Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
Ad Networks Preferred
The New York Times’ Stephanie Clifford says that even though big brand marketers may make a few high profile buys of “premium” ad inventory – such as the home pages of newspapers – it doesn’t mean the newspapers are continuing to reap the benefits of direct sales to the marketers. She says marketers may increasingly use ad networks who provide reach at a cheaper price. Read more.
Marketers Asking More Of Agencies
Marketers budgets may be loosening up a bit that doesn’t mean agencies are having it any easier as Suzanne Vranica of the Wall Street Journal points out in her article, “Many Big Marketers Go on the Hunt for New Agencies “. Vranica says marketers look for an increased competition of ideas among rival ideas in new account reviews that bubble up great thinking and drives down price. Read more.
What I Did On My Summer Vacation
Greg Coleman, President and CRO of Huffington Post relives the past year and the aftermath of his dismissal from AOL. According to Coleman, the break provided a great time to figure out what the next steps were going to be. As Coleman admits, the significant sum which was paid to him on leaving AOL was very helpful, too. Read “Sharpen the Saw” on HuffPo.
Ad Exchanges Research
Muthu Muthukrishnan has made available his research paper made in cooperation with Google on ad exchanges, which he will present at the upcoming WINE ’09 Workshop on Internet Network & Economics. Googlers assisting Muthukrishnan included Rahul Bafna, Eyal Manor, Yishay Mansour, Noam Nisan and Scott Spencer among others. The paper digs deep into the math of the exchange and its auction and offers some thought-provoking conclusions such as the need for an ad quality metric which overlays the auction and incentivizes advertisers. From Muthukrishnan’ blog, “my slice of pizza“, you can download the paper here (PDF).
Given that Publicis’ acquisition of Razorfish will not close until the end of the year, a couple of announced departures – technically – aren’t departures. According to Ad Age’s Michael Learmonth, Chief Strategy Officer Jeff Lanctot and Managing Director Jim Watson will be staying with Microsoft in a move that should be seen as a bright spot for the Redmond giant: two agency people are staying at Microsoft to drive ad business as opposed to to staying in the agency world. Learmonth also looks at Razorfish/Digitas integration. Read more.
Media Yogurt
Steve McClellan writes in AdWeek that Group Danone has chosen its media agencies across the globe and, by and large, Havas’ MPG is the winner getting the major accounts of France ($200 million) and the U.S. ($100 million) in addition to several others and within a global, Danone media budget of 500 million yogurt promo dollars. Read more.
DoubleClick Ad Exchange Webinar
From the Google Agency Ad Solutions blog, tomorrow, Tuesday, October 27, Google will be holding a DoubleClick Ad Exchange webinar targeting agency players that promises to cover “overs what the Ad Exchange is, how it impacts pricing, inventory and the Google Content Network, and what solution to choose.” Read more. (Sign up link doesn’t work currently. Hopefully it will be updated.)
Yahoo! Loses An Icahn
Late Friday, investor and shareholder activist, Carl Icahn, resigned from the Yahoo! board saying there is no longer a need for an activist investor like him. On his way out the door, Icahn tosses bouquets to the existing Yahoo! leadership unlike the grenades he was carrying when he entered the board room. Read the story on Marketwatch.
InterCLICK Prepares For NASDAQ
At its annual meeting, ad network InterClick approved a 2-for-1 reverse stock split to meet minimum NASD listing requirements as the company prepares to move its stock to the NASDAQ. The company also approved its board of directors which includes CEO Michael Mathews and President and Founder, Michael Katz. Read more.
Hiring The Start-Up
Mark Suster, General Partner at GRP Partners, emphatically states on his personal blog, “I believe that taking senior people from industry and assuming that they’ll do well in a startup is a farce.” Suster votes for the do-er as opposed to the one with the gold-plated resume in a missive on hiring practices at start-ups. Read more.
The Intender Internet
David Gillespie, Account Director at Maclaren McCann Canada, has posted (source: Fred Wilson) a presentation which crushes Guy Kawasaki’s 10 Slide rule by 253 slides and looks at where we are today with the Internet and its possibilities for the advertising community. The conclusion: it’s all about intent based on data and meaning and Gillespie cites as proof Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick, WPP’s acquisition of 24/7 Real Media and Microsoft’s acquisition of aQuantive. Sounds like the media optimization space to me! See the pres.
The Publishing Machine
This came out a couple of weeks ago in Wired, but if you haven’t read it by now, it’s worth a look. (- especially now that AOL may be doing the same thing according to Tim Armstrong at Web 2.0 this week.) Demand Media’s publishing machine is featured in detail. Could this be the future of newspapers where an algorithm figures out what stories should be covered and then sends the story topics out to a list of freelance reporters? Maybe. Read more.
New York Times Expands Local Footprint
The New York Times announced another localized version of its newspaper as former Chicago Tribune journalists with support from the local PBS station among others will provide Chicago news for a NY Times Chicago edition. This follows a similar announcement regarding a San Francisco edition. Read about it.
