, and I look forward to this next challenge for my career. Zanox has offices in 14 countries, and generate leads for advertisers in over 30 countries! This is sure to be an exciting new year!

Another Ad:Tech in New York has come and gone (at the speed of light, as usual). It's Friday morning, and I'm still feeling the effects of a crazy few days, but I have to admit it...I LOVE this show. There's really nothing better than getting out there and selling. I eat it up. I love meeting new people at Ad:Tech, seeing familiar faces, and course I get a kick out of the sheer volume of people in attendance. This year was unprecedented. The numbers vary, but suffice to say...there were a LOT of people packing into that New York Hilton. I joked with a few colleagues that the families that were in town on vacation must have been horrified to see all of the meetings being conducted in the lounge, lobby, restaurants, and surrounding establishments. It got to be so crowded that I even took meetings standing in the lobby. Two of those meeting were with large partners (it's a good thing that I can also call them friends), and we all had a good laugh at it. "welcome to my office, please stand here" :-)

AzoogleAds generated sufficient buzz at the booth as we continue to grow and gain market share. We poised to have another break out year in 2008!

Some of the best fun happened after the show when an colleague and I shot our video for our iMedia Spot (keep an eye out for it)! I'm certainly not an actor, but Audrey Breheney one of our Sr. Affiliate Managers is an Actress as well as an industry pro, so she added a sense of professionalism that this cheesy sales guy just couldn't muster! It was a ton of fun, and we can't wait to get it out there!

Looking forward to hearing from everyone about how they felt Ad:tech was for them.

All the best!
Chris Dessi
Director of National Ad Sales

AzoogleAds Branches Into SEM with Bazaar Acquisition
By Fred Aun, The ClickZ Network, Oct 2, 2007

In an effort to morph AzoogleAds into more than just a performance-based affiliate advertising specialist, the company has acquired Bazaar Advertising, a San Francisco search engine management and advertising player whose technology impressed AzoogleAds’ executives.
The decision to go beyond its niche in CPA-based affiliate networking has already proved fruitful for the New York-based company, said chief marketing officer Michael Sprouse. He said AzoogleAds, which handles affiliate advertising for Blockbuster Video, recently convinced the movie-rental giant to also use it for SEM.
“That’s really the one that we are most excited about so far,” said Sprouse. “We work with them in our affiliate business in big way. After a period of a few weeks, we really proved to them that we could manage their search as well and we are already in the process of running these campaigns with them.”
AzoogleAds also now offers media services, said Sprouse. “We built out a media buying team internally and we are doing media buys for a handful of pretty big clients. A lot of this stuff is in the early stages and we’re really excited about it.”
But when it came to search engine management, AzoogleAds decided acquisition, rather than internal expansion, was the better route. Sprouse noted Bazaar, a company that had about 20 employees, had “mostly small players” as customers, so the acquisition wasn’t about buying a client list.
“It was really a technology and optimization play for us,” he said.
Terms of the acquisition were not revealed, nor would Sprouse talk about new clients, other than Blockbuster, of the firm's fledgling SEM practice. AzoogleAds now has about 120 employees and offices in New York, Toronto “and now San Francisco,” said Sprouse.

So this morning I got into the office after a great long weekend to check my calendar. Holy Cow! I'll be out of the office 70% of the month bouncing around to come phenomenal places, and meeting with some of the best minds in the interactive industry. Next week I'll be in Cornado, California at the iMediaConnection Brand Summit. This is going to be phenomenal! They'll be more tahn 160 senior level marketing executives from major brand companies. Here is a brief sample:

The Advisory Board is composed of following industry thought leaders:

Jonathan Adams, VP, Director – Media, Digitas
Sean Cheyney, VP, Marketing & Business Development, AccuQuote
Jarvis Coffin, CEO, BURST! Media
Tom Hespos, President, Underscore Marketing
Clark Kokich, CEO, Avenue A I Razorfish
Scot McLernon, former SVP, Sales, CBS Digital Media
Dave Morgan, Chairman, TACODA
Mark Naples, Managing Partner, WIT Strategy
Correy Honza, Director of Internet Marketing, Quiznos Corporation
Sheryl Biesman, Manager of Online Marketing, Pharmavite
Bryan Stapp, CMO, Quicken Loans

I'll be at this show until Thursday of next week, and heading to Shop.org the week after in Las Vegas! Shop.org is the association for retailers online. I've attended this show in the past, and this is a top notch event that I recommend everyone attend.

