Playing Tag With Cash; Amazon AWS RTB

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

Playing Tag With Cash

Gotta tag? It’s valuable if you can scale the management of millions and billions of the ad variety. Tag manager Tealium has raised $15 million-plus (total for the life of the company is $27 million). The release claims large revenue growth on a percentage basis but no revenue figures. Read more. And, read the AdExchanger Q&A from January. The space is apparently a “greenfield” in a “blue ocean.” It’s also interesting to note Battery Ventures “ad data thesis” as it has laid down funds in BlueKai and Tealium, who have similar but different businesses models.

Amazon AWS RTB

With the help of retargeter AdRoll’s customer testimonial, Amazon makes the case for using its Web Services to provide real-time bidding database infrastructure. The pitch on the AWS blog: “Amazon DynamoDB is specifically designed (…) for RTB systems that need to quickly access information like cookie profile data.” The post goes on to claim that overcoming real-time bidding challenges with latency and data availability are also a focus for AWS.” Read more. Amazon supplies the pipes – and the media.

OS X Fragments

Apple owes its vibrant app ecosystem in part to the ease with which developers can build for its operating systems. Ad network Chitika notes in a new report that could be changing, at least for the Mac OS, as the number of OS X versions increases to four this year. ZDnet believes “the data points to developers having to deal with a more widely distributed Mac OS environment for the foreseeable future.” It argues for free upgrades of the next OS to get everyone on the same page. More.

Mobile Blow-Up

eMarketer took its mobile ad prediction rifle out of the closet yesterday and shot at some new predictions for mobile ads. From an eMarketer blog post: “US mobile advertising spending grew 178% last year to $4.11 billion (…) and spending is expected to rise a further 77.3% to $7.29 billion in 2013.” Read more. eMarketer sees YouTube as a driver for Google’s mobile display numbers among other observations.

DC: Digital Consolidation

Warner Bros. is gathering a number of its far-flung, and arguably most valuable, digital properties into WB Entertainment, Adweek’s Mike Shields reports. The plan is to create a one-stop shop for TMZ.com, EllenTV.com, DCComics.com and others to make ad buying more efficient. “Think of this as a boutique, premium ad network,” said Christopher Lindquist, who’s been tapped to lead the new unit. Read more.

One-Size Fits None

As consumers try to choose between consuming content on PCs, smartphones, tablets and (hoo-boy) “phablets,” the call for “responsive web design — where “one design fits all devices” — is getting louder. But don’t hold your breath for seamless, content experiences across devices any time soon, writes Jenny Xie, a PBS MediaShift editorial intern and MIT senior. She thinks the effort could be spent elsewhere, for one thing: “Instead of plunging into using responsive ads for responsive sites, perhaps everyone can get in the same room and prototype alternatives to display ads altogether.” Read the rest.

Robust Facebook

Facebook is doing fine, says All Things D’s Peter Kafka, citing data from J.P. Morgan analyst Doug Anmuth and comScore. Ad revenue upshot: Facebook will end 2013 with $5.5 billion in ad revenue (a 30% annual gain) and will make $6.9 billion next year. “Facebook users are spending much less time with the service on the PC. But they’re spending much more time on Facebook on the phone, so overall engagement is up,” Kafka adds. More.

But Wait. There’s More!