As part of its “State of…” series of articles with industry executives, AdExchanger.com sat down with Smith to discuss his company, his views on the space, and the state of ClearSaleing today.

AdExchanger.com: What would you say has changed at ClearSaleing since you were acquired by eBay?

RS: There’s an after‑transition effect. For example, Adam Goldberg has left ClearSaleing and is off with his next entrepreneurial opportunity. We’re going through that normal transition that you do. The good news is that with Ebay’s GSI acquisition in January, we have been able to maintain our  autonomy and move forward with our current business plan. We also get access to the GSI customer base as well as some of the cool things that eBay is doing. Finally, eBay will be a customer of ours and we’ll be working with them on some of their strategic initiatives.

Continue reading the full article at AdExhanger.com

COLUMBUS, Ohio, November 10, 2011 – ClearSaleing, an industry leading advertising analytics and attribution platform today announced the launch of ClearSaleing (CS) Barometer™, an advanced analytics solution that enables marketers to measure performance more precisely than ever before. CS Barometer provides deeper and more accurate insight into consumer behavior and the social and economic factors that affect their buying habits, giving marketers the ability to measure performance and react swifter relative to their competitors and other outside influences.

“CS Barometer combines innovative analytics and modeling technologies with hundreds of social and economic indices, allowing marketers to detect and respond fast to fluctuations in their digital marketing performance,” said ClearSaleing president Randy Smith.  “CS Barometer is the first solution to eliminate the complexities and barriers of measuring market and economic influences and empowers marketers with precise insight and confidence to create more targeted and strategic campaigns.”

CS Barometer also provides marketers information around their advertising marketing programs through access to online and offline key performance indicators, including economic information, unemployment rates, housing starts, consumer confidence, and other areas.  Available data includes:

• Economic Indices: Marketers can better understand how economic factors influence marketing success such as how consumer confidence may impact retail marketing tactics to how housing starts influence digital marketing efforts of household goods brands. Specific indices include: quarterly real gross domestic product (GDP), weekly M2 (Money Supply), monthly consumer price index (CPI), monthly producer price index (PPI), monthly consumer confidence index, monthly unemployment rate, monthly retail sales, monthly housing starts, monthly manufacturing and trade inventories and sales, Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index (S&P 500) and others.

• Social Indices: Monitors stats such as Facebook likes and Twitter mentions and enables advertisers to track social buzz as part of their integrated marketing campaign.

• Vertical Indices: Uniquely created for business, finance, services, retail apparel, and retail verticals, these indices are available with pre-populated, channel-specific data for easy search and display of critical metrics.

For more information about ClearSaleing’s advertising analytics and attribution technology, please go to www.ClearSaleing.com.

About ClearSaleing

ClearSaleing is an industry-leading advertising analytics and attribution platform. ClearSaleing enables innovative advertisers to increase sales volume and overall media mix profitability across their complex mix of advertising investments. The ClearSaleing platform and related services allow innovative clients such as American Greetings, Rosetta, Range Online Media and Nationwide Insurance to achieve true transparency across their marketing mix performance and to understand which marketing channels are most influential to profit, engagement, and overall return on investment. The company was founded in 2006 and is headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. ClearSaleing is a wholly-owned subsidiary of GSI Commerce. GSI Commerce is an eBay Inc. (Nasdaq: EBAY) company.

By: Juan Martinez

Randy Smith, president of analytics company ClearSaleing, discusses the GSI Commerce and eBay acquisitions and what his company can do to help clients drive customer loyalty.

Direct Marketing News (DMN): It’s been about 10 months since ClearSaleing was acquired by GSI Commerce and about seven months since GSI was acquired by eBay. How has your company changed in that time?

Randy Smith (ClearSaleing): As with any acquisition you go through some integration which was pretty standard. It was easy and straightforward. The real benefits were access to additional customer bases. EBay ironically was always one of our premier target prospects.  Now we can help them with their own massive digital marketing initiatives. We are clearly looking to invest in our platform and make sure we’re able to help advertisers optimize digital media spend. We’ve been able to surpass the 200 advertisers mark and it’s been an exciting year.

