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First is our top "ads" product that allows our partners to place simple javascript tags on their pages throughout the website to drive pageviews and uniques to highlighted ads. While this isn't a new concept, what you may not be aware of is the fact that Travidia can not only provide text links to your display ads, but we can also do this with your classified liners. MYSA is using this on their site and traffic and response has grown considerably. More importantly, they've generated incremental revenues merely by repurposing advertising content that Travidia processes.  Second is our integrated search capabilities. Using Travidia's search product in our MarketPlace Suite allows you to aggregate the content that we process and content we do not process into a seamless, consumer-friendly search interface. Instead of consumers going to multiple search boxes throughout your site, Travidia can provide a powerful search tool and keyword technology that will allow you to target specific keyword searches and sell sponsorships to search return pages. The Dallas Morning News is using this capability to its fullest and has generated some significant revenues. While this may seem to be minor capabilities, it's easy to forget the revenue potential by implementing these tools. As a Travidia partner, these tools are readily available to you, all with the backing of our industry leading support crew. At Travidia, we understand that ultimately we need to help provide a return on the advertiser's dollar, and most importantly give you the tools to drive interactive revenue. In our next issue of the Travidian, we'll have some major product announcements - all focused on our main goal...driving your local, interactive revenue. James
Green
DENVER NEWSPAPER AGENCY LAUNCHES NEW SELF-SERVE RECREATIONAL VEHICLE DEALER DIRECTORY POWERED BY TRAVIDIATravidia is pleased to announce the launch of a new self-serve Recreational Vehicle Directory website for Denver Newspaper Agency. Located at rv.postnewsmarketplace.com, the directory allows consumers to shop for RV's, motorcycles, watercraft, snowmobiles and ATV's from Colorado's most popular dealerships. The Recreational Vehicle Guide is powered by AdScripter technology which is Travidia's self-serve advertising solution that allows advertisers to log in and create their own enhanced listing including company logo, links to print ads, radio commercials, television commercials and build a microsite to help promote their business.  "Travidia is excited to be working with The Denver Newspaper Agency on building out our innovative AdScripter technology," said Viv Neti, Travidia's Vice President of Client Services. "The Recreational Vehicle Guide represents one of the many niche verticals that AdScripter can serve and provides Denver Newspaper Agency with a great new potential online revenue source," continued Neti. The Denver Newspaper Agency, who launched a shopping channel with Travidia in December of 2005, joins more than 300 newspapers from around the world currently being served by Travidia. "Travidia's AdScripter technology gives us a powerful online solution that allows our advertisers to take control of their own advertising message," said Fran Wills, Vice President of Interactive for The Denver Newspaper Agency. TRAVIDIA LAUNCHES ONLINE SHOPPING CHANNELS FOR MEDIANEWS GROUP INTERACTIVE PROPERTIES IN NORTHERN CALIFORNIA AND NORTHEASTTravidia-powered online shopping channels recently launched for over a dozen MediaNews Group Interactive Web sites which feature print display advertisements and special sections. "Travidia is pleased to be partnering with MediaNews Group Interactive in launching our industry-leading products and services," said James Green, Travidia's Chief Marketing Officer. "Working with a progressive, industry-leading company like MediaNews Group Interactive allows us to demonstrate our integration with other best-of-breed leaders in our industry to provide the knowledge, resources and service to continually stay ahead of the rapidly evolving digital advertising arena," continued Green. MediaNews Group Interactive joins more than 300 newspapers from around the world currently being served by Travidia. "Travidia's excellent reputation in the industry and commitment to customer service are expected to greatly enhance our online shopping initiatives," said Sara Glines, Vice President for Iinteractive Media for MediaNews Group's East Coast operations. INTRODUCING POWERFUL INTEGRATION OPPORTUNITIES FOR OUR NEWSPAPER PARTNERSby Chris Eckland, Director, Product Management Travidia is pleased to announce the completion of integration projects for DMC (Digital Media Communications) and AdPay Click-N-Buy Stores. The video advertising platform from DMC and the local retailer storefront solution from AdPay are both powerful advertising vehicles as stand alone applications. Now, though integration efforts by Travidia, you can leverage your DMC and AdPay content to gain greater exposure for your local advertisers! DMC INTEGRATION In conjunction with DMC, Travidia has developed an integration program which allows the user to seamlessly include links to DMC videos within the Travidia Marketplace (see sample graphic below). Consumers who are viewing an online advertisement within the Travidia Marketplace may now have the option of viewing an associated video for that advertiser. This enriches the online experience for the consumer and helps increase offline visits and inquiries! Further, the DMC integration leverages the investments already made to host the video advertisements