The first of many more anniversaries to come!

To celebrate their very successful first year, the Kontera UK office planned a special BBQ, with Kontera Europe’s Commercial Director, Nitzan Yaniv showing off his culinary skills.

However true to English weather, the event was rained out and plans needed to be changed. Sticking with the grilling theme, a leisurely lunch was rescheduled at the famous Goodman Steakhouse. We enjoyed a nice afternoon together and a delicious meal!

The UK team also had an informative and fun training day set on the north bank of the Thames where they rented out Bacchanalia, a Spanish and Italian wine/tapas restaurant.  Nitzan kicked off the training with a review of the great progress the sales team has made. Next, Cassie Graveling and Pete White of the sales team led the training session with a comprehensive recap of their recent trip and training in New York with the US sales team. While all the questions from the Account Management and Business Development teams led the training slightly off track, we still managed to finish the session in due time

Once our session concluded, it was time for team bonding over a cocktail and canapé making session led by Bacchanalia’s barman Michail, a chef and opera singer – who resembles Uncle Monty from the film “Withnail and I”. We learned how to make various cocktails – the favorite with the ladies was the “Twinkle”; with the guys preferring the “Blue Lagoon.” Michail even entertained us with a hilariously theatrical impression of Pete’s London accent.

Overall it was a wonderful day and the cap to a great year. Kontera’s growth in the UK and Europe is only accelerating, and we can’t wait to share with our Advertising and Publishing Partners all the exciting plans for year two!

One great technology platform, now two great networks.

Kontera is proud to announce the official launch of INTENTclick, the premier direct response In-Text network. INTENTclick differs from Kontera’s flagship brand network, in that it’s optimized to meet the specific needs of direct response advertisers and quality publishers in the “Save Money” and “Better Income” verticals. INTENTclick will be expended for additional content categories in the future.

Both networks utilize Kontera’s Synapse Platform, which provides advanced semantic analysis, along with real-time web trend and user context analysis, to predict consumers’ interests and intent. However, INTENTclick has an ad inventory that’s especially effective for monetizing SEO driven content covering the topics of saving or making money. Here are the advantages for both Publishers and Performance Advertisers:

For publishers, INTENTclick delivers:

• Exclusive in-text placements
• Thousands of offers
• Incremental monetization
• Easy setup – for a single site or a network of sites

For performance advertisers INTENTclick delivers:

• Superior optimization
• High conversion
• Precise Targeting for a qualified audience
• Exclusive in-text inventory
• Flexible ad formats (text and rich media)
• Dedicated account management

Kontera SEO Yoav Shaham further elaborates on why now is right time to launch a second in-text network:

“As a technology company with multiple offerings and a rapidly expanding footprint, we’ve scaled to a level where we can effectively manage multiple products, multiple market segments, and multiple networks. This segmentation of networks gives us the power and flexibility, to fully serve both brand advertisers and direct response advertisers, in the unique ways that satisfy their differing campaign objectives.”

As Yoav touched upon, INTENTclick is just the latest in a series of new products Kontera Technologies has released in the last six months. Along with INTENTclick, Kontera has also introduced Mobile Solutions and the acclaimed Social Boost family of products, further cementing Kontera’s position as an industry leader, and valued partner for both Advertisers and Publishers.

Why wait for users to find your Social Media channels, when you can bring the conversation directly to them?

Kontera Social Boost is a new Family of Social amplification ad products that connects advertiser’s Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or deal syndication messaging directly to qualified users.  Placed within highly relevant editorial content across the over 15,000 quality sites using Kontera, Social Boost is a great way to amplify word of mouth social sharing, increase the visibility of your brand’s social assets, and grow the number of fans and followers you have.  With Social Boost, brand advertisers are able to effectively combine their earned media marketing tactics with their paid media advertising tactics.

Here are the four types of Social Boost solutions that Kontera offers:

• YouTube Video Boost – Amplifies sharing and word-of-mouth buzz for an advertiser’s YouTube video content and their video channels. The syndicated YouTube videos are featured to interested consumers, within highly relevant editorial content across the web.
• Facebook Editorial Boost – Extends a brand’s social reach beyond the news feed to the broader web, through placement within highly relevant editorial content across thousands of sites. Brands are able to bring relevant and dynamic information from their Facebook wall, as relevant related information to the right editorial content.
• Twitter Editorial Boost – Syndicates the brand’s Twitter feed within relevant editorial content across 15,000 publishers. A brand’s “conversational” Twitter voice, when delivered alongside engaging branded creative, extends a brand’s social reach beyond the brand’s existing followers.
• Deal Syndication Boost – Accelerates online retailers’ and brands’ social commerce promotions by syndicating specific commerce offers within highly relevant content. Offers can range from time-limited deals to coupons and mini circulars.

