MMA’s New Release of its ROI service Extends the Power of “What If” to Product Portfolios
and Media Schedules

The second release of Avista by MMA helps marketers predict and track the impact of investments across brands/products, tactics, and time to deliver more effective marketing plans

Wilton, Conn., March 29, 2006
Marketing Management Analytics, Inc. (MMA) today announced a new release of its Avista by MMA Decision Support Service (Avista DSS) that allows marketers to maximize the ROI of their marketing and media investments. Adding to its signature “what-if” marketing simulation and optimization capabilities, Avista DSS now includes portfolio management and media schedule optimization tools to help marketers get even more return from each working dollar. Clients using Avista DSS can expect a 15% improvement in marketing ROI in the first year.

MMA, the pioneer and innovator in advanced marketing analytics, is an independent operating unit of Carat, one of the world’s leading media services companies.

This new release enriches the capabilities of Avista DSS by giving marketers and their agencies two new ways to identify and take advantage of opportunities to increase the profitability of their marketing and media investments:

• Portfolio Management recognizes differences in marketing responsiveness across brands, products and segments and the interactions among them to find the most profitable allocation of marketing budget. Portfolio management will be particularly useful to marketers budgeting across multiple supported brands and products or large brand franchises with
  multiple customer segments.
  
  
• Media Schedule Optimization allows clients and agencies to optimally allocate media weights (gross rating points, impressions) over time to extract the greatest return for a given media investment. Media Schedule optimization takes advantage of seasonality, differential media costs over time and econometric models to set the ideal media weight level for each week of the year.

This new release will be available June 1, 2006, in separate industry-specific versions, including retail, financial services, consumer packaged goods, telecommunications and automotive.

With the latest release of Avista DSS, MMA continues to help marketers integrate advanced marketing analytics into their planning process to improve their bottom line. “The new release of Avista will improve the way marketers build their marketing plans and media schedules,” said John Nardone, MMA Chief Client Officer. “For the first time marketers will understand the optimal amount to spend on each brand, product and media tactic, the ideal timing for that investment, and what results to expect.

“The new capabilities of Avista continue to deliver on marketers’ need to directly tie marketing activities to business results,” said Ed See, MMA Chief Operating Officer. “Based on our first release of Avista, our clients are already transforming their marketing processes to continually measure and improve results. The second release puts even more powerful tools in their hands to improve their marketing performance.“

Launched in July 2005, Avista DSS was the first fully-integrated managed service to provide marketers with the ability to manage marketing ROI on a continuous basis. Its on-demand analytic tools support scenario planning, optimization, forecasting, portfolio allocation, continuous tracking and diagnosis of marketing performance to help companies generate
the maximum return from their marketing investment.

Avista by MMA has been selected as part of Forrester Research’s Marketing Technology Framework (a best of class technology) and as one of Gartner, Inc.’s Cool Technologies for 2006.

Avista DSS is delivered as a web-based managed service that includes: On-demand analytic tools, continuously updated and integrated data, and econometric marketing mix models that are built and maintained throughout the year. Benefits to clients include the ability to maximize the return on marketing investment, deliver highly accurate forecasts, respond quickly to market changes and improve the alignment among marketing, sales and finance.

There are no unique technical requirements. Users simply access the service through a standard web browser.