07 February 2005

Espotting wins 'Fastest growing and most dynamic media company in UK' at Media Momentum Awards

LONDON, February 7th, 2005 - Espotting Media was named as the fastest growing and most dynamic media company in the UK at the GP Capital Media Momentum Awards.

The award recognises the UK's 50 fastest growing media companies, ranked according to their annual revenue growth rate between 2002-2003. Espotting emerged in pole position with a 726% increase in revenue.

Espotting also won one of the 5 'Media Momentum Stars' awards, judged by a panel of industry experts including Robert Leach, the Head of Interactive BSkyB, Nick Horswell, the Founder of PHD, and Jon Farley, the Head of the National Barclays Media SME team.

'Espotting has demonstrated unbelievable growth and execution' commented Manish Madhavani, partner at GP Capital. 'Despite a tough environment for the media sector, these 50 companies successfully grew their revenue base by an average of 149% in a one-year period. The results also indicate certain emerging industry sectors - internet advertising and mobile content being ones to watch for 2005.'

Espotting was the first company to launch the 'paid-listings' advertising model in Europe. Paid-listings has been the fastest growing sector of online advertising, more than doubling year-on-year (increasing 109%) to a value of £114.3m for the first half of 2004 (up from £54.7m in the first half of 2003). Paid listings now accounts for over 40% of total online media spend in the UK and has leapt in value to become 1.5 times larger than the cinema advertising industry (IAB/PWC). The scalability and accountability of the paid-listings model has played a critical role in Espotting's rapid growth.

Espotting operates an online marketplace where advertisers bid on keywords relevant to their business, and the higher they bid, the higher they appear within Espotting's paid-listings. Advertisers pay a fee (the bid price) only when an Internet user clicks on their online advertisement that appears on the Espotting network, and is delivered to their site. The model puts the advertiser in complete control, as it allows them to determine the bid price in an online auction. As a result advertisers have experienced some of the strongest return on investment from their marketing spend with Espotting. Espotting has thousands of advertisers ranging from small and medium-sized enterprises to the largest brands, such as British Airways and eBay.

'CEOs and CFOs are calling for their marketing directors to be more accountable and that plays directly to the beauty of the web where it is possible to see just how hard every last penny is working,' commented Seb Bishop, co-founder and senior vice president of Espotting Media. 'We are very happy to be acknowledged as the UK's fastest growing and most dynamic media company and attribute our growth to the hard work of the Espotting team.'

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