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Hoping to advance its position in the higher education marketplace, Aptimus Inc. has acquired High Voltage Interactive for $6 million and 200,000 restricted common stock shares.
The Sausalito, California-based High Voltage is an online marketing firm specializing in recruitment and enrollment solutions for career colleges and online schools. The acquisition represents a significant move for Aptimus – a point of action,” online advertising network – and its strategy to bring a new class of transactional advertising to the world’s largest brands.
Through the acquisition, Aptimus gains High Voltage’s knowledge of the education field and relationships with top education companies, including the University of Phoenix, American InterContinental University Online, Colorado Technical University Online, Kaplan University and ITT Technical Institute. In turn, High Voltage receives greater media reach through the growing base of Web publishers in the Aptimus advertising network.
“The acquisition of High Voltage Interactive launches Aptimus into a leadership position in our number one target category for lead generation,” said Rob Wrubel, CEO of Aptimus. “High Voltage’s total focus on the education category is a perfect match for our powerful and growing online advertising network that reaches a unique set of consumers by placing advertisements in active areas where most web site publishers have not traditionally had advertising, including our new relationship with AOL. ”
High Voltage has a proven track record in performance marketing for education marketers, with direct selling experience, industry knowledge and experience in converting online education leads. This expertise, combined with High Voltage’s direct relationships with colleges, will allow Aptimus to expand its education lead generation efforts and offer new services, such as school-specific hosted web sites, unique lead follow-up programs and exclusive advertiser representation approaches.
The business will continue to operate as a subsidiary of Aptimus, focused on the education category. Paul Epstein, the CEO of High Voltage Interactive, will continue to lead this business unit as a Senior Vice President of Aptimus and the COO of the company’s High Voltage subsidiary.
“Joining forces with Aptimus enables us to bring both our education clients and publishing partners a broader, richer level of service offerings,” Epstein said. “Our expertise in recruitment marketing combined with Aptimus’ technological capabilities and their extensive publisher relationships immediately makes us one of the top strategic recruitment marketers in the entire education space.”
The company anticipates the acquisition to add at least $1 million to Aptimus’ sales in the third quarter of 2006 and $2 million in fourth-quarter sales. Aptimus also expects organic growth of more than 10 percent during the third quarter. High Voltage will add 17 employees to Aptimus and is planning to relocate to Aptimus’ San Francisco facility.
About Aptimus Inc.
Aptimus is a “point-of-action,” online advertising network that reaches engaged users by placing offers in the transactional areas of web sites they trust. The network consists of 10 targeted channels that reach more than 10 million highly valuable consumers each month. Aptimus’ unique performance-based advertising network delivers qualified customer leads through presenting offers at the points of download, login, registration and other active locations across a diverse set of major publishers, such as AOL, Tickle, DriverGuide and PictureTrail. The company’s proprietary optimization technology presents advertisers’ offers on the web sites where they reach the right consumers, automatically targeting based on prior consumer response in each location and each individual consumer’s demographics. Aptimus’ current advertisers include many of the top 500 marketers such as Procter & Gamble, Nokia, Dell, Vonage, SC Johnson, and Carnival Cruises. Aptimus has offices in San Francisco and Seattle, Wash.
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