Continue reading the full article at DMNews.com

COLUMBUS, Ohio (July 13, 2011) – ClearSaleing, the leader in attribution management and advertising analytics, announced today that marketing analytics veteran Rudy Grahn has joined the company as Senior Director of Modeling and Analytics. Grahn will lead the modeling and analytics team in productizing new attribution and advertising analytics approaches. Grahn will head up implementing advanced and uniquely custom attribution models for advertisers to help them more accurately measure the true contribution of each marketing channel and campaign across online and offline channels. In addition, Grahn will lead the effort to develop new and innovative ways to visualize data across our more than 180 unique advertisers, billions of measured advertising interactions, and millions of unique Purchase Paths.

“We’re excited that Rudy has joined ClearSaleing and know that his deep analytics and modeling experience with large brand advertisers and agencies will be a huge asset to our strategic product and service roadmap,” said ClearSaleing President Randy Smith.  “His intimate knowledge of the unique challenges faced by large advertisers will help us maintain our attribution technology leadership, as well as surround our technology with the requisite services to allow our advertisers to gain maximum benefit from the ClearSaleing advertising analytics platform.”

Grahn, formerly the Vice President for Strategic Resources, Analytics at San Francisco-based Zenith Optimedia, founded and led the company’s analytics team that handled data integrity, qualitative/quantitative analysis, and campaign reporting for enterprise clients, including T-Mobile, British Airways, Orbitz, Toyota-Scion, Sanofi-Aventis (Ambien CR), and others.  While at Zenith, he managed the integration of all digital program and research reporting, including data modeling, in addition to developing and implementing proprietary reporting tools, databases, and data management systems.

Prior to his work at Zenith, Grahn served as an Associate Research Director at Claria/Feedback Research, where he led optimization programs for Yahoo! Japan, Best Buy, Daimler-Chrysler, and General Motors, among others.  Before that, Grahn worked for Jupiter Research as a Senior Research Analyst in the firm’s consumer marketing, branding and media areas, where he developed custom research for clients like Visa, Microsoft, and Delta Airlines.  Grahn began his career as a host at Clear Channel Radio and senior copywriter at i-traffic/Agency.com.  He began his career-long path toward analytics as a Supervisor for Campaign Performance Analytics at SF Interactive, and earned a degree in Communication Studies from the University of Iowa.

“ClearSaleing’s multichannel attribution approach represents a significant shift from the siloed analytics platforms of the past,” said Grahn.  “Being able to accurately track Purchase Paths and attribute credit, no matter what the medium, is a key factor in any advertiser’s success, and with ClearSaleing, they’ll be able to do just that.”

Rudy Grahn, Senior Director of Modeling and Analytics

About ClearSaleing

ClearSaleing is an industry-leading advertising analytics and attribution platform. ClearSaleing enables innovative advertisers to increase sales volume and overall media mix profitability across their complex mix of advertising investments. The ClearSaleing platform and related services allow innovative clients such as American Greetings, Rosetta, Range Online Media and Nationwide Insurance to achieve true transparency across their marketing mix performance and to understand which marketing channels are most influential to profit, engagement, and overall return on investment. The company was founded in 2006 and is headquartered in Columbus, Ohio.

For more information, please visit http://www.ClearSaleing.com/.

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“It’s an honor to be named a regional finalist for Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2011 Award,” said Smith. “As any entrepreneur will tell you, an individual executive award or recognition is only possible if you have a committed, talented team behind you who share your passion and vision. While we have developed a market-leading advertising analytics technology, what allows ClearSaleing to stand above our competitors are the collective knowledge, experience and drive of the entire ClearSaleing team.”

The Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year Program celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. The program has expanded to recognize business leaders in more than 140 cities and more than 50 countries throughout the world.

