Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
Audience Buying Is King, Kinda
AdWeek’s Brian Morrissey says that buying is moving from placement to the end user as audience buying swarms the digital display ad world. He writes, “Here’s how it works: Advertisers can hook into large ad exchanges and set a price they’re willing to pay for a particular audience. (…) The matching is done in real time, banner by banner.” Read more. But, Morrissey finds not everyone is a fan of the audience buying strategy through exchanges as Nick Johnson of NBCU says, “There are cottage industries being built off publishers (…) You’re going to see a lot of publishers taking their data back.”
New From Fastclick Founder
Fastclick founder (sold to ValueClick in 2005) Dave Gross has started a new company called Connexity. Gross tells the Pacific Coast Business Times that by using a combination of social networking and recommendation technology, “We will have the technological ability to target not just the individual, but under the right circumstances, their spouse, someone else in their household or someone they work with.” Read more. TechCrunch says the company has raised seed funding Persistence Partners (formerly Great Pacific Capital). Read it. (Includes graphic with the ubiquitous PANT people.)
SVnetwork Reaching
Michael Learmonth says that SVnetwork (AdExchanger.com Q&A) is giving advertisers what they want through the popular Zynga game empire: reach. He writes, “Through SVNetwork, Zynga is now doing business with a cross-section of major brand advertisers,” as consumers engage with ads in return for virtual goods. But, Learmonth wondrs, “Are consumers clicking because they want something or are they getting something memorable or valuable from the experience?” Read more.
In a wide-ranging article, Om Malik provides an overview of RapLeaf’s business model and the way it collects data on GigaOm. He concludes, “I don’t want to blame only Rapleaf — ad networks are doing this as well, giving it cutesy names like behavioral targeting. U.S. Reps. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Joe Barton (R-Texas) recently sent a letter to Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, questioning him about privacy breaches at the social network. In August 2010, these same congressmen asked for information from various web services on cookies and how they use them. Maybe they should consider looking at these data-collectors as well. Perhaps they will come to the conclusion that this industry needs some kind of oversight.” Read the article. And then in today’s edition of the WSJ, a new article from the What They Know series which reads in part, “RapLeaf knows even more about Mrs. Twombly and millions of other Americans: their real names and email addresses.” Read it.
What They Know And MySpace
Last Friday, TechCrunch founder Mike Arrington accused The Wall Street Journal (owned by News Corp) of not covering the consumer privacy story around News Corp-owned MySpace – and focusing on Facebook instead, which hinted of a conflict of interest at the WSJ. Hours later, The WSJ published a lengthy article looking at MySpace and denied that it was avoiding MySpace or that Arrington spurred the article’s publication. Read Arrington’s original post. And, read the WSJ’s MySpace piece titled, “MySpace, Apps Leak User Data “. Finally, read the VentureBeat overview of both pieces.
Google Adding More Privacy Controls
On the Official Google Blog, Alan Eustace, svp of engineering and research, discusses changes put in place since the apparent inadvertant collection of PII (Personally Identifiable Information) via “unencrypted WiFi payload data (information sent over networks) using our Street View cars.” Eustace identified three initiatives: new people who will keep a close eye on data collection; new training so everyone knows what to do and not to do; and the ongoing update to an internal compliance document. Read more.
What’s Getting Blocked On Google TV
Danny Sullivan walks Search Engine Land readers through how mainstream media TV networks in U.S. are blocking Google TV. To be clear, the networks aren’t blocking a broadcast TV feed to the new Google television units -or, not yet! Sullivan writes, “Google TV isn’t stripping the video off the sites. It’s not inserting its own ads into the content. It’s not knocking down firewalls, eating small children nor sacrificing animals. It’s simply letting you use a web browser, exactly as you’d use a web browser on a Windows or Mac computer.” Read more.
Crowdsourcing It
Need someone to do your display campaign? You may be crowdsourcing it soon as Robin Neifield of NetPlus Marketing looks at the potential impact of this latest popular, buzzword trend. She notes crowdsourcing’s use in video production which echoes the recent themes presented by Cindy Gallo of IfWeRanTheWorld at the ANA annual conference two weeks ago (Gallo’s video here). Read more from Neifield on ClickZ.
It’s Not About Bid Management
New business vp Thi Thumasathit of Adchemy provides his view on the secrets for SEM success and indicates there is too much emphasis on bid management and outbidding the competitor. His top line secrets are: “Focus first on improving ad copy and landing page relevance and maximizing conversion and then on bid management. That’s the key to a successful SEM campaign — and that’s when the dog starts wagging its tail.” Read more about what boils down to better understanding the searcher’s intent.
Signaling
Maureen Farrel looks at Foundry Group on her Forbes blog and says that there may be a signaling problem in Boulder, Colorado’s vibrant tech community. She quotes a local entrepreneur, “‘Because of TechStars’ proximity to Foundry Group, there are always a lot of questions around Foundry’s involvement. Everyone asks you why Foundry Group isn’t in your deal,’ says Micah Baldwin, CEO of Graphic.ly, (…) Other investors generally expect that Foundry has picked over any TechStars company, according to several TechStars-Boulder graduates.” Read about it. Foundry Group adamantly denies there’s a signaling problem as partner Seth Levine responds on his personal blog.
IDG Seeing Growth For B2B Ad Network
In B to B Magazine, Sean Callahan features privately-held IDG and IDG Tech Network (AdExchanger.com Q&A) and points out that few have tapped the B2B ad network space like IDG. Its CEO Bob Carrigan says that in spite of what he says is 19-fold growth for IDG Tech Net and continuing momentum, “The only one I know of (who is in the B2B vertical ad net space) is Hachette [Filipacchi Media], which bought Jumpstart [Automotive Group, a network of auto sites]. (…) There aren’t many b2b publishers pursuing this that I know of in verticals like construction or agriculture.” Read more. Will another vertical ad network company (a la Adify, Internet Brands) be cashing out for big bucks soon? Ch-ching!
Taking Control Of The Debate
Turn CTO Xuhui Shao takes the iMedia Connection microphone and encourges the advertising industry to take more control of the consumer privacy debate and offers five suggestions including screening vendors/partners closely: “Make privacy compliance a prerequisite when screening for new vendors. Specific tactics might include incorporating an engineer on the screening call to deep-dive into the technical details of how data are collected and used in the context of consumer privacy.” Read it.
Events Updated
The AdExchanger.com Events Calendar has been updated again to include more for 2011. It may not have every event, but it has many that are relevant to the audience buying space. See it.