created by DMC. Integration with DMC is a fairly simple process via XML feeds between Travidia and DMC - no feed generation or submission is required on your part! For more information or to start integrating your DMC videos into the Travidia Marketplace, please contact your Travidia sales representative or Account Manager for assistance. Sample DMC Integration:  ADPAY CLICK-N-BUY STORES INTEGRATION In conjunction with AdPay, Travidia has developed an integration program which enables you to easily include AdPay Click-N-Buy Store content within your Travidia Marketplace (see sample graphic below). Consumers can navigate to view Click-N-Buy Store content within the Travidia Marketplace and have the option to click through and actually purchase products via the AdPay Click-N-Buy interfaces. In addition, the Click-N-Buy Store content is included in the Travidia Marketplace search return. Consumers can find content either through a local online advertisement or through a local Click-N-Buy Store. Overall, this breadth of content enriches the online experience for the consumer and may help increase online and offline sales! The Click-N-Buy integration is a great way to leverage your AdPay content and generate traffic to your Click-N-Buy Stores. Integration with Click-N-Buy Stores is a simple process via XML feeds between Travidia and AdPay - similar to the DMC integration mentioned above, no feed generation or submission is required on your part! For more information or to start integrating your AdPay Click-N-Buy Stores into your Travidia Marketplace please contact your Travidia sales representative or account manager for assistance. Sample AdPay Click-N-Buy Stores Integration:  TRAVIDIA IMPLEMENTS SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION IN MARKETPLACE SUITEPowerful New Search Engine Optimization for Our Newspaper Partners! Travidia is pleased to announce the release of several Marketplace Suite enhancements to greatly improve our newspaper partners' search engine ranking. Our engineering team has been working on search engine optimization (SEO) techniques for the past year to help improve the rankings of your shopping channel in popular search engines such as Google, MSN and Yahoo! What is SEO? Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of designing and indexing a web site specifically for the search engines with the goal of achieving the highest possible rankings according to the selected keywords. Without top listings, your web site has little chance of gaining critical search engine traffic. Why is SEO Important?
SEO is a critical part of online marketplace development. Without effective SEO the resources dedicated to making your online shopping channel a success may be wasted because that information is not reaching its intended audience. Over 85% of Internet users use search engines to find products and services. SEO ensures your shopping channel has all of the necessary criteria to rank high in search results. Without high rankings, your shopping channel has little chance of gaining search engine traffic and your advertisers see less value in promoting their goods and services online. What is Travidia Doing to Increase My Search Engine Ranking? As part of Travidia's commitment to provide our partners with the most innovative and powerful solutions in the industry, we have started the year with targeting search initiatives for our newspaper partners. Travidia recently announced the release of our Integrated Search and advanced search capabilities; SEO now follows to round out our Marketplace Suite, providing the most advanced newspaper shopping channel platform technology available. Meta Tags A meta tag is a hidden tag that lives in the <HEAD> of an HTML document. It is used to supply additional information about the HTML document. To use meta tags to your advantage in search engines, Travidia focuses on your description and keywords specific to your market. The meta description tag is used to describe what your page is about. Engines that use it will supply the content of this tag when displaying a list of links. For example, if you do a search on "DFW Shopping," you will see the description listed on the search results page (see example below). Travidia continually analyzes data from your market, determines the most popular searched terms and caters your meta description tag accordingly.
The meta keywords tag helps search engines to categorize your site, and to allow people to find your pages more quickly. Again, Travidia analyzes your marketplace, determines the most popular keywords being searched on in your market and caters the meta keyword data accordingly. The example above demonstrates a search in "Google" on the keyword combination "shopping dfw." Travidia has optimized the Fort Worth Star-Telegram site to rank high using popular keywords and repetition of market name in the meta tags, "Dallas - Fort Worth." Title Tags A title tag is essentially an HTML code snippet that creates the words that appear in the top bar of your web browser. The title tag is one of the most important factors in achieving high search engine rankings.
All search engines use title tags to gather information about your shopping channel. What you put in the title tag is a key factor in which search queries you will rank highly with in the major search engines. Travidia configures title tags in your shopping channel to reflect your market and help you achieve the highest possible search engine ranking. Alt Text Short form for Alternative Text, it is an <img> property that is used as a placeholder when the image is loading and for usability purposes.
