SideStep announced both new and expanded marketing
agreements with seven leading ground transportation providers, including
Dollar Rent A Car, Thrifty Car Rental, Amtrak and Hertz.
Key campaign elements will include: targeted advertising, featured specials and email marketing.

“We aim to stay close to our customers, and SideStep helps us to achieve
this by encouraging more consumers to use the Enterprise.com site,” said
Scott Shuler, Assistant Vice President, Enterprise Rent-A-Car. “

“SideStep offers its partners a broad range of marketing programs, from
email marketing to targeted, in-product advertising,” said Jim Price,
SideStep’s Vice President, Ground Transportation. “And with more than 3.5
million unique users each month, SideStep enables marketers to reach more
prospects than all other players in travel search combined. As these
partnerships confirm, SideStep delivers.”

Online search advertising is positioned for significant growth. Industry
analysts predict that US online advertising will grow fifty-three percent
from $11.5 billion in 2005 to $17.6 billion in 2008, while total
advertising in the US is expected to grow ten percent from $278.5 billion
to $307 billion for the same period. Comparatively, paid search is
projected to grow thirty-seven percent in 2005 alone, from $3.5 billion in
2004 for $4.8 billion in 2005.
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