MIVA Direct, Inc., the toolbar, homepage and content division of digital
media and advertising company, MIVA, Inc. (NASDAQ:MIVA), today announced
the further and significant expansion of its ALOT brand with the beta
release of new, fully customizable toolbar and homepage products, ALOT
Toolbar and ALOT
Home. Coinciding with these releases, MIVA Direct also today
announced the beta launch of ALOT
Buttons, a website offering a portfolio of free to install widgets.
The new products are the latest step in the development of the ALOT
brand, which launched in Q4 2007 and is designed to ‘Make
the Internet Easy’ by aggregating
proprietary content and ‘best-of-the-web’
third party content across vertically themed toolbars and homepages.
ALOT’s new customizable toolbar and homepage
products are designed to take this vertical strategy to the next level.
Using these new products, consumers can now fully customize their ALOT
Toolbar and homepage, choosing from a wide range of different widgets
from the new ALOT Buttons website. These widgets cover areas including
games, maps, music, recipes, finance and politics.
"We believe that growth of the ALOT brand to
date is due largely to our vertical product strategy and believe that
today’s launch is a natural progression that
will enable us to further build on this success,”
commented Peter Corrao, President and Chief Executive Officer, MIVA. "With
our new personalized products, users can continue to install vertical
toolbars and homepages optimized for their specific interests, but can
now also personalize their products by adding widgets from our expanding
widget library.”
In addition to benefits to the consumer, the launch is also designed to
open up new advertising opportunities for MIVA Direct. Widgets in the
ALOT Buttons portfolio are available for sponsorship on a CPC (cost per
click), CPI (cost per insertion), CPA (cost per action) or CPM (cost per
thousand impressions) basis.
"We believe that for advertisers, ALOT widget
ads offer a powerful pull-marketing channel. Not only are our widgets
selected and installed by users themselves, but they are also displayed
within toolbars and on homepages, which we believe is highly visible and
valuable online real estate,” continued Mr.
Corrao.
MIVA Direct has built an active ALOT Toolbar user base of 3.2 million1
in under a year. MIVA Direct’s homepages
currently generate over 70 million page views per month2.
http://www.alot.com
http://buttons.alot.com/
http://home.alot.com
http://www.miva.com
About MIVA Direct, Inc.
MIVA Direct operates a portfolio of consumer websites, interest-specific
toolbars and personalized homepages. MIVA Direct’s
millions of active toolbars span a range of niche sectors including
jokes, music, recipes and horoscopes and offer consumers search
functionality in addition to one-click access to tailored content. MIVA
Direct is owned by MIVA, Inc. (NASDAQ:MIVA).
About MIVA®,
Inc.
MIVA, Inc. (NASDAQ:MIVA) is a global digital media company with a
mission to deliver valuable digital audiences to advertisers. MIVA has
two focuses to its business: owning and operating a growing portfolio of
consumer destination sites and interest-specific toolbars, through its
MIVA Direct division; and running a third-party contextual Pay-Per-Click
ad network focused on key vertical sectors, through its MIVA Media
division. MIVA, Inc. operates across North America and Europe.
Forward-looking Statements
This press release contains certain forward-looking statements that are
based upon current expectations and involve certain risks and
uncertainties within the meaning of the U.S. Private Securities
Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words or expressions such as "anticipate”
, "plan," "will," "intend," "believe" or "expect'" or variations of such
words and similar expressions are intended to identify such
forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are not
guarantees of future performance and are subject to risks,
uncertainties, and other factors, some of which are beyond our control
and difficult to predict and could cause actual results to differ
materially from those expressed or forecasted in the forward-looking
statements, including (1) our ability to successfully execute upon our
corporate strategies, (2) our ability to develop and successfully market
new products and services, and (3) the potential acceptance of new
products in the market. Additional key risks are described in MIVA's
reports filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission,
including the Form 10-K for fiscal 2007 and our most recently filed Form
10-Q.
®Registered trademark
1 Source: Internal statistics, September 30,
2008
2 Source: Hitbox, August 2008. Page views are
for both ALOT and MIVA Direct’s legacy
homepage brand