Melville, NY (BusinessWire) - Prime Visibility (PV) Media Group (pvmediagroup.com) today announced that it has acquired two leading online companies: AdOn Network, which provides innovative contextual and behavioral advertising solutions for advertisers and publishers, and Prime Visibility, a rapidly expanding search engine marketing (SEM) company specializing in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay-Per-Click (PPC) and PPC Search Engine Internet Marketing. The two acquisitions marked the formation of PV Media Group, headed by CEO Steve Rosenberg. A veteran studio executive, Rosenberg previously served as president of Universal Domestic Television, the production-distribution unit supplying feature films, first-run and off-network programming to all forms of television throughout the U.S. and Canada, and co-president of Universal Television Distribution, the studio’s international TV arm.

Rosenberg will lead a senior management team that can leverage its experience and relationships in traditional media with the combined company’s ad network and engine optimization search capabilities.

“We will be very opportunistic about putting stakes in all forms of the rapidly expanding interactive sector,” Rosenberg said. “We’re off to a great start by acquiring AdOn Network and Prime Visibility, two leading and complementary online marketing companies that will only get better by offering more services to their customer bases. And with our deep relationships in the traditional media space, we are in a strong position to help enhance their brands’ online presence and drive traffic in a fast-growing online advertising market.”

Chicago-based private equity firm Bridge Investments LLC led the investor group, providing the equity capital to finance the deal and bring together the two highly profitable companies into a single New York-based entity with more than 100 employees. To further drive its success, PV Media Group will eye complementary assets in the future.

Steve Jarmel, a principal at Bridge Investments LLC, commented, “We invested in PV Media Group because of its extraordinary management team, which has a unique vision of the marketplace and the ability to see distinct opportunities that will allow us to capture a large share of the ever-growing online advertising pie.”

According to industry estimates, online ad revenue in the U.S. reached $21.7 billion in 2007, up from $16 billion in 2006. It is projected to grow 24% annually over the next three years to $50.3 billion.

At Universal, Rosenberg oversaw the distribution of a library consisting of more than 40,000 hours of television programming and 5,000 theatrical releases. Additionally, he was involved in numerous TV program launches, as well as mergers and acquisitions that included the studio’s 1997 purchase and integration of talk show giant Multimedia Entertainment and, later, Maury Povich Productions.

Rosenberg also led USA Networks Television Group after its acquisition of Universal’s TV assets in 1998. He was responsible for the successful re-integration of those assets back into Universal in 2002. Two years later, General Electric’s NBC television unit acquired Vivendi Universal Entertainment.

Newly named COO Seth Page is a financial specialist in mergers and acquisitions, private equity and venture capital placements for the technology, media and telecommunications sectors. CFO Richard O’Connor, former vice president of finance and operations for Universal Domestic Television, managed the business unit of the domestic TV production-distribution group.

AdOn Network President Steve Armstrong, with more than a decade of experience in fast-growing, innovative technology companies, including PayPal, and Prime Visibility President Andrew Hazen, a leader for more than a decade in the SEO space, will continue to lead their experienced management teams.

With the formation of PVMG, each company now has an expanded suite of advertiser/publisher/agency services to offer to their respective clients, including JargonFish, AdOn Network’s new in-text search widget that publishers and bloggers can add to their Websites and seamlessly integrate third-party content with online ads.

PVMG, a leading integrated online advertising, marketing and media company, is comprised of two established name brands:

AdOn Network (adonnetwork.com), founded in 1999, is one of the largest contextual and behavioral advertising networks online, providing innovative solutions to more than 1,000 national and international advertisers and publishers. Based in Phoenix, Az., AdOn Network ranked 72nd on Entrepreneur Magazine’s “Hot 500″ list of 2007’s fastest-growing companies in America.

Prime Visibility LLC (primevisibility.com), founded in 1998, is a leading, full-service Search Engine Marketing (SEM) firm committed to increasing traffic, sales and ROI for its clients. Prime Visibility provides integrated online marketing plans and individually tailored services, including Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay-Per-Click (PPC), email marketing, conversion tracking solutions and other SEM services. Based in Long Island, N.Y., Prime Visibility has developed outstanding revenue growth and is on the 2007 INC. list of the fastest-growing private companies in America.

Forbes.com January 22, 2008

Forbes.com Story

Melville, NY (Newsday.com) - Advertising is increasingly going digital, and two Long Island companies are in the middle of a fast-paced world some say is revolutionizing the ad industry.This new order doesn’t have Madison Avenue as its epicenter. Instead the focus is the search engines of the World Wide Web, with Google, Yahoo and Microsoft’s MSN.com, being the most dominant.

Digital marketers like Prime Visibility in Melville and Didit in Rockville Centre help clients gain prominence for their products or services. Their objective matches that of traditional ad agencies. But the methods in the new media couldn’t be more different.

The digital agencies seek that prominence by taming the pecking order of search engine results. Some high-tech experts estimate as many as 90 percent of computer users get to a Web site via search engines. And the higher the ranking of a company’s site on what a search engine spills out, the more likely users will go to that site.

Prime Visibility is a 10-year-old search-engine optimization company, a clunky description for a company that uses analytical methods to come up with the keywords that allow companies to reach potential customers without the use of paid advertising. Prime Visibility then bids on the words through a search engine and strategically places them on the company’s Web site to push it up “organically,” or naturally, among the listings that appear after a Web search. About 15 percent of its business involves paid ads.

Lawyer Andrew Hazen, the company’s founder and chief executive, said clients like search advertising because the digital agencies can track the effectiveness of their clients’ Web site. They can track traffic, what sites customers are coming from and what keywords are being used.

“Newspapers can’t do that,” Hazen said.

The chief operating officer of one client praised Prime Visibility. “They were very successful in getting us top ranking on all the major search engines,” said Douglas Cooper, chief operating officer of Lauren Hutton, a Manhattan company owned by the veteran model.

Prime Visibility is a fast-growing business: Its revenue more than doubled in a year, from $2 million in 2006 to $5 million in 2007, Hazen said.

Spending for paid searches jumped to $8.9 billion in 2007, a 28 percent rise from the year before, and it’s expected to rise 24 percent to $11 billion in 2008, according to JupiterResearch, the Manhattan-based technology research firm. Google is the leading search engine for paid search advertising.

Didit is a 12-year-old search-engine marketing company that places and monitors ads for clients, again through the use of keywords.

In this part of the paid-search market, the search engines charge marketers based on the number of times computer users click on a company’s advertising, a concept called pay per click. The prices generally range from 50 cents a click to $1.50, said Gerry Bavaro, Didit’s vice president of client services.

The digital agency is paid a percentage of what the company pays overall for clicks, he said. “The spending is in line with what our clients are getting in returns [on their] investments,” Bavaro said.

Last fall Didit took on an Internet ad campaign for Brookstone, the specialty and gift retailer with 300 stores nationwide. The Merrimack, N.H., retailer wanted to build sales for its anti-snoring pillow, Sona Pillow.

“Didit built out a massive keyword campaign around it,” said John Lucey, Brookstone’s Internet marketing manager, “and it played a part in making that one of our top-selling products.”

Bavaro said the company, which has 100 employees, estimates that its 2007 revenue grew 15 percent from $23 million in 2006. The company has won several honors for its explosive growth in the past five years, including being ranked third on Deloitte’s list of the 50 fastest-growing technology companies in New York State.

Both companies predict they will continue in a growth mode despite the economic downturn because of the immediacy of search advertising.

“We’re almost recession-proof,” Bavaro said.

As featured in Newday, Match 26, 2008 (BY CARRIE MASON-DRAFFEN)

(Newsday.com Story)