RSS FeedArchive for the ‘Online Advertising’ Category

What Yahoo Sees In Tumblr: A Logged-In, Cross-Channel Audience

mayer-tumblrThere were two adjectives Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer used repeatedly when discussing the advertising opportunity with Tumblr, which her company agreed to buy for $1.1 billion. Those words: "native" and "aspirational."

It's what you would expect. In its short history of monetization, Tumblr has focused on organic ad formats, tentatively rolling out tools to promote organic posts. Yahoo execs, eager to demonstrate the huge price it is paying for Tumblr, are telling investors to expect ad revenue to go big-time in 2014.

But there's an additional opportunity around ad addressability of the constantly logged-in Tumblr audience – across both web and mobile – that is increasingly valuable in this era of decaying cookies. Mayer hinted at this opportunity.

"I don't want to pre-announce anything today," she said. "It is quite clear that the psychographic profiles on Tumblr are different than we have on Yahoo, which enriches the user base."

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Affiliate Marketing Going 'Mainstream' Says VigLink CEO Roup

viglink“Affiliate marketing has gone much more mainstream,” says VigLink CEO Oliver Roup.  That’s his hope, at the very least, since his 28-person company is built on the commission-based lead gen business model that has been a cornerstone of web marketing.

Roup adds, “[Affiliate marketing] has gone from coupons to content. Though coupon sites were dominating up until a few years ago, what you’ve seen since that time is mainstream publishers, who deal in real content are starting to delve into the affiliate world.”  Huffington Post and Wanelo are among the larger media companies using VigLink products today which, he asserts, “proves” that affiliate marketing is less on the fringes than ever.

And with Q4 2012 year-over-year revenue growth of 118% according to Roup, VigLink wants to continue to scale.  Bigger sites mean more inventory, which leads to more potential leads and more revenue to affiliate marketers, VigLink publishers – and VigLink itself.  And it all begins with the use of the innocent text hyperlink: when a sale is consummated, upstream credit is assigned to VigLink publishers along the clickstream who originally sent the traffic.

AdExchanger spoke to VigLink CEO Oliver Roup last week about his company and industry trends.

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For Priceline, TV Is For Branding, Programmatic For Conversions

Brett Keller, CMO, PricelineThere's been no shortage of talk about "programmatic direct," which involves using automated buying tools to support negotiated ad deals with presumably branding-oriented campaign goals. But for Priceline.com CMO Brett Keller, the idea is an illusion.

"We've been using TV as our branding vehicle from very the beginning of this company 14 years ago and we've had a commercial running practically every day since," Keller told attendees at Aol's Thought Leadership summit.

He said that while some spend has migrated to online video, the goal with the digital channel is conversion: "We've tried to move upstream and we'd love to get 'programmatic premium' – but we don't think it exists. For us, it's all about conversions, and that doesn't happen in online branding campaigns."

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IPG's David Bell Sounds Off: Ad Tech Complexity Unsustainable

David Bell at AOL SummitDavid Bell, the chairman emeritus for Interpublic Group, offered his take on some barriers to growth in digital advertising today at Aol's Thought Leadership Summit on programmatic advertising.

Number one on his hit list was the clutter of ad tech startups. He also took aim at the power wielded by procurement officers and bashed the ad industry for being meek in the face of legal and regulatory challenges around privacy.

Ad Tech Complexity. "The dollars flowing into ad tech have slowed," Bell said in his keynote address. "Those companies that haven't gone public and are generating less than $10 million will have trouble getting funding. There will be a wave of consolidation and some companies will just close up. That said, the benefits of simplification are huge. And that's what's coming."

Procurement. Given the number and range of vendors and tools advertisers have had to work with, it's no surprise that marketers' procurement officers have taken control of ad budgets. But with all the focus on ROI and demands for greater accountability, the process of advertising has gained more science and lost much of its art, Bell said.

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How Online Retailer Indochino Does Attribution

Indochino ImageOnline retailer Indochino uses a variety of digital ad tactics to promote its custom-made men's suits, including search and email marketing, mobile outreach and retargeting on the Facebook Exchange. Along with attribution software company Convertro, Indochino brings together all these marketing channels and determines what is working and what is most valuable, said Antonio Guzman, manager of online marketing.

“We’re really trying to put the right messages in front of the right person at the right time," Guzman said. "We want to understand that mix of messages, frequency and timing, and understand what levers we can move and change, and how that will impact subsequent touches."

AdExchanger spoke to Guzman about how Indochino works with Convertro, the importance of attribution tracking for the company, and the challenge of still not being able to track every visitor.

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Aol's Barbell Strategy Shows Uneven Lift For Display Dollars

Tim Armstrong AOL CEO 2Aol was able to maintain its hard-won profitability and ad sales gains Q1. But just as Aol was finally able to turn US display around with a decent growth of 6%, the usual powerhouse of third-party network revenues showed signs of slowing down. Read the earnings release.

