The ‘Ad Exchange News’ Category
Here's today's AdExchanger.com news round-up... Want it by email? Sign-up here.
Facebook CTO Speaks On Ads
In a note to clients, ThinkEquity analyst Atul Bagga shared an interview with Facebook CTO Bret Taylor about plans for the social media monster. Among his questions, Bagga asked, "How do you monetize the platform? Do you see the opportunity primarily with advertisement, or, longer term, do you see virtual currency also becoming a more-meaningful opportunity?" Taylor replied, "Our first focus isn't directly monetizing the platform. We're trying to create as much value for the people that use Facebook as possible with the idea that if using Facebook has value to you, and we expand that value by making Facebook useful for all the applications you use across the Web and on your phone that would make Facebook even more useful for you, which will lead to a lot of monetization opportunities in the long run. Advertising is our main focus. Virtual goods is an important part of our platform, but it's much smaller right now, and we're reinvesting almost all that back into Facebook Credits."
Right Media Memory Lane
Pat McCarthy has uncorked on his Conversion Rater blog a lengthy, detailed post on his experience as a member of the original Right Media team. He begins, "This is simply my perspective as I know that others at Right Media and Yahoo! had completely different opinions and feelings about everything that occurred from 2004-2010. That being said, let’s take a walk down memory lane." Walk now.
Havas Reports Stronger Q2
Yet another ad holding company has reported a stronger Q2 2010 in comparison to the previous year. According to AdWeek's David Gianatasio, "Havas said its net income surged 22.5 percent in the first half to $62 million on a 4.2 percent rise in revenue to almost $927 million, compared to the same period in 2009." Read more.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Ad Exchange News | 2 Comments »
OpenX announced the next step in its strategy to try and "end around" the growing momentum of Google's DoubleClick Ad Exchange juggernaut as well as exchange giant Right Media Exchange. The company announced a partnership similar to its Orange Market deal with Dentsu and CCI (Dentsu's "media rep firm" subsidiary) to launch OpenX Market Japan. Key components of the deal are localized versions of the OpenX Exchange for its partners. And for OpenX, it gets a top 5 ad agency holding company and CCI to drive demand and supply through its exchange and address what OpenX identified in an interview as the 2nd largest advertising market. OpenX CRO Jason Fairchild told AdExchanger.com that he believes OpenX is in the midst of proving a viable, go-to-market strategy with Orange and now Dentsu. The company was careful not to characterize the partnerships as merely an opportunity to improve the quality of OpenX Exchange's biddable inventory and emphasized the overall growth potential spurred by these new mega-corporate relationships. Read the release. Also, read more coverage from ClickZ'z Adaline Lau and The Wall Street Journal.
Posted in Ad Exchange News | No Comments »
Here's today's AdExchanger.com news round-up... Want it by email? Sign-up here.
Fallacies About Web Privacy In The WSJ
Emory University professor Paul Rubin makes the case for what he sees as recent obfuscation, misleading statements by various parties as it relates to the use of data in online advertising and consumer privacy. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece, Rubin begins: "Privacy on the Web is a constant issue for public discussion—and Congress is always considering more regulations on the use of information about people's habits, interests or preferences on the Internet. Unfortunately, these discussions lead to many misconceptions. Here are 10 of the most important..." Read his top 10.
To Publishers With Love And The Immediate Ad
Google Director of Product Management Jonathan Bellack authors a post on "The Official Google Blog" about the future of display advertising as it concerns publishers and the "quantum leaps" in innovation to come. From the sounds of it, a self-service tool that will allow publishers to sell inventory directly to buyers appears imminent: "Imagine if publishers—even the smallest website—had tools that enabled advertisers to click a button on their site to upload an ad, let them pay for it with a credit card, and then deliver this ad—through the publisher’s ad server—within minutes. This sort of 'immediate ad' will become possible as ad serving technology continues to simplify the process of buying and selling ad space." Read more.
High Value Exchange
Xuhui Shao, CTO of demand-side platform Turn, discusses the recent debate around privacy and how digital advertising companies use cookie tracking to facilitate targeting. Shao believes there needs to be a high value exchange created between consumer and marketer which is facilitated by ad tech companies. He writes, "In digital advertising, we strive to find similar approaches that are both effective and privacy friendly. One such approach is the 'act-alike model,' a close cousin to the “look-alike model.'" Read about it.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Ad Exchange News | No Comments »
Here's today's AdExchanger.com news round-up... Want it by email? Sign-up here.
