January 21st, 2008
New York, NY, January 21 — Epic Advertising (www.epicadvertising.com), the privately-held, New York-based online performance marketing firm, today announced strong 2008 results, posting core revenue gains of 29 percent over 2007. The company turned in a healthy 21 percent growth in Q4, accelerating to a 26 percent growth rate in December over the year ago period, in the midst of the starkly slowing overall economy and advertising marketplace. Profits increased apace with solid gains across key advertising categories. All growth came through ongoing operations, as the firm made no acquisitions during 2008.
“We believe 2009 is the year online performance marketing will take its rightful, and permanent, seat at the table alongside other major vehicles in marketing planning and execution, as the difficult environment drives advertisers to demand more from their marketing programs,” said Don Mathis, Epic’s CEO. “Strong growth in challenging times is gratifying and validates our performance-focused strategy, robust technology investments and hard work. But what’s most important and compelling is the story behind the numbers, and what it foretells for our category.”
Consumer products, insurance, entertainment and casual gaming were among Epic’s standout categories, as recession-resistant marketers stepped up activity and consumers responded in kind. E-commerce and direct response-based offerings added a boost towards the end of the year and into early 2009, with the company recording record revenue days throughout early January. The company’s performance is a function in part of Epic’s broad, high-quality publisher network and proprietary, patent-pending technologies.
Mathis said marketers, agencies and analysts are increasingly realizing that the measurement of online marketing campaigns must go beyond clicks and traditional CPM measures, and towards what makes them most effective and scalable.
“There’s a growing understanding that the real promise of Internet marketing is best unlocked by performance-based advertising - that is, thoughtfully calibrated and integrated campaigns, harnessing the power of search, display, and social media and leveraging brand awareness to drive superior customer acquisition,” he said. “Such integrated campaigns need measurement tools that can capture awareness and response, and place the right value on that mix.” Mathis said Epic is fine-tuning its patent-pending brand and performance measurement system that simplifies reporting for advertisers and continually optimizes campaigns based on usage and data.
Amid the bleak reports, positive signs remain for our industry. Most pundits think online advertising will continue to grow, even if at a slower pace. The shift towards performance marketing, as the need to make ad dollars work harder, will accelerate - and after all, that is what really separates online marketing from its offline counterparts. Search remains relatively strong, due to its measurable ROI. Emerging forms of distribution, such as social media applications, are proliferating and earning revenue. Even display advertising, as has been noted by several publications, has the potential for a comeback of sorts in 2009 despite some bad press (and declining CPM rates) in 2008. While everyone reading this will have a different opinion and a different market position, I hope that we can collectively agree that the opportunity to grow the entire interactive marketing industry in 2009 still exists … and there are very few industries right now that can legitimately claim this. We are indeed fortunate.
Mathis cited a recent Gridley & Company media conference that shined a spotlight on performance marketing’s maturation and power. “There was a real sense among network executives, agency heads and other major industry players that while the current downturn in advertising may be cyclical, one of its effects - the rise and importance of performance marketing - will be an enduring legacy of this period,” he said.
About Epic Advertising:
Epic Advertising (www.EpicAdvertising.com) is headquartered in New York, with offices in San Francisco, Toronto and London. The company is privately held and backed by private equity firms TA Associates and Stripes Group.
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