Well Bob this is what Engage says about competition in the prospectus.
'The market for Internet marketing solutions, including consumer profiling, online advertising services and systems, and Web site traffic analysis is new, rapidly evolving and intensely competitive. Engage expects competition to increase both from existing competitors and new market entrants for various components of its services. Engage competes primarily on the basis of its product features and performance, such as its scalable, application- independent technology and the anonymity and quality of its global database of profiles, level of service and, to a lesser extent, on price.
Profiling Solutions
Engage competes directly with providers of profiling technology, such as Personify, and indirectly with applications that include more limited profiling capability integrated into their solution, such as BroadVision and Vignette. NetGravity, through a partnership with Aptex and MatchLogic, and businesses that offer cash or other incentives to users to voluntarily provide profile data have indicated their intent to compete in the global profiling solutions market. Engage also competes with companies such as DoubleClick and MatchLogic that have the ability to aggregate large quantities of customer behavior data across the Web.
Online Advertising Systems and Services
The primary competitors to Engage's Accipiter AdManager software are providers of ad serving systems, such as NetGravity and Real Media. In the outsourced ad serving market, Engage's Accipiter AdBureau service competes with providers of ad serving services, such as those offered by Adforce and DoubleClick.
Market Intelligence Services
The primary competitors for I/PRO's NetLine Web measurement service and the Engage DecisionSupportServer product are companies offering outsourced solutions or software solutions, such as Accrue, Andromedia, net.Genesis and WebTrends. Nielsen I/PRO I/Audit service competes with auditing services from ABC Interactive, BPA and PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Many of Engage's current competitors, as well as a number of potential new competitors, have longer operating histories, greater name recognition and substantially greater financial, technical and marketing resources than Engage.
Engage's current and potential competitors also may have more extensive customer bases and larger proprietary databases. In addition, current and potential competitors have established or may establish cooperative relationships among themselves or with third parties to more effectively distribute their products or to enhance their product and service offerings.
In addition to these current and potential commercial competitors, Engage also faces competition from the internal capabilities of some potential customers. Some of the largest Web publishers use internally developed interactive marketing solutions rather than the commercial solutions offered by Engage and its competitors. There can be no assurance that Engage will be able to compete successfully with these internally developed solutions.
Increased competition may result in price reductions, reduced gross margins and loss of market share, any of which could have a material adverse effect on Engage's business, financial condition and results of operations. There can be no assurance that Engage will be able to compete successfully against existing or potential competitors or that competitive pressures will not have a material adverse effect on Engage's business, financial condition and results of operations...' |
