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HIGHBEAM™ RESEARCH APPOINTS JOSEPH B. MCWILLIAMS, JR. AS VP OF ADVERTISING
Online Advertising Veteran to Develop New Revenue Stream
Press Contact: Jani Spede
Phone Number: 864-650-7111
E-mail: jspede@highbeam.com
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CHICAGO — APRIL 28, 2004 — HighBeam™ Research, LLC, operator of an online research engine for individuals (www.highbeam.com) that fills the gap between free search engines and high-end information services, today announced that Joseph B. McWilliams, Jr., has joined the company as vice president of advertising.
McWilliams was formerly vice president of advertising and e-commerce sales for Hoover's, Inc., a pioneer in the online advertising field. Hoover's is a unit of D&B Corporation (NYSE: DNB). McWilliams was the first to sell online advertising for Hoover's Online in 1996. During his tenure at Hoover's, he led advertising sales teams in Austin, New York and San Francisco and consistently sold large, innovative advertising campaigns to such advertisers as Fed-Ex, Honda, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Visa and many other blue chip companies.
McWilliams is charged with developing a plan for the company to accelerate revenue from the sale of new advertising programs on HighBeam Research.
Patrick Spain, chairman and CEO of HighBeam Research, originally hired McWilliams while serving as chairman and CEO of Hoover's. Spain said, "With Joe at the helm, we can begin to better monetize our valuable audience of 4 million regular users, only about one percent of whom are paying members. Joe has a proven track record of creating advertising programs that appeal to top-notch advertisers who want to reach our audience. His talent and experience are a perfect match for us and I am excited to be working with him again."
McWilliams said, "Having the opportunity to build an advertising program almost from the ground-up again -- especially for such an innovative research service with a demographic that's in such high-demand -- is a wonderful challenge and is one on which I'm thrilled to be working."
Before Hoover's, McWilliams was regional sales manager for Hart Publications in Houston, Texas, publishers in the energy industry with information products serving the oil and gas sectors. McWilliams holds a B.S. in communications from The University of Tennessee.
Separately, HighBeam Research announced that it had reached 250,000 basic members within eight weeks of the launch the new research service.
"The addition of the Basic Membership program was an integral part of our entry into a broad-based advertising model. We now know more about who our regular users are and what they want through the information they provide us at registration," Spain said.
About HighBeam™ Research, LLC
HighBeam¿ Research, LLC (formerly Alacritude, LLC) operates an online research engine for individuals, filling the gap between free search engines and high-end information services. By delivering sophisticated research tools with convenient access to the free Web, paid online services, and our proprietary eLibrary database, we empower individual researchers to efficiently locate, organize and deliver answers. HighBeam Research is located at (www.highbeam.com).
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