VNU Partners with Gawker Media to publish Gizmodo, the “One of a Kind” Gadget Blog across 7 Territories in Europe

HAARLEM, The Netherlands — September 30, 2005 — VNU, a leading global information and media company, announced the launch of its partnership with Gawker Media, an independent media company located in New York, which publishes a stable of over a dozen weblogs, including the popular gadget weblog Gizmodo.com. In a licensing agreement, the two companies have agreed to publish Gizmodo.com across Europe with an eye towards becoming the ultimate European destination for everything gadget, gizmo, and cutting-edge consumer electronics-related. VNU will provide its local presence and its network of bloggers as well as its knowledge of the local consumer electronic players in Europe. Gawker Media provides the well-established its sharp daily content, for localization geared towards its already significant European reader base, and the established Gizmodo brand. .

Under the terms of the partnership, Gizmodo’s content will be translated from English into 6 additional languages, then augmented with local coverage for each market. Besides English, Gizmodo.com now will be available in French, German, Dutch, Spanish, and Italian and covering the Belgium market in Dutch as well.  

Dominique Busso, CEO of VNU Net, said, “We believe that this partnership with Gawker Media will help us accelerate our efforts in the Blog Publishing business area. We have since the beginning of the year completed various deals that put VNU in the position to be a cutting edge player in the Web 2.0 market, and this deal attached with our RSS Reader and Reader Expert Blogs initiatives will help us to embrace this new bottom-up user generated world of publishing.”  

Added Gaby Darbyshire, Director of Gawker Media, , “We’re thrilled to be working with VNU, the leading technology media company in Europe, to bring Gizmodo’s content to a new continent of readers. VNU’s networks of technology publications and websites will provide unparalleled help to roll out our award-winning brand in Europe. These European versions of Gizmodo.com aren’t just translated, : they’re internationalized and localized, providing best of breed European market product information in addition to our US originated content.”  

About VNUnet and VNU VNUnet sites reach over 7 millions unique users per month. VNU Net is VNU’s one-stop shop to gather information and news about trends, products and software in the IT world, including solid analysis from VNU’s leading print brands such as Computing, Computable and ComputerActive. VNU is constantly striving to expand on this base with partnerships such as this one with Gawker Media.

VNU is a global information and media company with leading market positions and recognized brands in marketing information (ACNielsen), media measurement and information (Nielsen Media Research) and business information (Billboard, The Hollywood Reporter, Computing, Intermediair). VNU is active in more than 100 countries, with headquarters in Haarlem, the Netherlands and New York, USA. The company employs 36,000 people. Total revenues amount to EUR 3.9 billion in 2003. VNU is listed on the Euronext Amsterdam (ASE: VNU) stock exchange. For more information, please visit the VNU website at http://www.vnu.com.

About Gizmodo and Gawker Media

Gizmodo is a web magazine dedicated to everything related to gadgets, gizmos, and cutting-edge consumer electronics. Its influential audience stops by frequently to check out the latest news, reviews and recommendations for products including laptops, cell phones, PDAs, digital cameras, home entertainment and more. Widely viewed as an authority on the latest trends in the gadget and tech industry, Gizmodo has in excess of a 1.5 monthly readers worldwide. Gizmodo has been named one of the 5 Best Tech Blogs by Forbes, was the winner of the 2005 Bloggy for Best Technology Blog, and is frequently reviewed and cited in the maintstream technology press.

Gawker Media is an independent media company located in New York City, which publishes a stable of over a dozen weblogs on topics including media gossip (Gawker.com), politics (Wonkette.com), Hollywood (Defamer.com), and gadgets (Gizmodo.com). Gawker Media titles in aggregate draw more than 4.5 million unique visitors, and over 37 million pageviews, per month.