ShareThis and Starcom MediaVest Group Partner to Bring the Full Power of Social Insights to Brands, Publishers and Advertisers

PALO ALTO, CA--(Marketwire - Sep 27, 2012) - ShareThis, the sharing platform and ecosystem that powers the social web, today announced a strategic partnership with Starcom MediaVest Group (SMG), one of the world's largest brand communications agencies. The partnership enables SMG to leverage the full spectrum of ShareThis' consumer insight tools, including its Social Quality Index (SQI) -- the most comprehensive measure of web-wide sharing activity -- and associated analytics and publisher-assessment offerings.

SMG clients will have access to market-leading insights from ShareThis, enabling them to align their brand objectives with social sharing activity occurring across the web and benefit from advanced analytics on campaign and publisher performance. A number of SMG brands have already seen measurable results through the agency's partnership with ShareThis. Among them, Wendy's, the nation's third-largest hamburger chain, saw increases in click-through rates, email sign-up and store locator pageviews in excess of 200 percent throughout the life of its social campaign with SMG/ShareThis.

The SMG partnership, which represents ShareThis' first large-scale, agency-wide agreement, provides SMG with the ability to scale data-driven social solutions across its client base and also provides proprietary joint research and planning, buying, and optimization solutions.

"To make the human experiences we create more meaningful, SMG is leveraging the critical insights we receive from social sharing data, which are important indicators of meaningful consumer engagement," says Lisa Weinstein, President, Global Digital, Data and Analytics, of Starcom MediaVest Group. "ShareThis has been a leader in capturing this valuable social behavior, developing tools to realize more value from sharing via planning, and targeting and activating against their standardized measure, the SQI."

"Each new social channel presents a challenge to brands and agencies as they try to match their desired marketing outcomes to the specific attributes of the channel," says ShareThis CEO Kurt Abrahamson. "With our SQI, we offer our agency partners a simple, intuitive way to capture social activity beyond individual channels and reach new, receptive audiences that brands couldn't reach otherwise."

ShareThis' SQI standard provides a social quality score for publishers across 27 different content categories, combining the sites' outbound share and inbound clickback traffic and comparing it to total pageviews. The resulting measure identifies those consumers with higher purchase intent and a greater propensity to circulate content among their social circles. SQI is a powerful alternative to standard media-buying measures such as traffic, demographics and audience size.

About ShareThis
ShareThis is the largest market for sharing and influence across the web, reaching more than 85% of the US population online across more than 1.6 million sites. ShareThis makes content more engaging for publishers and marketing more impactful for brands by tapping into its true influence and value. Based in Palo Alto, CA with offices in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, the company is privately held.

About Starcom MediaVest Group (SMG)
Starcom MediaVest Group is the Human Experience Company. Our dream is to grow our clients' business by transforming human behavior through uplifting, meaningful human experiences. These brand 'experiences' are brought to life by distinct, strategic point-of-views -- Truth and Design and Space for Ideas -- created and owned by SMG's two global agency brands: MediaVest and Starcom, respectively. Ranked one of the largest brand communications groups in the world, Starcom MediaVest Group (www.smvgroup.com) encompasses an integrated network of human experience strategists, investment specialists, content creators and digital experts and part of the Publicis Groupe [listed on the Euronext Paris Exchange -- FR0000130577 -- and part of the CAC 40 index]. With nearly 6,700 employees in 110 offices worldwide, SMG is the #1 ranked Global Media Agency (AdAge) and 2011 Media Network of the Year at the Global Festival of Media as well as the most celebrated global media network at the 2010 and 2009 Cannes International Advertising Festival.