Regional award winners are eligible for consideration for the Entrepreneur Of The Year National Award. Award winners in several national categories, as well as the Entrepreneur Of The Year overall National Award winner, will be announced at the annual awards gala in Palm Springs, California, on November 12, 2011. The awards are the culminating event of the Ernst & Young Strategic Growth Forum®, the nation’s most prestigious gathering of high-growth, market-leading companies, which will be held November 9–13, 2011.

Sponsors

Founded and produced by Ernst & Young LLP, the Entrepreneur Of The Year Awards are pleased to have the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation as a national sponsor.

In South Central Ohio & Kentucky, sponsors include Frost Brown Todd LLC, Thompson Hine LLC, Business Courier Cincinnati, Business First Columbus, Business First Louisville and The Eisen Agency.

About ClearSaleing

ClearSaleing is an industry-leading advertising analytics and attribution platform. ClearSaleing enables innovative advertisers to increase sales volume and overall media mix profitability across their complex mix of advertising investments. The ClearSaleing platform and related services allow innovative clients such as American Greetings, Rosetta, Range Online Media and Nationwide Insurance to achieve true transparency across their marketing mix performance and to understand which marketing channels are most influential to profit, engagement, and overall return on investment. The company was founded in 2006 and is headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. ClearSaleing is a wholly-owned subsidiary of GSI Commerce Inc. (Nasdaq:GSIC).

About Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year®

Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year® is the world’s most prestigious business award for entrepreneurs. The unique award makes a difference through the way it encourages entrepreneurial activity among those with potential, and recognizes the contribution of people who inspire others with their vision, leadership and achievement. As the first and only truly global award of its kind, Entrepreneur Of The Year celebrates those who are building and leading successful, growing and dynamic businesses, recognizing them through regional, national and global awards programs in more than 140 cities in more than 50 countries.

About the Ernst & Young

Ernst & Young is a global leader in assurance, tax, transaction and advisory services. Worldwide, our 141,000 people are united by our shared values and an unwavering commitment to quality. We make a difference by helping our people, our clients and our wider communities achieve their potential.

Ernst & Young refers to the global organization of member firms of Ernst & Young Global Limited, each of which is a separate legal entity. Ernst & Young LLP is a client-serving member firm of Ernst & Young Global Limited operating in the US. For more information about our organization, please visit www.ey.com.

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Optics and Altitude are components of ClearSaleing’s (CS) industry leading Attribution Management Platform. CS Optics provides digital marketers with a holistic, actionable view of campaign performance across all marketing channels. CS Optics is designed as a visually collaborative environment, enabling marketers a shared look at ad spend performance, and quick access to changing campaigns based on key performance indicators (KPI’s).

“Digital marketers have been looking for more robust and immediately actionable insights on the cause-and-effect relationship between digital advertising and advertiser demand, revenue and profit,” said Dustin Engel, Chief strategy officer, ClearSaleing. “They want a deeper view into the effect of various marketing channels, using attribution modeling customized to their unique advertising ecosystem,” he added.

CS Optics’ solution gives marketers a common interface by which to view and share performance data at both the channel and granular levels. CS Optics’ flexible, customized reporting enables marketers to map data against KPI’s such as conversions, profit, contribution percentage and engagement.

CS Optics’ shared, visually collaborative environment includes:

• One-click access to the CS Attribution Suite, enabling users to view KPI’s in multiple attribution and latency models instantly.
• Performance of advertiser-centric marketing initiatives, such as brands, geography, seasonality and brand awareness vs. direct response.
• Tailor the conversation between advertiser and consumer based on pinpointing campaigns as Introducers, Influencers or Closers along the Purchase Path.
• Identify trends based on calendar year, month, trailing seven days and custom date ranges.
• Actionable insights into advertising spend, revenue vs. profit and positive/negative movement within and across marketing channels.

