Coolsavings Becomes Q Interactive
Interactive marketing services provider CoolSavings Inc. changed its name to Q Interactive to reflect its move toward a broader suite of online marketing services, the company said yesterday.Services include lead generation, an advertising network and loyalty programs as well as its original online coupon service.
The rebranding follows the decision by Landmark Communications, Q Interactive's majority owner, to take CoolSavings private Dec. 15. Landmark is a privately held media company with national and international interests in newspapers, broadcasting, cable programming and electronic publishing.
The Chicago-based company formerly known as Coolsavings was founded in 1995 and launched its consumer savings Web site, CoolSavings.com, in 1997 to let advertisers deliver coupons and savings offers to its registered site users.
After registering 22 million consumers on its site by fall 2002, the company started an ad network, now called The Q Network, to aggressively extend its consumer reach for its advertisers to hundreds of partner sites on the Internet.
Today, The Q Network reaches 16 million unique monthly consumers across the Web sites of top publishers such as Knight Ridder, Meredith Corp., About.com and Weather.com as well as Q Interactive's own branded Web properties, CoolSavings.com and FreeStyleRewards.com. CoolSavings.com currently exceeds 45 million registered site users.
"The Q Interactive name and brand is the culmination of more than 10 years of continuing advancements in our service," said Matthew Wise, senior vice president of marketing for Q Interactive. "Today, our performance-based marketing programs span an extensive advertising network, helping more than 1,500 leading brands per year generate more than 100 million quality consumer responses."
The Q Interactive name signifies the company's ability to deliver high-quality and high-quantity results for its advertising clients and network partners, according to the company. The highly recognized CoolSavings brand name and Piggybank icon will remain the face of the company's original consumer savings destination, CoolSavings.com.
