Millennial Reports Mobile Ad Network Revenues; Display Snafu; Yahoo! Reverb

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Mobile Ads Report

Mobile ad network Millennial Media reported its earnings yesterday. Yes, that’s right, Millennial Media is a public company in case you’ve forgotten and every three months you will get a taste of how the mobile display advertising market is performing. How conveeeeeeeeenient. TechCrunch paraphrases the news for Q1 2012: “For the year, Millennial is looking at $173 million and 176 million in annual revenues, which would be up by 68 percent from the year before. But that’s actually lower than the $202.8 million analysts were expecting on average, according to a Bloomberg survey.” Oh, those pesky surveys. Read more. Latest valuation for MM (Millenial’s ticker symbol on the NYSE) – just over $1.1 billion.

Display Snafu

A live, video sharing website is the subject of Canada’s CBC feature article on the perils of brands advertising online. Advertisers Tim Hortons, Rogers, Home Depot and Bank of Montreal are among the companies whose AdSense ads as well as those of other “web ad placement services” were apparently displayed on a site called Stickam – “where young teens engage in public, sexually explicit exchanges via live webcam and text,” says CBC. Google spokesperson Andrew Swartz admits in the article, “Google has strict policies in place regarding the content of pages that show AdSense ads, which are enforced by sophisticated automated systems and human review. Due to the dynamic nature of website content, however, we do not always immediately detect content that violates our policies.” DSP DataXu is also implicated. DataXu vp of biz dev Adrian Tompsett tells AdExchanger via email, “This is an issue the entire industry faces as a majority of the content today is generated by consumers. The problem stems from the generic, inaccurate way exchanges categorize sites, hindering the brand safety and categorization software designed to filter it. We are always working with our exchange partners like Google to ensure the quality of the inventory.” Read the CBC article.

Offline Merging W/Online

Having been in business together for a few months, offline measurement company SymphonyIRI and Legolas Media have released results of a three-month study that they say takes into account 50 million rich media and banner impressions. A key insight says the two companies: “SymphonyIRI and Legolas found targeting based on a consumer’s prior purchase history to be the most effective ad strategy. Consumers who were regular users of a brand resulted in more than a 48 percent in-store sales lift, with a 23 percent lift for buyers of competitive brands.” Read the release (PDF).

Yahoo! Reverb

The online ads world is still reverberating from the executive changes at Yahoo!. Wall Street offers up its thoughts as J.P. Morgan’s Doug Anmuth notes the low lights, “Potential impact on employee retention/recruitment and Alibaba. According to AllThingsD Levinsohn sought to ease employees’ concerns on Sunday in an internal memo after the slew of changes were announced. However, we believe both employee recruitment and retention could become more challenging going forward if Yahoo!’s leadership situation remains unresolved for long. Additionally, last week The Wall Street Journal reported that Yahoo! was working on a potential taxable deal to monetize 15% to 25% of Alibaba Group—less than Yahoo!’s 40%+ stake overall. We believe the recent Board and CEO changes could delay this potential Alibaba deal, which might be disappointing to certain investors focused on a near-term transaction.” Mark Mahaney at Citi continues the discussion and says, “… there’s also a broader question that YHOO hasn’t effectively addressed in years. Should Yahoo! be run for Growth or for Value? We believe, in part due to mounting competitive pressures, that Yahoo! should be run for Value – share buybacks, dividends, Asia asset sales, etc… We’ll patiently wait for evidence of this strategy before considering becoming constructive on the shares, despite what appears to currently be a reasonable valuation.” Yahoo is worth about $19 billion right now. Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal reports that former CEO Scott Thompson resigned due – in part – to his thyroid cancer diagnosis. Read more (subscription). And All Things D’s Kara Swisher says she has details on former CEO Thompson’s severance package or lack thereof. Read that one.

Measuring Big Ads

Microsoft Advertising UK Research Manager Tim Lumb shares the results from a new study on his company’s blog that shows the IAB rising stars (big ads!) formats far outpace their diminutive brethren when it comes to key performance metrics. Lamb writes, “The premium formats are show to be more effective than the standard formats, especially in regards to consideration (twice as effective, from 3% to 6%) and opinion (two-and-a-half times more effective than standard formats). In terms of creative evaluation, the premium formats outperformed standard across all measures, especially in differentiation, click intent and purchase intent.” Read more. And, download the study (PDF).

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The Case For Exchanges

UK-based trading desk Infectious Media scores a DoubleClick case study as Google lights the fuse (again) to entice demand-side platforms to buy (and buy again). The study emphasizes the international appeal of the DoubleClick Ad exchange. Infectious reports recent results: “Year-on-year, the company reports a 165% increase in impressions served through AdX. Overall, one-third of all impressions are being served through AdX and 37% of all conversions come from AdX.” Read more (PDF).

Infographic Tuesday

Did you know that there are 162,000 attorneys in NYC, Washington D.C., San Francisco and Chicago? Well, that’s what IfByPhone says in an infographic on Marketing Automation. See it.

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