Ovation TV and KickApps Win 'Best Social Community' at SAMMY Awards

Ovation TV and KickApps Win 'Best Social Community' at SAMMY Awards

NEW YORK, Sept. 23 /PRNewswire/ -- Ovation TV, the only multi-platform network dedicated to art and contemporary culture, and KickApps, the industry's first complete Social Media publishing solution, were the winners of the "Best Social Community" Award at the 1st Annual SAMMY Awards on September 17. The SAMMY Awards honors overall excellence and breakthrough achievement in Social Advertising, Media and Marketing. The SAMMYs are presented by DM2, the publisher of digiday:DAILY and host of digital marketing events, including digiday:SOCIAL and the Digital Publishing and Advertising Conference.

"Our winners, such as Ovation TV for Best Social Community, raised the bar for everyone in this medium," said Nick Friese, CEO of DM2 Media. "Anyone who wants to make an impact in social media marketing has to start by aspiring to the kind of creativity and craftsmanship of the masters like KickApps and Ovation TV."

The KickApps-driven online community allowed OvationTV.com to fulfill an important part of the network's overall mission: inspiring the Ovation TV audience to put art into their life each day. Community members are now sharing, critiquing and encouraging each other, and members and their art are regularly featured on Ovation TV.

"In 2008, Ovation TV partnered with KickApps to power its online community with the goal of allowing people who love art to participate with the brand," said Megan Smith, Community Manager, Digital Media, and Ovation TV. "Since then, members have uploaded more than 100,000 works of art. Given that our category is very participatory, we knew we could engage our audience in a substantive way. KickApps helped us find a natural and authentic way to do just that and the response has been incredible."

As a result of launching its social community, in less than a year Ovation TV's online traffic shot up by 145 percent, page views jumped 311 percent, and the average time spent by users on the site quadrupled.

"The Ovation TV community is the perfect example of the integral role of social media in growing and engaging an audience," said Alex Blum, CEO, KickApps. "The key to success has been the way Ovation TV has programmed activities that compel the community to participate, and using the KickApps platform, enable them to express themselves and connect with other members that share a passion for all forms of art. We couldn't be happier to receive this award and congratulate the Ovation TV team."

The OvationTV.com/community site features media uploads, blogs and in-depth discussions, which promote the exchange of art and ideas generated by community members. The community has also boosted ad inventory, expanded the potential for direct sales and enhanced the network's affiliate sales proposition. In addition, activity on the site has generated both content and promotional opportunities for the channel. For example, an Ovation TV-authored blog post about self-published books inspired a collective of members to publish a book of their own art called Anthology of Friends. Five editions have since been released.

About Ovation TV: Ovation TV is the only multi-platform network devoted to art and contemporary culture. The network creates and curates one-of-a-kind programming about all the art people enjoy most, from the popular to the avant-garde and everything in between. The channel reaches a national audience of 33 million households through carriage on DirecTV (channel 274), Dish Network (channel 157) and on cable and telco systems in major markets across the country. Ovation TV's programming is also available on video on demand (in both standard and high definition) in the US. Ovation TV's popular website (http://www.ovationtv.com/) is a dynamic experience, featuring information about local and national happenings in the art world, as well as a vibrant community of artists who have uploaded over 80,000 pieces of original art.

About KickApps: Selected by BusinessWeek readers as Best of the Web 2008, KickApps provides brands, enterprises and web publishers with solutions that enable social, interactive, dynamic, distributed and data-informed web experiences. KickApps solutions consist of a suite of hosted social and media applications and services that are used by some of the world's largest websites and brands to grow & engage their online audiences and foster deeper relationships with customers. Clients include: Budget Travel, CW Television, Guinness World Records, Special Olympics, HBO, Cinemax, Cox Television, the Phoenix Suns, the New York Knicks, the New York Rangers and thousands of other sites. For more information, visit www.kickapps.com and www.kickdeveloper.com.

Source: Ovation TV

CONTACT: Patricia Frith Marketing, +1-818-876-0480,
pfmarketing@roadrunner.com, for Ovation TV; or Michael Chin, Senior Vice
President, Marketing of KickApps, +1-646-657-8112, cell, +1-415-990-8306

Web Site: http://www.ovationtv.com/
http://www.kickapps.com/
http://www.kickdeveloper.com/

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