JEGI Represents Acerno in Sale to Akamai

New York, NY November 3, 2008 – acerno (www.acerno.com) has been sold to Akamai Technologies (NASDAQ: AKAM) (www.akamai.com) for approximately $95 million in cash. The transaction was officially closed today.

The acquisition of acerno, a unique online co-operative of shopping and purchase data for enabling more relevant online advertising, greatly enhances Akamai’s Advertising Decision Solutions, a new product line announced recently. These new Akamai solutions enable online advertising businesses to boost the performance of their online marketing investments by driving smarter advertising decisions based on relevant audience segments.

The Jordan, Edmiston Group, Inc. (www.jegi.com), the leading provider of independent investment banking services for media, information, marketing services and related technologies, represented acerno in this transaction and acted as its exclusive financial advisor.
Real-Time Solution for Online Advertising Decision-Making

Akamai’s Advertising Decision Solutions are designed to help buyers and sellers of online advertising create attractive audience segments with the necessary scale to achieve better results from campaigns and investments. acerno’s powerful technology complements the ability of Akamai’s Advertising Decision Solutions to seamlessly incorporate real-time anonymous Web browsing information with anonymous online purchasing data from advertisers’ web sites to present the most relevant ad.

As a result, publishers are able to provide advertisers with better access to relevant consumers, strengthening the relationship with those advertisers and driving increased advertising revenue. In addition, advertisers will benefit by seeing greater return on investment and improved ad campaign performance, while cutting waste from their ad budgets by reaching their intended audience at the right time. Finally, consumers will enjoy greater advertising relevance and continued growth in the amount of free content supported by advertising.

As members of the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI), Akamai and acerno are committed to maintaining both user privacy and customer confidentiality. All of Akamai’s Advertising Decision Solutions, as well as acerno’s services, rely solely on anonymous and non-personally identifiable end user information.

“Akamai’s new Advertising Decision Solutions are a critical advancement in our product portfolio, designed to stimulate the economic model of online advertising by bringing greater simplicity and effectiveness to both ad buyers and sellers,” said Paul Sagan, President and CEO, Akamai. “As a trusted and strategic partner to today’s leading online retailers, publishers, and advertisers, supporting an estimated $84 billion in e-commerce transactions on our network for U.S. retailers alone, Akamai’s goal is to offer the industry’s most efficient online advertising solutions, while being a leader in upholding consumer privacy. Our investment in developing the Advertising Decision Solutions line over the past two years and acquiring acerno today, represent a strategic next step for Akamai.”

Mike Afergan, Akamai’s CTO and Senior Vice President of Advertising Decision Solutions, added, “We plan to leverage and grow acerno’s unique industry co-operative to enhance our new solution line. Our combined capabilities with acerno should benefit the eco-system of ad networks, online publishers and Internet advertisers by providing them with real-time, actionable data to serve more relevant marketing messages. Our Advertising Decision Solutions have already been adopted by several key stakeholders in the online advertising industry, resulting in higher revenues and better results.”

“This is a big win for the online advertising industry,” said Tom Sperry, President and CEO, acerno. “Greater precision in the advertising world reduces inefficiency, so advertisers earn a higher return on their investment. Together, Akamai and acerno will create a unique solution for advertisers to expand their reach of customers across multiple publishers and networks, while leveraging predictive and descriptive modeling for improving conversion rates. For acerno’s customers, Akamai will bring instantaneous scale and increased efficiencies to further improve the value of the co-op.”

Many of the Internet’s leading retailers currently contribute anonymous data to acerno’s information co-op. This data is used in acerno’s predictive models to determine why online shoppers actually browse, add merchandise to carts and eventually buy. In turn, this allows co-op members access to the most comprehensive source of information about what millions of online shoppers are looking to purchase and when they are likely to buy.

“Tom Sperry and Dave Hinton, Chief Operating Officer of acerno, have assembled a first-class team, designed a set of breakthrough services, and built trusted relationships with a valuable set of clients,” Mr. Sagan added. “We look forward to welcoming the entire acerno team to Akamai and to working together to build even more value for our customers.”

About acerno
Using anonymous consumer shopping data from product manufacturers and multi-channel retailers, acerno’s powerful analytics predict who these consumers are and what products or services they are interested in buying. acerno is a community of retailers, brand marketers and consumers whose interests align: brands create consumer demand for products; retailers promote those products for sale; and consumers react positively to relevant advertising. acerno (www.acerno.com) was founded in 2004 by an experienced team of direct marketing, online advertising and e-commerce professionals.

About Akamai
Akamai provides market-leading managed services for powering rich media, dynamic transactions, and enterprise applications online. Serving the world’s most recognized brands across diverse industries, Akamai has revolutionized how online publishers can monetize their content, and how online advertisers can expand their customer reach. Transforming the Internet into a more viable place to inform, entertain, advertise, interact, and collaborate, Akamai’s global network of tens of thousands of distributed servers provides the scale, reliability, insight and performance for businesses to succeed online. To experience The Akamai Difference, visit www.akamai.com.

About JEGI
About JEGI The Jordan, Edmiston Group, Inc. (JEGI) of New York, NY is the leading provider of independent investment banking services for media, information, marketing services and related technologies. Since being founded in 1987, JEGI has completed nearly 500 high-profile M&A transactions for global and emerging companies; entrepreneurial owners; and private equity and venture capital funds. JEGI has established an impeccable reputation in the marketplace, which reflects its superior performance on behalf of its clients. The firm’s executive team of investment bankers has over 200 years of combined experience across the media, information, marketing services and related technology sectors that JEGI serves. For more information, visit www.jegi.com.