2008-08-21 15:03:02 -

- JHG Townsend for Covario, Inc. Natasha Grach/Liya Sharif ngrach@jhg.com/lsharif@jhg.com +1-858-457-4888 Covario, Inc., the leader in interactive marketing analytics, today announced that it has developed a new metric titled, "Search Synergy Score." This metric allows Covario clients to better optimize overall search performance by maximizing the dynamics of paid and organic search programs down to the campaign and

keyword level. By adding this upgrade to its flagship offering, the Covario(TM) Marketing Action Platform, the company has created the first-ever system for holistic management of paid and organic search programs for large advertisers and agencies. The announcement was made today at the 2008 Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Jose, Calif., August 18-21.

Traditionally, paid and natural search programs were managed independently, preventing marketers from being able to balance the two. This often produces less than optimal results. In analyzing search programs for major global advertisers in four countries, Covario has found that there are significant ROI improvement opportunities available when better balancing paid and organic efforts. Covario has also found that these results have significant variance at the keyword level, requiring an automated solution that balances the return of both paid and organic results at the same time.

"Running paid search programs has an impact on organic search results. We have seen this clearly in our research," said Dr. Matthias Blume, chief analytics officer at Covario. "Without the ability to measure these interactions, advertisers may be limiting performance by underutilizing ads that increase the number of organic clicks while running other ads that shift traffic from organic search results to paid search results. Similarly, advertisers may be missing significant investment opportunities to further leverage their paid search programs in areas where SEO is underperforming, not just on a traffic basis, but on a value creation basis. Our goal has been to develop metrics like the Search Synergy Score that measure these effects and provide advertisers with recommendations on how to deploy spending to ensure maximum performance."

"As a Covario client, we're excited to see the company leverage its powerful analytics platform capabilities to help advertisers manage interactive advertising with full visibility into the impact of strategy changes on various forms of digital media," said Gary Milner, global marketing director at Lenovo. "We continue to seek more effective ways to monetize investments in our search programs and one of the most underserved aspects of the advertising market today is the availability of operational systems that allow advertisers to see the impact of changes in strategy in one advertising channel, like paid search, on another advertising channel, like organic search."

This new ability to manage paid search programs in light of their impact on organic search results is available to Covario customers, more than 40 large advertisers who are leveraging two core components of the Marketing Action Platform:

-- Covario(TM) Paid Search Insight, which helps large advertisers manage paid search programs, and

-- Covario(TM) Organic Search Insight, which helps global advertisers drive improved organic search rankings

Covario solutions are offered as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) - meaning that all support, data management, and technology infrastructure is managed by Covario, allowing agencies and advertisers to focus on strategy, creative and ROI optimization.

About Covario, Inc.

Covario, Inc. is the leader in Interactive Marketing Analytics (IMA) software. The Covario portfolio provides global organizations with robust interactive and search marketing analytics solutions for display advertising, paid search advertising and organic search engine optimization across the enterprise and throughout the channel. Covario enables complex and distributed organizations to control brand integrity, ensure budget transparency and deliver quantifiable results across business units, distribution channels and languages. Headquartered in San Diego, Covario's growing customer list include some of the world's best known brands in high tech manufacturing, financial services, electronics, media and publishing and consumer packaged goods. For more information on Covario, call 858.397.1500 or visit www.covario.com.

Company upgrades flagship solution with Search Synergy Score, with
initial results showing significant ROI improvements by better
balancing SEO and SEM efforts down to the keyword level