The payment service provider Lancore Merchant Services have announced that they will be exhibiting at two exhibitions in April. The first event taking place is the Cards Asia 2009 Exhibition at the SUNTEC International Convention & Exhibition Centre in Singapore between: 22nd – 24th April. Lancore will be based at stand E4002 for this event. The second exhibition is Internet World 2009 showing at Earls Court 2 in London between: 28th – 30th April where Lancore will be based at booth 4B15.

Lancore view the exhibitions as an important part of their marketing strategy. Yvonne Lankry, Lancore’s Marketing Director says “Both the Internet World and Cards Asia events are key exhibitions in our marketing calendar. The exhibitions provides a wonderful opportunity to meet people in all areas of the digital marketing and online industry”

Cards Asia is Asia’s leading Cards & Payments conference attended by over 200 industry professionals within the banking sector. The exhibition will include speakers from the region’s major banks, card issuers, acquirer and merchants to help provide a high level, case-study driven conference programme. This year sees a more interactive experience with extra panel sessions, debates and ultimately more audience involvement and networking opportunities.

Internet World is Europe’s longest running, best attended and biggest event for digital marketing and online business, attracting over 13,000 visitors and more than 300 exhibitors. Now in its 17th year, the event brings you everything you need to formulate and implement your online strategy, from digital marketing to ecommerce, content management to hosting. It showcases the UK’s leading suppliers and delivers Europe’s best free education program. The exhibition will also have key speakers from all areas of the industry, including Barclays and John Lewis, each offering their own expert insight.

With thousands of visitors attending both of the events the exhibitions will provide Lancore with the ideal opportunity to meet potential customers and demonstrate new products and services. The diverse nature of both events mean that people from all different areas of the industry can exchange views and gather feedback to formulate their online strategy. Lancore is a leading payment service provider and can offer payment gateways solutions and money transfer servicesto help grow your online business.

Everyone wants to get something for nothing, and now you can, thanks to Collect.com’s free classified ads.

“The classified ads are completely free — no gimmicks, no strings attached and no limit to the number of classified ads that can be placed,” said Dianne Wheeler, the community leader for collect.com. “This is a great way for collectors to sell the items that they don’t love anymore — and shop for new ones that they will — without pricey consignment fees or drawn-out bidding wars.”

Placing an ad is easy. Just visit www.collect.com, click on the collectibles area that applies to your item (Comics, Music, Sports, Militaria or Antiques and Collectibles), and add in the details. The Ad Wizard walks you through every step of the process, including writing the description and adding a photo of the piece that’s for sale.

The free classified ads are the first of numerous improvements that are scheduled to come to collect.com this year, Wheeler said.

Produced by F+W Media, the world’s largest hobby and collectible publisher, Collect.com is an online community where collectors can discuss and display their finds, keep tabs on the value of their collections, connect with buyers and sellers, read about the latest hobby news and more.

Visit http://www.collect.com now to sell your collectibles with Collect.com free classified ads.

Generate (www.generatela.com), the cross-platform production and management company, today announced it has established a new market research division, Generate Insight, as it continues to grow and diversify its entertainment and production offerings. Generate Insight, which is run by new hire and senior vice president Janis Gaudelli, collects and analyzes proprietary data sourced directly from a community of “Insighters” who Gaudelli has personally recruited and developed relationships with over many years, beginning when she oversaw Teen People’s Trendspotter network. The division will produce custom research initiatives help brands and companies interested in engaging the Millennial demographic, in addition to supporting Generate projects across the company.

“Generate was founded with a mission to understand the Millennial audience and develop content that suits their unique worldview and consumption habits by being quickly adaptable and able to move across mediums,” said Jordan Levin, CEO. “Bringing Janis in and creating the Generate Insight division is a big plus because it enables us to better achieve that mission – and help others share in our understanding – while simultaneously adding depth to our senior management team and broadening our capabilities for brands, advertisers, studios and networks.”

