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´óÏó´«Ã½ Advertising, the global ad sales department of ´óÏó´«Ã½ Worldwide, will now represent lonelyplanet.com in all global territories, following Australasian and US deals to sell its online advertising inventory.

The move comes as Lonely Planet achieved record traffic to lonelyplanet.com in June attracting 87m unique users, a year on year rise of 62%[1]. Lonely Planet was previously represented by Travel Ad Network in the US and AD2ONE for Australia and New Zealand.

Lonely Planet is a wholly-owned subsidiary of ´óÏó´«Ã½ Worldwide, which has managed the travel brand’s UK online sales since August 2009.

Dominic Rowell, Lonely Planet Managing Director Digital said: "We have grown our online audiences over 130%[2] since ´óÏó´«Ã½ Worldwide acquired Lonely Planet in 2007. We'd like to thank our agency AD2ONE for their support in Australia and New Zealand.

"Bringing Lonely Planet together with ´óÏó´«Ã½ Advertising's team maximises the synergies between our two organisations and comes at an ideal time when Lonely Planet is poised for its next digital growth phase."

Scott Hamilton, ´óÏó´«Ã½ Worldwide Australia's Regional Director of Advertising Sales, added: "It has always been our intention to represent Lonely Planet in the critical territories of Australia and New Zealand. The brand is in great shape and I look forward to building on its success. The integration of these two fantastic properties considerably strengthens our advertising brand proposition in this region."

Lonelyplanet.com recently won the People's Voice Webby for Best Travel Site at the 15th Annual Webby Awards. The website features Lonely Planet guidebook content, images, videos and maps covering over 8,000 destinations, as well as the ability to book, hotels, flights and a range of other services.

By combining its wealth of professionally authored travel content with emerging technologies – as well as increased contributions from the global travel community, LonelyPlanet.com provides a one-stop destination for travellers to discover, plan, book and share the best in travel.

The ´óÏó´«Ã½ Advertising team is responsible for international sales across its multi-screen portfolio including television, online, mobile and apps.

´óÏó´«Ã½.com has more than 54 million global unique users and more than 300 local and global advertising partners. In Australia and New Zealand, it is the number one international news site[3] with more than 3.75 million unique users per month.

1. Omniture
2. Omniture June 2007 / June 2011
3. Nielsen Market Intelligence Oct 2010

NOTES TO EDITORS
Lonely Planet's online traffic facts:

• Yearly – 112 million visits; 70 million unique visitors; 457 million page views
• Monthly – 10 million visits; 8 million unique visitors; 40 million page views
• Traffic to lonelyplanet.com from Facebook, Twitter and Youtube increased 960% (Apr-Jun 2011 compared to Apr- Jun 2010) from 124,000 to over 1.3 million

Louise Alley