VigLink Launches Quarterly Content-Commerce Report

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Mar 11, 2014) - VigLink, the creator of the VigLink Exchange (VLX), the world's first and only exchange for Content-Driven Commerce, released today its inaugural Content-Commerce Report. The report provides unique insights into the rapidly changing dynamics of this fast growing segment at the intersection of native advertising, contextual monetization, and real-time bidding platforms. Content-Driven Commerce is the emerging market of publishers who create content that drives shopping intent and merchants who seek those shoppers. With roots in affiliate or performance marketing, Content-Driven Commerce breaks new ground by adding a marketplace dynamic to the sale of clicks on native product mentions, unifying fragmented merchant demand and matching it to a more reliable supply of shopping clicks.

In this initial three-month report, VigLink analyzed click performance and Earnings Per Click (EPC) paid to publishers by merchants in the Q4 holiday shopping season. The analysis found that publishers received EPCs 2x to 3x higher for clicks priced through the VigLink Exchange as compared to clicks priced without direct competition through the traditional non-bidding platforms such as affiliate networks. "We launched VigLink Exchange specifically to create a real market for content-driven commerce, to help publishers tap into larger pools of demand for what advertisers value most -- demonstrable shopper intent," says VigLink Founder and CEO, Oliver Roup.

The report also contains detailed rankings and metrics across a variety of categories including:

• The Top 50 merchants in terms of EPC paid to publishers on average
• The Top Internet Retailer product categories in terms of EPC
• Who Won Black Friday and Cyber Monday -- rankings of retailers that provided the highest increase in their EPC payouts during the big shopping days of 2013
• The Mobile EPC Champions: rankings of which online retailers paid the highest EPCs for clicks from mobile devices

VigLink draws the data for this report from across its network of publishers and merchants. The network represents more than 300,000 content sites ranging from mainstream editorial to niche blogs and forums that, together, deliver more than 10 billion monthly page views. Over 35,000 merchants are represented by VigLink, a growing portion of which buy clicks from the Exchange, tapping into the newest and most liquid pool of clicks on specific product mentions embedded in original content.

The Exchange is fed by publishers who add new links to their content with VigLink Insert and who optimize existing links with VigLink Convert. VigLink Insert automatically matches and monetizes mentions of products, brands, and merchants to the most relevant and valuable destination URL. This state-of-the-art technology evaluates hundreds of thousands of signals to determine relevant commercial links for any situation. VigLink Insert utilizes proprietary natural-language processing (NLP)-based entity recognition and disambiguation technology trained by observing content and user interaction on billions of pages since 2012 to drive higher click-through rates and increased earnings. With the largest advertiser network of its kind, VigLink applies the power of competition to optimize links for both revenue and relevance. This delivers liquidity and clicks to merchants and increased revenue and earnings to publishers, unifying the two sides in a true marketplace and exchange.

About VigLink

VigLink technology captures the value of content-driven commerce by making hyperlinks intelligent, allowing publishers to monetize and analyze out-clicks. The largest network of its kind, VigLink maximizes earnings for over 300,000 sites and works with more than 35,000 merchants, processing more than 10 billion of page views and over five hundred million clicks every month. Founded in 2009 and based in San Francisco, VigLink is backed by top investors including Google Ventures, First Round Capital, and Emergence Capital. More information can be found at www.viglink.com or @VigLink.