Retargeting In Focus
The New York Times Miguel Helft and Tanzina Vega take a look at retargeting of consumers through display advertising and reference the experiences of Ad Age's Michael Learmonth and a consumer named Julia Matlin who are retargeted by Zappos ads. In discussing Matlin's experience, The NY Times writes that after she visited Zappos site, "...Then the shoes started to follow her everywhere she went online. An ad for those very shoes showed up on the blog TechCrunch." Read more.
TellApart Responds
Identified as a retargeting vendor in the NY Times piece, TellApart CEO Josh McFarland responded in a TellApart blog post that emphasized what McFarland sees as a need to respect the consumer. He writes, "Aside from the obvious & staid options mentioned by the Times’ commenters (opt-out, clear cookies, use Adblock), how do advertisers show respect for their consumers in this new world of display advertising? TellApart recommends and commits to the following..." See the list.
TagMan Has Good Health
TagMan has claimed another client as the company announced in a release that "Good Health Media (GHM), one of the fastest growing health ad networks, (...) has picked TagMan as its global 'container tag." GHM's investors include Metamorphic Ventures, Mike Perlis of Softbank and Joe Apprendi of Founder Collective (also the CEO of Collective). Read more.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Ad Exchange News | 1 Comment »
Here's today's AdExchanger.com news round-up... Want it by email? Sign-up here.
USA Today Points To Digital
The literally, colorful paper known as USA Today is not just getting a makeover but a complete strategic shift that began late last week. The New York Times reports that layoffs of the workforce are underway and that the paper's owner Gannett says that "the paper’s focus will now be on its digital operations. It will emphasize breaking news on its Web site, aiming to post articles within 30 minutes of a breaking news event." Read more.
Aegis Reports Q2, Says Its Acquisitive
Aegis Group, owners of Carat, Vizeum, Posterscope, Isobar and iProspect, continued the patterns set by other holding company earnings announcements and said that their Q2 2010 earnings were positive. Ad Age's Emma Hall reports, "Aegis' organic revenue grew 3.2% to $1 billion in the first half of 2010 and its pre-tax profits rose 8.3% to $75 million, driven by a solid second quarter." Read more. CEO Jerry Buhlmann indicated he's ready to start making acquisitions, too - as in more agencies.
Rumor Mill
The Business Insider's Nick Saint turns digital heads with his article on who will buy real-time ad platform AppNexus. Saint says Microsoft and AOL may be looking at AppNexus, and he adds that AOL "has been conspicuously absent from RTB. That's especially strange since AOL is increasingly becoming a content creation company, and will have ever more ad inventory of its own to sell." Read more.
Data For Video Targeting
Data provider TARGUSinfo announced that it, too, will be providing data through Adap.tv's video marketplace and its Brand Impact product. According to the release, "Through this agreement, adap.tv will access the verified audiences from AdAdvisor to enhance consumer targeting for online video advertising." Read more.
Merging Media Buying, Social Marketing
Tessa Wegert discusses how marketers are approaching merging their social media marketing and their media buying in a piece on ClickZ. She identifies a Clorox campaign which gets it right: "Using an interactive banner to promote a social campaign in this way is the ideal approach for brands keen on building a relationship with their customers through Twitter." Read more.
Vibrant Media Offers Results
In case you missed it, Vibrant Media recently offered insight on financial results for the in-text online advertising company. The company said in a release it is "reporting 51% Y-Y growth in Q2’10, and 45% Y-Y growth in H1’10. Categories which have shown particular strength globally during the first half of 2010 include Automotive (up 44% Y-Y), Business & Finance (up 63% Y-Y) and CPG (up 124% Y-Y)." Read more.
VideoEgg and SixApart
More rumor mill! The Business Insider thinks that video ad technology and network company, VideoEgg, and blogging platform SixApart are on the verge of a merger. TBI's Nick Saint says internal forces may be at works as both companies share "investors and two board members, August Capital's David Hornik and Focus Ventures' Steven Bird." Read more.
