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March 1, 2004 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Quigo, Inc. Secures Over $5 Million in Series A RoundLycos Founder Bob Davis Leads Investment in Contextual Advertising and Search Marketing Company New York, NY — March 1, 2004 — Quigo Inc., a leading developer of proprietary solutions for online contextual advertising and search engine marketing, announced today that it has secured over $5 million in its first round of institutional funding from Highland Capital Partners. In conjunction with the financing, Bob Davis of Highland has joined the Quigo board. "At Quigo, we are very excited to partner with Highland, one of the leading blue chip venture capital firms in the U.S.," said Quigo CEO Michael Yavonditte. "With its years of experience shaping the success of many well known brands, Highland brings far more to this partnership than money. We look forward to utilizing this rich history and applying their best practices to our business." Quigo is a developer of search solutions for online contextual advertising and search engine marketing in their AdSonar and FeedPoint products respectively. AdSonar is a contextual advertising platform for publishers that applies proprietary semantic algorithms to automatically identify, match and deliver the most relevant ads to each particular page of content. FeedPoint provides a turnkey, search engine marketing solution for advertisers and agencies. With FeedPoint, Quigo has developed the industry's most advanced search engine marketing solution for easy feed creation and to increase ROI. FeedPoint effortlessly generates keywords, titles and descriptions from ordinary web pages for all search and comparison shopping engines. "We have been very impressed with the technology behind Quigo's FeedPoint and AdSonar products. At a time when search engine revenues are exploding and advertisers are looking for contextual placement on web sites, Quigo is positioned to harness that demand with these exceptional products. Their partnerships with Overture and AltaVista are a testament to that," explained Bob Davis, partner at Highland and former CEO of Terra Lycos. "The management team of Quigo brings years of industry experience and technology expertise to the table and they are poised to leverage that to capture the market leadership position." Quigo plans to use the funding to support growth and the continued research and development of its search and contextual advertising technologies. "With search poised to become a $7 billion market globally by 2007, contextual advertising could reach $1 billion," estimates US Bancorp Piper Jaffray senior research analyst Safa Rashtchy, "We expect that within this field, the role of advanced technologies will be increasingly important — much more so than it was in paid search — and companies like Quigo, with a strong technology foundation, will have an edge in this burgeoning market." Jack Lahav, outgoing Quigo chairman and private investor who played an active part in the deal stated, "Quigo will benefit by capitalizing on the expertise of Bob Davis who in just five years led Lycos from a company with $2 million in venture capital to a multi-billion dollar business and an esteemed member of the NASDAQ 100." About QuigoQuigo, Inc., develops proprietary search solutions that facilitate online contextual advertising and search engine marketing. These technologies form the basis for Quigo's product offerings: AdSonar(SM), a contextual ad serving platform for online publishers and FeedPoint(SM), a search engine marketing solution for advertisers and search engine marketing agencies. Quigo delivers easy-to-use, revenue-driving search solutions to customers including HP, Overture, AltaVista, PC Mall, eCost, Advertising.com and iCrossing. For more information, please visit www.quigo.com or call 1-866-333-7932. About Highland Capital PartnersHighland Capital Partners was founded in 1988 with the mission of helping great people with great ideas build great companies. We emphasize a team-oriented approach in providing the right mix of strategic guidance, hands-on leadership, and deep industry domain expertise for helping entrepreneurs and their teams become market-leading organizations. Companies that Highland has backed include Altiga Networks, Ask Jeeves, Avid Technology, Be Free, CheckFree, EXACT Sciences, Gamesville, HighGround Systems, Lycos, MapQuest, Ocular Networks, Odyssey Healthcare, Sybase and WebLine Communications. For more information, visit www.hcp.com. # # # Media Contacts:Lisa Kalscheur Copyright © 2005 Quigo, Inc. All Rights Reserved. |