Advertising Network ContextWeb Puts Web Publishers in the Driver's Seat with Guaranteed CPM Rates.

Pricing Model Gives Control to Publishers for First Time: Lets Them Set Their Own CPM Rates for Advertising Network

NEW YORK -- Advertising network ContextWeb, Inc. (www.contextweb.com), ranked by comScore among the top 25 U.S. advertising supported properties, today announced a new pricing model in which publisher sites in its network can set their own CPM rates. This is a radical shift from the traditional "hope for the best" practice in which advertisers are the only party to control pricing and advertising networks decide what share of revenue they will pass on to the publisher.

"Open PO," the ContextWeb pricing model, has been successfully running at 100 of the comScore 250 publisher sites, including The Boston Herald, The Denver Post, World Now and Weather Underground. ContextWeb is offering the new 'name your CPM' price model to all comScore 250 sites and/or sites that generate more than 10 million impressions a month. Eligible sites can sign up by contacting [e-mail].

"Advertisers and publishers both need the ability to control pricing -- it is high time advertising networks begin to shoulder the risk of making the right match between buyer and seller instead of pushing this risk off onto the web publishing community," says Anand Subramanian, CEO of ContextWeb. "ContextWeb is freeing the publisher from the drudgery and randomness of receiving a percentage of what the ad network decides to pay," he says. "The voice of the publisher should matter -- when advertisers set their own price why can't the publishers?"

In the Open PO model, leading publishers sell to ContextWeb a potentially unlimited amount of media at CPM rates they designate.

One of the unique ways by which ContextWeb is able to satisfy both the advertiser and publisher is its patent pending ContextAd technology which provides real time page-level discovery of content on sites. This page level specificity - instead of the typical site level media buy -- improves performance and reach for the advertiser.

About ContextWeb

ContextWeb is the 24th largest advertising supported property in the U.S., according to comScore, with over 53 million unique users and 2.8 billion ad impressions in January 2007. Red Herring named ContextWeb a Top 100 Private Company in 2006, and AlwaysOn ranked the company in the Top 100 Private Companies in 2007.

ContextWeb publisher partners include more than 100 of the comScore top 250 sites. Advertiser partners include 12 of the Advertising Age top 15 interactive agencies, including Digitas, Agency.com (Omnicom), OgilvyInteractive (WPP), Modem Media (Digitas) and FCBi (Interpublic). Advertisers include Circuit City, Delta Airlines, HP, Verizon and The Wall Street Journal.

Founded in 2000, the company has assembled a team of executives from leading online advertising and technology companies such as Advertising.com, Apple, DoubleClick, Microsoft and Yahoo!

Leading venture capital firms have invested in ContextWeb's advertising network and patent pending technology. These firms include Draper Fisher Jurvetson, an early investor in major successes such as Hotmail (sold to Microsoft), Overture (sold to Yahoo!, now Yahoo! Search Marketing), Skype (sold to eBay) and Baidu.com, Inc. (Nasdaq:BIDU), and Updata Partners.

ContextWeb's patent pending ContextAd real-time contextual advertising engine delivers advertisers the desirable qualities of site specific buying with the pricing and reach of an ad network. ContextAd provides page-level discovery of content on sites endemic and non-endemic to the advertiser which improves both performance and reach compared to traditional advertising networks or site specific media buying strategies.

For more information visit www.contextweb.com.