I'll be sure to post a detailed review while at each event, and some post event thoughts

As the summer winds down with Labor Day weekend upon us it's a time to reflect on the great summer AzoogleAds had.

Our whole team did a phenomenal job, and the month of August will be a record for my own personal book of business (OVER $3million!).

We need to acknowledge all of the great work our Affiliate Managers, and Sales Managers did, slap the backs of the compliancy team, give a big round of applause for the executive team, and then get back to work all over again in September! LOL

There are a few constants in the interactive space; one of them is that there is never any down time....ever. While this is something that I love about it, this is also something that could potentially wear on you a bit. So what the heck are you supposed to do?

For me, I've started to get really involved in structured extracurricular activities. So instead of just going home and watching TV, I've scheduled guitar lessons, a helicopter ride around Manhattan Island, Golf lessons, and trips to visit friends and family.

My golf lessons seem to help my stress level the most. I rush to get out of the office by a decent hour, run to Chelsea Piers in the oppressive NY heat, and spend a blissful hour hitting a little white ball with an iron club into the Hudson (or in the Hudson's general direction)...if I'm lucky...but man...do I love it. Tomorrow I'll be out on the links as well as Saturday, playing golf and recharging my battery. I'll spend time at a BBQ with family and friends on Saturday, and look forward to fresh start on Tuesday!

The summer is over, and I'm ready to take on the fall!

Over the past two years here at Azoogle, we've seen tremendous growth. Part of that growth includes growing internally with our process, etc. One of the most simple yet effective ways of avoiding any sort of trouble down the line with any client has been the trusty weekly conference call. I've been luck to have some of the best clients out there (GE, Scholastic, Blockbuster, Netflix, Nutrisystem, Stamps.com, IAC/Ask.com) to name a few. These guys are at the top of their game, and expect their vendors to be as well.

Recently Karn Aquilino, our "rock star" Account Manager and I spent 4 hours meeting with Scholastic up in Connecticut. We had a phenomenal meeting, with lots of "Take-aways"....so far the easiest to implement with the greatest impact has been our very simple, yet highly effective weekly con call.

The client gets to review their "to do" list, we get to cultivate a relationship with our client, and get to know how to best service them, all while we have some fun on the call.

Recently the guys at IAC/Ask.com decided to play a joke on Karen and tell her that the whole campaign was being pulled....in a panic Karen IM'd me to jump on the call...where I heard the team laughing hysterically....wow....can't wait to see what they do on April Fools day if this was just a hum drum Monday in August!

Ever notice you do your best thinking while getting ready in the morning? Those few minutes to yourself while soaping up your hair with nothing else to think about other than wondering why, in 2007 we still can't get AM news radio reception while listening to the the whizzing and buzzing of 1010WINS??

ANYWAY.....This morning, while listing to said whizzing and buzzing of 1010wins, I was thinking about the fact that come Oct, I'll have been with AzoogleAds, Inc for a Whopping 2 years! Now, to the untrained eye this may seem like only a small blip on the screen in what I hope is a very long career. The thing that struck me is that in this day and age, and especially in this industry (Online Advertising) 2 years is like an eternity (kinda like Dog years I suppose)?

At first glace on linkedin.com you can see the trend. The 30 something counterparts of mine in this industry that have been around since working for a "Dot Commer" was the "It" thing to do in thate 90's have hopped around more than Paris Hilton in the VIP lounge of the hottest club.....but why?

I have a few theories so let me start out at 10,000 feet and then I'll drill down to what I think may be at the heart of the situation.

Reason #1 Get out before they get me out
While I was at Mediaplex in 1999 there were a few rounds of layoffs before Valueclick came in and bought the company. There were young, fresh faced, hard working bright people just out of college (or in my case Grad School) that wanted to make their internet millions. Well, those same fresh faced kids got caught up in some serious downsizing. Some of our parents were lucky enough to never see that kind of company overhall in an entire career. We saw it in the first few years of ours. This was of no fault of our own, but non the less, we were unemployed at 24 years old. Many of us left the industry (I went to a design agency for 3 years). Others kept moving along, but would never have the same loyalty they felt with their first company.

Reason #2 The market is fantastic
If you're good at what you do, and people know about it, they'll offer you a job. Every conference like Ad:Tech is certainly the hotbed for this kind of activiity. Other companies seek out the Rockstars, and try to hire them away. Lots of times it works.

