Avenue A/Razorfish

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The correct title of this article is Avenue A | Razorfish. The substitution or omission of a | is due to technical restrictions.

Avenue A | Razorfish Inc. an interactive agency in the U.S. and an operating unit of Seattle-based aQuantive, Inc. Avenue A | Razorfish works with leading brands to build large-scale websites and the digital marketing programs that drive traffic to them. The company works across the spectrum of digital services, including digital advertising, web design & development, intranets / extranets, search engine marketing, email marketing, and emerging media.

Avenue A | Razorfish employs about 1,100 digital specialists in the U.S. through offices in New York, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Portland, Boston, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Austin, and Fort Lauderdale. In 2005-2006, it expanded overseas through acquisitions in London, Sydney, and Frankfurt.^{[citation needed]} Avenue A | Razorfish clients include Verizon, Capital One, AstraZeneca, Best Buy, Carnival Cruise Lines, CondéNet, Ford Motor Company, Kraft, Kodak, Microsoft, and the U.S. Navy.

1 Products and Services
2 Beginnings
3 Spyware?
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Products and Services

Avenue A | Razorfish's offerings include: digital advertising & promotion; web development; e-business strategy; email/eCRM; search engine marketing; campaign/site analytics; web technology architecture & development; enterprise portals; and advanced media (e.g., online video, social media). Each engagement is staffed with a mix of strategists, experience designers, media planners/buyers, copywriters, technologists, and account/project managers who bring an average of ten years’ of experience in the digital realm. It is the largest single buyer of web media ($418 mm) and paid search ($130 mm). Ad Age named Avenue A | Razorfish 2005 media agency of the year, while Forrester Research ranked it as a top-tier web design agency. Its clients include CondéNet, Proctor & Gamble, Apple, adidas, JPMorgan Chase, and Wyeth Pharmaceuticals. Its work for Mercedes-AMG won the 2006 Webby Award for Best Automotive Site, and its recent redesign of NYTimes.com has garnered critical praise from the industry and blogosphere alike.

[edit] Beginnings

Razorfish was founded in New York in 1995 by Craig Kanarick and Jeff Dachis with the motto "Everything that can be digital will be." .

At its peak, the company had $260 M in annual revenue^{[citation needed]}, and a market capitalization of over $6 B. As a testament to the company's desire to be a "one firm firm" the company flew virtually the entire staff to enjoy a weekend-long working session in Las Vegas to get people working together.^{[citation needed]}

The company was and is a leader^{[citation needed]} in the development of interactive services, and pioneered much of the lexicon and working methodologies we take for granted now in the development of internet based applications and services.^{[citation needed]}

Among the company's former names were Razorfish, Inc. and when it was acquired by SBI Group (formerly SBI and Company) in 2004 it was renamed to SBI.Razorfish. The company was again renamed as Avenue A | Razorfish when the SBI.Razorfish division of SBI Group (formerly SBI and Company) was acquired by aQuantive, Inc in 2004.

SBI also purchased assets from Scient/iXL, Lante, MarchFirst (formerly USWeb & CKS Group), and Excelerate; many of these companies' employees still survive today as part of the new Avenue A | Razorfish team^{[citation needed]}.

The Avenue A | Razorfish combination resulted in the largest interactive agency ^[1] which married a pioneer in web marketing with a pioneer in site development. Its clients partner with Avenue A | Razorfish to leverage the web and digital media to transform their businesses online and to build customer relationships, from awareness through to loyalty.

[edit] Spyware?

As part of their digital advertising service, Atlas, a sister company of Avenue A | Razorfish, writes cookies to users' machines that are used to track their non-personally identifiable data and behavior, to allow for the delivery of more targeted advertising. These cookies are or have been listed by several spyware removal programs including Spybot^[2], the Computer Associates Spyware Information Center ^[3] and the Scan Spyware online spyware removal tool ^[4]. The Avenue A | Razorfish privacy notice indicates that the company "may collect information about user interaction with client Web sites and provide that information and our analysis to the client" and the type of information that is collected is not specified.^[5]. Avenue A | Razorfish directs users that are concerned about how Avenue A clients might use information they collect to the privacy policies of their clients' websites.^[6]