September 2008

The Fair Exchange emailable database tops 1,000,000

Fair Exchange has more than 4 million registered customers and offers a variety of branded offers and promotions, free games and prize draws where customers can exchange information for chances to win.

The website has rapidly met a growing demand for sophisticated and highly-targeted one-to-one communication and was recently announced as the 7th fastest growing website in the UK.

Fair Exchange and PDV remain the only free-to-play site in Europe to have paid out a £1Million jackpot to customers - and they have done it twice.

PDV, which is DMA registered and regulated, is experienced at profiling and recruiting pre-qualified and permission-based consumers into client-lead generation programmes. It also offers clients exclusivity over the data collected via their questionnaires.

The PDV database includes more than 4.2 million members.

September 2008

Troy Attwood promoted to Sales Director

Troy Attwood, who joined PDV only six months ago to head its sales teams, has been promoted to sales director.

Attwood took up the appointment after five years with DLG and with nine years of strategic new business sales experience working with clients including Barclays, HBOS, IPC Media, Renault and News International.

July 2008

Fair Exchange joins the top ten fastest growing websites in the UK

Nielsen Online, a service of The Nielsen Company reveals the fastest growing websites in the UK at the halfway point of the year.

Saving money a strong theme amongst the UK’s fastest growing websites. The Top 10 contains reward site Fair Exchange, a shopping comparison site (FindStuff) and a classifieds site for jobs, cars and homes (Trovit).

Alex Burmaster, Internet Analyst, Nielsen Online, comments: “Sites tapping into consumer concerns about the economy, giving them the opportunity to save money, dominate the fastest growing list. Coupons and reward sites, classifieds and shopping comparison engines are obvious examples”.

January 2008

PDV restructures to build on 40% revenue and profits increase; Burey takes over as MD as Hill takes the chair

Online marketing specialist PDV, which last year launched a highly successful FREE DVD Club and increased both turnover and profits by 40per cent, is making boardroom changes to drive further growth in real-time lead generation.

Bill Burey, who joined last summer as development director, when PDV acquired NDL Realtime, has been promoted to managing director.

Derick Hill, the previous MD who founded the company in 2000, has replaced Wanda Goldwag (who has left the company to pursue new opportunities) as executive chairman.

"We are homing in on the Holy Grail of lead generation - the ability to supply our client advertisers with sustainable volumes of genuinely interested consumers who are both willing and able to be contacted in real time. To do this, we intend to continue to provide consumer members with a genuine and valuable incentive to discuss their current needs and interests with reputable suppliers.

"Bill's expertise and experience makes him an ideal person to drive the company's expansion at this exciting time," says Hill, who predicts a vibrant year for companies able to supply sustainable volumes of high quality, responsive and permission-based leads in a market where online trading is growing rapidly, consumer intrusion is causing damage and existing contact strategies are failing.

October 2007

Free-DVD-Club launch gives boost to opt-in lists

The launch of an online Free DVD Club is set to boost substantially the quantity of fresh, permission-based data available to marketers.

Fair Exchange, the PDV-owned, online free entertainment portal which generates tens of thousands of bespoke marketing sales leads each month, has launched its Free DVD Club offering consumers aged 18 and over free DVDs in return for opting in to receiving marketing messages and completing questionnaires A wide range of titles are on offer, including feature films of every type, from children's to horror, plus music and sports.

The technical resource to launch the free-DVD-Club was acquired in PDV's takeover of NDL Realtime in May.

"PDV will soon be launching even more free entertainment services," said Derick Hill, PDV's MD.

"We're going to continue to widen the appeal of our "do stuff, get stuff" proposition by finding ever more tempting offers to attract more and more site visitors - free books and free music are in the pipeline.

"Our clients get a pretty good deal too because they don't pay a penny until a consumer expresses an interest in a brand or product," added Hill, "and each time we widen the appeal of the entertainment we offer we can expect to generate hundreds of thousands of new members, which means more leads for marketers.".

September 2007

Internet millionaire prize winner won’t change her 2-job lifestyle.

Counter supervisor Phung Ngu, 29, is a self-confessed workaholic, which is why she won’t be giving up her day job at the Halifax, or her second job at the Loomis cash centre, despite winning £1million on Fair Exchange’s Daily Draw free game website.