Reason #3 You can
When you send in a resume with 10 differnet positions at 10 different companies over the past 10 years. It's more than likley that at least one of the Sr. Executives at your company may have a similiar type resume.

Sometimes hopping around is the only way to take your career to the next level.

I have to say...at this point in my career, it's nice to finally find a spot to call home. For the first time since the early days when I was at Mediaplex I feel like we're onto something here. Maybe something big that we can say we were a part of. Soemthing worth sticking around for...

Only time will tell!

Ok, so I have to confess...I had a very embarrassing, yet funny experience the last time I went on the road for business. I've put up a few posts about the Internet Retailer show, and I've been debating if I should blog about this particular experience for a few reasons (you'll realize why if you keep reading)....so there I was....all sorts of excited for the Internet Retailer show in San Jose.

For a few different reasons while on business we all bunk with a co-worker. Now, at first blush this may seen like a nightmare scenario for some people. What most people don't realise is that at Azoogleads, we're like a family...seriously. We've all grown very close over the past two years that I've been here (for a few reasons). Not the least of which are: Explosive growth, phenomenal success, and lots of really bright, high energy people that are respectful to eachother at all costs. One major factor that has helped keep this company so glued together has been the shared loss of a co-worker and friend (Jai). We've learned from that loss, and grown together.

So this time around, I was all set to bunk with Tom Barbaro. Tom is an all star at Azoogleads. Tom happens to be a great friend of mine, so I was looking forward to handing out with Tom at the show. Our first night in California, two other members of the team had flown in from New York Chantelle White, and Karen Aquilino. We all met for a nice dinner, then off to bed to rest up for the busy days ahead (Internet Retailer show starts at 7am!!) so factoring jet lag into that equation made me head straight to bed.

When I got back to the room, Tom had already settled into the room, and was getting ready for bed (he had a later flight in from NY). We set our alarms, and off to bed (I told Tom I would get up a bit earlier so we could stagger our shower taking). I woke up (after hitting snooze a few times)...and hit the showers. I shaved, and started my morning routine. I was ready to go, this was going to be a great show. I had a great team along with me, and had set a big meeting with Netflix to dovetail into my time at the conference. As I was thinking of all these great things, a little thought kept creeping into my head "man, I am so tired...that jetlag is killing me!" as I turned the corner coming out of the shower (shaved, hair combed etc.), I gently said to Tom...hey buddy, time to get up, we're running a little late...(my clock said 6:30am, and we had to meet the girls in the lobby). Tom sat up, looked at me like I had nine heads and said "It's only 3:30am!" I stood there in the dark, towel on, shaved, hair combed, clean as a whistle....at 3:30am.....PST.....oh.....my.....GOD.....I forgot to change the time on my Blackberry.

So...red-faced...I crawled back into bed for 2 hours. Much to my relief I was able to get off to sleep quickly, and didn't really feel that horrible during the show. The only issue was that (since I'm VERY Italian, my normal 5 o'clock shadow would be showing up at an un-godly 2pm that day....oh well...live and learn....

If you can't laugh at yourself....right?
:-)

While I was out in San Jose for the Internet Retailer show, I spend some time with Zenith Optimedia. We had a great meeting discussing where AzoogleAds may fit into their media buys on behalf of a few different clients. The main theme of the conversation centered around what the media planners had to do in order to make working with Azoogleads make sense for their client. They were intrigued by the fact that everything we do as a company is performance driven.

What does that mean to your advertiser? Essentially what your looking at is a risk free endeavor (hard to believe, I know). But think about it, don't you agree that this is the direction all online advertising has been heading?

Back when I was at Mediaplex we were selling CPM to large agencies on behalf of their clients. This didn't work because the media buyers had to show ROI. This was difficult because they couldn't quantify an impression. There are numerous limitations to tracking impressions as we all know (caching etc). Then there was a move to CPC, and this too had it's limitations with click fraud etc. The natural progression has led us to CPA advertising, where the "A" can be anything that advertiser wishes it to be. It can be a lead, or it can be a sale. All we have to do is place a pixel on the confirmation page. This way we can track the conversion on behalf of the advertiser.

Sometimes this doesn't really work for an advertiser. Sometimes the advertiser may have too many SKU's, and working with us will only make sense if they are using us to drive leads for something promotional, like a sweepstakes.

Please feel free to call, or email me with questions/comments.

