Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
Adap.tv Gets Video Ad Exchange Clients
Ad Age’s Michael Learmonth covers the news that Adap.tv has signed Gannett, Omnicom and Publicis among others to its ad exchange. Trying to temper concerns about lower CPMs, Adap.tv’s CEO Amir Ashkenazi says that in comparison to display exchanges, his company’s exchange gives “publishers more control over what campaigns they accept and which they don’t, even allowing publishers to manually approve each bid, if they chose.” Read more.
Right Media Speaks
The Right Media blog came to life last Friday as the first post of 2010 gave Yahoo! Right Media Exchange members a taste of things to come. Among the tastings, looks like either Right Media will buy a brand safety metrics company or they’ll build their own brand safety tools as they promise new tools are ahead in this area. Also, the Right Media Exchange is getting more exchange-y with more publisher transparency, “We’ve also significantly increased the percentage of transparent exchange-wide validated URLs (VURLs).” There’s more in a post written by Brooke Wyard & Megan Pagliuca.
Signs Of VC Hope
Harvard University’s annual Venture Capital & Private Equity Conference showed “signs of hope” according to the Wall Street Journal’s Venture Dispatch blog. Among the signs, one venture capitalist told attendees, “At this point I think most people are trying not to lose money and lose their job.” Oh happy day! Read more about “capital efficiency.”
All Facebook reported last week that Facebook has rolled out its version of a conversion tracking pixel to a select group of advertisers. The implementation doesn’t look rocket science from here (should be easy for AdWords advertisers to understand) but the opportunity is clear about Facebook: huge scale. See a screenshot or two.
Brands ARE Media
Brian Solis from new media agency FutureWorks explains why he thinks brands ARE media as social media plays an increasingly important role in the lives of internet users. Solis writes, “In the near future, brands and organizations will create new or augment existing roles for editors and publishers to create timely, relevant, and captivating content on all social media channels.” Read more on ReadWriteWeb.
Yahoo! Using OPA Ads
PaidContent’s David Kaplan interviews Yahoo!’s VP of North American Sales, Mitch Spolan, about Yahoo!’s OPA “big ad” strategy and its success to-date. Spolan tells PaidContent, “‘We started talking about using the OPA formats in Q4. It all came together pretty quickly after that.’ So far, Yahoo is just using the XXL and Pushdown, as the Fixed Panel requires more complex coding.” Read more.
Newspapers + Online = Respect
Looking at recent research about the Australian newspaper reading public, the Australian finds that “When combined with their websites, [newspapers] did best of all on almost every measure. Among the key findings: 57 per cent of respondents (up from 45 per cent previously) said newspapers and their websites shaped the issues of the day; 51 per cent (up from 33 per cent) said their content was generally better respected than in other media.” Read about the online news strategy.
Clarizio Joins INVISION
Former Ad.com/Platform-A exec, Lynda Clarizio, has reappeard as CEO of INVISION (AdExchanger.com Q&A here). Clarizio tells PaidContent that recent company funding will be funneled to “expanding Invision’s TV ad-sales management systems to include audience targeting via set-top boxes
Read more. Former CEO Christine Watkins is Chairman of the Board.
Post-Apocalypse Ad World
Brand.net co-Founder and COO Andy Atherton cannot keep his finger off the “publish” button on the Brand.net blog. In his latest missive, “The (Ad) World is Flat,” Atherton identifies key trends, the winners and the losers that will emerge as standardization takes hold across digital channels (e.g. VAST for online video) and as convergence lives up to its billing – such as TV going addressable at long last. Read more.
Apple And LBS
There still seems to be confusion on what you can and can’t do within the apps of the Apple iPhone and, one would assume, the coming iPad as it relates to location-based service which can be critical to ad targeting. GigaOm’s Rahul Sonnad tries to sort it out but ends up finding three interpretations and concludes with his own interpretation, “Would a walled garden ad network on the iPhone be in Apple’s best interest?” Read more.
Quinstreet IPO Launches
LeadsCon founder, Jay Weintraub, looks at the initial public offering of Quinstreet which finally hit the street – Wall Street – on Feb. 11 at a price of $15. Unfortunately the stock is already trading below its IPO price at $14.45 on Friday. Fear not says Weintraub who positions the unsteady open as the first baby steps in a much bigger opportunity: “It’s taken years for us (the lead gen world) to get the space, so it’s only understandable that the financial world will remain hesitant and the stock trading close to slightly lower than the open.” Read it.
