1. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
FREEMONEE WINS DIRECT MARKETING ASSOCIATION 2012 INNOVATION AWARD
FreeMonee Pioneers New Marketing Economy With Gift Network,
Delivering Customers On-Demand
SAN MATEO, CALIF. – September 6, 2012 – FreeMonee Network, the world’s first and only
provider of consumer gift incentives, has been honored by the Direct Marketing Association
(DMA) as the 2012 Innovation Awards winner in the Digital Media Marketing category for its
FreeMonee Gift Network. The honors will be presented during the DMA2012 Annual
Conference & Exhibition, which will be held October 13-18 in Las Vegas.
The DMA Innovation Awards, sponsored by Google, recognize the innovative advances being
made in marketing technology. Innovation can be in the form of new-to-market offers, standing
solutions addressing complex business problems, market-leading solutions, or some new
approach altogether that improves the efficiency or effectiveness of the programs. Finalists and
winners were selected by a distinguished panel of judges.
“The continued integration of data, social, mobile, and creative through the use of digital
marketing technology is changing the way that marketers can interact with consumers,” said
Bruce Biegel, senior managing director, Winterberry Group, and an Innovation Awards judge.
“The marketing possibilities enabled by the outstanding 2012 entries were a significant step
forward in this evolution.”
The FreeMonee Gift Network generates Customers On-Demand for stores and restaurants—
delivering who they want to attract, when they want them, with the scale necessary for a positive
impact on their business. FreeMonee Gifts are cash incentives delivered to millions of people
every week through the cards they already use to make purchases. FreeMonee’s Gift
Underwriting Engine uses enriched, anonymized data about how people spend to ensure gifts
are relevant and valuable to the recipient, resulting in high return on advertising spend for
merchants.
“To be recognized by the DMA for what we consider a game-changing innovation is great
validation,” said Gadi Maier, CEO, president and co-founder of FreeMonee. “We created
FreeMonee Gifts to serve a massive unmet need among marketers: a tool that could eliminate
the vast inefficiencies of the $300 billion couponing and direct marketing spend. After three
years of hard work, FreeMonee Gifts have proven to efficiently deliver incremental, profitable
new sales at the scale our national clients require, establishing FreeMonee as a company that
will fundamentally change the economics of advertising forever.”
With the simplest, most effective incentives available, FreeMonee has introduced science-
backed marketing made possible by its innovative Gift Underwriting Engine. FreeMonee is able
to deliver compelling gifts at scale without risk by predicting spend associated with each gift
given. The result is significantly higher return on investment than marketers get from traditional
coupons and promotions. FreeMonee clients are seeing an average incremental lift of 400–700
percent, and more than 500 percent return on ad spend.

2. About FreeMonee Network
FreeMonee is changing the economics of advertising by enabling stores and restaurants to
attract Customers On-Demand using FreeMonee Gifts. With its unique new consumer incentive,
FreeMonee delivers gifts of money directly to cardholders of the largest financial institutions.
Customized to precisely match consumer interest, gifts allow consumers to purchase anything
they want at designated stores or restaurants—no strings attached. The gifts are made possible
by FreeMonee’s proprietary Gift Underwriting Engine, which accurately determines the right gift
to ensure the highest level of consumer interest and the best return on ad spend for a merchant.
Unlike traditional coupons or offers, FreeMonee Gifts feel like a gift card from a friend—money
to spend at places consumers like. For retail marketers, FreeMonee Gifts enable brands to
attract large volumes of profitable, incremental customer visits—without discounting. For banks
and credit card companies, FreeMonee provides the opportunity to positively engage customers
and strengthen loyalty.
Founded in 2009 and located in San Mateo, California, FreeMonee is led by former executives
of Google, Visa, Oracle, Cisco, Procter & Gamble and Coca-Cola. To date, FreeMonee has
raised $45 million in funding with investments from Charles E. Ryan, Opus Capital Ventures,
Redpoint Ventures and Sutter Hill Ventures, among others. Through continued partnerships with
the top U.S. financial institutions, the company expects 50 million households to have access to
FreeMonee Gifts in 2012. For more information, please visit www.freemonee.com.
About DMA2012 Conference & Exhibition
The DMA2012 Annual Conference & Exhibition: The Global Event for Real-Time Marketers is
the world’s largest gathering of cross-media/channel marketing professionals. DMA2012, which
will be held October 13-18 in Las Vegas, will feature keynote presentations, educational
sessions, roundtables, case studies, white papers, and research reports. DMA2012’s exhibit hall
will feature hundreds of exhibiting companies. For additional information, or to register for the
six-day multichannel marketing event of the year, please visit http://www.dma12.org.
About Direct Marketing Association (DMA)
The Direct Marketing Association (www.the-dma.org) is the world’s largest trade association
dedicated to advancing and protecting responsible data-driven marketing. Founded in 1917,
DMA represents thousands of companies and nonprofit organizations that use and support
data-driven marketing practices and techniques.
In 2012, marketers—commercial and nonprofit—will spend $168.5 billion on direct marketing,
which accounts for 52.7 percent of all ad expenditures in the United States. Measured against
total U.S. sales, these advertising expenditures will generate approximately $2.05 trillion in
incremental sales. In 2012, direct marketing accounts for 8.7 percent of total U.S. gross
domestic product and produces 1.3 million direct marketing employees in the U.S. Their
collective sales efforts directly support 7.9 million other jobs, accounting for a total of 9.2 million
U.S. jobs.
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