Retailers Gain Traction With Pixel-Free Predictive Segments From Akamai Advertising Decision Solutions

- Functionality can capture up to 100% of a site's audience, without the use of IT-intensive pixel implementation

- Enables support for bigger budgets, faster turnaround on ad campaigns and more robust predictive modeling

- Optimizes website performance

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Jun 09, 2010, 06:30 ET

CHICAGO, June 9 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- INTERNET RETAILER CONFERENCE -- Akamai Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: AKAM), the leader in powering video, dynamic transactions and enterprise applications online, today announced significant traction amongst leading retailers employing its pixel-free implementation. Available immediately with the purchase of new predictive modeling services through Akamai Advertising Decision Solutions (ADS), this first-of-its-kind functionality allows retailers to capture up to 100% of their website audiences, without the use of IT-intensive pixel implementation. Additionally, pixel-free implementation optimizes website performance and enables more robust predictive modeling with richer data. To speak with an Akamai representative about the pixel-free technology, please visit Akamai at the Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition in booth #555.

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Traditionally, the only way for marketers to gather e-commerce information has been the implementation of tracking pixels, which are small, transparent images embedded in websites that provide both a high-level and anonymous view of certain behaviors on a given website. Although tracking pixels can be an effective behavioral targeting method, they can take months of effort to install and can often be difficult to optimize within a meaningful timeframe.

"In theory, pixels can be very simple, but in practice, they impose several notable challenges including slowing site performance and requiring substantial IT maintenance," says Mike Afergan, Akamai's CTO and senior vice president of Advertising Decision Solutions. "ADS predictive segments with a pixel-free approach is the first offering of its kind to offer improved richness and variety of user behavior data without compromising site performance."

In-house research recently conducted with 15 companies advertising online found that home page load times slowed by at least 35% with the use of pixels. In addition to slowing website performance, the use of pixels requires choices to be made about which pages to pixel, inevitably resulting in a loss of user behavior capture during the process. Furthermore, once the pixels are in place, they are often difficult for the IT staff to maintain, which can slow the overall ad turnaround process and often decrease the effectiveness of the data that advertisers can leverage in their campaigns.

Conversely, because pixel-free implementation is powered by Akamai's Dynamic Site Accelerator solution, it can be automatically enabled for every end-user interaction with a client's website. This architecture is designed to help advertisers to capture larger audiences and more site visits, in turn, enabling bigger advertising budgets and providing a much richer set of data to model against. Instead of capturing purchases and browsing behaviors at the department level, the pixel-free approach enables modeling at the product category and product detail level, which provides the models with a much more in-depth understanding of a purchaser's intent.

Akamai's ADS predictive segments are based on data from the industry's only online shopping data cooperative, which includes hundreds of multi-channel retailers, product manufacturers, travel, and telecom websites that contribute data representing approximately $15 billion worth of quarterly, anonymous consumer shopping transactions. This unique data set makes it possible for Akamai ADS to understand the distinctive behavioral patterns shoppers exhibit leading up to a purchase --and thus identify in-market consumers with accuracy.

The Akamai Difference

Akamai® provides market-leading managed services for powering video, dynamic transactions, and enterprise applications online. Having pioneered the content delivery market one decade ago, Akamai's services have been adopted by the world's most recognized brands across diverse industries. The alternative to centralized Web infrastructure, Akamai's global network of tens of thousands of distributed servers provides the scale, reliability, insight and performance for businesses to succeed online. Akamai has transformed the Internet into a more viable place to inform, entertain, advertise, interact, and collaborate. To experience The Akamai Difference, visit www.akamai.com and follow @Akamai on Twitter.

Akamai Statement Under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act

The release contains information about future expectations, plans and prospects of Akamai Technologies, Inc.'s management that constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors including, but not limited to, the effects of any attempts to intentionally disrupt our services or network by hackers or others, failure of our services to operate as expected, lack of market acceptance of pixel-free predictive segments, failure of Akamai technology to operate as expected or generate intended benefits for customers, a failure of Akamai's network infrastructure, and other factors that are discussed in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and other documents periodically filed with the SEC.