Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
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Yahoo!’s New PR Firm
First, The New York Times runs an article by Brad Stone and Ashlee Vance offering insider details on what a great deal (follow closely) Microsoft thinks that Yahoo! received in handing over search to Microsoft. Yesterday , Kara Swisher on All Things D gives the MicroPhone to Microsoft’s Yusuf Mehdi who echoes Ballmer saying that Yahoo! has a great opportunity ahead. Today, Swisher talks to Satya Nadella, SVP of Research and Development at Microsoft’s Online Services Division, the guy in charge of the newly-merged Yahoo-MSFT search product among other things.
Obviously, fears about disgruntled Yahoo! shareholders going ballistic were discussed prior to announcing the big search deal as the market was expecting a stack of cash rather than a rev share.
Interesting to see Microsoft as a PR agency, though. They’re pretty good.
AdWeek’s Steve McClellan enters the digital zone as he examines opinions from global ad leaders on what the future holds for the advertising industry. The article, “Ad Biz Faces the ‘New Normal’,” quotes David Kenny, managing partner of Publicis Groupe’s VivaKi, who sounds like an Obama supporter in rhetoric as he believes in “change.” “People are going to emerge from the current recession forever changed,” Kenny tells McClellan. “The global recession has changed them. Environmental realities have changed them. New global leadership has changed them.”
The New, Integrated Ad Model
The Wall Street Journal’s Emily Steel covers (“Internet Start-Ups Diversify Their Business Models“) the move away from display ads to an ad model based on integrated opportunities such as Slide’s branded entertainment campaigns as well as offering a virtual currency which hopefully morphs into real currency. Ro Choy, chief revenue officer at Rock You provides a new buzzphrase when he tells Steel, “We are not a widget company. We are a distributed media company.”
Your Ancestors Are Worth Something!
Ancestry.com has filed for an initial public offering (click for SEC filing) which would raise $75 million for the Company according to Rafat Ali of PaidContent.org. This isn’t your Grandma’s Internet company in spite of the name as it is profitable with “almost one million paying subscribers around the world as of June 30, 2009” and for first six months “of 2009, it had revenues of $99.9 million with profits of $8.18 million, compared to $87.4 million revenues in first six month of 2008 and profits of $1.24 million.”
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BlueKai Tries To Reduce Friction, Offers “BlueKai Inside”
In an effort to make the buying and selling of data more efficient, BlueKai is now offering a program (BlueKai Certification Program) which allows advertisers and agencies to create custom segments that are submitted to ad networks and portals through BlueKai’s new program. The ad network, for example, then responds with a plan that includes both the media and BlueKai data “inside.” Zach Rodgers covers the news on ClickZ here. It’s also interesting to note that Havas Digital is once again busy, publicly, building its online media buying platform strategy as Rodgers notes Havas’ involvement in the new program – reminiscent of the newly-announced deal with TRAFFIQ two weeks ago.
You can sign up for a demo of the new BlueKai program here.
Buying Digital Radio? You Will
Pandora announced a deal saying that they have partnered with Katz 360 Sales’ Katz Online Network (see Katz release), a Clear Channel subsidiary, to sell their online ad inventory. Pandora will leverage Katz’s 200-person salesforce according to Radio Business Report.
Targetspot, an online audio advertising technology and network provider, announced today that they have hired a new CEO to lead them into the next phase of development, Eyal Goldwerger formerly of XMPie Inc. which was acquired by Xerox in 2006. Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures (Targetspot investor) discusses the prospects for audio advertising online on his blog “A VC.”
Vertical Ad Network NetShelter Expands
NetShelter announced in a release today that it has added another site to its vertical ad network – ExpertsExchanger.com. According to Comscore figures and the release, “NetShelter Technology Media (www.netshelter.net) reaches more than 90 million monthly unique visitors, the largest online technology audience in the world.” That’s a lot of technologists.
Dapper on Real-Time
Paul Knegten from Dapper discusses the importance of real-time on the Dapper blog and how unlocking data may enable social media. Knegten writes:
“Real-time is really, really hard to do from a technical perspective; saying that we should be searching the web for offers to match every individual intent is different from actually building an engine to do that for ads. Keep that in mind as “real-time” becomes the new buzzword.
As more and more platforms (like Facebook) open up their data to advertising platforms, the data we need will certainly be there, and will finally become key to making social media really deliver ROI. “
Mendez Fears Market Killing Display
And to be precise, it’s killing the publisher according to Jonathan Mendez.
From his blog, Ramp‘s Mendez fears that an unequal and potentially destructive model has evolved in display advertising between advertisers and publishers these days with publishers “getting about 10-20% of the total value of their audience & content.” He suggests that pubs need to “create new platforms with new revenue models” which likely means coming up with more and better integrated offerings for advertisers that will presumably fetch a higher CPM and stave off any perceived imbalance. Read more.
Video On Buying
ContextWeb has a new video out showing use of its “ADSDAQ Exchange Performance Goals with CTR or CPA” for display advertising. Visit YouTube here.
PaperG Printing New Customers
After a test on the Houston Chronicle site, Chron.com, Hearst has made a deal with New Haven-based, PaperG, for its bulletin-board-like display ads product called “Flyerboard.” The results were impressive in the initial test according to the release as Stephen Weis, VP Digital Sales of Hearst Newspapers says, “We were pleased by the ease of Flyerboard’s deployment at Chron.com and the amount of new ad sales revenue we generated in only its first month.”
