In case you haven’t checked the Business Wire this morning…Doubleclick announced a major technology partnership with Pepperjam.

With the addition of Doubleclick’s unparalleled technology, Pepperjam becomes the most sophisticated and cutting edge full-service internet marketing agency in the world.

This is a significant milestone in the history of Pepperjam’s technology offering and we are honored to be associated with Doubleclick and excited to pass the value of the partnership to our growing client base.

Truth is we’ve been in negotiations with Doubleclick dating back before Google’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) $3.1 Billion acquisition. In addition, we were in private negotiations with numerous other top ad management and technology vendors, including aQuantive (NASDAQ: AQNT), who was recently purchased by Microsoft.

I’ve included the body of the press release below, which was sent out by Doubleclick this morning.

For press inquires please contact Ojas Naik, Vice President, Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide at 917-406-7159 or ojas.naik@ogilvypr.com.

June 07, 2007 09:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time

Pepperjam Selects DoubleClick as Exclusive Ad Management Solution for Its Rapidly Growing Client-Base
Pepperjam Switches from Atlas to DoubleClick DART® Ad Management Integrated Platform for Search, Rich Media and Display

NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–DoubleClick Inc., the premier provider of digital marketing technology and services, today announced that Pepperjam, an Inc. 500 company and industry leading full service Internet marketing agency, has selected DoubleClick’s integrated DART® platform to meet the digital marketing needs of Pepperjam and its clients. Pepperjam is a rapidly growing agency that specializes in search-engine marketing, affiliate marketing management and online media buying and planning. The agency serves clients in the fashion, entertainment, education, retail and consumer packaged goods industries, such as The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, 1-800-PetMeds (PETS: NASDAQ), and Sesame Street.

DoubleClick’s integrated DART platform enables Pepperjam to serve display and rich media ads and conduct effective search marketing campaigns while also providing deep analysis and reporting across all digital channels to ensure Pepperjam has a holistic view of campaign results. Through the use of DoubleClick’s DART platform, including DART for Advertisers (DFA), DART Search and DoubleClick Rich Media, Pepperjam collaborates with its clients to seamlessly integrate digital advertising into overall marketing efforts. The integrated solution gives Pepperjam clients the ability to manage all their digital marketing with greater efficiency and flexibility.

“We made the switch to DoubleClick because they offer a fully-integrated ad management platform to seamlessly manage all digital marketing channels,” said Kristopher B. Jones, president and CEO of Pepperjam. “It became a burden to manage multiple products for each marketing channel. DoubleClick instead provides cutting-edge technology and in-depth analysis enabling us to focus on serving our clients.”

“Pepperjam is growing tremendously, adding new clients each week and we are thrilled that they have decided to streamline their ad management with DoubleClick,” said Jason Bigler, vice president of product management at DoubleClick. “The combination of DFA, Search and Rich Media gives Pepperjam a single platform to create world-class advertising campaigns that produce great results and allow Pepperjam to achieve operational excellence.”

DFA provides Pepperjam with a hosted, enterprise-class advertising management and serving solution to help their clients reach their online goals efficiently and effectively. DFA offers sophisticated targeting capabilities, ad serving technology, robust reporting and rich media capabilities. As a highly advanced ad management platform on the market today, DFA allows marketers to centrally manage creative assets, traffic more compelling ads, track results beyond impressions and clicks to understand conversion, improve ROI and branding and automatically optimize creative to improve results.

Pepperjam’s powerful search-engine marketing management solution will rely on the Web-based DART Search, a solution for all aspects of creating and managing search advertising. It is integrated with DFA, so Pepperjam clients get a clear view of results across both display and search advertising, enabling them to boost efficiency, effectiveness and ROI. The Web-based DART Search system is integrated with leading engines so Pepperjam clients have insight into what’s happening from first bid to final report, across multiple search engines. Additionally, DART Search is synchronized with DFA, so Pepperjam clients can gain a clear view of their results.

With DoubleClick Rich Media, Pepperjam can easily collaborate with their agency partners, publishers and advertisers to produce campaigns that garner great results. DoubleClick Rich Media integrates the best of interactive design, ad serving and reporting into a sophisticated integrated rich media offering.

DoubleClick’s world-class service model provides unparalleled support for Pepperjam by giving them direct access to technical account managers and specialists to help ensure campaigns are up and running seamlessly.

About Pepperjam

Pepperjam is an industry leading full-service internet marketing agency offering management services in the areas of search-engine marketing (PPC / SEO), affiliate marketing, and online media planning and buying. Pepperjam is a 2006 Inc. 500 Company (#293) and has been in business since 1999.

Learn more at www.pepperjamsearch.com

About DoubleClick Inc.

DoubleClick is a provider of digital marketing technology and services. The world’s top marketers, publishers and agencies utilize DoubleClick’s expertise in ad serving, rich media, video, search and affiliate marketing to help them make the most of the digital medium. From its position at the nerve center of digital marketing, DoubleClick provides superior insights and insider knowledge to its customers. Headquartered in New York, and with 17 offices and development hubs and 15 data centers worldwide, the company employs more than 1,200 people and delivers billions of digital communications every day. Learn more at www.doubleclick.com

WOW! What a whirlwind of a week, first we have a wildly popular YouTube Video and as a result of that we have won a years supply of free energy drink from Who’s Your Daddy? and now we have a great video from Michelle Foley.