With CS Optics, marketers can fully visualize the insights from ClearSaleing’s enhanced multichannel Attribution Suite. An important benefit is marketers can use the attribution model that works for them to obtain a more precise analysis of channel performance. The CS Attribution Suite offers a rich set of attribution models tailored to the unique needs of each customer. Marketers can also drill down to every customer touchpoint in each channel – whether paid or organic search, display, rich media, or social media – and see exactly how ad spend is working along the path to conversion.

CS Altitude’s attribution model is the latest addition to the industry-leading ClearSaleing Attribution Suite that enables marketers to capitalize on marketing opportunities that exist only for pockets of time such as hours, days, and weeks. Altitude’s quick, actionable insights include:

• Identifying which marketing channels, social media sites, pages, content publishers, display advertisements and keywords are driving revenue.
• Targeting and scaling those marketing channels with significant correlation to customer conversions.
• Determining the impact of marketing channel position in the customer purchase path and impression decay across the display advertising portfolio.
• Allocating marketing budget by attributing a percentage of profit to each customer advertising engagement along the purchase path through objective statistical analysis.
• An industry-first, Dynamic Exclusion to automatically account for and optimize media spend against channel, campaign, and advertisement-level saturation.

“Being the only solution uniquely able to analyze both paid and non-paid media in conjunction with passive and active advertising interactions, ClearSaleing’s Altitude attribution technology gives marketers the insight and tools to act upon a greater level of attribution data,” said Morris Martin, Director of product marketing and strategy, ClearSaleing. “Most importantly, the insights we are providing are specifically geared towards empowering advertisers to achieve greater revenue and profit, in addition to increasing overall demand for their products and services.”

“ClearSaleing is pleased that marketers are moving beyond the “last ad” status quo and increasingly willing to allocate attribution throughout the sales funnel. The addition of CS Altitude to our industry leading CS Attribution Suite gives marketers the most precise, adaptive, and robust look at all aspects in the marketing mix that influence customer behavior,” Martin said.

About ClearSaleing

ClearSaleing is an industry-leading advertising analytics and attribution platform. ClearSaleing enables innovative advertisers to increase sales volume and overall media mix profitability across their complex mix of advertising investments. The ClearSaleing platform and related services allow innovative clients such as American Greetings, Rosetta, Range Online Media and Nationwide Insurance to achieve true transparency across their marketing mix performance and to understand which marketing channels are most influential to profit, engagement, and overall return on investment. The company was founded in 2006 and is headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. ClearSaleing is a wholly-owned subsidiary of GSI Commerce Inc. (Nasdaq:GSIC).

COLUMBUS, Ohio (Jan. 26, 2011) – ClearSaleing, a leader in advertising analytics and attribution management within the GSI Commerce (Nasdaq: GSIC) Global Marketing Service division, today announced Microsoft Atlas Institute Senior Analyst Morris Martin has joined the company as Director of Product Marketing and Strategy.  Recognized as an industry thought leader in digital advertising analytics, Martin will lead ClearSaleing’s product development initiatives to address the needs of direct advertiser and agency clients.

“Digital advertising is evolving rapidly with advertisers seeing a greater need to comprehensively track, measure and optimize the growing range of channels and media complexity.  Morris Martin’s extensive experience in advertising analytics and creating unique and actionable attribution strategies, will serve us well as we develop new product features and benefits.  These new product developments will continue to keep ClearSaleing a leader in advertising analytics and the premier platform by which to measure the effectiveness of this expanded content and more complex online presence,” said Dustin Engel, chief marketing and strategy officer for ClearSaleing.

As part of his responsibilities, Martin will lead ideation and spearhead execution of ClearSaleing’s product strategy, and he will also be responsible for creating new technology partnerships and manage the development of product features for advertiser and agency partners.

“I am looking forward to helping develop the next phase of features for ClearSaleing’s advertising analytics and attribution platform, which I believe is one of the most effective technology tools in the marketplace today.  We will help ensure that advertisers are allocating their digital marketing spend in the best possible way and enable advertisers feel more confident in their campaign decisions as they navigate through the growing number of marketing channels available today,” said Martin.