An excellent example of Kontera Social Boost is Ritz’s Glee campaign, which was recently featured in articles by the New York Times and MediaPost.  As Ritz Crackers and the TV show Glee and are both brands associated with fun, Ritz built a promotion around the popular musical, giving away trips to meet the cast on set in Los Angeles. To enter the promotion, fans would have to “Like” Ritz’s Facebook page.  Kontera’s role was to create awareness of this Facebook promotion within editorial that was relevant to Ritz or Glee, and to expose the dynamic community to readers interested in these topics.

Here’s Sheeba Philip, the marketing director for Ritz explaining in The New York Times, the advantages of using Kontera for their campaign:

“A program like Kontera’s is really effective for reaching consumers with common and shared passion points,” Ms. Philip said. “It really was a push to drive people to Facebook to learn more about the brand.”

Kontera used a content sponsorship strategy across its many publishers, featuring a Related Social Content unit that dynamically filtered wall content for relevance to Ritz and Glee.  The brand’s relevant visually compelling information was placed within highly relevant editorial.

Kontera’s ability to identify qualified users based on their immediate interests unlocked a new audience for the brand’s social initiative.

To learn more please visit our Social Boost page.

When you challenge Kontera’s R&D department, prepare to be amazed at the results!

Kontera Israel recently held its First Annual Innovation Day where our developers were asked to enter into a friendly competition to create Kontera’s next great idea. In addition to bragging rights, a brand new iPad 2 was awarded to each member of the winning team.

The teams consisted of groups of 2-3 people and with a single day to work on their projects, everyone arrived to the office early and stayed late, hydrating often and breaking only to snack on falafel and pizza. Once sufficiently refueled, the teams dove right back into their computers, furiously programming against the clock.

When it finally came time to show off the work, 10 different teams presented.  The projects spanned the entire scope of Kontera’s business, from front-end innovation to back-end simplification, and various projects addressed the needs of advertisers, publishers, and end users.

When it finally came time to show off the work, 10 different teams presented.  The projects spanned the entire scope of Kontera’s business, from front-end innovation to back-end simplification, and various projects addressed the needs of advertisers, publishers, and end users.

Each of the team’s presentations was impressive but there could only be one winner. After much deliberation, an esteemed panel of judges, Kontera CEO Yoav Shaham, Executive Vice President Assaf Henkin, and Vice President of Research & Development Itai Brickner made the final call. Congratulations to Gregory Mostizky, Yehonathan Sharvit, and Sasha Abramovich who were awarded the grand prize for their innovation!

What set them apart? Aside from Sasha’s enthusiastic pitching style, the team was able to create a completely functional demo in less than 24 hours, which is jaw dropping on its own, but it was also a project that will be utilized to add value for Kontera’s partners down the road.

Great job guys!

If you’d like to see to what Gregory, Yehonathan, and Sasha worked on, fear not, it’s been decided that both their project and many of the other presented will be integrated into Kontera’s products in the weeks and months to come

Our advertisers and publishers already know this, but now the independent authority on search vendors is saying it too.

TopSeos.com which has been ranking internet marketing service providers since 2002, has just named Kontera the number one In-Text Advertising network. This is the second month in a row that Kontera has been awarded that title, and hopefully is the start of a much longer streak!

The finding were arrived at after an extensive review by the TopSeos.com research team, who measured In-Text networks on such criteria  as size of network, amount of active clients, and client retention rate. Kontera outperformed all competitors, awarded an overall score of 99% on the TopSeos.com rating system.

You can read the complete results of the study here.

Additionally, the corporate directory service Lead411 has just named Kontera on their 2011 list of the “Hottest Companies in San Francisco”. This exclusive award was limited to a select few privately held companies, who over the past two years experienced either a 150% increase in revenue or who received at least $12M in funding during the same period.  With literally thousands of high tech companies considered, Kontera was the only In-Text ad network that made the cut and we couldn’t be happier about the recognition.

Our thanks to both TopSeos.com and Lead411!