TechTarget Launches “TargetROI: Brand” Online Branding and Measurement Program

Newest ROI-focused Program Enables Clients to Easily Quantify Increases in Brand Awareness and Consideration Effected by Online Banner Advertising

NEEDHAM, MA--September 29, 2005—Information technology (IT) publisher TechTarget announced today the launch of “TargetROI: Brand,” a managed online branding and measurement program designed to enable IT marketers to measure shifts in key attributes of brand consideration and awareness effected by targeted online display advertising. The program includes a ten-week campaign of targeted online display advertising and an online survey to assess the effectiveness of the campaign in increasing key measures of branding impact, from brand awareness to brand favorability and purchase consideration. Each TargetROI: Brand program is managed from beginning to end by TechTarget’s Client Consulting Services department, a team of media and advertising professionals focused on helping IT marketers achieve their advertising goals and maximize their ROI on TechTarget media buys. The online survey is conducted in collaboration with third-party marketing research firm Dynamic Logic.

In a separate release issued today, TechTarget announced that in a limited rollout to several TechTarget clients, the TargetROI: Brand program enabled PolyServe, a vendor of server-consolidation software, to quantify dramatic shifts in awareness and consideration resulting from its TargetROI: Brand campaign for its Matrix Server solutions.

Server-consolidation software vendor PolyServe achieved dramatic increases in all measures of branding impact with its TargetROI: Brand campaign.

The campaign, which ran for three months on SearchStorage.com, delivered increases (deltas)* for Aided Brand Awareness and Purchase Intent ranked “excellent” in comparison to other technology campaigns within MarketNorms®, Dynamic Logic's syndicated marketing effectiveness database of campaign-performance benchmark data, which includes results from surveys of more than 2 million respondents spanning nearly 2,000 online ad campaigns. The increases in all other brand metrics ranked “above average or better” when compared to results of other technology campaigns within MarketNorms.

"When IT marketers tie their media buys to performance, TechTarget comes out ahead,” said TechTarget CEO Greg Strakosch. “That’s why we’ve led the industry in creating programs that allow our advertisers to easily measure performance and determine ROI. With TargetROI: Brand, we’ve extended this commitment to branding campaigns, where performance data has historically been difficult to capture or quantify. We’re proud to be the first IT publisher to offer a fully managed online brand advertising and measurement program to make it easy for clients to evaluate the performance of brand advertising on our highly targeted sites.”

"Effective brand advertising helps build a foundation of awareness that eases the conversion process for future leads,” said Rich Bruer, principal, McClenahan Bruer Communications, which developed the creative for PolyServe’s TargetROI: Brand campaign. “But many companies, especially emerging companies with tight resources, are reluctant to spend on brand advertising because it’s difficult to measure performance. It didn’t surprise me that TechTarget was the first IT publisher not only to encourage customers to apply concrete performance metrics to branding campaigns, but to provide them with the means to do so. Together with Dynamic Logic, TechTarget built a very sophisticated measurement component into its TargetROI: Brand program, which enabled us to see conclusively that banners on sites reaching targeted, qualified audiences are effective branding and advertising vehicles.”

"As the provider of a software-based solution in a market dominated by big-name vendors offering big appliances, we recognize the power of brand advertising in allowing us to communicate a unique branding message to the right audience,” said Jeff Day, product marketing manager, PolyServe. “It was critical for us to substantiate the effectiveness and determine the ROI for our campaigns. The TargetROI: Brand campaign not only allowed us to reach a very qualified audience with strong creative, but enabled us to prove demonstrably that targeted banner advertising can create enormous shifts in brand awareness and purchase intent, as well as other important brand metrics. We now have the quantitative data we need to justify future branding campaigns on TechTarget sites.”

About TechTarget

TechTarget is a leading provider of specialized online content that brings together buyers and sellers of corporate IT products. We sell customized marketing programs that enable IT vendors to reach corporate IT decision makers who are actively researching specific IT purchases. We operate a network of 35 websites, each of which focuses on a specific IT sector, such as storage, security or networking. IT professionals rely on our websites for key decision support information tailored to their specific areas of responsibility. We complement our online offerings with targeted in-person events and three specialized IT magazines that enable advertisers to engage buyers throughout their decision-making process for IT purchases. As IT professionals have become increasingly specialized, they have come to rely on our sector specific websites for purchasing decision-support. Our content enables IT professionals to navigate the complex and rapidly changing IT landscape where purchasing decisions can have significant financial and operational consequences. Since our founding in 1999, we have developed a broad customer base that now comprises more than 1,000 active advertisers who placed business with us in 2006, including Cisco, Dell, EMC, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, Research in Motion, SAP and Symantec. More information about TechTarget is available at www.techtarget.com.

*The delta represents the absolute difference between the result for the control group and the result for the exposed group.

Dynamic Logic’s MarketNorms® is a marketing effectiveness database. These findings are aggregate in nature, reflect past results and are not a guarantee of future results for individual campaigns.

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Contact:
Marilou Barsam
Senior Vice President, Client Services & Corporate Marketing
617-431-9368
888-274-4111 x 9368
mbarsam@techtarget.com

Chris Olive
Director of Corporate Marketing, Events and Public Relations
617-431-9374
888-274-4111 x 9374
colive@techtarget.com