SOURCE: Media6Degrees

December 01, 2008 10:49 ET

Media6Degrees Announces Commercial Launch Based on Strength of Beta Tests: $1 Spent With Media6Degrees Client Generates $7 in Transactional Revenue

NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwire - December 1, 2008) - Media6° (www.media6degrees.com) the advertising company that maps the social graph of the United States and uses this data to provide major brand marketers with scalable customized audiences, today moved to full commercial launch based on successful beta tests with over two dozen well known brands.

Media6° has invested two years of research and development into its novel, patent pending technology. In a discovery with important implications for the emerging field of social media, Media6° demonstrated that a consumer who was connected to any firm's existing customer (a "network neighbor") responded to advertising from the firm at rates 2X - 30X higher than consumers targeted using traditional demo or geo targeting techniques. This occurs because linked consumers share high degrees of homophily (the tendency of like-minded people to be attracted to each other) and evidence similar psychographics and engage in group purchase behavior. Media6° technology uses no consumer or publisher data to map the social graph or deliver its targeting solution. The firm is a signatory to the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) guidelines on the appropriate use of data in online advertising.

Typical of the extremely strong results seen during the beta was the experience of a leading global athletic brand which tested Media6° against numerous other online advertising entities including ad networks, search providers, competitive behavioral targeting methods and major portals. A six-week campaign was executed by Media6° in support of a major new product launch. The results validated Media6°'s underlying "network neighbor" theory, outperforming every competitor across every performance metric measured by the client. Here are some of the results:

For every $1 dollar spent with Media6°, the client recorded $7 dollars of transactional revenue.

Media6°'s display media campaign outperformed search by a factor of 2 to 1.

Media6° delivered 86% of the total campaign revenue with only 15% of the total campaign impressions.

Media6° successfully scaled the client's customer base by identifying a network neighbor group over 10X the size of the client's current online customer population.

"When you have results like these, your first thought is to make some sort of disclaimer like 'results may vary' but frankly these are pretty typical of all of our beta customers," says Joe Doran, who left a 9 year Microsoft career most recently General Manager of Microsoft's AdCenter, to become Media6°'s Founding CEO. "Media6° has found a way to leverage social graph data from all major user-generated content platforms in a privacy and consumer friendly way to help advertisers build massive, customized audiences that respond better to their offers than any other online audience sold by any other new media entity."

"I am pleased to announce that we are Open for Business," adds Mr. Doran.

Media6° (media6degrees.com) provides major brand marketers scalable, bespoke audiences using the power of social graph data. The company is backed by $9M in funding from U.S. Venture Partners, Contour Venture Partners, Coriolis Ventures and several prominent angel investors.