VALUE COMMERCE

ValueCommerce Co., Ltd., Japan’s leading affiliate service provider, today announced the launch of a contextual category listing service, “Matchsmart™”, provided with major Japanese search directory service provider, Looksmart Japan, Ltd. ValueCommerce acquired the assets of Looksmart in April 2004.

Matchsmart is the first “contextual category listing” service in Japan. It integrates unique industry category based listings with Looksmart’s search technology algorithm and ValueCommerce’s ad distribution and media network. Drawing from advertisers within its search directory database, Looksmart Japan has categorized listings into 26 industry categories at launch. Premium media partners will then be able to publish the Matchsmart category listings that are specific to their content. When the ads are shown on the website, the Matchsmart algorithm will call the most relevant and highest performing listings for that category in real-time to display on the website. These industry categories can also be customized with more detailed sub-categories or keyword searches for websites with page views that exceed certain levels.

The Looksmart directory is professionally edited by Looksmart ontologists (experienced editors who specialize in content classification and organization) into 26,000 categories and the keywords that people are most likely to search for; Advertisers and Media partners can expect better results than conventional robot based contextual advertising. The Matchsmart category listings are only provided to relevant websites with matching content and proven performance history. Matchsmart listings will only be distributed through the ValueCommerce affiliate network of premium websites. ValueCommerce manually classifies its member websites into 51 content and performance based categories, enabling a highly targeted and quality controlled media distribution channel for the Matchsmart service.

Matchsmart is an innovative new service that enables both advertisers/merchants and media partners (publishers) to improve online campaign performance and generate revenue. Matchsmart will be marketed through Looksmart channels which include over 60 ad agencies, and aims to acquire 1,000 clients in the first year.

ValueCommerce and Looksmart will be introducing Matchsmart in more detail at the “Search Engine Strategies Conference & Expo (held at Tokyo Fashion Town)’ on April 20 and 21, 2005.

 

What is Matchsmart?

Matchsmart, provided by Looksmart Japan, is a “smart” advertising solution that matches advertiser paid listings with media website content, by category. This enables advertisers to show their listings on highly relevant websites and allows them to earn advertising revenue.

Benefits for Advertisers

• Quality Media: The Matchsmart premium network is made of 5,000 manually screened and categorized websites with a proven performance history.
• Pay for Performance: Get maximum exposure and proven results for your budget from fixed CPC based pricing by industry.
• Online Reporting: Reporting by listing available online
• Increased Reach: Increase and improve the potential for your promotional reach and user base by gaining access to a network of high-quality, content specific sites that cannot be reached with conventional online advertising methods.

 
Benefits for the publishers / media

• Media Controlled Matching: Premium partners can additionally select the relevant sub-categories to fine –tune the matching process and Matchsmart will customize the content to be displayed.
• Flexibility and Easy of use: Media partners can choose various ad formats and styles and set-up on their site, with simple cut and past of the Ad-tags. Ongoing optimization and management will be performed real-time by the Matchsmart algorithm.
• Higher Revenue Returns: Matchsmart offers multiple best performing listings on a revenue share basis.

 

【ValueCommerce】

ValueCommerce Co., Ltd. (Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo. Founded: March 12th, 1996. President & CEO: Brian Nelson), is providing services for companies conducting business online in the 3 main areas: affiliate marketing, directory and search, and hosting / infrastructure. The ValueCommerce Affiliate Marketing platform is Japan’s largest online marketing and advertising network, delivering over 330 million advertisements per day and reaches up to 50% of the Japanese Internet population.
(NetRatings Japan “Basic Research in Internet ” “NetView BTC JP”)

【Looksmart Japan】 http://www.Looksmart.co.jp

Looksmart first began compiling its Japanese directory in 1998 before setting up operations in Japan in 2000. LookSmart Japan has been operating Japan’s leading fully managed OEM directory with over 300,000 listings, categorized under 26,000 categories compiled by professional editors over a collective work period that equates to 25 years in man hours. The directory provides media partners with high quality content as well as search advertising revenues generated from a diverse base of 20,000 commercial listings in the directory.

Some of Looksmart Japan’s current media partners include: Nifty, Fresh Eye