Welcome to Video #16 in the “Meet the Pepperjam Team” series.

This week on Meet the Pepperjam Team. Michelle Foley, A Senior Search Marketing Manager, tells us about her love of the finer things in life such as golfing, backpacking in Europe, studying in Spain and Cooking. Watch and Listen as Michelle tells us about her love of the NCAA Tournament, Joe Paterno, why she LOVES working at PepperJam and her love for Jam Bands. Michelle is full of Love. (Must be all that Grateful Dead)

Michelle is relatively new to the staff but you would never be able to tell based on how well she manages her accounts. She is a PSU Alum, who has come back to the area because of the great opportunities available here. Michelle brings with her worldly knowledge and a zen like attitude that has helped her to become a great account manager.

Lets take a stroll down Shakedown Street with Michelle and see what she is all about!

For those of you who don’t know the “rules” behind the Meet the Pepperjam Video Series, here they are:

Every Friday Pepperjam will post a new video interview of a member of our staff - everyone will be included - affiliates managers, executives, search-engine marketing managers, directors, software engineers, assistants, online media buyers, and interns. The person being interviewed won’t know he / she has been chosen until about 30 seconds before the interview - this way you’ll get an unrehearsed, real world look at the employee…hopefully, this will make it interesting and non-corporate, which is what we are known and respected for across the internet marketing industry.

Why are we doing this? Well, I am proud of our team and I think you’ll find them as interesting and intelligent as I do. Also, I’m a student of viral video and the social media space and I want to test the waters as it relates to what corporate america is doing (and not doing) to spread buzz and build next generation work places.

Finally, I just thought it would be cool to put some people in front of a video camera that have never done so before, have a little bit of fun, and see if Pepperjam can spread some additional buzz about why we are the leader in online marketing.

FYI - all videos will also be posted to YouTube. If you think what we are doing is outside-the-box and interesting please blog about it and share the story with the world.

Our previous videos include:

Maura Goodwin
Tara Lou
Dean Karasinski
Kim Noler (dated YouTube founder)
Stephanie Yachim
Roxy (Pepperjam’s English Bulldog)
Kris Jones
Katharine Dempsey
Ken Mohn Jr.
Mandy Foley
Tara DeGiusto
Robyn Martin
Kate Sarnak
Aaron Baker
Megan Rogan

Other fun Pepperjam Vids:
Naked Crazy Man Video
Pepperjam Adds Ping Pong Table to Pepperplex
Roxy with the Tony Robbins Beach Ball

My previous must-read post was about Shmuly Tennenhaus - an industry friend who has become a YouTube reality star. Not to be outdone by Shmuly (Shmuly’s recent YouTube video about his “Bubby” aka, grandmother has gotten over 250K visitors within the last 4-days and has been getting international press), Jeremy Schoemaker (Shoemoney) blogged today further adding fire to the speculation that Matt Cutts is leaving Google. Not sure if this story will gain the same traction that “Bubby” has for Shmuly, but I have a funny feeling that Shoemoney’s post has some serious buzz potential even if it’s unlikely that Matt will accept Pepperjam’s generous offer.

Here’s what Shoemoney did - on Monday he sent an e-mail to a small list of his friends, including myself. He posed the following question: Would you hire Matt Cutts? If you had to come up with a dollar figure to offer him what would it be? What would his job title and job description be? The other folks that responded to Shoemoney’s “top secret” e-mail included Danny Sullivan, Patrick Gavin (CEO, Text-Link-Ads.com), Aaron Wall (Author, SEOBOOK), Rand Fishkin (President, SEOMOZ), Jason Calacanis (Former CEO Weblogs INC & AOL Exec - apparently loves English Bulldogs) and others.

Anyway - there were some really interesting responses. Here was my response to Shoemoney’s question:

Kris Jones - CEO, Pepperjam

Pepperjam would hire Matt Cutts in a fraction of a second.

TITLE: President of Software Development - Search Division
JOB DESCRIPTION: Matt would manage the day-to-day operations and direction of Pepperjam’s internet software development - search division. As President, Matt would direct the overall strategy of the division and would be provided with the flexibility and resources to build a team around his vision for the future of search.
SALARY: $250K Base + Profit Sharing + Stock

As one of the fastest growing privately-held companies in the United States (Inc. Magazine, 2006), why wouldn’t Matt want to work for Pepperjam? He’d be crazy not too. Matt clearly wouldn’t go where the money is - he’s got more than he will ever need. Matt wants the flexibility and upside that a company like Pepperjam will give him. At Pepperjam he would be given free reign to build projects around his vision for the future of search. Aside from that, I just know Matt would fall in love with Roxy, Pepperjam’s English Bulldog mascot.

CLICK HERE to read all the responses (and comments) from Shoemoney’s blog. Click below to digg Shoe’s story.