PostRelease Re-Brands as SponsoredContent

Expands Online Content Marketing Options for Advertisers – Creates Revenue Opportunities for Website, Forum and Blog Publishers

New Content Marketing Platform Provides Companies and Brands with Simple, Scalable, Effective Way to Reach Audiences with Relevant, Highly Targeted Content; Names Tanaka VP of Business Development

Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco 2011
LONG BEACH, Calif. – PostRelease™, the first effective solution for influencing word-of-mouth forum discussions by enabling marketers to insert sponsored posts into targeted online forum discussions, has been re-branded as SponsoredContent (www.SponsoredContent.com). The re-branding applies to both the company and its existing forum discussion product. At the same time, the company announced that the product’s features and reach have been expanded significantly.

Concurrent with the re-branding, the company named Tyler Tanaka vice president of Business Development. Tanaka, an automotive digital marketing expert, previously served as account director for PostRelease. Tanaka has been an active participant in the automotive aftermarket for more than 20 years as an enthusiast and a marketing specialist. He has pioneered the use of social media in helping brands form direct connections with their customers online.

The new SponsoredContent marketing platform provides companies and brands with a simple, scalable and highly effective way to reach audiences with advertiser-generated content, such as viral videos, product announcements and special offers. Content can consist of text, images, embedded video and other valuable content that is automatically distributed and published on relevant websites, forums and blogs.

SponsoredContent’s proprietary algorithm automatically matches marketing messages to the right audiences across hundreds of content-rich sites and blogs – in addition to the hundreds of forums previously available with PostRelease. Advertisers also have the ability to integrate their social media marketing by directly engaging enthusiasts and consumers with links to both Facebook and Twitter.

SponsoredContent complements traditional online banner advertising by allowing marketers to “pull” consumers by telling a deeper story about a brand, product or service. Placements appear in the content area of highly relevant sites, blogs and forums and are designed to be consistent with the appearance, look and feel of the site where they are published. As a result, SponsoredContent posts are 5-10 times more effective than traditional banner ads, according to Justin Choi, founder, president and CEO of SponsoredContent.

“As the amount of ‘noise’ increases online, it is more difficult for marketers to reach their audience through traditional banner advertising,” said Choi. “Our experience with SponsoredContent proves that content marketing cuts through the clutter and generates a far higher percentage of engagement by providing the audience with something of value to them – information they can use to make more informed buying decisions.”

The easy-to-use SponsoredContent content marketing dashboard enables marketers to create, manage and track impressions, read rates and click-throughs. “Once a marketer completes the easy-to-execute three-step campaign creation process, SponsoredContent automatically analyzes submitted headlines, text and visuals, finds sites with similar content, and executes a media buy,” said Tanaka.

“Pricing works like Facebook ads and content placements are optimized based on response rates,” he said. “This automatically maximizes the effectiveness of the media buy. Content marketers set their own budgets and can adjust the pool of sites on which their content is published. They can spend as little or as much as they want to attract new audiences and consumers ready to take action or make a purchase decision.”

While SponsoredContent gives companies and brands of all shapes and sizes a highly effective way to reach their target audiences, it also provides a new, premium revenue stream for publishers of content-rich websites, forums and blogs where SponsoredContent-distributed articles appear. Joining the SponsoredContent network is free and easy. In time, members will receive access to a comprehensive dashboard they can use to monitor results.

SponsoredContent posts are clearly labeled as branded advertising content, in compliance with FTC disclosure regulations, and feature the sponsoring company’s logo and list the company as author.

About SponsoredContent

SponsoredContent (www.SponsoredContent.com) is a comprehensive content marketing platform that provides companies and brands with a simple, scalable way to reach audiences with text, images, embedded video and other valuable content that is automatically distributed and published on relevant websites, forums and blogs. SponsoredContent provides marketers with a medium by which they can tell a deeper story about a brand, product or service. It also provides a premium revenue stream for the content-rich website, blog and forum publishers who opt-in to the SponsoredContent network.