Botsploitation; Rich And Oh So Viewable

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

Botsploitation

Adweek’s Mike Shields pens a feature on “ghost publishers” who create inventory through botnets, invisible impressions, and other non-human means. Using background sources, he fingers a group of the “most suspect” site networks. An irony: the problem may be driven by brand marketers. “Robots can’t fake purchases…meaning that performance advertisers won’t ever end up paying for bogus impressions.” More. The piece references a new botnet disclosure from UK-based Spider.io, which we covered yesterday. Read that.

Yahoo’s ‘YouTube’ Stake

The Wall Street Journal reports that Yahoo may be on the verge of acquiring a 75% stake in video content site DailyMotion. The WSJ explains, “Dailymotion, which is similar to Google Inc.’s YouTube site but is smaller in scale, would immediately make Yahoo a bigger player in Web video outside the U.S., where the company is looking to grow. [CEO Marissa] Mayer has repeatedly stressed that investing in overseas markets would play a key role in Yahoo’s future growth.” Read more. Or maybe Mayer said: “Get me video content now! Marketers can’t buy enough video ads.” Also, when this editor looked, Nielsen’s Vizu was retargeting with a 300×250 ad unit on the DailyMotion home page. Surely, Yahoo could stir up a direct sold buy for a U.S. browser.

Rich And Oh So Viewable

eMarketer publishes some viewability data for rich media ads courtesy of DG MediaMind. The top three types are “commercial break,” “floating ad with reminder,” and “wallpaper ad” — suggesting that high viewability may flirt with intrusiveness. There’s also a chart for viewability by industry vertical. See it.

Facebook Lookalikes Go Global

Facebook’s lookalike targeting feature, launched in beta last month, is now available to all advertisers globally. Facebook said in a blog post, “We’ve seen this new type of targeting drive a wide range of success metrics for direct response companies like Fab, including lower cost per checkout, lower cost per acquisition, larger purchase size, and faster and increased return on investment.” All Facebook ad types are supported.

DoubleClick AdX Evolves

Google has an update of its DoubleClick Ad Exchange that’s aimed at promoting its notion of “guaranteed programmatic,” which includes the fuller integration of supply side platform AdMeld’s ad network, which the search giant bought nearly two years ago. In a DoubleClick blog post, Scott Spencer, Director, Product Management, promises greater transparency and controls as well as higher yields. “We’re also introducing Private Auctions, a new way to increase yield from your high-value inventory by pitting select buyers against each other,” Spencer writes. “If you use the new [DoubleClick for Publishers], you’ll be able to raise the value of your Private Auction inventory even further by importing your first-party data directly into AdX.”

IAB’s Safer Frames

The Interactive Advertising Bureau has rolled out its specs for using impression viewabiliy as a metric. The SafeFrame 1.0 specification, as it’s called, updates the traditional iframes format and is part of the Making Measurement Make Sense (3MS) program. See the specs here. “Buyers are clamoring for viewable impressions, which are difficult for most to measure accurately when ads are served in frames. SafeFrame 1.0 is a vital next step in moving the industry ahead on that front,” said Steve Sullivan, the IAB’s VP of Ad Technology. Read the release.

Native Ad Network

Buzzfeed is well-known for its reliance on native ads on its own site, now it’s planning to extend it to other destinations within its new ad network, AdAge’s Jason Del Rey reports. “We always wanted the business not to be limited by the scale of our site,” Buzzfeed President Jon Steinberg says. “That means figuring out places do what we do other than on Buzzfeed.com.” Read the rest. Perhaps Buzzfeed goes into content acquisition mode from here, too? Similarly, last year, NetShelter launched its native ad network/platform InPowered after building a network of community-powered tech sites.

Demand Media Gets The Creativebug

Content aggregator Demand Media has been trying to be noticed for its higher quality content to attract more lucrative brand ads, versus direct response. Now, it’s hoping consumers will pay to read its evergreen offerings by purchasing paywall-protected craft site Creativebug, reports AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka. “There may be some crossover between the two groups, though: Demand says 20 percent of its page views are ‘craft-related,’” Kafka writes. That could help generate further interest from high-end advertisers looking to reach presumably more engaged subscription-paying users. Read more.

Marin Is Like Buddy (Kinda)

In a research note, Pivotal’s Brian Wieser sees SEM platform Marin Software as an acquisition target à la Efficient Frontier (2011) and Buddy Media (2012). Wieser writes, “Buddy Media’s financials were not necessarily more favorable than Marin’s – for the six month period ending June 30, 2012, it generated $18mm in revenue and an operating loss of $21mm; these figures were up by nearly 80% and 400% respectively vs. the prior year period. There is undoubtedly similar strategic value to any of the aforementioned acquirers except perhaps Google, but including the likes of IBM or others pursuing a presence in the enterprise marketing space. Using a 15-20x multiple on full year revenue that may have come into play in Salesforce’s assessment of Buddy’s value at the time it was acquired would support a valuation of more than $1bn for Marin given its $60mm in revenues during 2012.” And then Wieser cautions… Read it (PDF).

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