Generate Insight’s network of 7,500 Insighters, comprised of tweens, teens, young adults and moms, is nurtured and sourced in real time through the high-touch relationships Janis has with the community, distinguishing it from those of other research firms. The majority of Insighters are hyper-connected tastemakers that are at the vanguard of what’s new and compelling. Generate Insight’s directly derived findings – both quantitative and qualitative – will be customized and focused on immediately actionable data points for clients across industries.

Gaudelli began work with this community of Millennials at Teen People, where she oversaw its Trendspotter network and grew it by 50 percent within a year. After the magazine folded, Janis maintained her close connections with the Trendspotter network as an independent youth culture and trends consultant to companies including Warner Bros, Reebok, Saatchi & Saatchi, General Mills and Lucky magazine. Her relationships are the foundation of the Generate Insight network. In addition to her research, Gaudelli is a mentor to teens, serving on numerous youth mentoring boards and assisting in the creation of progressive educational initiatives.

“Generate is the perfect place for me to bring together my passion for youth culture, longstanding relationships with influencers and significant research experience to inform both content and brands who are eager to engage Millennials,” said Gaudelli. “Keeping up with and truly listening to what this generation is saying and feeling is crucial to developing successful entertainment properties and marketing campaigns alike.”

Generate’s senior executive team has an established track record of understanding and creating content for Millennials; as former CEO of The WB, Levin was part of the founding executive team responsible for defining series that established the network’s distinctly youthful brand such as Dawson’s Creek, Gilmore Girls, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and 7th Heaven. During that time he worked with Gaudelli and the Teen People Trendspotter network. Generate’s recent Millennial-focused productions include political Web satire Republicrats for MSN and dark Web comedy Pink: The Series, which is a Webby nominee and a Streamy award winner.

Generate Insight will tap the Insighters community to produce a monthly “Pulse report” snapshot of trends and themes impacting the Millennial generation. The first Monthly Insighters report, to be released in time for Earth Day, will focus on how Millennials think about the environment and green issues, as well as how they respond to brands going green.

The Berlin-based media consultancy GOLDMEDIA has founded GOLDMEDIA-Holding to expand even further. (Goldmedia.com). The new holding company is the umbrella for all activities of the different Goldmedia companies and for current and prospective shareholdings. For more than ten years, Goldmedia has provided national and international clients with high quality consulting and research services in the fields of media, entertainment and telecommunications.

Today, Goldmedia-Holding GmbH consists of Goldmedia GmbH Media Consulting & Research, Goldmedia Sales & Services GmbH, Goldmedia Custom Research GmbH and shareholdings of blaetterwald gmbh. (www.blaetterwald.org)

AIS Media announces that its eBSP® partner program saw strong growth in the fourth quarter of 2008 and is forecasting even greater growth in 2009. As more professionals are facing the reality of unemployment, many are establishing consultancies in their area of expertise by partnering with AIS Media. The AIS Media Partner program is the leading program of its type in the world. The foundation of AIS Media’s partner program is eBSP® certification. A federally registered trademark, the “eBSP” seal serves as a symbol of trust, helps enhance partner credibility, and provides customers a service quality guarantee. As the unemployment rate continues to rise globally, more displaced professionals are seeking to establish their own businesses and turning to AIS Media and its Partner program. AIS Media offers four Partner levels and has certified partners across the globe.

“The global recession is hitting every sector of the economy and creating unemployment levels that we have not seen in over four decades,” said Thomas Harpointner, CEO of AIS Media. “The savvy professional is proactive and seeking new outlets for their entrepreneurial spirit that is fueling the tremendous growth that we are seeing with our Partner program. Our new Partners come from different disciplines and parts of the world but share similarities in their determination to succeed and unleash their creative and professional spirit.”

“As the economy continues to worsen, I expect further growth with our Partner program,” said Harpointner. “During the turmoil on Wall Street, we saw many professionals in the financial services sector seek out the Partner program as it is compatible with the drive and energy they demonstrated daily in their former careers. This trend has continued in other professional services that are being stung by the recession. Indeed, our new Partners are creating their own economic stimulus with the energy and new business they are producing.”

