With the mission of making “a lot of information easy,” MIVA Direct officially launched its ALOT brand on November 29. The online direct marketing services provider, is combining multiple Web properties including toolbars, search and start pages, to drive traffic throughout its network properties and generate revenue for its ad partners.
MIVA
has partnered with Google, eMusic and Netvibes to provide content and technology to support this new brand. For example, the ALOT toolbars will provide users with “one-click access” to information from a browser.
“What we have is a vertical-oriented toolbar which can be used for searching and book marking Web sites,” said Rob Roe, SVP and general manager at MIVA.
The toolbars, which can be downloaded and installed into Internet Explorer Web browsers, have been created around different interest categories. A Firefox-compatible toolbar will be launched in 2008.
ALOT has already partnered with eMusic for the music toolbar, Roe said. A recipe toolbar has also been developed, and others are in the works. He added that, s
ince its soft-launch in September, the ALOT brand has attracted more than 630,000 toolbar users.
When users download an ALOT toolbar, they will have the option of setting up a personalized ALOT start page on their browser. That start page can be personalized with various widgets, blogs, e-mail and IM accounts, photos, videos, social networks and/or podcasts. The start page will allow users to do general Web searches, powered by Google.
“The page is fully customizable,” Roe said.
ALOT widgets provide information from both MIVA-owned and third-party sites. The “Right Now on eBay” widget, for example, provides shopping information on the most popular items people are searching for “right now,” Roe said.
A soon-to-be released “Spill” widget will provide users with movie reviews from Spill.com, which is owned by MIVA.
