$averCD, LLC and PCTest Announce Strategic Relationship

ARCHIVED 2002–2016: Originally distributed via the eWire press wire service. Preserved as historical record.

SUBSCRIBE/UNSUBSCRIBE |

Corporate Responsibility

Science & Technology

Syndication Partners

**************************************************************************

E-WIRE PRESS RELEASE E-WIRE PRESS RELEASE E-WIRE PRESS RELEASE

**************************************************************************

Advertising Writers/Business Editors/Consumer Products Writers

$averCD, LLC and PCTest Announce Strategic Relationship

Eco-Friendly Direct-Mail CD-ROM CRM Marketing Unveiled; Leading Brands Platform Software and Interactive Multimedia Ads

PORTLAND, OREGON, Nov. 21 -/E-Wire/Business Wire/-- $averCD's direct-mail interactive CD-ROM advertising is redefining customer relationship management (CRM) and mixed-media advertising. Due to $averCD's many unique features and benefits, the $averCD ad-vantage CRM paradigm has quickly attracted many leading companies that are interested in offering consumers trial software coupled with mixed-media advertisement and CRM incentives with tracking capability. Companies like Qwest, Trendwest, Overstock.com, Rite Aid, Oregon Ballet Theatre, Riverdeep, UBIsoft and the Rose Quarter, are topping out a list of more than 150 new clients currently leveraging $averCD's mixed media capability. $averCD was unveiled during the first days of October through a broad distribution via U.S. Mail free to 380,000 consumer households in the Portland-Vancouver market who are now experiencing the value, fun and convenience of the $averCD CD-ROM.

"The challenge for consumer software and application companies has always been in achieving cost-effective consumer trial of software and subsequent acquisition. In the past, providing trial software on CD-ROM to consumers has been an expensive proposition. Due to the formalized strategic relationship between PCTest and $averCD, we can now offer our many clients special pricing and placement on $averCD on a quarterly basis," said Wasi Wahedi, president of PCTest (www.pctest.com).

"By platforming consumer software applications and games on $averCD, software development companies can cost effectively provide a free trial version of their games and software directly to consumers on CD-ROM within the scaled efficiency of the CRM community of advertisers on $averCD, providing nearly daily exposure and branding. And given the strategic relationship between $averCD and PCTest, PCTest can now offer their many leading software clients a 5% discount off the $averCD rate card," said William E. Simpson III, executive vice president, $averCD, LLC (www.savercd.com).

$averCD effectively reaches consumers with advertiser offers:

Recently a very important shift in consumer behavior has been observed:

Consumers now spend more time viewing and obtaining information from their computers than from TV, print or radio. Consumers have largely rejected Internet advertising, pop-ups and spam and most consumers are unwilling to devote the time and energy to manage and store pre-printed direct-mail advertiser offers and coupons, which is why most of these coupons and offers end up in the trash or recycle bin. Recent consumer adoption and spending on entertainment technologies that are largely commercial-free, like On-Demand, Netflix, TiVo, Sirius and XM satellite radio, Apple's iPod and digital video recorders (DVR), are rendering traditional advertising methods less effective and obsolete. Additionally no other direct marketing parading, including TV, Cable or radio can deliver trial software or games directly to consumer households like $averCD does today.

$averCD, LLC is an advertising company with a unique proprietary product paradigm that provides advertisers with highly effective yet economical ad campaigns for client acquisition and retention. Based on an interactive multimedia CD-ROM advertising platform, $averCD provides advertisers with many of the same advertising features and benefits that would result from a very expensive traditional mixed-media advertising campaign with TV, print and Internet, while contemporaneously presenting advertiser ads and incentive coupons/gift certificates to consumers in a way that is unobtrusive, easy to manage and use, fun and free to consumers. $averCD's unique paradigm creates true CRM and "community" by way of a cooperative of advertisers providing ongoing value and incentives directly from the $averCD CD-ROM, and in real-time through the enhanced features provided by an Internet connection.

Further, given the 90-day shelf-life of each quarterly $averCD, advertisers have their offers and incentives always available to consumers, so when a buying decision is made, the offer is conveniently at hand instantly, unlike any other conventional ad paradigm known today. $averCD does not require any Internet connection and, therefore, business-consumer relationships can be fully developed using only the $averCD CD-ROM. However many of $averCD's features are augmented through Internet connectivity. $averCD is sent to consumer households via U.S. Mail quarterly, free of charge.

The tremendous over-printing of paper coupons and free standing inserts (FSIs) for newspapers and direct mail affects the ultimate cost of all advertised products and services to consumers. On a good day, only one out of 100 coupons or FSIs printed gets used, and the other 99 pre-printed ad coupons end up in the waste bin, with a lesser amount being recycled. Consumers that use the 1-out-of-100 coupons to buy the advertised products and services must then end up paying for these antiquated advertising inefficiencies created by the costs of wasted materials (trees, paper, ink, etc.) used in publishing and distributing the 99% unused coupons. These costs are integrated into the "cost of goods sold" or "COGS."

By using $averCD, advertisers needn't participate in the inefficient practice of over-printing coupons and FSIs and can thereby significantly reduce their costs for both client acquisition and retention. These savings to advertisers can be shared with consumers via initial acquisition incentives and thereafter with ongoing retention discounts, without undercutting profitability.

The use of $averCD helps conserve our dwindling precious natural resources.

With every household in America receiving the equivalent of a truckload of paper direct-mail advertising over the course of a year (estimated at 1,800 pounds per household, per year), that environmental impact can be significantly reduced by having a large portion of those paper ads, coupons and FSIs condensed onto the four recyclable-plastic CD-ROMs that $averCD ships annually to each household. Ultimately, this new paradigm could dramatically reduce demand for paper and the burden upon recycling projects and help to minimize the environmental impact and pollution from logging and paper mills. These savings could amount to thousands of tons of paper annually, saving trees and forests.

Everyone remembers the old paper volumes of the encyclopedia, which have now been smartly replaced by one CD-ROM. One can only imagine how many thousands of tons of paper (and trees) that are saved annually by that single conversion. In addition to the reduced demand on timber supplies for paper and the resulting reduction of pollution from paper mills helps protect our air and water supplies.

We must now ask the question: why print coupons unless someone will actually use them?

By using the revolutionary $averCD CD-ROM product, consumers only need to print the coupons that they will actually use, when they need them. Therefore advertisers need not engage in the practice of flooding the market with pre-printed coupons in a shotgun attempt to provide coupons to relatively few potential users.

The simple efficiency of $averCD allows advertisers to dramatically reduce their client acquisition and retention costs, and, therefore, advertisers can now afford to provide discount-incentives for client acquisition and retention to consumers as a part of the $averCD paradigm, without undercutting their profitability.

To learn more about this emerging advertising revolution, visit: www.savercd.com or call $averCD, LLC at [REDACTED-PHONE].

$averCD, LLC, Chris Somerville, [REDACTED-PHONE], [REDACTED-EMAIL]

http://www.savercd.com

**************************************************************************

To Transmit Your News Over E-Wire, visit http://www.ewire.com or

call 1-[REDACTED-PHONE]. E-Wire Is Broadcast To Millions Of Readers Worldwide

**************************************************************************