Video Size Vs. Quality
Ashkan Karbasfrooshan of WatchMojo.com breaks down the marketer's conundrum of online video advertising today into two, over-arching groups (size of the audience and quality of the site) and four quadrants (Technology, Distribution, Advertising or Content). He writes on TechCrunch, "While it’s true that size and reach are going to be a major hindrance for small and mid-sized video companies, regardless of whether they’re in Content, Technology, Distribution or Advertising, I’d still rather be producing quality content." Read more.
JCrew Comes Online
Popular apparel retailer JCrew is looking to bring its outlet stores online. The Wall Street Journal's Elizabeth Holmes points out that the company risks cannibalizing sales from its high margin, brick-and-mortar stores since "Apparel companies typically locate outlet stores in out-of-the-way malls, forcing customers to drive long distances to get access to the discounted goods." Read more. Let the retargeting campaign begin.
Software For Creatives, By Creatives
Who says an agency can't build it's own technology? According to The New York Times, "BETC Euro RSCG, part of the Euro RSCG Worldwide division of Havas, has developed software that can produce elementary advertisements." The article has a great quote from an agency exec about this cross-channel software in regards to creative teams who use it: "After this first reaction, they get a little scared when they see that a software program can create the same (mediocre) results in just 10 seconds as several hours of strategic meetings and production.” Read more.
Adnetik's New Digital Digs
Havas Digital's agency trading desk known as Adnetik is featuring a brand new website which outlines some of the players behind the group as well as the core strategy around "AIM." From the site: "Adnetik is unique in that we have the ability to assimilate data from multiple sources to operate the Audience Investment Management (AIM) system." Ding! - a new acronym is born. Visit Adnetik.com. And, see the execs page.
The Ad Verification Debate
Jim Ewel of ad verifier Adometry asks if blocking ads is the right approach for ad verification companies. He believes that unwanted latency is being introduced into the display ad daisy chain, for example. He adds, "It almost always makes more sense to fix a problem at the source rather than at the final distribution point." But, Ewel admits that solutions around self-policing URLs beforehand have challenges, too. Read more.
Fish Goes To Sears
Ex-Razorfish President David Friedman is taking his digital experience and moving to Sears Holdings where he'll become SVP and president of marketing. Read more. According to DM News, "Friedman will replace Richard Gerstein, who resigned in May to become Hewlett-Packard's SVP of strategy and worldwide marketing for its personal systems group."
The Mission Is A Pile Of...
Clickable marketing guru Max Kalehoff pens a think piece on MediaPost's Online Spin blog titled: "Your Company's Mission & Values Are Probably A Big Pile Of Nothing." Kalehoff writes, "I won't implicate any specific companies, but I'll cite some of the most commonly abused words: powered, innovation, integrity, honesty, trust, accountability, responsibility, solutions, excellence, superior, committed and standard. You get the idea. You'd think we're getting ready for an intense session of BS bingo." Read the article. And, get your BS Bingo card here.
When To Sell Your Start-up
Eric Paley ruminates about the right time to sell your start-up assuming you have one. He seems to think the answer lies in an understanding of risk as your start-up's success fluctuates and writes, "The right question is how far away is that next peak and how much dilution will be endured in that time." Read more.
HTML5 Love
Looking to secure the business of iAd video lovers, Tremor Media announced that it now provides HTML5 video capability. From the release: "Tremor Media will first enable these advanced formats on the Apple iPad and will continue bringing such capabilities to further HTML5 devices by the end of the year." Read it. FWIW, the popular Flash video format is not allowed on the iAd platform - yet.
Posted in Ad Exchange News | No Comments »
Here's today's AdExchanger.com news round-up... Want it by email? Sign-up here.
Search And Display From Webtrends
Web Trends announced update to its product line as drives harder on the ad business. The company announced Webtrends Ads - according to the release - "an end-to-end, data-driven solution for creating, measuring and improving performance marketing acquisition across global search networks, the Google Display Network, and Facebook Ads." Read the release.
Cookie Lawsuits
Specific Media is being sued by a well-known attorney focused on consumer privacy online over alleged improper use of Flash cookies according to Ryan Singel of Wired. This is the third privacy-related lawsuit filed this month. Others include a "zombie cookie lawsuit" and a Demand Media/Disney lawsuit. Read more about the Specific Media filing.
