Partnership with Highline Media expands coverage in the insurance and finance verticals

NAPLES, Florida - MediaBrains, a leader in business-to-business online advertising, today announced it has formed a partnership with Highline Media to build and manage online industry directories for eight of the publisher's magazine brands.

Highline Media specializes in the insurance and finance industries with magazine brands including the National Underwriter Property/Casualty and Life/Health weeklies, Claims, Tech Decisions, Insurance Advocate and Florida Underwriter.

Each magazine's online directory focuses on that publication's vertical market. Industry directories are similar to industry-specific yellow pages, a buyer's guide to help website visitors quickly and easily find providers of the products and services they are searching for.

"Working with Highline expands MediaBrains' coverage of the insurance and finance industries," says Joe Buckheit, CEO of MediaBrains. "The partnership expands the number of websites in our financial services vertical and we are pleased to have Highline on board."

Using its proprietary ad and sales management software platform, MediaBrains will build the technology platform, verify the publishers' data, expand content, optimize organic search rankings and manage advertising sales.

"We look forward to MediaBrains maximizing the potential of our industry directories, says Andrew Goodenough, President and CEO of Highline Media. "These directories are truly an innovative online data source for the insurance and finance community and for the brokers and asset managers who service it."

Industry directories appear on the publications' website and provide opportunities for advertisers to purchase Featured Listings, prominent ads that appear at the beginning of the directory, before the alphabetical listing. Featured Listings lead customers to an advertiser's business at exactly the right time: when they're researching and making purchasing decisions.

"Featured Listings are the most successful way to generate meaningful revenue from online directories," Buckheit says. "MediaBrains' success in selling low-cost Featured Listings to a large number of advertisers not only generates incremental revenue, for publishers such as Highline, but also becomes a source of valuable new leads for other forms of marketing, such as print advertising and trade show sponsorship."

Highline Media joins MediaBrains' client list of publishers including Prism Business Media, Crain Communications Inc., VNU Business Media, Bobit Business Media, CMP Media LLC, publishers of well-known magazine brands such as Automotive News, Fire Chief, Insurance and Technology and WasteAge.

About MediaBrains

MediaBrains, a leader in business-to-business online advertising, specializes in industry directories and contextual advertising and enables marketers to place advertising in industry directories and alongside relevant content on vertically-focused websites, to guarantee the most targeted leads. Formed in 1996, MediaBrains' exclusive network of online publishers covers 20 vertical markets and consists of more than 85 premium websites. For more information, call 800.627.2467 or visit www.mediabrains.com.

About Highline Media

Highline Media LLC is a company formed in October 2003 to acquire The National Underwriter Company, the leading publisher and reference provider to the insurance and financial industries. Magazine brands include the National Underwriter Property/Casualty and Life/Health weeklies, Claims, Tech Decisions, Insurance Advocate and Florida Underwriter; the reference tools TaxFacts and Fire, Casualty and Surety Bulletins, along with 150 other books and electronic products, and three conference events. In May 2004, the company added insurance and banking data assets, including regulatory, M&A and publicly traded data, from The Thomson Corporation. In the fall of 2005, Highline acquired Wealth Manager magazine from Bloomberg and Research and Futures magazines from Adams Business Media. The company's revenues now exceed $50 million and 250 employees.

The company is backed by Spire Capital, a private equity firm whose current fund is making investments totaling $260 million, and the banks Harris Nesbitt and Brown Brothers Harriman. Learn more at www.highlinemedia.com.