Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
Aol Gets Political
Everyone is gearing up for the fall political season including Aol as the company announced a new political vertical ad network that can be accessed through its self-service Ad Desk ad platform or through Aol Advertising’s full-service sales team. The vertical ad network leverages Advertising.com’s 158 million uniques according to the site. See the Aol Politics portal. And, read the release. Also of note, Aol has started something it calls “Display University” which it hopes will educate buyers and lead to them spending even more in display. Are you educating your buyers?
Facebook Is Like The Electric Co.
Joshua Brustein paints a story in The New York Times that Facebook has the potential to become as essential as electricity and water. She quotes, Microsoft’s Danah Boyd from her personal blog: “I hate all of the utilities of my life. Venomous hatred. And because they’re monopolies, they feel no need to make me appreciate them. Cuz they know that I’m not going to give up water, power, sewage, or the Internet out of spite. Nor will most people give up Facebook, regardless of how much they grow to hate them.” Read the article.
Blip.tv’s Pre-Roll
Online video content site Blip.tv has introduced new pre-roll ads which allow users to remotely download games to their game consoles. Ad Age’s Michael Learmonth writes, “It’s an example of a new kind of pre-roll, one that actually does stuff — like allow consumers to send a playable game to their Xbox console or program their DVR to download a show.” Read more.
Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that Publicis VivaKi’s Curt Hecht is “deploying advertising models it has developed in the U.S. for online search, display and video advertising in China.” It’s a land grab for chinese ad dollar in the agency world. Read more. From her personal blog, Sonal Patel writes that things may not happen as quickly as agencies want in China, “The largest hurdle is the e-commerce channel in China. Its relatively new and as seen in USA and UK – ecommerce has expanded the growth of online advertising. So lack of an e-commerce channel or a lack of adoption of – is going to affect the growth of the chinese ad market.” Read more.
The Rep Firm Is Back
Tom Hespos writes on iMedia Connection that given brand markters needs for placement and other factors, exclusive pub relationships may be critical. He writes, “Is it time for direct representation to make a comeback? Networks are looking for a differentiator, and this could be it. Brand advertisers and their agencies are looking for scale with a human touch.” Read more.
Tumri Hiring
Tumri has hired a new President and Chief Revenue Officer as the company looks to grow its creative-focused, “dynamic marketing platform.” David Smith, formerly Director of Publisher Sales at Microsoft Advertising and professional services and sales lead at Rapt, joins as CRO. David Kim assumes the role of president and comes from Efficient Frontier as well as Advertiser Web Services at Yahoo! where he was GM. Read the release.
New President For Mag Publisher
Condé Nast has promoted Bob Sauerberg to president of the entire company, after he served as group president of consumer marketing. MediaWeek’s Lucia Moses quotes Sauerberg saying, ““We’d like there to be more consumer revenue. We think the more we focus on the consumer, it’s going to make our advertising even better.” Data-driven online audience buying – and selling – maybe? Read the story.
FreeWheel (Again)
FreeWheel has signed up yet another video publishing partner as Univision has agreed to use FreeWheel’s video monetization platform. VideoNuze’s Will Richmond says FreeWheel’s co-CEO Doug Knopper told him that “during the World Cup, FreeWheel dynamically served up to 64,000 simultaneous ad requests for ESPN3.com, which Doug said is 50 times higher than FreeWheel typically serves across its entire network. He further believes that this is the largest live event that has had dynamic ad insertion. The benefit of dynamically inserting is that ads can be optimized for certain audiences and also can more specifically follow advertiser policies such as product exclusivity in a pod.” It’s about audience! Read more.
Hispanic Audience Grows
If you’re targeting all Hispanics in the U.S., you’re now reaching 1 in every 6 consumers Americans according to Peter Francese, Ogilvy & Mather’s demographic-trends analyst, who notes the key demographic trend in Ad Age. Read more.
