Pepperjam expanding its reach

WILKES-BARRE – Rapidly growing Internet marketing agency Pepperjam has stepped its business up a notch by partnering with online advertising giant DoubleClick Inc.

Pepperjam President Kristopher Jones said that adopting DoubleClick’s DART platform will allow the local company to serve new clients of all sizes.

“The idea is not only to attract larger Fortune 500-type clients,” Jones said, but those that spend less than $10,000 a month on Internet marketing.

“Up until this point we’ve been challenged in our ability to take on smaller clients,” he said, because Pepperjam lacked the manpower and time to support them. “This allows us to do that.”

The new technology streamlines and automates the core components of online marketing, Jones said, allowing businesses to see in real time which products and advertisements are attracting interest. Without that ability, “there’s a lot of room for error,” he said.

The DoubleClick platform had previously been available only to large partners such as national advertising agencies or store chains.

The switch to DoubleClick has already borne fruit. Jones said Pepperjam signed up Upromise and a unit of the Nordstrom department store chain as clients in deals negotiated under the assumption that Pepperjam would adopt the DoubleClick platform.

The tie to DoubleClick puts Pepperjam in company with Google Inc., which announced in April that it will purchase DoubleClick for $3.1 billion.

“It positions us with a multibillion-dollar company,” Jones said. “It takes our Internet marketing offering to a new level.”

Pepperjam, founded in 1999 and now housed in the Innovation Center @ Wilkes-Barre on South Main Street, already was one of the fastest-growing companies in the nation.

The company was ranked 293rd on the Inc. 500 list in 2006 and Jones expects to be included again this year. He said that through April the company had recorded more revenue than in all of 2006.

The new alliance “will absolutely contribute to our growth,” he said. Pepperjam’s employment has increased as well, and Jones expects the head count to approach 100 later this year.

To support its expansion, Pepperjam closed a “pretty decent” financing round about a month ago, Jones said. The financial partners are American Express Financial and M&T Bank.