Twitter's Custom Audiences; EU Joins Google Anti-Competitive Bandwagon

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

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.

Google Antitrust, EU Version

Google is still battling legal trouble in the EU as Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia says the search giant needs to improve its proposals around competitive fairness. Reuters reports that more than a dozen companies in the region, including Microsoft, say Google’s offers to label its products and let advertisers more easily migrate to other platforms are inadequate. Read more. The EU challenge follows last week’s reports that the US Federal Trade Commission is mounting a new antitrust investigation of Google’s dominance in display advertising.

Ads Unattributed

An eMarketer report aggregates available research on adoption of multi-channel attribution tools. The upshot: everyone agrees the stuff is important, but it’s still early days. Only 26% of companies are using advanced attribution, but 28% say it’s a goal for this year: “Email and paid search are some of the easiest channels to include in attribution programs. But there are still a number of digital and offline channels that businesses are hardly tracking, such as TV, mobile and print media, according to the Econsultancy and Adobe survey.” Read more.

Tablets Eclipse PCs

IDC gazes into the crystal ball and sees a prolonged PC doldrum, brought about in part by rising demand for tablets. The researcher “now predicts tablet shipments will exceed those of portable PCs this year, as the slumping PC market is expected to see negative growth for the second consecutive year.” Of course, fewer desktop machines means fewer desktop ads, which will shift the bulk of display formats to smartphones and tablets. Press release.

Social Video Nativeness

BuzzFeed and CNN are teaming up to create news videos exclusively for YouTube – and capitalize on the burgeoning demand for premium video ad inventory. “By pairing the journalistic strength and reach of the CNN brand with BuzzFeed’s unique editorial approach and young audience, our partnership will enable both organizations to engage new audiences,” said KC Estenson, SVP CNN Digital. Read more. Meanwhile, Reddit is turning some of its popular content into a video series to dip into that same honeypot. Read more. And if that’s not enough, how about Hearst’s “native ads” strategy in Adweek? Oh the data!

Display Ads Are For Brands

In support of its ad platform, FIite (2012 Q&A with its client, Condé Nast) preaches to the publisher audience in a new eBook on paid media: “Display ads can be a dynamic vehicle for brand storytelling. They can be the content containers themselves, as living extensions of a brand’s narrative in paid media that are safe and enjoyable to explore.” Read the release. And drink the eBook Kool-Aid (pay with some PII).

Data Scientists Are Sexy

Last week on MIT Tech Review, data scientists were in the spotlight. Do you have yours yet? Cloudera data scientist Josh Wills describes his job: “I’m a data janitor. That’s the sexiest job of the 21st century. It’s very flattering, but it’s also a little baffling.” Read more. According to Facebook’s “data” job board, there’s enough to data to hire three more data science sex symbols. See the lurid listings now. Still more data scientist feature-ing on Ad Age.

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