Google, Phones, Facebook
On The Business Insider, Goldman Sachs analyst James Mitchell offers a reason for the new Google calling feature in Gmail. TBI paraphrases Mitchell: "Google’s ulterior motive is less about disrupting the teleco industry and more about driving engagement within Gmail and its social networking activities to better compete with Facebook." Read more.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Ad Exchange News | No Comments »
Here's today's AdExchanger.com news round-up... Want it by email? Sign-up here.
BrightTag Announces Funding
Data rights management platform BrightTag (AdExchanger.com Q&A) announced that it has closed its Series A financing led by TomorrowVentures and New World Ventures with participation from Epic Ventures and the I2A Fund - note TomorrowVentures involvement which is an investment vehicle for Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Read the release. DRMP and DMP (data rights and data management platform) are the latest additions to the online ad ecosystems acronym soup. Welcome!
Making Brands Comfortable
Looking to grab brand dollars moving online, video ad marketplace Adap.tv has launched its "Brand Impact" offering which is a combination of partnerships with Affine Systems content verification technology, Vizu's brand optimization and measurement product line and Adap.tv's own technology. From the release: "Adap.tv's Brand Impact provides five key benefits for brands that want to create powerful online video advertising programs..." Read them.
RIM Acquires...
RIM quietly announced that it has acquired a mobile content and app management platform company called Cellmania. No word on how much. In fact, no word beyond what's on the Cellmania home page. Read more on TechCrunch. Does this mean Millennial Media is off the table? No. The Cellmania purchase looks like a piece of an overall mobile monetization strategy - there still seems to be room for a mobile ad network with scale.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Ad Exchange News | No Comments »
Here's today's AdExchanger.com news round-up... Want it by email? Sign-up here.
Online Ad Spend Swamis
More good news from those who forecast digital ad spend. Borrell Associates says in a release, "Total online ad spending will grow almost 14 percent, from $45.6 billion, in 2010, to $51.9 billion, in 2011, while local online ad spending is expected to grow nearly 18%, from $13.7 billion, this year, to $16.1 billion, next year. The fastest-growing segments of online advertising are the local sector, anything targeted, and everything involving social media." Read more.
WPP Group Reports Q2
Ad holding company WPP Group reported strong, second quarter 2010 results yesterday as "profit attributable to shareholders rose to £150.8 million ($234 million) from £108.4 million." For digital: "In the first half, direct and digitally-related activities accounted for 28%, or $1.913 billion (an annual run rate of $4 billion) of the Group's total revenues, which are running at the rate of well over $14 billion per annum." And, the company raised its dividend for the first time in 18 months. Read the release. And, here's a combative video interview with WPP CEO Sir Martin Sorrell and Bloomberg yesterday regarding results.
MySpace, FAN Are One
Fox Audience Network (FAN) has been placed under the MySpace umbrella at News Corp. The news comes as FAN chief Adam Bain has left for the top revenue generator role at Twitter. From the MySpace/FAN release, MySpace prez Mike Jones said, "By fully integrating FAN's platform and team, we are in a great position to further leverage FAN's technology." With a dwindling user base at MySpace, perhaps this consolidation will present an opportunity to sell the FAN technology and MySpace as a package. Read the release.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Ad Exchange News | No Comments »
Here's today's AdExchanger.com news round-up... Want it by email? Sign-up here.
Bain Leaves FAN, Joins Twitter
Former Fox Audience Network CEO Adam Bain will now be the one who gets to answer, "How is Twitter going to make money?" in that he'll be in charge of driving all revenue at microblogging company Twitter. TechCrunch's Mike Arrington writes that Bain "will be President, Revenue and he’ll be reporting to COO Dick Costolo." Read more. Thus far, no tweets from Bain through his Twitter account.
Hanlon Hired By Mediabrands
IPG Mediabrands has hired Tim Hanlon, who recently left Catalyst S+F, according to Brian Morrissey of Adweek. Morrissey reports that Hanlon will be IPG's "point person for bridging the gap between Madison Avenue and Silicon Valley (and) will work in Mediabrands Ventures, the unit set up in January under Matt Freeman to house 16 specialty digital marketing companies like search firm Reprise Media, digital ad trading desk Cadreon and mobile shop Ansible." Read more on Adweek.