Prior to ClearSaleing, Martin served as a Senior Analyst within Microsoft’s Atlas Institute, where he was responsible for advanced analytics and attribution research for many of the industry’s foremost advertisers and agencies. Martin also served on the team responsible for the creation of engagement mapping and client strategy, growing the product customer base considerably.  He also directed conversion attribution competitive intelligence for Microsoft’s Atlas Advertiser Suite.

While at Microsoft, Martin authored the first case study on engagement mapping, “Beyond Search: Illuminating the Alltel Wireless Sales Funnel,” in addition to writing the often-quoted blog posts, “The Case for Adoption: One Giant Step for Attribution” and “The Incredibly Shrinking Conversion Window.”   He is also a frequent speaker and panelist for digital advertising conferences including ad:tech, Ad Week, DigiDay, DPAC and OMMA, as well as for organizations including DWFIMA, IAB and MITX.

A graduate of Drexel University, Martin majored in Information Systems.  He volunteers for several organizations, including iMentor and KEEN, and serves as a motivational speaker for several New York City high schools and nonprofits.

About ClearSaleing

ClearSaleing is an industry-leading advertising analytics and attribution platform.  ClearSaleing enables innovative advertisers to increase sales volume and overall media mix profitability across their complex mix of advertising investments.  The ClearSaleing platform and related services allow innovative clients such as American Greetings, Rosetta, Range Online Media and Nationwide Insurance to achieve true transparency across their marketing mix performance and to understand which marketing channels are most influential to profit, engagement, and overall return on investment.  The company was founded in 2006 and is headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. ClearSaleing is a wholly owned subsidiary of GSI Commerce Inc. (Nasdaq: GSIC).

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KING OF PRUSSIA, Pa.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–GSI Commerce Inc. (Nasdaq: GSIC) today announced its Global Marketing Services division has acquired ClearSaleing, a Columbus, Ohio-based provider of advanced advertising analytics and attribution management. The acquisition of ClearSaleing broadens and deepens the division’s portfolio of marketing services offerings and overall market position. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“ClearSaleing’s innovative advertising analytics platform provides today’s marketers and digital agencies with an accurate way to measure, compare and optimize profit and ROI of their online advertising campaigns,” said Chris Saridakis, chief executive officer of GSI’s Global Marketing Services division. “The U.S. digital advertising market is $25.8 billion.¹ ClearSaleing gives marketers the ability to understand the entire customer purchase path and how each online channel works to move a customer from acquisition to conversion, which helps deliver stronger performing marketing programs. We’re very pleased to welcome ClearSaleing to GSI.”

“ClearSaleing’s advertising analytics and attribution platform is the solution for the limited last-click measurement model online marketers and advertisers have been stuck with for far too long. ClearSaleing gives marketers the tools and intelligence to manage their overall media mix and fine tune the message of their campaigns,” said Randy Smith, chief executive officer of ClearSaleing. “GSI’s multichannel approach to marketing services and entrepreneurial culture makes this a strong fit for ClearSaleing and our clients. We’ll be able to continue to develop our technology while taking advantage of GSI’s broader resources and market position.”

ClearSaleing’s Attribution Management product was named a Leader in the independent October 2009 Forrester Research, Inc. report, The Forrester Wave™: Interactive Attribution Q4 2009, for its ease of use, custom analytics and appeal to a wide array of marketers. For the past year, TrueAction, a full-service digital agency within GSI’s Global Marketing Services division, has been using ClearSaleing’s attribution marketing platform to help 60 of its clients improve efficiency in decision making and increase productivity from automation and reporting by providing more accurate attribution analysis. Other ClearSaleing clients include companies such as American Greetings, Rosetta, Range Online Media and Nationwide Insurance. The investment banking firm Petsky Prunier represented ClearSaleing in this transaction.

