Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
The FAN Wins Again
Fox Audience Network (FAN) scored another client win for its media buying platform as WPP Group signs on and the audience buying trend with agency holding companies drives forward. Two weeks ago FAN announced a deal with Omnicom that appeared focused on offering buying services across FAN properties. Yesterday’s announcement appears to be about mutual, data integration which will include WPP’s Compete features in FAN’s Audience Insights platform; “WPP Digital’s Media Innovation Group will incorporate elements of the FAN media planning suite into ZAP, its proprietary digital advertising platform”; and “FAN will aggregate additional retail and other information on an anonymous basis from Kantar Media (Compete is a division) into its Audience Insights platform.” Read the release.
CBS Says Display Improving
Les Moonves said on CBS Corp.’s Q3 earnings conference call yesterday that “We are seeing display advertising improve in the fourth quarter and given our online portfolio, I have every reason to believe we will be a leading beneficiary in that up-turn as well.” That’s a good thing – as Gavin O’Malley reports on MediaPost that interactive revenues declined 15% in Q3 but the interactive group did post a small, but slightly bigger, year-over-year quarterly profit. Read more. View the Seeking Alpha call transcript here.
ad:tech And DSP Strategy
Great to see all the people at ad:tech, but it’s obvious that many attendees knew very little about the new platform buying world. For now, it isn’t as sexy as, say, social media, twitter and free cocktails at a swanky New York club. Give it time, people! It would seem from here that as success with these new demand-side platform (DSP) strategies becomes well-publicized, as RTB’s potential is increasingly harnessed and as agencies begin to pour dollars into their DSPs, then we’ll start to see industry-wide excitement (late 2010?). Look out Twitter!
Disintermediation Talk
More Fox news. According to Mediaweek’s Mike Shields, CEO Jon Miller said during his ad:tech New York keynote that he believes most ad networks are going “to be disintermediated…and move to an exchange model.” Miller also positioned Fox Audience Network (FAN) as a more premium, audience buying opportunity. Read more. Also, read By Ty McMahan’s coverage in The Wall Street Journal.
Safeguard Scientifics On MediaMath
Safeguard Scientifics who were a leading investor in MediaMath’s latest round of financing gave the DSP a “shout-out” in its Q3 earnings conference call on Friday according to the Seeking Alpha transcript: “MediaMath serves billions of highly targeted ads per month on behalf of more than 20 top tier advertising agencies. Safeguard deployed $6.5 million of capital in July of 2009 and we owned an 18% stake in MediaMath.” Read more.
New Privacy Plug-In
The Network Advertising Initiative (NAI), an industry org containing many of the largest ad networks, said that a new, freely-available, browser plug-in will allow consumers to easily opt-out of any cookies being set in their browser. BlueKai’s technology solution for persistent opt out – called Ahi – has been has been incorporated into the plug-in. Read the release (PDF). And/or, download the plug-in. (Ghostery is still my favorite plug-in for this sort of thing. Get it for Firefox here.)
Google Privacy Dashboard
In addition to NAI’s initiative, Google announced its new privacy dashboard which let’s you see and control what Google knows about you across Google Products like Gmail and YouTube. As TechCrunch points out, this is not the same as data collected by DoubleClick, for example. For this, the user needs to go to the Google Ad Preferences manager to see what’s up. Read more on TechCrunch. Or, see your Google Dashboard now (requires Google Account login).
Online Radio Growing
Have you targeted online radio audience today? Perhaps you should. Carol Krol of DM News covers the latest report from SNL Kagan looking at the online radio industry which concludes that it has grown 12% year-over-year to $530 million in ad revenues and looks to reach over $800 million in 2013. Read more.
Iphone Displaying Ads
Have you targeted mobile audience today? Greystripe, a mobile display and game advertising network with investors ranging from GE to Disney, says that it has inked a deal for full-screen display ads within mobile developer Tap Joy, which will integrate Greystripe’s display ads in their software developer kit (SDK). In the release, Greystripe says its mobile ads are “proven to deliver a higher CPM than the basic small, static banner ads.” Read the release.
Google TV Adds Audience Targets
Have you targeted Digital TV audience today? MediaPost’s Joe Mandese reports that following Datalogix recent deal with Nielsen which brings Nielsen’s PRIZM audience segments online, Google is bringing the segments to its TV ad platform. Read more. Why wouldn’t they bring this to AdWords or a future iteration of its media planning tool – and aimed at buyers of audience on the DoubleClick Ad Exchange?
Digital Out-Of-Home Taking Off
Have you targeted DOOH audience today? Katy Bachman writes in Mediaweek that “digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising will reach $2.2 billion this year, hitting $3.7 billion by 2013 according to a BIA/Kelsey forecast released this week.” With a future 13% annual growth rate for DOOH, this easily outpaces traditional’s expected 1% growth rate. Read more.
Ad Pepper Protecting
ad pepper media announced that it will begin to offer Sitescreen, a semantic/contextual solution that ensures agencies are able to run client campaigns in “brand-safe” environments. The SiteScreen for Agencies platform is the latest in a string of industry, risk management solutions. Read more on ad pepper’s offering.
Morgan On TV’s Juice
Simulmedia’s (formerly Tacoda’s) Dave Morgan argues in his weekly MediaPost Online Spin column that TV will be well-served by the power of technology and its ability to target consumers. Morgan writes that among many of TVs advantages, “There just aren’t any viable alternatives anymore when it comes to delivering really big reach, a high level of audience engagement and the ability to “cume” that big audience really fast.” Read more.