Block And Tackling
MediaMath CEO Joe Zawadzki discusses the data-driven ad world in a Forbes.com feature called "Advertising: More Science Than Art" by Victoria Taylor. Zawadzki says, "I do think that we're in a time when marketing moves from art and interactive marketing moves from process into plot and into sort of automation. The basic blocking and tackling is now automatable and it's allowed people to think again." Read more.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Ad Exchange News | No Comments »
Here's today's AdExchanger.com news round-up... Want it by email? Sign-up here.
Display Ad Heat
ClickZ's Zach Rodgers discusses "the heat" around display these days as he chronicles a round of last week's festivities at Connected Marketing Week in San Francisco. Rodgers identifies what he calls the "800lb gorilla" in the space and writes, "Google (...) is blurring categories and definitions like no one else. Google is simultaneously attempting to fill the role of ad exchange, ad network, DSP (through its Invite Media acquisition), and media agency." Read more.
Wall Street Attends SES, Sees DSPs
Citibank analyst Mark Mahaney attended last week's Search Engine Strategies and offered observations to investors: "Display Marketing Continues To Garner Interest — DSPs (Demand Side Platforms) are emerging and helping advertisers optimize on specific content and users (we note that Google recently acquired DSP provider Invite Media). Yahoo! is gaining good traction with certain ad formats as well, such as its Login-Page ad, which now reaches 10% of all ‘Net users. Advertisers like Hyundai have found nearly 230% increase in overall conversion from Rich Videos Ads in Yahoo! Search vs. traditional Search campaigns. Finally, there is strong interest in Display Exchanges, but people we spoke with stated that Right Media Exchange has some serious misgivings, like no Real Time Bidding, lack of quality media, and limited transparency. The Google DoubleClick Ad Exchange, on the other hand, has full transparency, Real-time bidding, audited inventory, and impressive targeting."
Ad Network Invective
Media consultant Ari Rosenberg takes the PublisherInsider microphone on MediaPost and delivers that David Koretz would be proud of. Rosenberg writes, "(...) online publishers must end all their relationships with ad networks. These third-party companies that habitually lie to publishers and advertisers are the dominant reason why users are being tracked to death." Site rep firms unite here.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Ad Exchange News | No Comments »
Scott Spencer, Group Product Manager, DoubleClick Ad Exchange and Jason Miller, Group Product Manager, Google Display Network discussed the display media space as well as DoubleClick Ad Exchange enhancements with AdExchanger.com today.
AdExchanger.com: What is Google announcing today?
SCOTT SPENCER: Basically, we’re going to be rolling out a few more tools to help DoubleClick Ad Exchange buyers buy quality inventory, and to check their campaigns.
Taking a quick step back; when we launched the exchange about a year ago, we engineered it with best-in-market buyer and publishers controls, as well as extensive crawl-and-verify inventory screening. Together with the real time bidder, these were the biggest upgrades we made.
As part of a long line of improvements in this area over the past year, we’re taking the wraps off a couple of additional features to give buyers even more control, quality and transparency.
The first is “Site Packs” – these are manually crafted collections of like sites based on DoubleClick Ad Planner and internal classifications, vetted for quality. These allow buyers to get a set of high quality sites for their particular campaigns, covering anonymous and branded inventory.
Second, we’re making some changes to our Real-time Bidder (in beta). The biggest change here is for Ad Exchange clients who work with DSPs. Historically, Ad Exchange buyers were hidden from publishers behind their DSP. By introducing a way to segment out each individual client’s ad calls, inventory can be sent exclusively to an Ad Exchange buyer even when that buyer uses a DSP. It increases transparency for publishers and potentially give buyers more access to the highest quality inventory, like “exclusive ad slots” – high quality inventory offered to only a few, select buyers as determined by the publisher.
Thirdly, we’re soon going to be rolling out a beta of what we call “Data Transfer” – this is a report of every transaction bought or sold by a client on the Ad Exchange. Effectively, it’s a daily log file of everything that happened. Clients can then review every branded URL that they purchased to ensure everything was what they expected.
A recent report suggested that exchange inventory is unsafe for marketers. How does Google respond?
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Ad Exchange News | No Comments »
