Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
Traditional Media Revolts
It appears traditional media companies are tired of their Nielsen main course and have decided to try something else from the menu.
Bill Carter and Stuart Elliott of The New York Times cover a recent diabolical plot by the heads of major media companies to create an effective alternative to Nielsen which they believe has been under-reporting or miscounting their audiences for a while now. Not only that – media company operators are looking to go cross-channel and into digital with their measurement.
The Times writes that the new plan “would call for the creation of a new audience measurement service that would account for the transmission of programming and advertising across television, Web sites and mobile devices.” Cross-channel attribution coming soon, one way or another, to a measurement company near you.
Read more. And, Jeff Jarvis gives his two cents here.
The media companies will be sending out an RFP of sorts to have the new measurement service created. It will be interesting to see how the VC community responds (perhaps forming companies to offer to create the new service). And, will companies like Comscore, or perhaps Quantcast, step up? We’ll see. Suzanne Vranica and Sam Schechner cover “the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement” story for the WSJ.
Ad QA Moving To Real-Time
In Online Strategies Magazine, Richard Sim of Anchor Intelligence delivers his thoughts on how the media business is evolving to a real-time marketplace and how online ad quality management will evolve. Sim argues that companies should move beyond concerns around click fraud alone to traffic quality and predictive analytics. In regards to the digital evolution/revolution, he adds, “The days of media buying through personal relationships and handshakes over expensive rounds of golf are quickly disappearing.”
OPA Study Continues To Irk
Is the OPA the greatest link baiting organization in advertising, or what?
In a column on AdAge last week, PubMatic CEO Rajeev Goel (AdExchanger.com Q&A) rebuts – to some degree – a recent OPA study on ad effectiveness with his article, “OPA Ad Effectiveness Study: It’s Not That Black and White.” Goel argues that though buying “premium” inventory from large publishers does make sense for brand marketers, so does buying so-called “non-premium” which may provide the marketer with a better ROI. DM News takes in the reaction to the study including Burst Media CEO Jarvis Coffin’s (AdExchanger.com Q&A) observation: The OPA has “opted to set fire to the forest floor that … scorched the effectiveness of the entire Internet as a brand medium save for its 50, or so, members.”
Questions Surround WPP
The Financial Times’ Tim Bradshaw covers recent questions about WPP Group including a report that “analysts at Morgan Stanley and UBS stirred market concern about whether WPP needed to launch an equity fundraising to protect its credit rating.” FT notes that Sir Martin Sorrell has said that economic conditions continue to be tough for marketers and he sees no “green shoots” in the ad economy. This is in contrast to Publicis and Omnicom who called the bottom of the advertising market last month. Read more.
Elegant DIY Display?
Google has updated its Display Ad Builder so that users can make do-it-yourself display banner ads that don’t look so do-it-yourself. From the Google AdWords blog, Dan Friedman terms the update as, ‘a new set of “Elegant’ ad templates.”
Does this give AdReady a run for their money? (- effectively Yahoo!’s answer to Display Ad Builder.)
BTS For DOOH
Scott Hines of SeeSaw Networks looks at the back-to-school (BTS) season for digital out-of-home in an article on Digital Signage Today. Hines provides a list of five tips for effective DOOH campaign efforts:
- Focus on life patterns
- Consider the context.
- Bring your message to life with great creative.
- Leverage existing digital assets.
- Create the perception of ubiquity.
Financial Times Looking Good
The New York Times’ Eric Pfanner looks at The Financial Times and its CEO John Ridding who decided to go to a subscription model in 2002 and hasn’t looked back since then. With newspapers struggling, the subscription model appears to be “the new advertising” for newspapers online. Still, advertising remains part of the overall revenue model at newspapers and Rob Noss, at media agency Mindshare Worldwide, tells Pfanner that he wonders if advertising really works in these situations saying, “My personal view is that if I’ve paid for the information, my openness to the advertising will be affected.” Read more.
MDC Partners Aligning Stars For Future
Noreen O’Leary of AdWeek looks at MDC Partners and how CEO Miles Nadal is plotting the holding company’s future as it relates to two of its premier agencies Crispin Porter + Bogusky and Kirshenbaum Bond + Partners. As part of his planning, and with “earn-outs” due shortly to each agency, Nadal is hunting for a new CEO for KBP (which earned $70 million in revenue in 2008) as the shop’s founders, Richard Kirshenbaum and Jon Bond, transition into next phases of their careers. He adds, “It’s important that the next generation is both emotional and financial owners of the business.” Read more.
This Week’s Show Business
“Show business” is taking place in Portland, Oregon, this week as advertising operations professionals gather for AdMonsters Publisher Forum US XXI which runs through the 19th. And, in New York City, the lead generation industry will convene for LeadsCon which takes place today and tomorrow.
Gawker Speaks
In an AdAge piece that looks at five companies who have been successful during the recession, Nick Denton’s Gawker media is among the pantheon. Denton tells AdAge’s Michael Learmonth that his secret for success has included, “no ad networks; sell ads exclusively to brand advertisers; make them big, kind of like a magazine; and don’t sell too many of them.” Denton also reveals to Learmonth that “The bulk of Gawker’s business is now whole-day takeovers of a blog.” Read more.
Viral Media With Premium CPMs
Think viral/social media can’t garner “premium” CPMs? Ben Huh’s I Can Haz Cheeseburger empire is raking it in as “30% of ads go for premium prices of up to $8 per 1,000 page views” according to a feature story on Huh written by Time’s Laura Fitzpatrick.
Zoom-ing DOOH
Zoom Media, which has 600 screens in local bars and restauarants in ten top DMAs, and LocaModa, an interactive software platform, have partnered acccording to MediaWeek’s Katy Bachman.
LocaModa is also responsible for the interactive display in New York City’s Times Square which is pictured on the right according to its website.
New Hispanic Ad Network
ClickZ’s Zach Rodgers writes about a new hispanic-audience-targeted ad network from Batanga Media called “Batanga Network.” Rodgers notes that the spanish language network’s Comscore numbers reached approximately 15.2 million U.S. users in July. Read more.
