Universal Ad Launches a New Era in the Management and Production of Retail Advertising

FEBRUARY 23, 2007 / CHICAGO, IL – Universal Ad, Inc., a leading provider of highly innovative Advertising, Marketing and Promotions software and service solutions, announced at the Retail Advertising Conference today that it has entered the North American market and signed up its first US client. The company’s On Demand Promotions Suite fully automates the planning, management and creation of advertising and promotions materials.

Most retailers, wholesalers and ad agencies currently use highly manual resource-intensive processes to produce newspaper inserts (FSIs), circulars, flyers, catalogs, Web ads, store signage and other promotional materials. It takes an average of three to five hours to create a single ad page, version it and repurpose it to other channels. These operational bottlenecks significantly impede the ability to get targeted promotions in front of customers in a timely manner.

“As our customers` results have proven, by completely automating the Creative efforts, and not just the workflow and the data transfer, Universal Ad`s solutions can reduce both operational costs and time-to-market by up to 90%. This provides retailers with the ability to create ads on demand across multiple marketing channels,” said Adit Tevel, CEO, Universal Ad. “Since our technology does not rely on static templates, designers can reach a new level of creativity and develop truly unique materials that help change buying behavior, rather than waste time hunting down images, designing each page separately and reentering data in order to repurpose each ad.”

“More than 250 Billion ad pages are distributed each year by US retailers but that still doesn`t cover the need to create ever larger numbers of more customized ads synchronized across an ever growing number of marketing channels,” added Aviel Amit, founder and CTO, Universal Ad. “Retailers and their ad agencies do not have the capacity to produce such a vast amount of ad pages and still stay profitable. With Universal Ad, a small group of people can collaboratively produce any number of highly creative pages on the fly and immediately create ads in response to the competition, inventory issues, weather changes and any other marketing need.”

The On Demand Promotions Suite adds science to the art of retail advertising by fully integrating the main aspects of the process – Creative, Workflow and Data. Universal Ad`s customers are seeing dramatic improvements from streamlining the collaborative planning processes at all levels and from automating the flow of product, promotion and price data from merchandisers to advertisers. They are able, at a fraction of the cost of their existing inefficient processes, to create large numbers of highly targeted promotions on demand and distribute them across all marketing channels without any errors.

The On Demand Promotions (ODP) Suite is built around the Ad Builders - automated ad building and editing engines that, besides print (inserts/FSIs, circulars, flyers, ROPs, etc.), also support the creation of catalogs, Web ads and store ads (store-specific flyers, coupons, posters, displays, and shelf ads). These capabilities are based on patented variable layout algorithms that make layout changes to promotional materials at any step in the process by automatically adjusting entire pages and specific ads to fit new sizes, designs, content, and formatting.

The ODP Suite includes the following applications:

· Promotion Studio – allows graphic designers working with Adobe InDesign to automatically generate ads and instantly repurpose them across all marketing channels.

· Promotion Planner – enables merchandisers and marketers to collaborate in order to plan highly targeted campaigns, manage the process and integrate data from external sources.

· Retail DAM (Digital Asset Management) – the centralized repository stores and manages all ad-related elements, including images, product data, copy, metadata and version control.

Current customers are seeing significant benefits from the deployment of these applications. Office Depot Israel reduced its catalog production cycle from four months to one month by using Universal Ad`s solutions. Lily Hela, Chief IT Officer, Office Depot Israel said, “Universal Ad’s solutions have helped us streamline our catalog content and publishing process, reducing production time and efforts by 75%.”

About Universal Ad, Inc.

Universal Ad provides retailers, wholesalers, advertising agencies, and printers with highly innovative enterprise-class advertising, marketing and promotions software and service solutions that automate the planning, management and production of consumer advertising and promotions campaigns. Customers include Alpha 1 Marketing, Office Depot Israel and Shufersal (the largest retail chain in Israel). The company has two offices in the US and its international headquarters is located in Israel. The company, which was founded in 2003 by a highly experienced advertising and publishing executive, is privately held and venture-backed by the Walden Israel VC fund. For more information about Universal Ad, please visit www.universal-ad.com.