One of the main attractions to the AIS Partner program is the eBSP® certification that is internationally awarded and recognized. eBSP® certification grants Partners the licensing rights to AIS Media’s trademarks and resell rights to AIS Media’s full range of Internet services and solutions along with year-round support from AIS Media Subject Matter Experts (SMEs).

Founded in 1997, AIS Media is an Internet marketing and web services company that provides businesses award-winning web site development, email marketing, lead generation, e-commerce, and search engine marketing solutions. The company has developed a suite of Web-based applications under the proprietary “Excerpo” brand, which focuses on email marketing and e-commerce. AIS Media’s solutions are available directly and through its global network of certified partners. For more information, visit: www.aismedia.com.

BroadSign International, Inc., a worldwide provider of “Software as a Service” (SaaS) solutions for managing digital signage networks, and RMS Networks, Inc., the leading digital marketing and technology solutions agency, have joined forces to offer advertisers easier-to-buy digital out-of-home media.

The integration has become possible due to the new open-standard cross-network media buying platform – BroadSign Open, scheduled for release in early 2009. The two companies have collaborated to connect BroadSign Open with rVue – a digital signage media-planning tool developed for the DOOH industry and used by RMS Networks. rVue’s addressable advertising exchange takes a ‘Google AdWords’ approach and applies it to the DOOH industry. RMS’ rVue exchange is a web-based application that enables advertisers to find and bid on digital out-of-home properties across multiple networks.

Thanks to the rVue/BroadSign Open collaboration, over 165 DOOH networks that run on BroadSign’s software can now add their inventory to RMS’ media planning platform, thus becoming part of the larger-scale media buys they didn’t have access to before.

BroadSign Open will grant rVue users access to its combined network media space to enable advertisers to target and execute digital signage campaigns across BroadSign-powered networks.

“Our relationship with RMS Networks gives our networks an opportunity to be seen by planners and advertisers via a unified interface and simplifies the process of buying digital out-of-home,” said Brian Dusho, President & Chief Strategy Officer of BroadSign International. “Coupling rVue with BroadSign Open brings together the best of two worlds: mass reach and micro targeting.”

“BroadSign is an established, worldwide provider of campaign fulfillment workflow for the industry with an impressive group of networks,” notes Jason Kates, Founder, President and CEO of RMS Networks. “The integration of our respective technologies is designed to further enable advertising agencies to easily plan and buy OOH media campaigns and measure their effectiveness.”

The rVue Ad platform also offers greater accountability and relevancy in advertising. With rVue’s innovative targeting tools and auction-based pricing system, advertisers can find the right context and audience for their advertising message, only pay for impressions delivered to their ads, and receive digital reporting within 24 hours.

Additionally, The Component Group, an Omnicom agency has endorsed rVue from the start and is very optimistic about this announcement. “We collaborated with RMS Networks over the last year to integrate what the agencies are looking for – a dashboard approach to segregate the digital out of home opportunities and allow an efficient buy to take place,” said Bob Chimbel, CEO of the Component Group. “The incorporation of rVue into BroadSign’s reach is game-changing. A platform of this scope now allows us to access digital Out-of-Home outlets in a way that was not previously available.”

