The Facebook Ad Network Scoop; Looking At Media Trading In Europe; What They Know

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

The Facebook Ad Network

Facebook ad network rumors continue to swirl and The Register’s Cade Metz carries the latest quote from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg regarding the ad net possibilities from this week’s Web 2.0 Summit. Metz writes, “Zuckerberg was asked if Facebook was on the verge of unleashing such an ad network, and if the company had reached a point in its history analogous to the moment when Google took its on-site ad expertise and rolled it out to the web-at-large in the form of its AdSense network. He hemed and hawed a bit, but he eventually indicated that such network isn’t coming any time soon. (…) Zuckerberg said he ‘doesn’t think of exporting an ad system or anything like that any time soon.’ But he does see the company making money from the ‘socialization’ of all sorts of other industries.” Maybe next week. Read more.

Exchange Trading In Europe

ExchangeWire’s Ciaran O’Kane talks to VivaKi Nerve Center’s EMEA managing director Marco Bertozzi about the media trading business. Bertozzi comments on exchange trading momentum in Europe, “It’s slow but steady. On the one hand it feels as though everyone is talking about it but then you realise that it’s still very much under radar, I think all the people connected with this industry know each and other and interact, some limited teams in the agencies are aware but generally it’s still nascent.” Read more.

What They Know

The Wall Street Journal continues its What They Know series with a look at insurers. Leslie Scism And Mark Maremont write, “Insurers have long used blood and urine tests to assess people’s health—a costly process. Today, however, data-gathering companies have such extensive files on most U.S. consumers—online shopping details, catalog purchases, magazine subscriptions, leisure activities and information from social-networking sites—that some insurers are exploring whether data can reveal nearly as much about a person as a lab analysis of their bodily fluids.” Read more.

AdExchanger.com Retargeting

Peter Kafka takes a look at the current AdExchanger.com retargeting campaign on All Things D. (Have I said retargeting is hot?) Kafka comments, “So here’s a Web ad campaign that cuts to the chase, and simply tells you up front that it’s stalking you. And the chances are very, very high that you’re not going to care. That’s because the ads come from AdExchanger.com, a very niche (and very good) trade publication that focuses exclusively on ad technology. And the only way you’re going to see the ads will be if you’ve visited AdExchanger.” Please do. Often. Read more from Kafka.

The Digital Culture Shift

In a lengthy article, Danielle Sacks looks at the future of advertising and its many challenges including one of culture shift. She covers a recent digital bootcamp for non-digital agency folks on FastCompany, “Most of the men and women here — average age: 38 — have worked at agencies for more than a decade. Such tenure used to be considered an asset, but these days it’s more of a liability.” 38! Read more about the drive to specialization.

Retail Spending On Upswing

The doctor is in – again! Efficient Frontier’s Dr. Siddharth Shah says that retail spending is looking good for November and December after a recent survey of its retail clients. One of Shah’s takeaways is “Retail advertisers are in an increasingly competitive environment and are having to pay more per click to acquire customers. However, they are also more profitable than they were a year ago and have increased their budgets by an estimated 16-18% this holiday season.” Read more takeaways.

Reaching To Creative With Mobile Tech

Mobile ad technology company Medialets announced Medialets Create yesterday as it looks to target creative agencies. It’s not entirely clear what the program entails as the blog calls it, a “certification program that puts the knowledge and tools for mobile rich media ad creation into the hands of agencies and in-house creative teams,” but a solid list of shops have signed on including AKQA, AvatarLabs, The Hyperfactory, MRM Worldwide, Ogilvy North America, Razorfish, Southern Realm, Theorem, and The Visionaire Group. Read about it.

The Media Brand

Consultant Ellen Oppenheim opines on MediaPost about Media as Brand. What she means: “CBS was a TV network, Sports Illustrated a magazine and The Wall Street Journal a newspaper. All that’s changed. As they expanded content across multiple platforms, media properties began referring to themselves as brands.” And now, in order to be good brand stewards, these corporate media brands need to start acting like it. She gives 6 tips including “mining the digital data stream.” Read more.

Your Target Categories

Semantic technology company OpenAmplify announced that it has launched a new product that will allow content providers to create their own content targets, if you will. Paraphrasing the release, the product called Ampliverse lets a “company create, analyze and monetize digital content to manage their own, needs-specific taxonomies and to classify web content according to their unique requirements.” And, then target away on those custom categories. Read more.

Addressing DOOH

Digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising is increasingly part of the digital marketers toolkit as out-of-home signage gets its digits on – which helps targeting become more addressable and real-time in nature. Jeremy Lockhorn provides a few examples of the latest and greatest in New York’s Times square where the media is so addressable that it may include your face as Mickey Mouse – with your permission, of course. See it.

You’re Hired!

ValueClick Media announced that Lynn D’Alessandro has been hired as VP of eastern sales and will report to general manager Bill Todd. From the release, D’Alessandro’s experience in the ad network space is identified: “A veteran digital media sales executive, most recently Ms. D’Alessandro led national sales at Traffic Marketplace, where she served since 2003.” Good to see more women in the executive ranks of ad technology. Read the release.

But Wait, There’s More!