Dancing With Publishers; Social Software $$$ For GraphEffect

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Publisher Dancing

Former Knight Ridder exec and author Ken Doctor looks at Google’s relationship with pubishers and says, “Next Wednesday, Google hosts an all-day assemblage of news publishers in New York City. It won’t be the first meeting, but it’s an intriguing time to be talking ‘partnership’ with news media. Why? Lost in the marketing and technology pages and posts of the web, Google’s been relentlessly reshuffling its ad businesses the past few weeks as it moves toward something we could call The (Ad) Singularity.” What is that, pray tell? He sees a “dance” continuing between publishers and Big G., “Expect that handoff, between technology and sales, people and product, to be a pivotal part of the next Google/publisher dance going forward.”

Social Software $$$

That bell ringing is not another angel getting its wings, but another startup getting a round of funding. Graph Effect (AdExchanger Q&A) announced that it has raised $12 million led by Rincon Venture Partners for what CEO James Borow describes as his “marketing collaboration software” company. Read more. All of this social marketing M&A with profitable exits (Oracle/Vitrue, Salesforce/Buddy Media) can mean more funding for independents as their investors see the pot of gold.

Xbox Audience

Tricia Duryee asks in the title of her piece, “Raise Your Hand if You Want More Ads on Your Xbox”. To which I say, “How high?!!!” Duryee quotes Xbox GM of Live Entertainment and advertising about the audience available, “‘It’s increasingly challenging to reach these people, because they are spending so much time on our platform,’ Honey said, adding that Xbox Live reaches roughly 40 million users. In particular, he said, gold subscribers spend about 84 hours a month — or three hours a day on average.’” Do these people have jobs? That’s some serious “time spent.” Read more.

Consolidating Tech

In “The Valley” section of The Wall Street Journal, Amir Efrati takes a look at ad tech and sees consolidation. Efrati says sell-side platform PubMatic is a buyer: “Some industry watchers say the six-year-old Redwood City-based company, which has acquired two competitors since last fall, is valued at some $200 million. ‘We see ourselves as a consolidator in the marketplace, and that was the key driver of our fundraising,’ says PubMatic CEO Rajeev Goel, who declined to comment on the company’s valuation.” Read more (subscription).

Agencies + Cockroaches

Rishad Tobaccowalla explained to the crowd at VivaKi Ventures event why the much-maligned agency model will continue to survive and thrive. MediaPost’s Joe Mandese quotes Tobaccowalla, “‘The truth is, agencies are cockroaches.’ (…) Tobaccowala said his point about agencies’ ability to survive was that they “cannot do it alone,” and must rely on outside ‘third parties’ to help them adapt and develop new business models and services to help their clients evolve their businesses.” Read it.

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The Great Metaverse Reversal; Netflix Grows The Catalogue

Tablet Stats

Attention, Tablet Lovers. Chitika has released new data that says tablet people love iPads, but…, “We found that 91.07% of tablet web traffic comes from iPad devices. While the iPad still accounts for a great majority of tablet web traffic, it has fallen about 3.5% from the 94.64% figure we reported in early May. The rise in use of non-iPad tablets is likely an effect of the increased options for consumers (hundreds of models are available), in addition to declining tablet prices.” See the graphic.

Baaaaad Ads

Everyone wants to stop bad ads. ReadWriteWeb reports, “Non-profit organisation StopBadware has partnered with the industry heavyweights — which also include the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and AOL — to launch the Ads Integrity Alliance, which will work to educate, tackle and promote awareness of issues in the Internet advertising space.” Read more.

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