About RMS: RMS is the leading digital media and marketing agency that develops, manages and delivers the most relevant video advertising segments to millions of consumers daily. Through rVue, RMS’ addressable advertising exchange, high-traffic venues and consumers can access HD video content, create play lists and dramatically enhance the shopping experience. Advertising agencies can reach their target audience at or near the time of purchase. The technology is platform-agnostic, and can work independently or layer on most current industry applications. From its headquarters in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., RMS has served the nation’s most respected and recognizable brands including AutoNation, Blockbuster, Subway, Accenture and Advance Auto Parts – all with a simple proposition: Where ROI meets awareness. That’s RMS. Learn more at rmsnetworks.com and rVue.com.

http://www.rmsnetworks.com

Free Ads Online UK portal uses Web 2.0 features and hence it has many advantages to users. Free Ads can be searched from popular search engines, such as google, msn, and in this way, giving the Free Ads and Classifieds more exposure to a wider audience. London, UK, January 05, 2009 — Free Ads Online UK, is a Web 2.0 Portal offering free display ads, free advertising and free classifieds, the Free Ads UK site is seeking to make its mark in the UK Market after a successful launch of its Flag Ship site in the USA. Unlike traditional Classifieds Sites, users do not have to search from within the site. Free Ads Online UK portal uses Web 2.0 features and hence it has many advantages to users. Free Ads can be searched from popular search engines, such as google, msn, and in this way, giving the Free Ads and Classifieds more exposure to a wider audience. It’s very quick, simple to use and the design is modern. The latest ad pictures are shown on the home page and users can see the new ad titles and each new category that users may create. The portal have partnered with a Luxembourg e-commerce site, Wikio to facilitate access and distribution of the content, including its free ads, classifieds, news releases and more. Users can also add Skype name to the Free Ads, which makes selling or buying products online much easier for the buyer and or seller. The site has eliminated the long registration forms, and so has made a simple but very effective end-user solution. The Internet in 2009 is about giving the community more choice and more information. The Free Ads UK Wiki style website allows for more choice and more freedom of information. Anyone can publish free ads, and more – and all of it for free and because of its smart Web 2.0 programming, the users control the ads settings. When people search for information, its relevance is much higher in the search engines’ results. United Kingdom Free Ads UK http://www.freeadsonlineuk.com Contact: James Kent Free Ads UK London, UK 44-20-7861-9988 [email protected] website: http://www.freeadsonlineuk.com Blog: http://freeadsonlineuk.blogspot.com/ Crunch Base: http://www.crunchbase.com/company/free-ads-uk

Chris Mather, director and founder of the comprehensive Internet venue, cmather.com, announced today the enhancement of an innovative classified advertising service. “Our company recognizes that in this day and age an ever increasing number of people from all walks of life and from all over the world are in need of online advertising space and services, including classified advertising. We wanted to develop a creative and dynamic venue through which people can post classified advertisements … for no charge or for a very low cost,” Mather explained. There are no back end buy or sell fees or other surprise costs that are found at many other so-called free or reduced cost classified ad sites.

Beyond providing classified advertising space and services at no charge, cmather.com has also made it profoundly easy to place an ad. First of all, under the streamlined system at the site, a person or business wishing to place a classified advert does not have to register. Moreover, the ad itself can be placed within a matter of seconds. If desired, an ad placed through the site can come complete with a photo at no additional cost. Free ads remain up and posted for thirty days.

“We provide extremely effective options to people or businesses that place ads with our site. For example, a classified ad can be localized to a very specific community or geographic area,” Mather remarked. Ads can be placed by country, state or city. “Of course, understanding that the Internet opens up a world wide marketplace, a targeted advertisement is viewable all over the world,” Mather added.

In addition to more typical classified ads designed to buy or sell, the site also allows for the placement of event notifications — an ideal feature for promoting entertainment, meetings, presentations and gatherings of different types.

Other features of the free classified program at cmather.com include premier linking of an ad to popular community and search engine marketing sites. All URLs associated with the site are search engine friendly, which draws significant traffic to the site each and every day.

“We also understand that some individuals and businesses need something more extensive when it comes to their classified advertising needs. As a result, our site now offers both an extended and a featured ad program at reduced prices,” Mather said. Extended ads run for 365 on the network. Moreover, more traffic share is included in regard to extended and featured advertisements.

Whether the need is for a free, extended or featured ad, the site allows a person or business requiring an advertisement to select a placement from over 300 classified categories. Finally, the site provides around the clock customer and technical support, seven days a week and 365 days a year. “Our customers are our number one priority at cmather.com,” Mather said.

