Spongecell A Winner Of The Interactive Advertising Bureau's (IAB) Digital Video Rising Stars Competition

NEW YORK, Feb. 25, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Spongecell, a creative technology company that transforms standard online ads into dynamic, interactive experiences, announced today it was selected as a winner of the IAB Digital Video Rising Stars competition. As a winning company, Spongecell will participate in the IAB Digital Video Rising Stars Full Screen Working Group and the IAB Digital Video Rising Stars Ad Control Bar Working Group with fellow digital video innovators to help define, build, and implement the next generation of video advertising units.

The winners were announced today at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting, a three-day event bringing together the industry's most influential brand marketers, agency executives, and publishers. This year's event is held February 24 ^th-26 ^th at the Arizona Biltmore hotel in Phoenix. A thorough quantitative scoring and qualitative evaluation of more than 70 entries was performed by the IAB's Agency Working Group, which selected the winning companies and the five creative ad product concepts that will become the organization's digital video format standards. Spongecell scored among the top entrants in the "Full Screen" and "Ad Control Bar" categories.

Spongecell, along with its fellow winners, will work with the IAB, the Agency Working Group, and other experts to create the style guides and technical specifications for these digital video units, a process expected to take between 90 and 120 days.

"We are very pleased to earn this recognition from the IAB, a distinguished body that sets important standards for our industry," said Ben Kartzman, CEO of Spongecell. "Our approach to online video advertising is all about simplicity. We want to make it easy to add the power of interactivity to a brand's video creative and scale that content across the web. We're looking forward to working with the IAB to help develop the new standards for video advertising."

Spongecell was ranked as the 27 ^th fastest growing company in the United States on the 2012 Inc. 500 list with a 6,316% three-year growth rate. To learn more about Spongecell, visit www.spongecell.com.

About the IAB: The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is comprised of more than 500 leading media and technology companies that are responsible for selling 86% of online advertising in the United States. On behalf of its members, the IAB is dedicated to the growth of the interactive advertising marketplace, of interactive's share of total marketing spend, and of its members' share of total marketing spend. The IAB educates marketers, agencies, media companies and the wider business community about the value of interactive advertising. Working with its member companies, the IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices and fields critical research on interactive advertising. Founded in 1996, the IAB is headquartered in New York City with a Public Policy office in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.iab.net.

About Spongecell:Spongecell is an award-winning advertising technology company that transforms standard ads into dynamic, interactive ad experiences that run anywhere on the web.  Spongecell's data-driven ad solutions help brand advertisers and their creative and media agencies deliver more effective video and display campaigns and better analyze consumer engagement, enabling superior ROI. An independent, privately owned company, Spongecell is headquartered in New York City and has offices across the United States and Europe. Find out more at www.spongecell.com.

SOURCE Spongecell

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