AdExchanger: News and Views on Data-Driven Digital Advertising

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The Fruits Of Akamai

MediaMath formally launched Adroit Digital (see it) on Tuesday, using the technology and the team it acquired from Akamai’s ad business, known as Advertising Decisioning Solutions (ADS). It’s also using part of the name of Adroit, the Boston-based dynamic creative optimization company it acquired in 2010. The new business unit positions itself as providing access to the same data co-op that Akamai’s ADS was built on, with more than 300 companies contributing. Read the release and MediaPost. MediaMath’s managed services business is evolving too, as MediaMath CEO Joe Zawadzki told AdExchanger recently, “We're not providing managed services at MediaMath. When we bought ADS, the division from Akamai, we took the rest of the trading services team, the managed services team, and merged that with the ADS team, and that has become Adroit. They're another separate entity." Also bubbling: MediaMath’s exclusive license of Akamai’s pixel-free tech and access to the data co-op may not last forever, as Akamai could want to cash in and open it up to other platforms that wish to retarget co-op data. A MediaMath spokesperson offered this correction of our previous statement: "Akamai has no control whatsoever over the co-op. The data co-op belongs solely to Adroit Digital, and a company has to become an Adroit Digital customer in order to participate in it or benefit from its data."

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Counting The Spend

Online ad revenue has hit a new high – $9.6 billion – according to an IAB and PwC report. That’s a 15.6% increase in just one year. “This first quarter milestone clearly illustrates that marketers recognize that digital has become the go-to medium for all sorts of activities on all sorts of screens, at home, at the office and on-the-run,” said IAB CEO and Prez Randall Rothenberg. Read the quarterly update.

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Conflict Of Interest?

It’s not an agency trading desk story, but agency-vendor conflict of interest is the theme of a Digiday article. Tremor’s S-1 outlines that Publicis Starcom Mediavest Group (SMG) exec Laura Desmond received $300k in 2012 share options as a member of Tremor’s board while SMG was one of Tremor’s largest 2012 clients, pushing $18 million in spend through the company. “The conflict” could be that agencies and their executives potentially give preference to certain vendors that supersede client interests. Marshall claims a similar conflict of interest may exist between Videology and WPP’s GroupM. Read more. If you look at the S-1, former AKQA COO Jim Rossman is also part of Tremor’s board, but AKQA spent little with Tremor in comparison. The Desmond involvement was originally spotted by Stuart Smith, who suggests that Desmond could make upwards of $3 million if Tremor IPO’s as expected.

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Twitter Exchange

In Ad Age, Tim Peterson reports Twitter’s rumored ad exchange may be imminent.  Anonymous sources tell him that “the micro-blogging platform is planning to erect an exchange similar to FBX that would let brands retarget people who visit their sites with ads on Twitter.” Read it. If true in regards to Twitter programmatic efforts,it will be interesting to see how inventory is delivered at-scale. Twitter’s stream seems more restrictive to ads than Facebook’s, too.

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D11: Meeker’s Ad Spend Trends

Mary Meeker, formerly a Morgan Stanley analyst and now at VC firm Kleiner Perkins, released her latest “Internet Trends” snapshot of the online ecosystem at the All Things D D11 conference. Given time spent on the Internet, whether through mobile- or PC-based devices, Meeker sees a $20 billion ad spend growth opportunity ahead in the US alone. See the 117-slide report on Slideshare. Also at D11: Apple’s “sole motivation” for getting into mobile advertising? CEO Tim Cook says it was about developers, developers, developers. Watch the full interview here.

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Twitter CRM Matching

AdExchanger’s Twitter ad strategy prognostications may be true. Twitter is rumored to be releasing a customer matching tool similar to Facebook’s Custom Audiences product, which will allow advertisers to target their customers on the site. Although there is no official word from Twitter, Bloomberg “sources” expect the feature by year’s end. Read more.

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Yahoo & Video Ads

At All Things D, Kara Swisher taps her Yahoo sources and finds that the company is hot on the trail of Hulu with a $600-800 million bid for the video site. This syncs with previous rumors reported by Bloomberg. Swisher paraphrases sources who say, "While allowing the bid to proceed, [Yahoo CEO Marissa] Mayer is more focused on the integration of Tumblr, as well as other acquisitions that will bolster other key product areas." Corp dev is driving this one. Read more.  Yahoo is looking to create a better video story for advertisers. It recently lost out on a stake in France-based video clip destination Dailymotion.

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FTC Probes Google Display Biz

The Federal Trade Commission is prepping a new antitrust probe into Google’s display ad dominance, just four months after ending its last investigation of the company (which found no wrongdoing). Bloomberg sources say, “FTC investigators are examining whether Google is using its position in U.S. display ads...to push companies to use more of its other services.” Read it. It’s been six years since the FTC approved Google’s DoubleClick merger, calling the display space “dynamic.”

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Programmatic Out-Of-Home

Signs on sticks – can you buy them programmatically? Xaxis thinks so. The WPP trading desk is adding out-of-home buys courtesy of sister company Spafax and its geo-based audience segments (with Vistar Media’s help – Digiday). The venues: “taxis, shopping malls, doctor’s offices, stadiums, gas stations, office buildings and hotels.” Press release. Volume is about 1.4 billion monthly impressions across 100,000 screens. At a glance, this appears to be a data enhancement more than an addressability shift. WSJ recently covered Xaxis and Spafax’s moves in radio and OOH (out-of-home). Read that. Meanwhile, in other OOH news, OOH buying platform AdStruc has integrated into agency workflow system Mediaocean.

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Elementary, My Dear Watson

From yesterday’s Smarter Commerce Global Summit in Nashville, Tennessee, supercomputer “Watson” is apparently coming to marketing in a much bigger way. An IBM release offers, “Watson will serve as an assistant in helping line of business leaders from CMOs, customer service agents and sales leaders transform the customer experience...” What’s that mean, you ask? A big computer is going to help the marketer figure out the “big data” stew. A keyword to all this is improving “engagement” with consumers at-scale. Read more on GigaOm. Will they become an acquirer in the ad tech world to pull in the paid media channel? Seems possible. In the meantime, download IBM’s new 2013 marketing report.

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