She will also continue to play every day on the other various Fair Exchange free games – just as she has done for the last three years: “I enjoy it and have previously won various small cash prizes,” says Phung.

Fair Exchange and PDV remain the only free-to-play site in Europe to have actually paid out £1million jackpots to customers...TWICE.

Because its member acquisition programme focuses on building ongoing relationships, rather than relying solely on new member recruitment, PDV members are highly responsive to marketing communications and requests for detailed personal data.

PDV has always been committed to a fair exchange policy which offers consumers access to the Fair Points loyalty scheme in return for their information, which incentivises and rewards continued interaction.

September 2007

PDV launches Fair-Exchange.com

The Fair Exchange consumer entertainment portal promises consumers; "Do stuff; Get stuff", because PDV rewards site visitors for their online activity by offering free entry to various prize games and competitions - including six free chances to win more than GBP1million every day PDV is still the only European free-to-play draw to have ever paid out a GBP1 million prize.

"The Fair Exchange rebranding of our free-to-play websites, including The Daily Draw, Fruitillion and Chooseaprize will put the customer at the core of all our content offerings and reinforce the message that they will be rewarded for agreeing to receive specific marketing information," said Derick Hill, MD of PDV.

"The new brand fits our needs perfectly since we do exactly what the Fair Exchange name says we do".

The relaunch has been timed to allow new entertainment-driven sites and extended real-time data services - accelerated by PDV's recent acquisition of NDL Realtime - to be launched under the new brand.

July 2007

Online data pioneer PDV buys NDL Realtime

Online permission-driven marketing company PDV, famous for its Daily Draw, and Fair Exchange consumer websites, has acquired NDL Realtime from its founders Tony Coad and Bill Burey.

The acquisition marks a milestone in PDV’s ongoing expansion of its on- and offline consumer data collection and interaction propositions. The purchase of NDL will deliver additional clients and revenue streams to PDV – enabling it to be the No 1 supplier of responsive consumer data in the UK.

NDL Realtime delivers high-value, real-time customer data acquired via relationships with media owners such as the Sun and the Daily Telegraph. Its clients include npower, Land Rover, Castle Cover and British Gas.

Tony Coad and Bill Burey, both high-profile marketing personalities, have long championed real-time, consumer (rather than marketing)-led sales.

In 1985, Coad founded NDL International which was destined to become the UK’s biggest lifestyle database company. In 1994, having become the Calyx Group, it was sold to VNU for £49million to form Claritas UK (now known as Acxiom).

Coad and Burey have joined the PDV senior management team as business development directors. Burey will take a seat on the PDV Board.

Fair Exchange background notes.

Fair Exchange is owned and operated by PDV Ltd, one of the UK's largest privately-owned online permission-based marketing companies.

The site has more than 3.2 million registered customers and offers a variety of free games which customers can play to win a variety of prizes - from GBP1,000,000 to cars and cameras. Customer play for free as games and prizes are played by exchanging information for chances to win.

Its new Free DVD Club has further boosted membership and site traffic. The site, which was recently rebranded and redesigned, was founded in 2000 by Derick Hill and Smedvig Capital, launching its first consumer website in 2001. This website, The Daily Draw, rapidly met a growing demand for sophisticated and highly-targeted one-to-one communication and was recently integrated into the Fair Exchange website.

Fair Exchange and PDV remain the only free-to-play site in Europe to have actually paid out a GBP1million jackpot to customers - and they have done it twice.

PDV, which is DMA registered and regulated, is experienced at profiling and recruiting pre-qualified and permission-based consumers into client-lead generation programmes. It also offers clients exclusivity over the data collected via their questionnaires.

The PDV database includes more than 3.2 million members (with a six month active base of over 650,000).

Because its member acquisition programme focuses on building ongoing relationships, rather than relying solely on new member recruitment, PDV members are highly responsive to marketing communications and requests for detailed personal data.

PDV has always been committed to a fair exchange policy which offers consumers access to the Fair Points loyalty scheme in return for their information, which incentivises and rewards continued interaction.

PDV also caps the number of mailings each member receives and operates a rigorous privacy policy.