Cyber Monday Online Retail Sales Grow 33% Over 2008, In-Line With Black Friday Results Mercent Reports; Mercent eCommerce Index Indicates Strong Online Holiday Sales


SEATTLE, WA--(Marketwire - December 1, 2009) - Mercent™, a leading provider of on-demand marketing solutions for retailers, today released the Mercent eCommerce Index™ for Cyber Monday 2009. The Mercent eCommerce Index is a scheduled report that measures the year-over-year (YOY) same-seller online gross merchandise value (GMV) growth of Mercent's aggregate retail clients each quarter and for key dates and date ranges during the holiday shopping season. The Mercent eCommerce Index tracks online retail transactions generated by paid online advertisements placed across a network of leading online shopping destinations including Amazon.com, Google, Microsoft Bing, Yahoo!, eBay, and more than 70 others. Mercent serves more than 120 leading global online retailers.

Today's release specifically includes consumer retail e-commerce growth figures for Cyber Monday, November 30, 2009.

-- For the 24 hours of Cyber Monday 2009, Mercent reports overall same-
   seller online retail GMV grew 33% relative to Cyber Monday 2008.

-- On Cyber Monday, same-seller GMV of Mercent clients participating in
   Amazon's "Selling on Amazon" third-party marketplace program increased
   by 47% relative to Cyber Monday 2008.


2009 Key Holiday Shopping Days vs. Corresponding Days in 2008
                 for eCommerce Spending

                                  Online Shopping Channels
                                  ------------------------
Holiday Season Day                   ALL           AMZN
                                  ----------    ----------
November 30th - Cyber Monday          33%           47%
November 27th - Black Friday          41%           56%
November 26th - Thanksgiving Day      33%           78%

According to Mercent CEO Eric Best, "Cyber Monday sales are 30% higher than Black Friday results, offering further evidence of a positive 2009 holiday shopping season. Mercent's data show consumers are looking online as a preferred shopping channel for the holidays, most likely due to aggressive online merchant promotions, discounts and increased customer service levels. Black Friday and Cyber Monday demonstrated paralleled growth and we expect to see comparable trends through the peak selling season in December."

Mercent attributes merchant GMV sales growth across online channels to the macro-economic recovery in non-discretionary and discretionary spending; the increased draw of online channels that provide aggressive and competitive purchasing options for value-conscious shoppers; and the efficiencies of major online shopping destinations such as Amazon, eBay, Walmart and others, that are placing downward pressure on industry selling and fulfillment expenses. Furthermore, the most competitive merchants are becoming intensely savvy and efficient with their online sales and advertising strategies, leveraging technologies like Mercent Retail™ to seamlessly integrate product data feeds with online sales channels and fully optimize online ad campaigns and promotions to drive incremental sales.

About Mercent Retail™

Mercent Retail™ is an on-demand, online channel management platform designed exclusively for multi-channel retailers. The solution gives merchants the power to reach more than 250 million customers with targeted products, advertisements and promotions through the most popular online marketing channels. Based on a proven and industry-leading platform, Mercent Retail™ offers seamless integration with back-end retail e-commerce systems and turnkey data integration with analytics and paid search platforms to give retailers campaign intelligence and the power to change product promotions and offers 'on-the-fly.' Most important, the SAAS platform makes it easy and cost-effective for merchants to increase sales revenue, improve gross margins and optimize their return on advertising spend by promoting and selling the right products with the right merchandising offers on key retail channels.

Mercent Retail™ helps the world's leading online retailers promote their products across online transactional marketplaces like Amazon and eBay. The technology handles the complex and unique challenges of managing multiple data feed exchanges and is ideally suited for connecting retail systems with sophisticated online marketplace and comparison shopping APIs. Mercent Retail also addresses the correct mapping of products, automates order processing, and provides ongoing data feed monitoring to rapidly and efficiently grow marketplace revenues.

Information regarding Mercent Retail shopping feed management technology, Mercent Performance marketing services, and the complete list of online marketing channels in the Mercent Shopping Network are available at www.mercent.com.

About Mercent

Mercent is a leading provider of online channel marketing technology and services for retailers. Through its award-winning Mercent Retail™ SAAS technology and Mercent Performance™ professional services, Mercent helps the world's most successful online merchants including 1-800-Flowers, Bass Pro Shops, Brookstone, GUESS?, L'Occitane USA, Redcats Group, and REI optimize online shopping channel marketing campaigns to drive customer acquisition, revenues, profits, and inventory velocity. Mercent is the single point of integration with a vast online advertising network that includes transactional marketplaces such as Amazon.com and eBay; comparison shopping engines (CSEs) such as Shopping.com and NextTag; affiliate marketing programs such as LinkShare and the Google Affiliate Network; and other product advertising channels including Microsoft Bing Cashback and Google Product Listing Ads (PLA). The company is a 'Selling on Amazon.com' Certified System Integrator, Buy.com Gold Certified Partner, eBay Certified Provider, certified Google Product Search Partner and Yahoo! Search Submit Pro certified feed provider. Founded by a seasoned team of Amazon.com veterans, Mercent is a venture-funded company based in Seattle, WA. For more information, visit www.mercent.com.

Contact Information: Mercent PR Contact: Kristine Szarkowitz Tel: 206. 310.5323