Bidz.com Selects Mercent to Optimize Online Advertising for Buyz.com Branded Site

Mercent Drives New Customers and Sales to Leading Jewelry Retailer


SEATTLE, WA--(Marketwire - October 23, 2008) - Mercent™, a provider of online marketing software and services for retail merchants, today announced that Bidz.com (NASDAQ: BIDZ), a leading online jewelry retailer, has selected Mercent to drive traffic and sales to the Buyz.com fixed-price online jewelry store.

Bidz.com launched the Buyz.com online storefront this year to provide high quality gold, silver and brand name jewelry and watches at fixed prices. Using the on-demand Mercent Retail platform allows the company to efficiently and profitably promote its products on all the leading comparison shopping engines and affiliate networks.

"We're pleased to count Bidz.com among the Internet Retailer Top 100 clients utilizing Mercent Retail to improve online product marketing," said Eric Best, Mercent CEO. "We look forward to driving higher-margin, higher-value transactions through the Mercent Shopping Network to Buyz.com."

"With Mercent Retail, we've been able to ramp our number of transactions per day and revenue generated on Buyz.com in only six months of operation," said Leon Kuperman, Chief Technology Officer and Vice President of Business Development for Bidz.com. "Mercent's technology provides us additional insight and control necessary to achieve substantial ROI from comparison shopping engines sooner than we expected."

Ranked 74th on the Internet Retailer 2008 Top 500 List, Bidz.com is the second largest online jewelry retailer worldwide. The company experienced substantial growth in 2007, increasing revenues 42% year-over year to $187.1 million. Performance in 2008 has likewise been impressive, with Bidz achieving $116.9 million in revenues for the first two quarters, representing a 39% increase year-over-year.

Mercent helps leading retailers drive revenues and profits through more than 50 ecommerce channels, including comparison shopping engines, transactional marketplaces, paid inclusion programs, and affiliate networks. Through Mercent's on-demand marketing platform, Mercent Retail, merchants manage key aspects of online merchandising including automatically optimizing for profitability, inventory, and other business goals with substantially less time and effort.

Information regarding Mercent Retail shopping feed and paid inclusion management technology, Mercent Performance marketing services, and the complete list of online marketing channels in the Mercent Shopping Network is available at www.mercent.com.

About Bidz.com

Bidz.com, founded in 1998, is an online retailer of jewelry. Bidz offers its products through a live auction format as well as a fixed price online retail store, Buyz.com. Bidz.com's auctions are also available in Spanish and Arabic. To learn more about Bidz.com visit its website at www.bidz.com.

About Mercent

Mercent provides online marketing technology and services to help retail merchants optimize performance across online marketing channels. Mercent's on-demand platform, Mercent Retail, connects existing retail management systems and The Mercent Shopping Network, a network of more than 50 online shopping destinations including transactional marketplaces such as Amazon.com and SHOP.COM, comparison shopping engines (CSEs) such as Shopping.com and Shopzilla, paid inclusion programs like Yahoo! Search Submit Pro, and affiliate marketing programs such as LinkShare and Performics. Mercent Retail makes it easy for merchants to increase revenue and gross margins by promoting the right products with the right merchandising offers and placement using optimized product data feeds to these key retail channels. Mercent customers include Bidz.com, Brookstone, 1-800-Flowers, Bass Pro Shops, Celebrate Express, GUESS?, Levenger, L'Occitane USA, Redcats Group, REI, and other leading retailers. Mercent is an Amazon.com Certified System Integrator, Buy.com Gold Certified Partner, SHOP.COM Certified Data Feed Provider, certified Google Product Search Partner and Yahoo! Search Submit Pro certified feed provider. Founded by veterans of Amazon.com, Mercent is a venture-funded company based in Seattle, WA. For more information, visit www.mercent.com.