New Media Age Shortlist Connextra & Ladbrokes for 2003 Effectiveness Awards

Connextra's groundbreaking work with Ladbrokes over the 2002 / 2003 football season has been rewarded with a prestigious place on the Sports and Gambling shortlist for the 2003 New Media Age Effectiveness Awards. Winners from this year's record 660 entries will be announced at the awards ceremony in London later this month.

Connextra's specialist ad serving system has enabled Ladbrokes to significantly enrich its communications strategy on long-term partners, including a raft of premiership club sites. Highly tactical, event-led executions, including free bet offers and one-off competitions, have now largely supplanted generic brand advertising on these key sites. Central to the mix has been a range of interactive units developed in conjunction with Ladbrokes.

"For fans to respond to betting online, advertising has to be highly contextual and visually appealing," said Adrian Forde, Commercial Director of Arsenal FC. "Ladbrokes can now produce new banners for every Arsenal game. Built into the banner is a mechanism allowing customers to quickly obtain prices around a range of bets for that match." By putting emotionally appealing, relevant product in front of the committed football fan, the ad format ensures that increased response rates are accompanied with strong intent to purchase and so translate into greater levels of registration and betting.

David King Lassman, Connextra MD, commented, "For some time now, we've been seen as the clear market leader in terms of delivering product-based advertising formats to the betting industry. Our work with Ladbrokes cements this position while demonstrating our ability to add value to all kinds of advert delivery. Our third party ad serving platform enables the advertiser to take control of every aspect of their marketing and to replace infrequently changing, generic creative with a whole range of tactical and timely promotions."

With flexible post-impression and post-click reporting recently introduced into the product, Connextra's ad serving platform now enables advertisers to track activity all the way through the customer life cycle and to optimise communication strategies on the basis of customer value as well as acquisition targets.

About New Media Age 2003 Effectiveness Awards

Since 1997 the NMA Effectiveness Awards have recognised and celebrated the best in new media, not in terms of looks or ambition, but in terms of how well projects have performed against their stated aims, of business benefits and of impact on the company's bottom line. And each year, as the number of entries has increased, so has the standard, raising the bar for inclusion on the shortlist ever higher. The result is a roll call of projects and businesses that demonstrate both the growing power of new media, and its crucial role in modern business.

Further details can be found at http://www.newmediazero.com/awards03/

About Connextra

Providing online marketing services since 1999, Connextra is now the UK's leading provider of ad serving services and marketing solutions to the betting and gaming industries.

More details can be obtained from Iain Hutchison, Sales Director on
+44 (0)20 7438 8653 or from http://www.connextra.com.

About Ladbrokes

Ladbrokes.com is part of Ladbrokes Limited, the betting and gaming division of Hilton Group plc, the world's premier international hotel brand. Hilton's Betting and Gaming division also operates: Ladbrokes (UK and Ireland's largest off-track bookmaker with around 2000 high street Ladbrokes shops); Other Betting and Gaming licences in Europe, Latin America, the USA, South Africa and the Middle East

Ladbrokes has led the way in not only meeting the most stringent licensing criteria for these various legal jurisdictions, but also influencing the guidelines to promote higher standards for consumers.

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