PRESS RELEASE

ADTECH First in Europe to Market with IAB Video Ad Standards

Four-tier commitment and improvement strategy announced

London, UK – 24th September 2008. ADTECH, a leading provider of ad server technology and part of Platform-A, AOL’s digital advertising business, has today announced that it is the first in Europe to market with a fully compliant video ad solution – in line with the IAB’s new video standards. It has also launched its own four-tier strategy for video advertising.

Despite smashing the boundaries between the Internet and television with its standards-approved technology, ADTECH acknowledges that this progress can only be sustained and grow as the industry and technology develops. It’s new four-tier message reinforces its commitment to improving and developing technology in-line with professional standards, improving the quality assurance for moving images, making certain technology is easy-to-use and fusing Internet and TV experiences seamlessly. A demonstration of this approach will be given at the ad:tech show.

Four-tier Strategy:

1. Professionalisation through standards
ADTECH has completed a further standardisation procedure for video ads at International level. It has been actively involved in the preparation of IAB (U.S.) video guidelines and has already implemented the IAB recommendations with its first customers. Thus ADTECH is proceeding with its strategy of continuously standardising and simplifying work processes in online marketing. This in turn promotes the use of new advertising media on the Web.

2. Ensuring picture quality through High Defininition (HD) spots
Users should be able to indulge in high quality videos on the Web. ADTECH adservers supply videos in the same high-resolution picture quality the user knows from television.

3. Ease of use of technology
Integration of video advertising into the ADTECH technology makes the creation, management and tracking of video ads as easy as campaign management for display ad formats - time-consuming training for new systems is no longer required and no additional technologies need mastering.

4. Fusion of the Internet and TV experiences
Television and online can learn and benefit from each other. Decades of TV experience can easily be combined with the technical possibilities of the Internet. Television provides the content of the ads, the Internet the scope of creative design. ADTECH’s ad serving platform offers the necessary scope and freedom for development.

For Dirk Freytag, CEO at ADTECH, the online industry is the driving force behind long overdue changes in the TV landscape: “The medium of television must recognise that changes have to be made. There are opportunities for change in all areas, particularly coverage measurement and targeting. I can see the potential for standards from the online area entering this medium. It is a win-win-situation. But it is only beneficial if both sides play their part.”

He continued: “ADTECH is committed to improving the user experience, ensuring advertisers get the maximum return and the industry can continue to move forward. Our approach means that we can create the technical prerequisites to deliver video campaigns across different platforms, tailored to each player. We will be demonstrating this at ad:tech London.

Video advertising on the Internet is not a “one size fits all” business, and there is no one solution that can be used by everyone to achieve the best results. As a result, we are committing to provide fully customisable, flexible and simple to integrate and operate technologies. This allows publishers and agencies to extract the maximum amount of profit from the advertising inventory.

We will continue to push for standards and raise the bar for video advertising so that the industry can improve its reputation for technology excellence,” Freytag concluded.