Deann Harvey, currently chief sales officer of GSI’s Global Marketing Services division, will serve as ClearSaleing’s chief revenue officer effective immediately. She will be responsible for building ClearSaleing’s sales team and growing its client base among global advertisers and agencies.

ClearSaleing will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of GSI’s Global Marketing Services division which provides a comprehensive set of interactive marketing solutions to help clients drive customer acquisition, conversion and loyalty across multiple channels. With the addition of ClearSaleing, the division now includes eight leading marketing services companies: e-Dialog, FetchBack, M3 Mobile, MBS Insight, Pepperjam, Silverlign and TrueAction. The company plans to integrate ClearSaleing into these other marketing services platforms. For more information, visit http://gsicommerce.com/marketing_services.

About GSI Commerce

GSI Commerce® enables e-commerce, multichannel retailing and digital marketing for global enterprises in the U.S. and internationally. GSI’s e-commerce services which include technology, order management, payment processing, fulfillment and customer care, are available on a modular basis or as part of an integrated solution. GSI’s Global Marketing Services division provides innovative digital marketing products and services comprised of design through TrueAction and Silverlign, e-mail marketing through e-Dialog, affiliate marketing through Pepperjam, retargeting through Fetchback, mobile marketing through M3 Mobile and database marketing through MBS Insight. Additionally, GSI provides brands and retailers platforms to engage directly with consumers through RueLaLa.com, an online private sale shopping destination, and ShopRunner.com, a members-only shopping service that offers unlimited free two-day shipping and free shipping on returns for a $79 annual subscription.

About ClearSaleing

ClearSaleing is an industry-leading advertising analytics and attribution platform. ClearSaleing enables innovative advertisers to increase sales volume and overall media mix profitability across their complex mix of advertising investments. The ClearSaleing platform and related services allow innovative clients such as American Greetings, Rosetta, Range Online Media and Nationwide Insurance to achieve true transparency across their marketing mix performance and to understand which marketing channels are most influential to profit, engagement, and overall return on investment. The company was founded in 2006 and is headquartered in Columbus, Ohio.

Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements made in this release, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements. The words “anticipate,” “believe,” “estimate,” “expect,” “intend,” “may,” “plan,” “will,” “would,” “should,” “guidance,” “potential,” “opportunity,” “continue,” “project,” “forecast,” “confident,” “prospects,” “schedule” and similar expressions typically are used to identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on the then-current expectations, beliefs, assumptions, estimates and forecasts about the business of GSI Commerce. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions which are difficult to predict. Therefore, actual outcomes and results may differ materially from what is expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. Factors which may affect GSI Commerce’s business, financial condition and operating results include the effects of changes in the economy, consumer spending, the financial markets and the industries in which GSI Commerce and its clients operate, changes affecting the Internet and e-commerce, the ability of GSI Commerce to develop and maintain relationships with strategic partners and suppliers and the timing of its establishment, extension or termination of its relationships with clients, the ability of GSI Commerce to timely and successfully develop, maintain and protect its technology, confidential and proprietary information, and product and service offerings and execute operationally, the ability of GSI Commerce to attract and retain qualified personnel, and the ability of GSI Commerce to successfully integrate its acquisitions of other businesses and the performance of acquired businesses. More information about potential factors that could affect GSI Commerce can be found in its most recent Form 10-K, Form 10-Q and other reports and statements filed by GSI Commerce with the SEC. GSI Commerce expressly disclaims any intent or obligation to update these forward-looking statements.

¹ eMarketer Web site, December 21, 2010

AG: Today, we have the ability to perform attribution across any online channel.  We are able to account for the value of a click, a view-thru, an interact-thru, and video on a conversion.  If we can track that an ad, a video, a direct visit, organic visit, etc., was involved in a conversion, we can attribute credit (profit, revenue, sales, engagement) across those activities in a statistically sound manner…

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