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March 21, 2007

iCrossing announced yesterday that it will acquire Sharp Analytics, a next generation business intelligence solutions provider.

The move combines iCrossing’s leading digital marketing services with Sharp Analytics’s proprietary SharpView™ marketing technology, to provide Fortune 500 marketers and their agencies a comprehensive offline to online SEM campaign analyzis platform.

Sharp Analytics is helping companies like Hewlett Packard and Procter & Gamble derive insight and enhance SEM campaign performance through advanced analytics and SharpView™ the company's proprietary, Web-based tool.

SharpView uses embedded optimization and modeling to identify key insights hidden within data, integrates campaign results from disparate systems, and then analyzes the information against pre-defined campaign goals.

Overall, decision makers access this information in real-time via an intuitive customized dashboard to monitor results and optimize marketing campaigns.

Sharp Analytics will retain its brand and operate as a division of iCrossing, Inc.

iCrossing’s existing analytics and performance insight teams will merge with Sharp Analytics’s current service offering to create fully integrated business intelligence solutions that bridge the gap between on and off-line data.

Meanwhile, Sharp Analytics will continue to be headquartered in Salt Lake City, with additional personnel being added in New York, Scottsdale, Ariz., and London, U.K.

Sharp Analytics’s founder, Chuck Sharp, will become managing director of the Sharp Analytics division. In this role, he will be responsible for the product development and marketing of SharpView and its corresponding analytics services. Sharp will report to Rod Lenniger, executive vice president of iCrossing.

Jeff Herzog, CEO and founder of iCrossing said “we've always prided ourselves on the combined talent and technology that has made our analytics offering number one in the search engine marketing industry.”

He added “today, we raised the bar even higher. Sharp Analytics’s business intelligence technology, combined with our own analytics services sets a new standard for tracking, measuring and optimizing campaign ROI both on and off-line.”

The Sharp Analytics news comes on the heels of iCrossing’s February 2007 acquisition of Spannerworks, the leading search agency in the U.K., and of NewGate Internet acquired in November of last year. NewGate Internet is a search marketing firm with a strong presence in the retail sector.

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Source: iCrossing