About CMather.com Services
CMather.com offers web hosting, design services, domain names, search engine, advertising and ecommerce applications to over 20,000 users daily. For more information, contact Chris Mather 1300 628 437 or visit the link below.

CMather Internet Home: http://www.cmather.com/
CMather Classifieds :http://www.cmather.com/classified/
Domain Name and Web Hosting Applications: http://domain.cmather.com/

Microsoft Corp. has announced that since its launch in May, Microsoft Live Search cashback has seen positive traction in all three of the key metrics on which the company said it would report: number of offers in the system, advertiser return on investment (ROI), and percentage of commercial search queries as measured by comScore Inc. The company also announced that 20 of the top 50 online retailers in the U.S. and 140 of Internet Retailer’s Top 500 are now participating in the program, including new advertisers AT&T, Drugstore.com Inc., FTD, Gap Inc. properties (including Banana Republic and Old Navy), Kmart, RedEnvelope and Saks Fifth Avenue.

“We are pleased to report a 30 percent increase in the number of product offers available in Microsoft Live Search cashback, indicative of the strong advertiser interest in the program and early results on its ROI,” said Brad Goldberg, general manager of Microsoft Live Search. “We have seen an average of 4.5 million unique users per month visiting cashback who have conducted more than 68 million commercial queries. We believe this early traction speaks to the differentiated and unique value proposition of Microsoft Live Search cashback for both consumers and advertisers, especially in these tough economic times.”

On advertiser ROI for the program, according to Stephanie Tilenius, general manager of eBay North America, “Combined with eBay’s already great prices — frequently 30 percent below retail on the items people want — the Microsoft Live Search cashback program is bringing home holiday deals for eBay shoppers that can be an incredible 60 percent below retail. Beyond the great deals for buyers, Microsoft Live Search cashback (http://www.live.com) has improved our ROI on paid search by 50 percent, and based upon our shared success, eBay is increasing its search marketing spend with Microsoft Live Search by threefold.”*

Other advertisers are also reporting strong results. Sales at ShoeMall have increased over sixfold since it began participating in Microsoft Live Search cashback, prompting ShoeMall to devote even more marketing dollars to the cashback program for holiday and beyond.

In addition, according to a custom comScore study, in the second quarter of 2008, Microsoft Live Search referred almost 12 percent of total U.S. commercial online transactions and about 13 percent of total U.S. online spending among key retail categories. Microsoft Live Search placed among the top two U.S. engines in five of the 10 key commercial categories for conversion rate, including Computer Hardware, Movies & Videos, Home & Garden, Music, and Travel. Microsoft Live Search also shows a competitive advantage in attracting high-quality and high-spending buyers. Microsoft Live Search ranked as the top engine among the competitive set by a large margin in dollars spent per buyer, across the combined 10 key commercial categories.

Shopping Cart Providers Expand Program’s Reach

Microsoft also announced today that Microsoft Live Search cashback has entered into agreements with shopping cart providers Miva Merchant, Early Impact Inc. (ProductCart) and 3DCart. Under the agreements, retailers using these shopping carts on their sites are now eligible to become a part of the Microsoft Live Search cashback program. Each of the providers has implemented a set of tools to easily enable its retailer partners, mostly small to midsize merchants, to join Microsoft Live Search cashback. The addition of these merchants through the shopping cart providers is projected to greatly expand the set of product offers available to consumers through Microsoft Live Search cashback.

About Microsoft Live Search cashback

With Microsoft Live Search cashback, Microsoft helps merchants maximize their advertising investments and drive more sales by providing consumers with an added incentive to buy — a cash reward. Online advertising spend that participating merchants would otherwise pay to Microsoft is instead passed on to customers who complete sales under the Microsoft Live Search cashback program as cash rewards. A complete list of Microsoft Live Search cashback partners can be found at http://www.live.com/cashback.

