eBureau Spins Off Digital Ad Targeting Business

Predictive Analytics Expert eBureau Spins Off Digital Ad Targeting Business Into New Company Named TruSignal

TruSignal to Deliver Greater Precision, Efficiency to Advertisers and Interactive Agencies In Segmenting Today’s Savvy Online Consumers

ST. CLOUD, Minn. — January 10, 2012 — Predictive analytics firm eBureau today announced it is spinning off its online advertising targeting business into a new company called TruSignal™.

Effective immediately, the move highlights the growing importance of eBureau’s ad targeting business line, and creates a formal corporate entity, with an experienced management team and dedicated resources, that can concentrate on accelerating revenue in one of the hottest marketing channels of the past two decades. TruSignal will focus its product, sales and marketing efforts on pursuing business opportunities among Fortune 500 consumer brand advertisers, direct response-oriented online marketers, and their interactive marketing agencies.

TruSignal helps marketers precisely target key messages only to those online users that “look like” their highest value customers, reaching large scale audiences across digital display, video and mobile campaigns. Discovered using patented data mining and predictive analytics technologies, TruSignal Ideal Audiences™ are up to 80% more precise than existing online audience segmentation methods, which often focus on a website visitor’s basic demographics, such as age and gender; his approximate location; or solely on the content on the web page itself.

According to recent statistics from the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), U.S. online advertising revenues are growing 22% year over year, and will likely surpass $30 billion in total expenditures for 2011. As consumers spend more time online, advertising budgets are shifting away from traditional print and broadcast media towards digital platforms, including personal computers (PCs), smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices. In this rapidly-expanding, highly-fragmented online media universe, marketers face many challenges to discover and reach their ideal customers and prospects with relevant messages and offers.

“2011 was the year of audience targeting, where third-party data became ‘the new black’ for digital marketers who wanted to improve efficiency, reduce waste, and increase relevance for consumers,” according to the December 2011 Forrester Research, Inc. report, 2012 Interactive Marketing Predictions. The report also stated that “audience optimization will drive customization on a massive scale” and that “‘media buying’ gives way to ‘audience buying’” in 2012.

eBureau has been developing its audience targeting solutions since 2010, and it has conducted a series of successful digital display and video campaigns with several advertisers and digital agencies.

“For the past year, we’ve been working closely together to deliver highly targeted display and video advertising campaigns,” said Scott Haslam, director, media services, at Datamark, a leading data-driven marketing agency serving the education sector. “Our results together have shown real promise, and we are looking forward to working with TruSignal to deliver successful brand-oriented and direct response campaigns for many of our leading education clients.”

“After nearly two years of research and development, product refinement, and market testing, our audience targeting product line has emerged as our fastest-growing offering,” said Gordy Meyer, founder and chief executive officer of eBureau. “With the formation of TruSignal, we are dedicating resources to become a best-of-breed player in the digital advertising technology ecosystem. Meanwhile, eBureau continues to strongly expand its client roster around proven consumer scoring, fraud prevention, and credit and collections solutions.”

Gordy Meyer is chief executive officer of TruSignal, while David Dowhan, an eBureau executive, serves as president. TruSignal, LLC is a sister company of eBureau, LLC, both of which are wholly owned by xTech Holdings, Inc.

TruSignal abides by the Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising, an industry-wide effort to develop consumer-friendly standards by the nation’s largest media and marketing trade associations, including the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI), American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA), the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), and supported by the Council of Better Business Bureaus (BBB).

About eBureau
eBureau provides a powerful suite of predictive analytics and real-time information solutions to help consumer-facing businesses prevent online fraud, manage payment and credit risk, and improve operations. Clients span numerous industries and rely on the company’s consumer scoring, identity verification, authentication, and location services to make instant, data-driven business decisions. Launched in 2007, eBureau is a wholly-owned subsidiary of xTech Holdings, Inc. Its investors include Redpoint Ventures, Split Rock Partners and Tenaya Capital. For more information, please visit www.ebureau.com.

About TruSignal
TruSignal helps leading consumer marketers and their advertising agencies discover and reach their ideal audiences at scale across one-to-one digital marketing channels, including display, video and mobile. TruSignal’s patented data mining and predictive analytics platform enables both direct marketers and brand advertisers to more precisely target their digital advertisements for improved campaign results. TruSignal was spun off from eBureau, its sister company, in 2012. TruSignal is a wholly-owned subsidiary of xTech Holdings, Inc., and its investors include Redpoint Ventures, Split Rock Partners and Tenaya Capital. For more information, please visit www.tru-signal.com.