Investors in Profitable, Growing Service Businesses
Hotbar and 180solutions Merge; Combined Company To Be Called Zango
Bellevue, WA and New York/Tel Aviv, Israel (June 7, 2006) – Hotbar and 180solutions today announced an agreement to merge, effective immediately. The merged company will be known as Zango.
The new Zango will continue to offer consumers an ever-increasing collection of free, sought-after online videos, games, music, tools and utilities through the Hotbar (www.hotbar.com) and Zango (www.zango.com) products. The merger creates increased available inventory and an even larger audience of potential customers whom advertisers can target utilizing Zango's time-shifted ad-delivery model. As a result of increased audience size and Zango's ad delivery system, advertisers will be able to achieve industry-leading levels of ROI.
"This merger will benefit each of the constituents in the Zango Content Economy vision," said Keith Smith, CEO of the newly formed Zango. "The vision is to deliver consumers free, online entertainment experiences while automating and monetizing the ecosystem of content creators, publisher and webmaster entrepreneurs and advertisers. This merger is a significant milestone in those efforts."
"We have built an extensive user base and effective advertising opportunities through a wide variety of Internet services," said Oren Dobronsky, co-founder and CEO of Hotbar. "The scale of this merger makes possible an array of opportunities to fulfill consumer and advertising demand for the products of the new Zango."
The new company will continue to offer both the Hotbar and Zango products, which have attracted millions of users. Hotbar's email and browser toolbars enable users to set backgrounds and skins, send eCards, create digital business cards, play games and insert emoticons (or smileys) in email programs, and more. Zango fulfills consumers' growing demand for free, sought-after online videos, games, music, tools and utilities.
"Both Hotbar and Zango are focused on delivering to consumers desirable entertainment experiences," noted Smith. "Today's merger and our combined Zango identity give us an even better and more robust platform, while continuing to provide advertisers with an industry-best return on investment."
Marketers interested in learning more about Zango's time-shifted advertising opportunities, please visit
www.metricsdirect.com
Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Savvian LLC arranged financing for 180solutions and Hotbar was advised in this transaction by Cascadia Capital.
About Zango
A pioneer of what we call the Content Economy, Zango, an online media company, fulfills millions of consumers' growing demand for free, sought-after online videos, games, music, tools and utilities giving them greater choice and control over when, where, and how they access them. Zango's Content Economy vision enables content creators to monetize and distribute their content, provides publishers with valuable content as well as a way to make money from their web traffic, and delivers to advertisers industry leading ROI by way of a receptive consumer audience at the precise time through time-shifted ad delivery that they are most likely to be making a purchasing decision. Committed to safe and ethical practices, Zango welcomes more than 150,000 new opt-in consumers every day. For more information, visit
www.zango.com
U.S. Contacts:
Zango
Steve Stratz
sstratz@zango.com
425.279.1321
206.300.9134
Infotech Strategies for Zango
Crystal Brown
crystal@itstrategies.com
202.585.0256
