Buddy Media Updates Social Ads Platform; Twitter Discovers; FakePreRoll.com

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.

Engaging With Facebook Ads

Buddy Media acquired social ads company Brighter Option at the end of February (AdExchanger Q&A) and already the newly-acquired company is part of a major product launch. Inside Facebook’s Brittany Darwell covers the new Facebook API-infused ad plaform dubbed “BuyBuddy”: “Buddy Media tracks conversions off-Facebook and generates some of its own engagement metrics for the content brands share through the platform. Bringing content marketing and content advertising into a single system will allow advertisers to better optimize their campaigns for different actions.” Read more.

Discover-ing Twitter Ads

Former Google AdSense product guy and current Twitter VP of product, Satya Patel, makes an appearance on the Twitter blog. At first glance, it doesn’t appear that he’s introducing anything that could possibly be construed as advertising-related – but this is AdExchanger, so, let’s go to the Twitter blog! Patel discusses the new “Discover” feature for the popular micro-blogging platform: “The Discover tab makes it easy to discover information that matters to you without having to follow additional accounts.” Oh realllllly? (putting on AdExchanger conspiracy theorist, ad product hat) Looks to me that Twitter is pouring more traffic into hashtags and keywords that users would be interested in – thereby creating more scale for Twitter advertisers and better answering the question, “How can Twitter take better advantage of the contextual opportunity?” Sounds like AdSense to me!

Data Science Shortage Follow-Up

Recent buzz around the shortage of data scientists in media has bubbled up in the news recently (WSJ (subscription), 4/30). In an email interview with AdExchanger, Turner’s Ken Rona expressed some optimism if you’re willing to do a little work. Rona said, “The hiring strategy that’s working for us is to find really good analytic athletes and train them in media. The A players in analytics are by definition super smart, and they pick up the media business very fast.” As for the top areas that Rona saw essential to address in media, he was unequivocal as finding an automated way to accurately classify their content. Rona saw some potential in the service or agency layer to address data science and make up for any shortfall: “CRM agencies are already springing up and others are exploring this idea. I think the ad tech stack is at a point where it’s possible to assemble the components for an effective data sciences agency. I don’t think they’ll need to build all the technology. Some of the DSPs have capability in this area.” Need more “talent pool” talk? VivaKi Nerve Center AOD exec Marco Bertozzi offers his take on his personal blog: “One thing I am sure about is that I fear the return to the days of when search took off and they became a hugely overpaid, under experienced, high churn group of individuals…” Read it. He sees potential for salary inflation.

FakePreRoll.com

Video demand-side platform (DSP) TubeMogul has become so disgusted by all the fake pre-roll out there that it has started a site meant to expose the evil do’ers. See FakePreRoll.com. A TubeMogul spokesperson writes, “This site will showcase instances of brands’ pre-roll video ads running in what we call ‘fake pre-roll’ ad units. We define ‘fake pre-roll’ as video ads that auto-play on a web page where the viewer has shown no intent to watch the ad or the content after the ad. They are typically run within banner ad units or in small, syndicated players below the fold.” Read more on TubeMogul’s blog.

Signs Point To Local

On GigaOm, Ryan Kim profiles a new, local marketing startup called Signpost which just raised a round of funding. He explains part of the pitch, “The company works with more than 1,200 publishers such as Google Offers, EveryDay Health and AOL Patch and places ads and deals on the sites that can be tracked back to clicks and purchases. The company has tried to position itself as an AdSense for local commerce with its one-stop shop approach.” Read more.

Do Digital Upfronts Work?

GroupM chief investment officer Rino Scanzoni isn’t sure what to make of digital upfronts according to Adweek’s Mike Shields. Scanzoni says that Nielsen’s Online Campaign rating may end up putting online over the top, but for now, there remains no standard measurement between TV and online that would make it easier for the marketer to buy. He says to Shields, “We can’t tell a client, ‘If you add X amount of dollars to Web video, you get Y.'” Read more.

The Tree And Display

Lending Tree reported its Q1 2012 results and beat estimates – 24 million in revenue on $4.4 million in net earnings. Citi analyst Mark Mahaney was impressed and commented on marketer traction and the display ad impact: “The company is seeing strong traffic to its sites from visitors looking for mortgages/refis, and is gaining traction with Marketers on its Non-Mortgage lead business; Display ad revenue leads were up 400% Y/Y, as the company revamped its Display biz; and Exchange Adjusted EBITDA was positive for the 4th quarter in a row.”

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