LinkShare, a global online advertising services provider, today announced the addition of 74 new advertisers to its network for the third-quarter of 2008. The new customer count outpaces LinkShare’s second-quarter growth, reflecting both the company’s success in providing full-service online marketing solutions as well as the increasing demand for performance marketing as a result of the current economic landscape.

“Now more than ever companies are looking for measurable return on investment from their marketing dollars,” said Yasuhisa “Yaz” Iida, Co-President, LinkShare Corporation. “We are pleased to see these new customers joining LinkShare’s network for performance-based marketing solutions. For all of our customers — both existing and new — LinkShare consistently strives to provide excellent services while developing new and relevant technologies that support the specific and evolving needs of today’s online marketers.”

Known for attracting large, sophisticated ecommerce companies, third-quarter additions to LinkShare’s network include 42 small-and-medium-sized companies. Ecommerce programs, such as cost-per-action (CPA) marketing, that are measured based on performance, have become a vital part of many business strategies as a way to significantly improve both revenue and ROI.

“LinkShare is proud to welcome so many small-and-medium-size businesses to our network,” said Jonathan Levine, Co-President, LinkShare Corporation. “In today’s tough economy, these advertisers can benefit from our global network of publishers to market and sell their products while tracking each affiliate marketing dollar spent. LinkShare continues to offer a dynamic interactive network where advertisers and publishers of all sizes can work together to form mutually beneficial relationships.”

Third-quarter additions to the LinkShare network include companies within the Internet’s fastest-growing and most dynamic markets, including retail, media and fashion. One small-to-medium-sized business that has joined the LinkShare Network is Hay House, Inc.

Hay House

“Hay House was started by one woman with an idea, and has now become one of the fastest growing self-help and transformational publishers in the world,” said Tiffini Alberto, Internet affiliate manager, Hay House, Inc. “Through our partnership with LinkShare, our affiliate marketing program is on track to generate nearly $1,000,000 in revenue this year. Our network has grown to include more than 4,700 affiliates that carry the Hay House brand. We are able to manage and track our affiliates’ successes using LinkShare’s extensive portfolio of services, which allows us to focus on building and maintaining customer relationships and growing our brand. ”

Despite recent macro-economic trends, online retail sales are expected to reach $44 billion this holiday season. For companies seeking to reach the widest audience of prospective buyers, affiliate marketing programs have proven to be extremely cost-effective.

About LinkShare

LinkShare Corporation provides ecommerce businesses with a wide range of online marketing services including Search Marketing (SEM), Lead Generation and Affiliate Marketing. Advertisers can increase their online sales by leveraging LinkShare’s massive performance marketing network along with expert consultative services and patented technology. Superior service combined with technology innovation allows advertisers and publishers to acquire and retain new customers, increase revenue and drive results.

LinkShare clients include Fortune 500 and other prominent and emerging companies doing business online, including J.C. Penney, 1-800-Flowers.com, American Express, and Avon Products. LinkShare was founded in 1996 and is headquartered in New York City, with offices in San Francisco, Chicago, London and Tokyo. LinkShare is a division of Rakuten, Inc.

About Rakuten, Inc.

Headquartered in Tokyo, Rakuten is one of the world’s largest and most comprehensive Internet service companies, providing leading services in e-commerce, portal & media, travel, financial services, and professional sports. Rakuten focuses on new business development and increasing its scope in order to improve and diversify service offerings. Rakuten, Inc. is a publicly traded company in Japan (JASDAQ: 4755).

Web site: http://www.linkshare.com//

Website Optimization, LLC (WSO), a leading website optimization and speed optimization provider, is happy to announce a major upgrade to our popular Web Page Analyzer tool. The new Analyzer features faster performance, HTML and CSSTidy integration, and updated HCI guidelines.