The company's third-party network revenues growth slowed to a 10% gain in Q1 from a 22% rise in Q4, a deceleration that can't easily be dismissed as typical seasonality. That's something of a surprise, considering the emphasis on building Aol's ad tech stack with its AdLearn demand side platform and the recent introduction of its Marketplace supply side platform.

Incidentally, the slowdown occurred just a few weeks after the executive who had done so much to rebuild Aol's third-party ad strategy, Ned Brody, resigned as CEO of Aol Networks, the unit that houses Advertising.com, ad serving tool ADTECH, the year-old demand side platform AdLearn, and the recently launched supply side platform known as Marketplace.

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Spotlight On Brazil: RTB Gaining Ground In A Diverse Advertising Market

Brazil SoccerWith the World Cup and Olympics coming to Brazil in 2014 and 2016, all eyes are on the country's preparations for the events, which include readying its digital infrastructure. Brands are waiting for the chance to be at the center of the worldwide stage, and several advertising technology companies have opened offices in Brazil.

This BRIC country is seen as an emerging market when it comes to its economy, and online advertising is also growing. While programmatic and RTB haven't yet made a huge splash in the country, the introduction of Facebook Exchange, US-based demand-side platforms opening offices in Brazil, and the expansion of other ad exchanges and networks in the ecosystem may change that.

"It’s a huge economy and a pretty robust ad market right now," said Bruce Journey, Chief Customer Officer for DataXu, a DSP with an office in Sao Paulo. Journey notes that Brazil is the sixth largest economy in the world: "It’s a vibrant digital community, but it is about a couple of years behind in terms of advertising, compared to where things are in the United States."

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Corrected: At Aol's Newfronts, Lines Between TV And Video Disappear

Ran HarnevoFor all the glitz and glamour that surrounded Aol's Newfronts programming preview on Tuesday, perhaps the most relevant news for advertisers came at the end of the showcase with a mention of the unsexiest of topics: back-office operations designed to support the thousands of hours of digital video, along with analytics.

Following appearances by actors like Sarah Jessica Parker, Hank Azaria and Nicole Ritchie to promote their new Aol video series, the company discussed the new deal with media buying workflow software provider Mediaocean and digital video rights manager FreeWheel, as well as a new deal with Nielsen to provide "TV comparable" ratings for Aol's online video.

FreeWheel is billing this new arrangement with Mediaocean, which is being inaugurated with Aol but will be rolled out across their respective new and old clients over the next few months as its "FourFronts solution."

"There is no such thing as online video," said FreeWheel co-founder and co-CEO Jonathan Heller in an interview with AdExchanger after the Aol presentation. "There is only TV. Marrying our distribution capabilities with Mediaocean and their presence in the buying community makes the point that in order for the video ad buying process to work, it has to be end-to-end. Or it doesn't work at all."

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Self-Serve Twitter Ads No Longer Invite-Only, Now Open To All

Kevin Weil, TwitterA year after Twitter opened its self-serve Twitter Advertising system to businesses on an "invite-only" basis, the microblog's Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts products will be open to anyone in the US. Read the release.

This news was mentioned as Kevin Weil, Senior Director of Product for Revenue at Twitter, participated on a panel with Google's VP of Display Advertising Neal Mohan and Facebook's Product Director of Ads Gokul Rajaram at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York.

Weil said Twitter is mindful that the real money is still in TV, making a bid for Twitter's place in alignment with old media rather than against it.

"Twitter is a bridge, not an island," he said. "It can connect with all the market outreach an advertiser already does, especially across TV. About 95% of the social media commentary about TV happens on Twitter. During the last Super Bowl, about half of all the TV ads had hashtags. Our message to advertisers is that Twitter and TV...make each other stronger."

The panel's moderator, TechCrunch's Anthony Ha,  then led a broader discussion with the other panelists about the importance of mobile and how the three companies approach devices.

"I tell advertisers, 'If you're building for mobile, you're building for the future,'" Mohan said. "Consumers don't think of silos – they don't think, 'I'm on my desktop, I'm on my tablet, I'm on my phone' – but they do have different mindsets. And we all have to embrace that concept. Advertisers need to be focused on consumer context, not devices."

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Yahoo's De Castro Pledges Guarantees To Buyers Who Shift TV Budgets

henrique de castro yahooYahoo executives talked a lot about "new" ad formats and video-centric programming during its Newfront presentation, but a vague familiarity persisted until the very end of COO Henrique De Castro's presentation, when he made a promise to media buyers: give us a small yet sizable portion of your TV ad spending and we'll guarantee satisfaction.

It was a fairly bold moment – some in the audience laughed at either the audacity of De Castro's offer or the nonchalance of his delivery – amid a series of pedestrian showcases of upcoming video programming.

"Pick one brand on Yahoo," De Castro told attendees who had waited in long lines at the Best Buy Theatre in Times Square. "Call us and tell us you want to shift five to ten percent of your budget to Yahoo. And I will prove that it is the best return on your investment. And if not, I don't want your money. Pretty fair?"

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