Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
Portals, Publishers and Networks, Oh My!
Citing three years of data that include more than 4,800 marketing campaigns collected by WPP’s Dynamic Logic, The Wall Street Journal’s Emily Steel delivers the details on a new OPA study which says that large publisher’s premium (i.e. directly sold) inventory performs better than remnant inventory sold by ad networks as well as the content portals offer. Steel’s article, “Web Sites Debate Best Values for Advertising Dollars,” concludes that perhaps the in-fighting which the OPA study ignites is inhibiting a shift of ad budgets to digital. Yahoo!’s Bill Wise, identified as VP of Business Development at Yahoo, gets in a quote trying to bring everyone together Kum-bay-yah-style, “It is all part of us getting more market share for digital.”
Katz Leveraging Rubicon Project Infrastructure
MediaWeek’s Katy Bachman covers Rubicon Project’s partnership with Katz 360 Sales, the sales arm of Katz Media Group, a Clear Channel company. Under terms of the agreement, Katz will use the Rubicon OnDemand platform for its own Audience Representation program which enables Katz advertisers to buy audience and contextual segments. (Read The Rubicon Project release.) This adds a fourth platform to Katz’s digital audio network, email segmentation, and mobile advertising platforms according to MediaWeek.
Net Imperative reports that in the UK, Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) advertisers can now advertise through Yahoo! using Nectar card data from UK supermarket chain, Sainsbury, in addition to Yahoo! sales records. Marketing Magazine in the UK reports that this is similar to a similar service that has been available in the U.S. called Consumer Direct.
Blocking All Web Ads
Harry McCracken of The Technologizer posits on what would happen if all internet advertising ads were blocked. He considers more scenarios than many may have thought possible. His scenario #3 catches the eye, “Scenario #3: Ads would get less annoying.” In other words, I’d suggest, “ads get better and add value” – this is the potential it would seem from here.
Thanks to Zach Coelius and the Triggit blog for pointing out the OMMA Behavioral video showing Dave Zinman‘s (who started AdKnowledge) presentation at the recent conference in San Francisco. Zinman, Vice President & GM, Display Advertising, argues that at least part of the next $25 billion of ad budget to come online will be allocated to display advertising and ad exchanges. He also notes a common mantra (it’s not about the click), the need for good, rich media creative, and looks at a recent HP display campaign with Yahoo! that provided the same ROI as Search, but also reached 140 million uniques.
Performance Based Pricing Makes SEMs Wary
Derek Edmond reports on a panel at this week’s Search Engine Strategies and how search engine marketers are reluctant to enter into performance-based pricing deals with clients. For example, only 5% of iProspect’s clients (SEO and SEM) are paying according to performance. Other participants on the panel as well as the audience suggested they can do performance-based pricing but are still wary. Vivek Bhargava, Managing Director of Communicate 2, notes, “We know what we get paid for, but we don’t get paid for a lot of the things we do”.
Hell Is For Ad Exchanges
Andy Atherton of Brand.net shows no mercy with his Brand.net blog missive, “Purgatory for Ad Exchanges.” Atherton echoes themes from a recent Cory Treffiletti post about ad exchanges and that they haven’t lived up to their promise. Hard to disagree with him at this point from a brand advertiser perspective, but we’re just at the point where things are going to get exciting for brand publishers as liquidity, transparency and controls continue to improve through the exchange. Among his requirements for exchanges is smooth guaranteed delivery through the exchange model. Until a futures exchange is created where inventory can be reserved, this will not be possible in a spot market. Of course, buyers could go to traders, ad networks and buy-side platforms to effect client requirements such as “smooth guaranteed delivery.” Check out his POV here.
Big Pharma Starts DOOH Ad Network
Cardinal Health announced recently that it’ss starting a digital signage network business called Pharmacy Health Network (PHN) which promises advertisers, “Connecting You To The Healthy Living.” (As opposed to?)
Respario Digital Advertising Group and Real Digital Media will manage the network’s infrastructure and back office which is to include over 5,000 retail pharmacies according to the release.
Simply Hired Gets Funding
Simply Hired, a job board and recruitment advertising network, announced that is has received $4.6 million in new funding from IDG Ventures and Foundation Capital. Read the release which says, “Simply Hired powers job listings, includes LinkedIn, MySpace, The Washington Post, CNNMoney, BusinessWeek and Plaxo, reaching 23 million unique visitors monthly.”
Quantcast Responds; Makes Flash Cookie Change
According to Wired, Quantcast quickly responded Wednesday to a Tuesday article by Wired and has made a change on its servers in regards to Flash cookies which “re-spawn traditional browser cookies” after the user has deleted them. Wired notes that the UC Berkley grad student, Ashkan Soltani, who discovered that Quantcast was among one of several companies using Flash cookies, exclaimed, “Research in action!” upon hearing of the changes. Quantcast spokesperson Christina Cubeta told Wired that the Quantcast cookie behavior was an “unintended effect” of trying to have better web traffic measurement.
