Facing Potential Recession, Retail Brands Turn to Specific Media to Target Consumers Online and Grow Revenues

Top four comScore-ranked advertising network helps retail brands reach target audiences with more relevant ads

Irvine, Calif. — June 10, 2008 — As the nation’s retailers reported the weakest sales for the month of March since 1995 and sales in April declined another 0.2 percent, many retail brands are turning to Specific Media, the largest independent online advertising network for brand advertisers, to reach and engage with their target online audiences. Connecting with more than 145 million U.S. consumers online across hundreds of name brand publishers in its Premium Network, Specific Media helps leading retailers target online audiences and build their brands in the long-term, while converting shoppers’ online interests into actual purchasing decisions in the short-term.



“As a pioneer in leveraging the online ad network space for retailers, NetPlus expects only the highest level of performance from its media partners in terms of ROI, targeting capabilities and customer service,” said Denise Zimmerman, President, NetPlus Marketing. “Specific Media consistently delivers on all levels. As our clients face increasing economic pressure, we will continue to turn to Specific Media to help our clients meet their aggressive goals and expectations.”

In addition to offering retail brand advertisers demographic, behavioral, contextual and geographic targeting solutions, Specific Media provides other innovative high-impact advertising options, which enable advertisers to take over its Premium Network inventory or a demographic, behavioral, contextual or geographic segment for an allotted time. These solutions provide scalable inventory and extensive reach, which are particularly effective for seasonal or regional sales events or openings.

Specific Media also enables retail brands to measure their advertising campaigns with offline impact reports which quantify consumers’ offline purchase behavior to reveal the offline impact of online advertising campaigns. The reports include metrics such as purchases, revenue, dollars per buyer, share of purchases and share of dollars. Overall, these reports offer retail brands valuable best practices data for use in future media planning.
Power of Retargeting

In spite of the Internet’s rising popularity, as many as 65 percent of online shoppers abandon their shopping carts before completing a purchase. Specific Media’s site-level retargeting technology is regarded as the single most powerful method which can effectively find those consumers who have previously browsed an e-commerce site or abandoned their shopping carts and bring them back to complete their purchases. Studies reveal that returning customers – such as those brought back by Specific Media – spend the most time and money on e-commerce sites. Moreover, the company’s clients utilize its impression-level retargeting to extend the frequency of category buys outside Specific Media’s network.

“Retail customers can be very hard for advertisers to reach. By combining demographic targeting with behavioral, contextual and geographic components, Specific Media is the only advertising network able to reach specific consumer segments online with scale and accuracy,” said Tim Vanderhook, CEO and co-founder of Specific Media. “The success clients – such as Net Plus Marketing – have had using Specific Media proves that it remains the advertising network of choice for top retail brands.”
About Specific Media

Specific Media, the advertising industry’s largest independent online advertising network, enables advertisers to target consumers throughout North America and Western Europe based on demographics, behaviors, geographic locations and/or the contextual relevance of websites visited. Specific Media works with many of the Fortune 500 brands including seven of the top 10 companies. The company’s Premium Network reaches more than 220 million consumers globally each month. Since 1999, Specific Media has connected advertisers with target audiences across consumer branded publishers. Visit www.specificmedia.com