Best,
Chris
212 308 8509 x 3242
chris.dessi@azoogleads.com

Continuity Programs continue to be some of the best performing offers on our CPA network. They are tailored to convert well, and due to the monthly cost to consumer, each advertiser that may have previously purchased media on a CPM, or CPC basis can now justify a certain amount of money (allowable aquisiton cost) to generate a conversion. They know that they can afford to do so because the quality of the conversions/sales that we generate is unsurpassed. Since the majority of these conversions are happening via search, we're finding that the advertisers churn rate is low, and therfore they can afford an attractive CPA to our affiliates/publishers.

Continuity Programs – Minimal upfront cost to register, coupled with a monthly subscription model.

Blockbuster
Netflix
Vistaprint
SunRocket
BMG/Columbia house
GE Money

Finally getting settled back in New York where I've had some time to take inventory, and think about what a great show the Azoogleads team had in San Jose at Internet Retailer!

As the only pure performance based Ad Network that had a booth, we had lots of fun chatting with internet retailers about how we can help their online ad campaigns. It was great to discuss the differences between ourselves and Performics, Commission Junction, and the like.

I was especially excited because Netflix CEO Reed Hastings was attending and speaking! It was certainly a highlight since they're a client of mine.

About 5 months before Google went public, I had a very interesting experience. I had been working at AGA, a creative design agency that develops catalogs brochures etc. AGA is a great company, and I loved working there. I had just come back from a phenomenal year in London that had been hugely successful for me as well as the AGA. I came back thinking I could conquer the world (in my mind I had).

My first order of business when I got back to NY was to get my life back in order, and try to recapture the life I had before I went to London.

That wasn't going to happen. Things got better! I met my (now) wife Laura!

Things were looking great for me. I was at a job I loved, met a great girl, and I had just started interviewing at GOOGLE! Wow! I thought I was a shoe-in. Three years earlier I had worked in the interactive space at a company called Mediaplex. I yearned for those glory days of the Internet. I missed the face paced environment, and the speed of light business that occur ed. I have a Masters of Science in Direct Marketing from New York University, international sales experience, and all the confidence in the world!

I spent a long time preparing for my interviews, and thought that each time I met with the team at Google, that I was certainly going to get the job offer. There was even a series of odd coincidences that I thought pointed directly to my getting an offer. I ran into an old college friend at my first interview (actually DURING the interview)!

I was sitting with the HR person, when her paper blew off her desk (they had a great deck at the former Google offices). When I got up to get the paper I saw my friend! She was just as shocked to see me, as I her! We exchanged pleasantries, and she wished me luck! WOW! If they highered Meghan McGarry, and she and I went to the same school, Loyola College in Maryland (even if only for a semester, because she transferred to the University of Connecticut)! Well... this was EASY!!

Not so fast. I had just started the arduous task of numerous interviews at Google. They don't get the creme of the crop for nothing. They take their time, review, and review, and review. They taped my sales calls with them to analyze my pitch. This was not easy for me. I felt as if I had been "out of the game" for a bit. The sales process at AGA was much slower, and things were NOT closed over the phone. I was the king of face to face meetings.

After my first few interviews, I even found out that the woman that had been organizing all of my interviews at Google (Sandy Feigenbaum) was a college friend of my wife Laura! At the time Laura and I had just started dating, were in the midst of falling madly in love, and I had mentioned her to Sandy on more than one occasion (before I even knew that they knew each other)! Another odd cooincidence in my favor!!

Long story short, after 7 interviews, two taped over the phone (apparently the final taped call was a tie breaker between myself and another candidate), I was not offered the job.

This was the BEST THING THAT HAS HAPPENED TO MY CAREER!

If I had not been turned down by Google, I would have not been where I am today. Currently I am the Director of Sales, Northeast Region at Azoogleads, Inc.

I have had such a phenomenal time at Azoogleads. I was the 3rd person to be highered in the NY office, and we currently have close to 40 people in that same office! My thoughts are always on the positive, and my life is abundant. For a long time, I held onto negative feelings about my experience with Google. Now I can look back, and say that they had made the right decision. Before coming to Azoogleads, I made a brief stop at Responsys. I was selling software, and was working from home for a short period of time. I grew tremendously during that job, and I feel that I needed to mature as a business person. I have been lucky to have met the people I have since my Google experience, and I hope that this story can inspire others that may not see the "silver lining" of a seemingly bad situation.

Have a great day everyone!

"All that we are is the result of what we have thought"
-Buddha