Digital Marketing Leaders Covario and Kenshoo Form Strategic Alliance and Joint Offering

SAN DIEGO and LONDON, September 13, 2011 -

- Covario to license Kenshoo Enterprise and Kenshoo Social; Companies to collaborate on integrated organic and paid search solution leveraging Covario’s SEO software platform

Digital marketing industry leaders Covario and Kenshoo announced a strategic agreement that includes software licensing and technology integration to deliver innovative search and social marketing solutions for enterprise advertisers.

Under the terms of the agreement, Covario, the United States’ largest independent provider of search engine marketing and SEO (search engine optimisation) software solutions, will utilise Kenshoo’s digital marketing software to enable scalable online media buying and optimisation on behalf of several global enterprise clients for both paid search and paid social advertising.

Additionally, the companies will co-develop a fully-integrated paid and organic search solution for global digital marketers, leveraging Covario’s industry-leading SEO technologies, including Covario Organic Search Insight™ and Covario Organic Search Optimizer™, together with Kenshoo’s award-winning online campaign management products Kenshoo Enterprise, Kenshoo Local, and Kenshoo Social.  

“We are delighted to be powering the search engine marketing practices of Covario, which has emerged as one of the U.S.’ leading search marketing agencies,” said Yoav Izhar-Prato, chief executive officer of Kenshoo. “The advanced algorithms in our paid search and social media buying platforms will be an asset as Covario scales to serve an expanding base of global enterprise clients. I also look forward to working with Covario on the integration of their sophisticated SEO technologies with the Kenshoo Universal Platform to develop a holistic solution for global search marketers.”

The companies cited three factors driving their partnership:  the double-digit growth of paid search spending by enterprise marketers globally, the rapidly growing budgets for Facebook advertising and other paid social media campaigns, and the proven benefits of holistic management of paid search and SEO.

For instance, in its quarterly Global Search Spend Analysis of major technology and consumer electronics companies issued in July, Covario reaffirmed its projection for 15 to 20 percent annual growth in paid search spending in 2011. Meanwhile, eMarketer recently reported that “all roads lead to Facebook” in social network advertising, with a forecast for 2012 that call for the mega social network to command $5.74 billion in ad revenues worldwide. Additionally, Forrester Research, in its 2011 Wave of U.S. Search Marketing Agencies, asserted its belief that integrating SEO and paid search efforts is easiest when done through a single partner.

“The Covario-Kenshoo solution will allow search marketers to drive improvements in the performance of both their paid and organic search programmes through integrated analytics,” said Russ Mann, chief executive officer of Covario. “Kenshoo is a leader with respect to biddable paid search and social media advertising software, while Covario was recently named ‘best in SEO technologies’ by Forrester Research.  This partnership will have a turbo-charging effect not only on our agency services, but also in support of the joint clients we serve and the industry as a whole as our mutual technologies and strategies are optimised.”

With respect to timing, Covario has begun the onboarding process with Kenshoo for a number of existing paid search clients.  As for the integrated organic and paid search solution, a prototype will be unveiled in the months ahead.    

About Covario

Covario is the United States’ largest independent provider of search marketing services and SaaS-based SEO software systems.  Headquartered in San Diego, the firm offers global enterprise solutions and agency services for paid and organic search, social media marketing, display advertising, and cross-media attribution analysis. The company’s growing customer base includes world leaders in technology, consumer electronics, retail, ecommerce, financial services, media, entertainment, publishing, and consumer packaged goods.  More information about Covario is available at www.covario.com.

About Kenshoo

Kenshoo is a digital marketing software company that engineers technology solutions for search marketing, social media and online advertising. Advertisers, agencies and marketing providers use Kenshoo Enterprise, Kenshoo Local and Kenshoo Social to direct more than $15 billion in annual customer sales revenue. The Kenshoo Universal Platform delivers the automation, business intelligence, integration and scale needed to make better marketing investments. Kenshoo powers 6 of the top 10 retailers in the world, 6 of the top 10 hotel groups, 7 of the 10 biggest telecoms, 8 of the 10 largest ad agency networks, and 22 of the Fortune 50 companies. With campaigns running in more than 100 countries, Kenshoo customers include Barnes & Noble, CareerBuilder, Covario, Facebook, Havas Digital, Hitwise, iREP, John Lewis, LendingTree, Omnicom Media Group, Sears, Starcom MediaVest Group, Tesco, Travelocity, Walgreens, and Zappos. Kenshoo has ten international offices and is backed by Sequoia Capital and Arts Alliance. Please visit www.Kenshoo.com for more information.

Covario Contact: Rick Clancy, Sr. Director, Public Relations, +1-858-397-1500, ext. 1643, rclancy at covario.com; Kenshoo Contact: Stacie Susens
Director, Corporate Marketing & PR, +1-877-563-7642, ext. 131, stacie.susens at kenshoo.com