TV Style Ads On Facebook; Chicago POG Merger Benefits

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TV Ads On Facebook

Facebook video advertising will take the form of 15-second television-style ads, according to Bloomberg’s Edmund Lee. Depending on how large an audience the advertiser wants, the ads could cost up to $2.5 million a day. Facebook and Nielsen have already been working together for three years, says Lee, to provide advertisers the ability to compare television ads to video ads on Facebook. Read more.

Don’t Forget About Chicago

New York City may be the center of the media agency world, but Chicago stands to benefit from the Publicis-Omnicom merger as well. Two Publicis-owned media companies, Starcom MediaVest Group and VivaKi, are based in the Windy City, and expansion of those offices would be a boost to the local economy. “Starcom is the crown jewel of Publicis’ media landscape, and VivaKi is the nerve center of its technology,” said Shawn Riegsecker, founder of Centro. “If this transaction is truly based on technology, and VivaKi sits here, it would suggest that there’s a great opportunity to create more jobs in Chicago.” Read more.

Data $haring

With all the chatter about privacy and data sharing, Reputation.com plans to launch a product that trades rewards for personal information. According to the MIT Technology Review, the company was founded in 2006 and has received $67 million in investment funding. Not everyone thinks this product will work, such as Peter Fader, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, who said, “Despite the ways that companies delude themselves, demographics and other personal descriptors are rarely useful.” He believes behavior is much more lucrative. Read more.

Free Ads

Social media opens up an opportunity for marketers to repurpose user-generated content as ads, especially since studies show people trust their friends’ opinions more than media companies’. According to PandoDaily, a new company called Olapic gathers photos from social networks and then gives them to e-commerce companies to use for ads. Some of the brands Olapic works with include Pepsi, Condé Nast and JetBlue. Read more.

Twitter South of the Border

Twitter is launching promoted products in Peru and Ecuador after finding success in other South American countries, The Next Web is reporting. “We’re seeing US brands turn to Latin America as an attractive emerging market to scale and monetize their business,” says David Rayo, managing director of IMS Social. Read more.

Holy Data

One of the most popular Bible apps, YouVersion, could be worth $200 million because of its audience size and the data it collects, according to Slate. Despite spending $20 million so far on developing and maintaining the app, its creator has no intention to monetize. The data collected is used to help customize the user experience and is shared on a macro level with publishers. Read more.

Mobile Gains

An update to a comScore report shows that mobile traffic continues to increase, especially for companies like Pandora, Zynga and Groupon. The total audience for the top 100 sites has grown by 49% from smartphones and tablets. Some sites, such as Google and Vevo, saw a decrease in mobile-audience growth, even though the overall audience grew, due to people using the desktop sites. Read more on MediaPost.

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