Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
MediaMind Reports Q3
Ad server and rich media technology vendor MediaMind released its results for the quarter ended September 30, 2010 and “revenues increased 16.3% to $17.7 million compared to $15.2 million in the prior-year period.” Net income was $1 million. Read the release. On its first-ever earnings conference call, CEO Gal Trifon said that during the quarter the company had signed Unilever – through agency Mindshare – in 9 markets across Europe and Asia among other highlights. But, Trifon said the company experienced softness in Southern California as it said the ramp for entertainment client business was less than expected, and in the UK there were fewer brand campaigns and more DR due to a down economy. Headcount increased to 363 in Q3 from 265 a year ago. The company said no additional hiring is expected. Finally, the company has $98 million in cash and expects around $26 million in Q4 revenues and 20-25% growth in revenues annually. Version 2.0 of MediaMind’s platform is expected to be rolled out in early 2011 using a license model. Other pricing details included the company’s creative optimization tools which are priced using an incremental CPM fee. For exchange trading, the company takes a percentage of the media spend. Trifon emphasized the company’s access to client data through the MediaMind platform and that the revenue opportunity for exchange trading was of interest to its clients. He added the company is building infrastructure for high volume exchange trading. MediaMind’s stock closed down yesterday 18% to $12.03.
Hulu And Ad Targeting
GRP Partners VC Mark Suster takes a look at the potential of Hulu as something akin to OPEC for online video media and notes that it is not a data-targeting-friendly platform. He writes on his personal blog about what he sees as “Limited ‘Targeting’ of Advertisements [on Hulu]: The great promise of the Internet for advertisers was that they were finally going to be able to deliver targeted advertisements to users because they could finally know who you were. This has become a reality with banner ads, search ads, contextual ads and Facebook ads. But not Hulu ads.” Read more about Hulu pitfalls and potential.
Selling Less To Ad Networks
The Wall Street Journal’s Jessica Vascellaro pens another piece for the What They Know series using – in part – data from Krux Digital’s study on publisher data usage (read AdExchanger.com’s Q&A) as well as talking to members of the media community. IAC Advertising VP Ali Mirian informs Vascellaro that in response to the number of cookies that were being dropped on company-owned web properties, “[IAC] now sells directly 30% of the ads that used to go to ad networks; its goal is to sell all of its ads on its own.” Read more.
New Mobile Guide
The new “Mobile Web Advertising Measurement Guidelines” are out from the Internet Advertising Bureau and the Mobile Marketing Association. (For acronym lovers: The new MWAMG has been release by the IAB and MMA.) According to the IABs landing page, “These guidelines cover measurement of WAP/mobile web advertising activity. Measurement of other forms of mobile advertising activity, including messaging applications (SMS and MMS), mobile applications, and various forms of mobile audio and video (including streamed, downloaded, broadcast and progressive audio and/or video), is not within the scope of these guidelines.” Take that. And, read more. And, download the guidelines (PDF).
Predicting In The Exchange
On the Right Media Exchange blog, RMX announces “user response prediction technology” which it says “lets advertisers adjust bids at an impression level in auction-based marketplaces. In turn, publishers benefit from better alignment of what they are selling to what advertisers are buying resulting in higher yield for their inventory. This leads to improved advertisers’ ROAS and publisher yield.” What’s that mean? You’ll have to read about it here.
Display Perfection
RocketFuel’s Richard Frankel authors “Build a perfect data-driven display campaign” on iMedia Connection. Among his recommendations, “Build a healthy test budget and then prioritize it – If you want to run a valid test, plan on spending at least $5,000 to $10,000, if not more. Why spend so much if you’re just testing? Don’t think of it as just a test. You’re actually making a media buy. It’s the only way to find out if the data you’ve bought actually works.” Read it.
Local Ad Network Biz
The local advertising buzz is covered in a new article from the Columbia Journalism Review as local publications band together to lure ad dollars. -If you’re a teeth whitening marketer, go elsewhere as CJR’s Lauren Kirchner writes, “Because of the sites’ previous ‘bad teeth’ experiences, Catrow and Pharr say it is important that they keep their design standards high. They only accept static banner ads, simple squares and rectangles, and won’t allow any ads with Flash or animation, even though those would bring in more profit.” Keep it simple locally (KISL).
