RMX Chief McGrory Says RTB Has Created Lopsided Market; Google Eyes Content Play; MediaBank Expands To Europe

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

Yahoo!’s McGrory Speaks Out On RTB

Yahoo!’s Ramsey McGrory takes a look at the impact of real-time bidding for publishers on Jack Myers’ Mediabizbloggers. He thinks publishers need to consider all sides of the potential impact of putting their non-guaranteed inventory in a real-time bidding-enabled marketplace. McGrory says that though the benefits to buyers is clear, it may be less so for publishers. He writes, “So the rub is that the introduction of RTB has created a lopsided market that jeopardizes the publisher side of the equation. RTB fundamentally changes the nature of the market. By providing the full URL to literally hundreds or thousands of buyers, the opaque unsold market becomes very transparent. Read more. Meanwhile, on the DoubleClick Ad Exchange “Help” website, up popped a new section titled: “Real-time bidder and the implications for sellers.” Read it.

Google Getting Into Content?

The New York Times reports that Google may be getting into the content creation game by purchasing online video production company Next New Networks as it looks to amp up ad sales for YouTube. The NYT writes, “The acquisition would be YouTube’s first major foray into producing original content, and demonstrates how intently it is focused on offering professional videos rather than just short clips by amateurs.” What isn’t Google doing? It may be all segments of the value chain except for the marketer part. Read more about the juggernaut’s latest, rumored move.

MediaBank Going Overseas

MediaBank is the latest American advertising tech company to take its services abroad as the company announced it will move into the UK early next year and then other European countries thereafter. From the Mediabank website, the company plans to acquire or do some biz dev to establish a footprint: “The new global presence will be crafted to fit the unique needs of each regional market. To achieve this goal, MediaBank will create strategic partnerships with, and acquisitions of, leading media management businesses worldwide.” Read more.

Havas Digital Eyes Attribution

Havas Digital announced that will further leverage the “big data” of its Artemis data warehouse by partnering with EMC. From a press release: “Havas Digital and EMC’s Data Computing Products Division are working jointly to enhance the Artemis Analytics Lab — a research and development initiative to embrace large-scale, big data analytics in the private cloud. This initiative greatly amplifies Havas Digital customers’ understanding of user behavior and ability to optimize their marketing campaigns accordingly.” Havas Digital says its looking to crack the code when it comes to attribution of ROI across marketing channels. Read the release.

Google Fiber

No. It’s not a Google initiative to improve regularity. Google is in the testing phases of its broadband fiber initiative across local communities as Milo Medin, new vp of Access Services said on the Official Google blog that they’re still deciding which community/communities to select first, “We had planned to announce our selected community or communities by the end of this year, but the level of interest was incredible—nearly 1,100 communities across the country responded to our announcement—and exceeded our expectations.” Read more.

On OpenRTB

On his personal blog, angel investor Jerry Neumann reports back to his readership that some of the dismissive comments he’s heard about the new OpenRTB initiative among supply-side platforms and demand-side platforms is a mistake. He writes, “Dismissing OpenRTB as not being really anything very interesting at all is missing the point. OpenRTB is not radical change, it barely qualifies as incremental change. But it is architectural change. It is the reconfiguration of existing linkages, or the beginning of it.” Read more.

AppNexus O’Kelley On Ecosystem

From last week, AppNexus CEO Brian O’Kelley delivers his thoughts on the bubbling ad tech ecosystem and says, “What I find remarkable is how much of the investment in our industry is being spent on overlapping stacks of ‘proprietary’ technology.” He adds later, “Smart companies know that they don’t have to reinvent the wheel to be successful. (…) Savvy VCs reward this type of thinking. They appreciate that a company has to be different where it counts, and rely on existing technologies to support that.” Read more.

CEO Cadogan On OpenX Growth

In a wide-ranging interviewing, OpenX CEO Tim Cadogan speaks to SoCal Tech about his company which he says is experiencing a run rate of tens of millions and touches on the Dentsu partnership which he says will be up and running in the first quarter of next year. Cadogan drills down on key drivers of OpenX growth: “We’re seeing good growth on our enterprise, software-as-a-service ad server. Obviously, we’ve also seen growth but don’t make money off the free products. We’ve also seen the market just really, really grow quickly. Part of that is a strong, underlying trend of more and more buyers and agencies buying on the spot market, and using real time bidding.” Read more.

Lipstick On A Banner

SVnetwork (AdExchanger.com Q&A) president Joe Marchese is having none of the display ad or DSP talk these days in a MediaPost opinion piece. He recounts an anecdote inspired by a colleague: “SVnetwork’s Chris Rooke must have been reading one of countless articles on the latest and greatest new targeting/DSP/social ad networks hoping for something new, when he just exclaimed to the office “They are just putting lipstick on a banner!” Read about it.

SpotXchange Gets $12 Million

In-stream, video ad marketplace SpotXchange announced what it says its first institutional round of financing through H.I.G. Partners. It appears H.I.G. will fund the entire $12 million round and in return for equity will get two board seats. SpotXchange CEO Mike Shehan (AdExchanger.com Q&A) says in the release, “We plan to open several international offices in the next year and significantly add to our current media sales team.” Read more.

Twitter Worth Billions

All Things D’s Kara Swisher reports that Twitter has raised $200 million at a $3.7 billion valuation. In addition, former DoubleClick-er David Rosenblatt will join the company’s board. Read more. On the Twitter blog, Twitter CEO says that the Kleiner Perkins and existing investor joined in the new round and offers some tweet stats: “In the past 12 months, Twitter users sent an astonishing 25 billion Tweets and we added more than 100 million new registered accounts. In that time, our team has grown from 130 people to more than 350 today.” Read the Twitter blog. Finally, the company is taking inquiries on advertising through a fancy new interface –read more on Search Engine Land.

Cookie Control

OwnerIQ CEO Jay Habegger takes a pro-OBA on Ad Age with “Why Online Behavioral Advertising Is the Most Consumer Friendly.” He defends the media and companies in the space that are using behavioral techniques (i.e. cookies), “There is simply no market failure. The companies involved have provided mechanisms for managing any targeted ads that may be displayed, and consumers themselves have easy and absolute control over any cookies placed on their computer.” Read it.

New Sites And The Social Graph

33across has a brand new company website – see it here – and has also created what it calls a new industry resource at www.socialgraphproject.org whose mission according to the home page is “to collect and share the most exciting innovations, research and practical applications involving social networks and graphs. We’ve spent the past two years aggregating the best social graph media coverage along with related research, commentary and tools.” See it.

But Wait, There’s More!