Travidia uses alt text to describe images such as ROP ad sub-regions and thumbnails for special sections or inserts. In the case of a product image such as an ROP sub-region or catalog item, Travidia builds in alt text to describe the product in such a way that someone with a text browser or images turned off knows what the image is about and more importantly helps the search engine determine what the item is. The example above demonstrates alt text for an ROP sub-region for Fry's Electronics. Having the alt text loaded with specific keywords related to the location, the item and the advertiser greatly increases the chances of a consumer finding this item when searching specifically for computers and accessories in a particular market. Page Headings Page headings are another way Travidia has helped optimize pages for higher search engine ranking. Depending on where a consumer navigates to in your shopping channel, the page is accompanied by a text page heading that describes the page they are on. The example below shows a page heading that is rendered when clicking on the "Automotive & Vehicles" category. Repetition is seen in the breadcrumb links, the page heading and the sub-category heading.
Important
keywords or keyword phrases should appear at least three times on a
page. Travidia has placed these important keywords in the title tag,
the meta tags and lastly in the main content of the page. Working to Make Your Shopping Channel a Success Travidia continues to improve our market-leading line of products and services. Search Engine Optimization is just one of the ways we are helping improve results for you and your advertisers. Throughout the rest of the year Travidia has scheduled product releases aimed at making your online shopping channel initiatives more successful. We always
welcome feedback from our valued partners in shaping our line of
products. If you have any comments or feedback on SEO or any other
initiatives you would like to see our team concentrate on then we
would love to hear from you!
TRAVIDIA INC APPOINTS RAND A. HUTCHISON AS CEO TO LEAD COMPANY INTO NEXT PHASE OF GROWTHTravidia is pleased to announce the appointing of Rand A. Hutchison as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) to lead the company into the next phase of growth. Mr. Hutchison has over two decades of MIS and software development, public accounting, and financial experience. Prior to being appointed the position of CEO, Mr. Hutchison served as Travidia's Co-founder, President and Chief Operating Officer. "As Co-founder, Rand has a complete understanding of the company and all its operations. He successfully fulfilled his duties as Chief Operating Officer and is well-positioned to take on the additional responsibilities. We anticipate that the transition will be smooth and seamless," said Mr. Yeatman. John Strisower, former CEO of Travidia Inc. will be pursuing a new business venture and long-time passion to develop medical technology. "I am proud of our accomplishments as a team at Travidia in growing this business to where it is today. I have every confidence in my Co-founder, the executive team, and all the wonderful, talented people that comprise Travidia to take it to the next level. As a founder and significant shareholder, I will continue to help Travidia on its path by serving on the Board of Directors of the company," said Mr. Strisower.
Travidia's
history is based on operating with one foot in the present and one
foot in the future. The benefit of this strategy is that Travidia's
Board of Directors and Senior Management team recognized the
need for key personnel succession planning. I am reflecting with
great melancholy that, at the time when we can exercise our
succession plan, my Co-Founder and CEO John Strisower has departed.
We will all miss John, but will continue to benefit from his
contributions as a member of the Travidia Board of Directors.
I expect a
smooth transition to my new role as Chief Executive Officer. As
Co-Founder, President, Chief Operating Officer and Board member, I
have worked closely with clients, Senior Management, key staff from
all departments, and the Board of Directors. With over 30 years of
relevant management and technical experience, I energetically accept
the position of Chief Executive Officer. Travidia's
mission is to become the leading provider of digital publishing
services for local advertisers of the largest print and broadcast
media companies. As we approach the halfway mark for 2006, Travidia
continues to accomplish its mission, while remaining closely
connected with our client base, and positioning the company for
planned growth. While I am proud to continue the legacy of our
mission, I am not satisfied with Travidia's current position. We
must find ways to increase the pace at which we implement our
strategic plans without sacrificing any quality of execution. This
is a critical objective and a top priority for the rest of 2006. I
have charged Travidia with the goals of improving speed-to-market
for new products and innovations that benefit and grow our client
base, and to do so while offering competitive prices. To compete
successfully in this value-driven world, it is more critical than
ever to anticipate client needs to deliver superior solutions, and
to do so faster than the competition. Sincerely, | |||||||||||
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© 2006 Travidia Inc. | ||||||||||
2006 continues to be a strong year for Travidia.
We're well positioned to have yet another record-setting year in
terms of performance. This is all due to the tremendous success of
our valued partners. Without focusing on that success, Travidia
would not be where it is today. Often in this article I talk about
recent wins...those continue with 
Generating and
maintaining traffic to your advertisers' messages online is the
single most important item in creating a successful online
marketplace. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is as important as
choosing the right print or electronic media to promote your product
or service. Creating a web site without SEO is like buying
television ad time without consulting the market information
provided by the television station. How do you know that your money
is being well spent? How do you know whether you are reaching your
target audience? 
