Clearspring Introduces ConnectedAds -- Viral Widgets That Adapt to Leverage Social Connections

MCLEAN, VA and SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwire - April 21, 2009) - Clearspring Technologies, the leading widget network connecting publishers and advertisers to audiences on the social Web, today announced the ConnectedAd program, enabling advertisers to use Facebook and MySpace in a deeper way by tapping into information about the public connections between people on social networking sites. In addition to providing a more engaging and relevant experience for users, Connected Ads leverage the same industry-leading sharing and tracking as other Clearspring widgets, making it significantly easier to launch and measure word-of-mouth campaigns.

With ConnectedAds, advertisers will be able to measure the entire conversation around the widget including comments, news feeds, shares, notifications, fan page links and other interactions. In the past, the only metrics for widgets on social networking sites were installs and views. For example, if people install movie trailer widgets on their Facebook pages, the movie studio can now measure if that application appeared on a person's newsfeed and count subsequent friend comments that it generated. They can also measure if it was shared with followers on Twitter or added to Delicious bookmarks.

"Today, widgets can be distributed broadly across the social Web, while also providing accountability via metrics," Hooman Radfar, co-founder and chief executive officer of Clearspring stated. "We are moving to the next phase of the evolution of advertising with widgets -- enabling them to more deeply integrate with the environment they are installed in. Advertisers need better tools to automate and measure word-of-mouth advertising across this emerging social landscape. ConnectedAds take us one step closer towards this vision."

Social sites are opening up their capabilities at an accelerating pace -- Facebook Connect, Google FriendConnect, and MySpace ID are all examples of open initiatives. Every day there are more channels for advertisers to use to engage their advocates and customers. The expanding social network opportunities make it difficult for advertisers to reach their audience in the constantly changing social landscape. Clearspring provides a turn-key solution for advertisers to leverage these channels by creating, distributing, and tracking widgets and social applications via the ConnectedAd Program.

Clearspring's one-click widget sharing and tracking platform, which forms the basis of ConnectedAds, has empowered the largest publishers (NBC Universal, Time Warner, MTV Networks) and advertisers (Clearasil, Sprint) to virally distribute widgets across the social Web at a massive scale. Coupled with Clearsping's pay-for-performance widget distribution network, this solution has become a standard means to reach social media audiences.

As part of the ConnectedAds program, Clearspring will be extending its ABCi certified widget metrics suite to capture social interactions. For advertisers, measuring virality is growing beyond the need to know about installs and views. ConnectedAds can be spread across more than 80 social destinations and leverage social information from Facebook and MySpace platforms. Clearspring plans to support additional services in the coming months.

Clearspring is a one-stop shop for advertisers -- the company develops widgets and provides pay-for-performance distribution to kick-start viral distribution. This is important for advertisers that don't have the expertise or time to work with many different vendors on a very large campaign, such as a movie studio launching a large summer blockbuster.

For more information, visit http://www.clearspring.com/connectyourads.

About Clearspring

Clearspring is the leading provider of distribution, management and monetization services for widgets and other distributable Web content. Clearspring's free sharing services enable publishers and developers to distribute and track viral digital content to the most popular destinations, including social networks, start pages, bookmarking sites, blogs, mobile devices and desktop platforms. The company delivers billions of impressions every month working with the world's most prominent brands, media companies and Web 2.0 businesses. The company also provides new monetization opportunities for publishers and developers using the Clearspring platform by allowing them to seamlessly integrate advertising-based services in their distributable Web content. To learn more, visit www.clearspring.com.

Contact Information: Contact: Travis Murdock A&R Edelman (650) 762-2807 travis.murdock@ar-edelman.com