Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
ValueClick Buys Greystripe
ValueClick has taken a reported $75 million plunge into the mobile advertising business with the acquisition of mobile ad network Greystripe according to TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington. He writes, “Greystripe has raised $18.1 million in funding to date over four rounds. They have a direct sales force that sells rich mobile ads directly to brands, and are on pace to bring in $25 million – $30 million in revenue this year, with about $6 million in gross profit.” Read more.
Mobile And Privacy
On Friday, The Wall Street Journal claimed that Apple and Google were using mobile data without users’ permission in their mobile operating systems. Read it. In a follow-up piece, Google defended itself against claims that it’s sucking down mobile data in its Android mobile operating system without a user’s permission. According to the article, “A Google spokesman said ‘all location sharing on Android is opt-in by the user.'” The WSJ article then says, “However, this definition of ‘opt-in’ doesn’t mean the system is off by default for people who use the typical Android set-up.” Read what the WSJ means. Finally, the WSJ’s Robert Lee Hotz pens a detailed “What They Know” piece titled, “The Really Smart Phone,” and looks at the different types of data coming out of smartphones. Read it.
TellApart Seeing RTB Results
Online ad retargeter TellApart is seeing its real-time bidding-enabled, buying efforts yielding big results according to a new DoubleClick Ad Exchange case study which reads: “[TellApart]’s pay-per-conversion business model is adding as much as 8% in total revenue growth for top e-retail sites like Diapers.com, eBags, Drugstore.com, CafePress, Hayneedle and more.” In confirming the case study’s findings with AdExchanger.com, TellApart CEO Josh McFarland claimed that his company is one of the top five bidders on the DoubleClick Ad Exchange.Download it (PDF).
On ClickZ, Tessa Wegert examines the do’s and don’t’s of the local ad business and writes, “When it comes to advertising on local content sites and planning campaigns on group buying services, a single rule can be applied to both: use special offers to lure new customers, but rely on CRM to keep them.” She makes clear it’s not all about placement – read more.
More On Cloud Outage
Amazon EC2 cloud service outages stretched into Friday as an AdExchanger.com editorial staffer found himself unable to check-in on Foursquare when “researching” some local NYC fare. Meanwhile, on their company’s development blog, B2B audience marketing company, Bizo, explained how it survived late last week in spite of what looks to be long odds: “Bizo’s infrastructure is 100% AWS (Amazon Web Services) and we support 1000s of publisher sites (including some very well know business sites) doing billions of impressions a month. Sure, we had a few bruises early yesterday morning when the outage first began, but …” Read more. On O’Reilly Community blog, George Reese says, “These kinds of failures don’t expose the weaknesses of the cloud—they expose why the cloud is so important.” Many of the commenters on his post seem to disagree. Read it.
Data Drives Productivity
In a piece titled, “When There’s No Such Thing as Too Much Information,” The New York Times’ Steve Lohr says that “big data” is a good thing and data-driven decisions can actually help companies’ productivity. He offers IBM as an example: “I.B.M. alone says it has spent $14 billion on 25 companies that focus on data analytics. That business now employs 8,000 consultants and 200 mathematicians. I.B.M. said last week that it expected its analytics business to grow to $16 billion by 2015.” Read it. Along those lines, need a big data infographic? – try Nieman Journalism Lab, see a video of a new data-driven tool by the NY Times R&D team using Twitter feeds.
Marketing To Ad Agencies
Dierdra Teodorczuk offers her thoughts on how to successfully market to ad agencies. As it turns out, her efforts to network during a recent Advertising Week did not do the trick. Instead, she turned to eBay and “a flier advertising an eBay auction for meetings with ad-agency CEOs to benefit The New York Advertising Club’s foundation.” She adds “I almost didn’t take it. I owe a big thank you to the woman who handed it to me. After researching the prizes, I started bidding. A spirited contest ensued and I ended up winning five CEO meetings — not bad market penetration for $3,000.” Read more.
Tech Bubble?
RadiumOne CEO Gurbaksh Chahal joins this past weekend’s blogosphere buzz (Aol/TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington, vc Fred Wilson) on whether or not we’re in a “tech bubble” a la 1999 and 2000 and the whole ecosystem is running too flush with investor cash. Chahal is pessimistic, “What’s going on right now is just bad for the ecosystem. We’re breeding a very different type of entrepreneur. We can’t train entrepreneurs to think this way; its bad for innovation and just doesn’t work in the long run.” Read more.
You’re Promoted!
ClickZ’s Kate Kaye reports that Microsoft has filled the top global ad exec role vacated by Carolyn Everson when she left the company to take a similar role at Facebook. Frank Holland, previously Microsoft’s corporate vp of operations, gets the job. Read it.
Adap.tv Adding Publishers
Online video marketplace and platform provider, Adap.tv, announced a deal with Intergi’s online video platform, Playwire, which will now be plugged into buyers in Adap.tv’s Marketplace. According to the release, with the deal, Adap.tv’s video ad Marketplace reaches “4,200 premium sites and 60 million monthly users.” Read more.
Talkin’ ‘Bout A Revolution
Marketing maven Seth Godin says on his personal blog that there is a revolution afoot as “The exchange of information creates ever more value, while commodity products are ever cheaper. It takes fewer employees to generate more value, make more noise and impact more people.” He thinks there’s opportunity for anyone – with a few caveats. Read it.
But Wait. There’s More!
- Foursquare Seeks New Round At $500 Million Valuation – The Business Insider
- In a Data-Heavy Society, Being Defined by the Numbers – The New York Times
