Evaliant News Please click a headline to read the full article.
emergit.com If information is the key to success in a rapidly changing marketplace, then Evaliant Media Resources is poised to provide its clients with a great deal of success. Originally known as Leading Web Advertisers (LWA), New York-based Evaliant is a leading provider of online advertising data. The company tracks Internet advertising campaigns for clients, providing a complete overview of where ads are appearing and what they look like. Information in Evaliant's database is updated daily to ensure that their clients stay on top of the latest developments. "We target both buyers and sellers of Internet advertising," says Carole Tracey, Senior Vice President of Canadian Operations for Evaliant. "To the sellers, we're providing the opportunity to learn what a brand is doing. For the buyers, they can use the service for competitive review of their brand. As well, companies can determine what the competition is doing and see how their own campaigns fit into the big picture." Aggressively pursuing an international presence, Evaliant has offices in San Francisco, St. Louis, Bozeman MT, London and Beijing. In early October 2001, the company announced its acquisition of Forrester Research's Internet AdWatch, a European online advertising tool. "We had our own division in Europe but this acquisition allows us to take on a number of new clients," says Tracey. "We're in Beijing and Taiwan, and we're continuing to expand. Our future plans over the next six months include expansion into the Latin America market as well." This past April, Evaliant closed a second round of venture capital financing worth $5 million, led by Coqui Capital Partners, FDG, Milestone Venture Partners and Spinner Global Technology Fund. The funds are designated to support the company's plans for continued global expansion. Leon Liebman and Michael Kubin, who serve as co-CEOs for the company, founded Evaliant together in 2000. Leibman, who previously founded two similar companies, Interactive Market Systems and Leading National Advertisers, has a strong track record in the advertising statistics market. In addition, Kubin's experience as the Global Marketing Strategist for Initiative Media brings a technical slant to the table. Evaliant tracks approximately 100,000 brands and products on over 2,700 US Web sites and more than 2,300 international Web sites. Users are able to access statistics and graphics of current and previous advertising campaigns through a standard Web browser. "The application is Internet-driven so that nothing resides on the end user's computer," says Tracey. "That way, there is less software cluttering up the corporate network, and users on the move can access data from anywhere with an Internet connection." Using the service, clients can call up a listing of a particular brand's online campaigns. The available information includes banner graphics, targeted sites, frequency of ad impressions, cost of the media buy and contact information for both the brand and their advertising agency. While a number of services provide similar snapshots of online brand activity, Evaliant is the only company to offer daily updates of their source data. In addition to these online snapshots, Evaliant also offers an assessment service to clients who are interested in getting an overview of a particular brand's online strategy. This is especially useful for companies that want strategic intelligence about a competitor's Internet advertising. However, Evaliant does not provide clients with an assessment of the effectiveness of the advertising campaigns through visitor statistics or user response rates. "We don't get involved in the effectiveness aspect of online advertising," says Tracey. "We're showing snapshots of Web sites and the dates that campaigns appear. Effectiveness lies more on the research side, which is not what we do. We don't track click-through rates or traffic at all." The value proposition of Evaliant's services is straightforward and can be utilized differently by individual target users. Media sellers can use the application to research the current campaigns of potential or existing clients, gathering information to help them make an initial sale or increase their share of a client's media budget. Buyers are able to track their own campaigns and compare those efforts to competitors, ensuring that they are well positioned in the online space. Buyers can also use the application to see the percentage of house advertising inventory that has actually been sold for a particular Web site, a useful fact when negotiating a media buy. The cross-audience appeal of Evaliant's offerings provides a strong opportunity for success. Already the company has attracted a number of high-profile clients, including MSN Canada, Canoe.ca, Yahoo!, 24/7 Media, Wall Street Journal and Globe Interactive. "Looking long-term, we want to make sure that clients are getting value for their money," says Tracey. "It's about competitive knowledge at Internet speed."
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