Publishers Clearing House Acquires Liquid Wireless

NEW YORK and PORTLAND, Maine, Jan. 11, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Publishers Clearing House, America's leading multi-channel direct marketer and the premier digital destination for consumers who want to play and win, today announced the acquisition of Liquid Wireless, a Portland, Maine-based company specializing in mobile lead generation, media buying and analytics.  The company's mobile platform and services offering is a 360 degree approach to lead generation and customer acquisition.  Liquid Wireless not only creates and deploys mobile campaigns, the platform tracks activity from lead generation and click-through to post conversion sale and also auto-optimizes to ensure that campaigns are performing at the highest conversion rate.  One of the Company's core differentiators is that clients are only charged for leads, not the services it takes to build out a mobile campaign.

"The Liquid Wireless team has built technology and processes that are unmatched by most larger mobile technology companies," said Andy Goldberg, CEO of Publishers Clearing House.  "This enables Liquid Wireless to provide quality customer acquisition at a scale that has never been seen before on mobile. The business is a terrific complement to the multi-platform model that PCH has already created and continues to successfully execute on daily, delivering quality customer acquisition services to over 1000 marketers. We are excited to have them as part of the PCH family."    

Publishers Clearing House continues to focus on providing entertaining new ways for consumers to engage in play and win opportunities across its multiple platforms and channels, including online, social and mobile handheld devices as well its traditional offline direct mail.  PCH is unique amongst direct marketers in transitioning from offline to the digital channel.  After building successful online ecommerce and advertising businesses, with industry leading engagement metrics on the web, on email and on Facebook, the Company is aggressively moving to expand onto all mobile devices.  Liquid Wireless' revolutionary and proprietary mobile customer acquisition engine will help tap into the mobile engaged audience and provides a new market for existing and new PCH advertising clients.

"There are incredible cross-promotional opportunities between the two companies," said Jason Cianchette, President and Founder of Liquid Wireless.  "High response rates to PCH banner ads and landing pages will drive increased traffic to our existing offers, especially in the smart phone and tablet markets.  We will also be able to execute on significantly more powerful media buys with the financial backing of PCH.  The combined forces will make a great offering for our clients.  Our entire team has worked diligently to get to this point and we are proud to be the newest members of the Publishers Clearing House team," added Cianchette. 

One of Liquid Wireless' key strengths is a central focus on analytics and its tie-in to performance. Liquid Wireless back-end technologies are extendable to Publishers Clearing House and third parties as a potential service provider, which include ad server and campaign monitoring. By placing more than 1.4 billion ads on mobile devices each month, Liquid Wireless manages more than 4 million consumer visits across 15 mobile optimized websites.  The Company is an early adopter of OpenRTB (Real Time Bidding) and has a mobile optimized bidding engine.

The Liquid Wireless team will continue its growth in Portland, Maine while becoming an extension of the Publishers Clearing House digital advertising sales organization. 

About Publishers Clearing House
Headquartered in Port Washington, NY, Publishers Clearing House (PCH) is nationally famous for the sweepstakes it has used since 1967 to draw attention to its direct mail and online offers of merchandise and magazine subscriptions.  The Company's TV advertising features the iconic Prize Patrol van that annually delivers prizes worth millions of dollars to winners across the U. S.  In recent years the Company has built on its sweepstakes heritage to establish numerous online properties that offer new entertaining games, "Search and Win" opportunities and other free-to-play, chance-to-win content of interest to millions of consumers.  With 444 full-time employees, over 40% of the Company's profits go to trusts for the benefit of charities.

About PCH Digital
PCH Digital is the Web destination for Publishers Clearing House, a leading multi-channel direct marketer of value-based consumer products and magazines. The Company calls attention to its products and PlayandWin content by providing visitors with a chance to win valuable sweepstakes prizes including its current "$1 Million Every Year for Life" mega prize event. With more than 3.5 million new online registrants per year, over 8 million monthly unique visitors and a database of more than 14 million customers, PCH Digital is an attractive vehicle for advertisers seeking to reach a diverse group of consumers online. PCH's digital properties include pch.com, PCHSaveandWin.com, PCHSearchandWin.com, PCHLotto.com, PCHGames.com, Candystand.com and PCHOnlineSurveys.com along with access to mobile lead generation through its latest acquisition, Liquid Wireless. For more information about PCH Digital, visit http://www.pchonline.com. 

SOURCE Publishers Clearing House