Monday September 13, 8:26 am Eastern Time
Company Press Release
GoTo.com Expands Its Advertiser Base by 50% In Two Months
GoTo.com Introduces Two New Payment Programs and Net Pricing for Recognized Agencies
PASADENA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 13, 1999--GoTo.com (NASDAQ: GOTO - news), the company that pioneered an online marketplace that introduces consumers and advertisers, today announced the addition of approximately 5,000 new advertisers to its targeted pay-for-performance online advertising program. These additions represent a 50% increase since June 1999, bringing GoTo's burgeoning advertiser base to more than 15,000. Further enhancing GoTo's growth rate are two new payment programs for advertisers and the company's new ``Net Pricing' program for advertising agencies.
GoTo.com attributes the recent influx of new advertisers to its unique business model, which delivers highly targeted traffic at a price pre-determined by the advertiser. As the popularity of GoTo's search engine has increased with consumers, so has the effectiveness of its advertising programs. In the second quarter of 1999, GoTo provided its advertisers with more than 31 million click-throughs to self-qualified consumers, more than twice the number from the previous quarter and an indication of the growing power of GoTo's ability to provide highly targeted customer acquisition opportunities. In a recent custom report, Media Metrix reported GoTo.com's July network reach to be more than 12 million unique visitors, including all traffic directly visiting the GoTo.com site or visiting a site using GoTo's Search Syndication Network(TM).
GoTo.com's growth has led to increasing interest from advertising agencies. ``GoTo's unique full-service offering led us to evaluate them as an alternative to traditional advertising,' said Mindy Zuziak, Senior Account Manager at Beyond Interactive. ``After examining the advertising opportunities that GoTo provides, and its unparalleled ease of use, we have integrated GoTo into the permanent advertising campaigns of several of our clients. We've been extremely pleased with our results to date.'
Today's announcement of the agency ``Net Pricing' program is expected to further extend GoTo's presence in the advertising community. This program provides a 15% commission to recognized agencies whose clients advertise on GoTo. Unique to this program is the extension of 60-day payment terms, recognizing that agencies need greater flexibility in billing because of their representative relationships.
GoTo.com advertisers enjoy complete control over their campaigns, thanks to a suite of tools that enables them to easily manage the traffic, targeting, and cost of their marketing programs. Advertiser control is further enhanced by the recent addition of GoTo's ``Non-Stop Traffic' plan that enables advertisers to pre-authorize an ongoing payment for the traffic they receive. In addition, GoTo's ``Fixed Budget' program allows advertisers to select a fixed monthly payment, and manage their advertising expenditures against a pre-determined monthly budget.
``Our extraordinary advertiser growth and agency adoption of our model indicates that the advertising world has come to recognize the value of GoTo.com,' commented Jeffrey Brewer, Chief Executive Officer of GoTo. ``By providing a service that combines strong results with unrivaled cost-effectiveness and control, we have effectively created a system that answers the demands of advertisers and their customers.'
About GoTo.com
GoTo.com (NASDAQ: GOTO - news) created and operates an online marketplace that introduces consumers and advertisers. Consumers conduct searches using the GoTo.com search service at its Web site and at more than 100,000 locations across the Internet where GoTo.com can be accessed through its Search Syndication Network(TM). Advertisers bid in an ongoing auction for priority placement in the search results with the highest bidder's site appearing first in the results. Each advertiser pays GoTo.com the amount of its bid whenever a consumer clicks on an advertiser's listing in the search results. This dynamic, together with GoTo.com's streamlined search method, improves a consumer's ability to quickly and easily find relevant Web sites providing information, products and services. Moreover, GoTo.com ranked ahead of Yahoo!, Excite, Lycos and Infoseek in the category ``frequency of finding information sought every time' in an independent online consumer survey recently conducted in the Spring of 1999 by NPD Online Research. GoTo.com ended the second quarter of 1999 having made more than 31,000,000 introductions between consumers and advertisers, and had more than 15,000 advertisers in its marketplace in September 1999. GoTo.com is located in Pasadena, California and can be found online at goto.com.
Statements in this press release regarding expected growth are ``forward-looking statements.' These forward-looking statements are inherently uncertain. Actual results may differ materially from these forward-looking statements due to factors such as: the risk that the ``Net Pricing' program may not be adopted by advertisers, or the slow growth or decline in advertiser acceptance of GoTo.com's business model. For a discussion of some of the other risks and factors that could affect GoTo.com's future results, see the discussion of ``Risk Factors' in its Prospectus, dated June 18, 1999.
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Contact:
GoTo.com, Pasadena
Al Duncan
626/685-5714
al@goto.com
or
Connors Communications, New York
Alayna Tagariello
212/807-7500
alayna@connors.com |
