Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
Akamai Has Vision
MediaPost’s Laurie Sullivan interviews Akamai’s Mike Afergan about Akamai’s new Online Shopping Data Visualization. Afergan tells Sullivan, “Advertisers are often times asked to guess how to reach their audiences. We have seen that the concept of Shopographics, the process of identifying things consumers have historically purchased, provides better targeting for ads.” In regards to Shopographics, Afergan says that the new tool “offers online advertisers a way to find target markets by using shopping data to define audience segments. Read more.
Invite Media Coverage
Now that it’s official – still need more coverage? You’ve come to the right place as here are links to more stories on Google’s formal announcement of the acquisition of Invite Media: NY Times, Adweek, Ad Age, PC Magazine and Mediapost notes privacy advocates poking at the deal.
AdSafe Media On Display
AdSafe Media released its Q1 2010 analysis of the online display advertising industry. From the study: “47% of traffic was served by exchanges, real-time-bidding (RTB) or demand-side (DSP) platforms, a significant increase in the use of these channels from last quarter.” Download the study (PDF). And, read the release.
Baker And Tawakol
CEO of DataXu and columnist, Mike Baker, sits down with BlueKai CEO Omar Tawakol on ClickZ “to discuss the audience data market, data integration’s future, and data privacy concerns.” Read more.
Facebook Bulging
The Inside Facebook blog offers up a few sexy charts showing the demographic breakdown of Facebook. Overall, the blog notes that in the U.S. “[Facebook] gained more than 4.4 million monthly active users in April and accelerated on that last month with 7.8 million new users to reach 125 million.” Read more.
Demand Scores .Fox In UK
In the UK market, Demand Media has signed up News Corp’s .Fox Networks to sell ad network inventory across such Demand properties as eHow and comedy site Cracked.com, which reach 6 million and 1 million users, respectively. Read more.
$31 Million For HauteLook
It’s hard to ignore $31 Million so AdExchanger.com is telling you about it. Hautelook, an online, fashion sample sale site, has scored the cool $31 mil of Series C financing led by Insight Venture Partners. Adam Bernhard, CEO of HauteLook tells The New York Times, “People are paying attention to the flash sale space. We’re able to hit the accelerator and grow the business.” Read more.
CitySearch Changes Name
David Kaplan of PaidContent reports that Citysearch – the formerly popular database of restaurant, bar and more information has changed its name to CityGrid Media. CityGrid Media CEO Jay Herratti tells Kaplan, “There is so much competition today. But instead of looking at them as competitors, I’d like to look at them as partners. Changing the name reflects a broader range of things we’re doing and would like to do.”Read more.
Healthy May CPCs
Efficient Frontier was seeing healthy CPCs in May according to EF’s Siddharth Shah. He writes on the company blog, “Despite the YoY decline, the CPCs are 7% better as compared to May last year. Retail CPCs look very favorable from this stand point too as they increased 25% YoY.” Read more and see a chart.
Wanted: Creative
Chief creative officers can make up to $1 million a year according to The Wall Street Journal. Yet, in spite of the money, agencies are having a difficult timing filling creative roles across the board. The WSJ’s Suzanne Vranica quotes Nick Brien, CEO of Interpublic’s McCann Worldgroup: “Creativity is now far broader and far more complicated than it used to be. This is where art and science are meeting, and it can either be a beautiful thing or a painful crash. All agencies need to be reviewing.” Read more. In spite of the shortage, Ad Age’s Rupal Parekh questions the digital “edge” in an article titled: “Is Putting Digital Experts in the Top Creative Spot the Right Thing?.” Read it.