“Due to the increased load on the Web Page Analyzer and our website we have upgraded our main server to a more powerful model,” stated Andy King, President of Website Optimization, LLC. “The new server has dual high-speed Xeon processors, faster solid-state hard drives, and twice the available bandwidth. The Analyzer tool has been moved to its own dedicated server to handle the load independently of the main WSO server. These changes, plus the addition of CAPTCHA and usage throttling, allow us to continue to offer the analyzer free of charge, and scale for more users. We’ve thrown in some other tweaks, including making the CAPTCHA “this-is-a-human” test faster. We hope you find the new server more responsive, we’re already noticing the difference in response times.”

The Web Page Analyzer Tool will scan, analyze, and calculate page size, composition, and download time of any web page. With the push of a button, the WSO Web Page Analyzer Tool is sent out to view your web page, and all of the objects within the page. Then the tool analyzes the entire page and its components for size and download speed at different bandwidths. Once the check is complete, a full report is produced for you in HTML format with a summary on how the page performed.. Users also receive page and object information including::

Page size and composition
Formatted XHTML, JavaScript, and CSS files
Recommendations based on the latest HCI research and average web page size

The Web Page Analyzer tool incorporates best practices from the popular book titled “Webiste Optimization: Speed, Search Engine & Search Engine Secrets” by Andy King into its recommendations. For the Web Page analyzer Tool, see:

http://www.webpageanalyzer.com

Melbourne based e-media company iGEN Media Corporation is set to launch its mobile-to-web classified advertising site txt2ads.com.au. Aimed at the “mobile generation”, typically 18 – 35 year olds, txt2ads.com.au combines the immediacy and simplicity of mobile messaging with the richness and reach of the Internet.

“By bringing these two unique forms of communication together, advertisers are able to get their message quickly online, without actually needing to be online,” Edward Fenech, Managing Director of iGEN Media Corporation said.

Mr Fenech went on to say that he wanted txt2ads to evolve the classified advertising paradigm and to bring something notably different to a generation of consumers that are prevalent users of mobile messaging and the Internet.

“txt2ads leverages the incredibly powerful yet very user friendly communication capabilities of SMS and MMS as an online content originator. While there are a number of providers delivering content to mobile phones, very few if any are using the mobile phone as an originator for online content; we certainly believe we’re the first to do so in the classified advertising sector.”

Mr Fenech said that even though there are a number of online classified directories, most had followed very similar formats and he wanted txt2ads to offer something new to customers.

“We wanted to give customers a new experience; not just in relation to how they place their ads but also in how we present their ads online. Our design approach was a deliberate shift away from the classified directory styles used by other sites and I believe that by adopting this approach it will be a great deal easier for us to continue innovating the service,” Mr Fenech said.

In relation to security, iGEN Media Corporation’s Director of Technology, Mr Steven Long said that txt2ads.com.au used a ‘Closed Loop Authenticated Mobile’ system, along with a number of other measures to protect customers.

“Our system is designed around authenticated mobile numbers and individuals can’t place an ad without first having their mobile number authenticated,” Mr Long said.

“This security process is initiated by the customer directly from their mobile phone and is only successfully completed when we’re able to deliver a security PIN back to their mobile phone.”

Adding to this, Mr Fenech said that given the concerns many consumers had with doing business online, they had introduced a number of measures that protect the privacy of users.

“We have worked very hard to reduce privacy concerns. One example is that advertisers don’t need to publish their contact details in their ads; this is especially beneficial for private advertisers. The system enables them to receive enquiry notifications directly to their mobile phone via SMS,” Mr Fenech said.

“People making the enquiry will of course need to have their mobile number authenticated before they can send enquiries and we also have a number of constraints in place to prevent someone abusing the system.

“It’s also important to note that we don’t directly bill the advertiser; they’re billed for the service by their mobile carrier. This means we don’t collect the same level of personal or credit card information as other online sites. It’s reasonable to say that these measures will give our customers a very secure online environment to do business.”

txt2ads.com.au will be fully available from the 27th October 2008. Visit http://www.txt2ads.com.au/