Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
AOL Reports For The First Time
AOL reported its 4th quarter 2009 earnings and among the takeways, “Domestic display revenue grew year-over-year for the first time in 8 quarters.” Get the Investor Relations Presentation (PDF) here. ClickZ’s Christopher Heine looks deeper into the earnings report and reports that AOL beat the street’s expectations as the company “reported a profit of $1.4 million, compared to a $1.96 billion loss for the same 2008 period.” Earnings release here (PDF).
BrightRoll Gets $10 Million
BrightRoll has rung the register and received $10 million in funding led by Scale Venture Partners. According to VentureBeat’s Paul Boutin, the company will use the funds to “expand its technology platform and beef up worldwide advertiser and publisher operations.” Boutin notes that Brightroll CEO Tod Sacerdoti says his company has been profitable for the past 12 months as video gains momentum online. Read more.
Private Companies Have Earnings Calls
We’ve noted recent press releases from private, ad tech companies regarding their earnings and/or revenue momentum. Now, The Wall Street Journal Venture Dispatch blog reports that private companies are even having earnings conference calls as companies see it as a way to build their brand and show their alternative solution to larger companies. Read more.
adMarketplace launched version 2.0 of something called Ad Tag Cloud which it believes will drive search-like yield for publishers. The display unit incorporates “Keywords and related offers which are behaviorally targeted based on aggregated user interaction data including keyword roll-overs, click-throughs, and conversions.” Read the release.
You Need R&D
A startup with a research & development team? That’s what Lotame is starting in Boston as it looks for an edge in the media business. The ad network/buying platform/social data company said that is has hired “machine learning expert, John Thomas, to advance use of social data to improve online marketing results.” Read more.
PubMatic Issues RTB Report
PubMatic has released a new white paper on real-time bidding from the publisher’s perspective. The yield optimizer identifies many of the RTB players (though it leaves off competitor, AdMeld) and how RTB works in an extensive report that highlights PubMatic’s RTB capabilities. Download it here.
Building In The Viral Loop
Entrepreneur Andrew Chen shares his notes from his recent presentation on customer acquisition and viral marketing at the First Round Capital CEO Summit. Chen discussed the importance of viral loops to consumer products and adds, “Sustainable viral growth is key for long-term value creation.” See his notes.
IP Law For Startups
Jill Hubbard Bowman, an intellectual property attorney, has started a new blog called IP Law For Startups. In one of her first posts she discusses, “Why Entrepreneurs Should Care About Trade Secret Law.” She points to software developers who could be coding a new iteration of a product which may have already been “infected” by stolen code implemented by a previous programmer. Read more.
Defining Display
Andy Atherton discusses what he sees as the many flavors display advertising as mobile, video and digital-out-of-home offer display opportunities over IP. Increased standardization over various digital channels is enabling audience buying and optimization which will eventually lead to improved efficiency. Read his post on the Brand.net blog.
Cross-Channel With Search And Display
More cross-channel digital talk! From the Efficient Frontier (EF) blog, Director of Product Management, Suman Basetty, discusses a new update to the EF platform which it says “gives marketers a quick view of all conversions on their website and insights into what advertising channels are driving those conversions.” Read more.
Adchemy In The News
The Adchemy PR machine is on fire as today’s story on Adchemy comes from GigaOm and writer Liz Gannes who profiles the demand-side platform and notes the company’s key premise, “To improve demand for online advertising, it must become more effective — not just efficient.” Read it.
Data And Display
CRO and GM David Jakubowski at Aggregate Knowledge pens an article on iMedia Connection about “How targeted display can extend your influence.” As you might imagine, Jakubowski identifies the importance of data to enable effective buying of audience. Read it.
No More Widgetbucks
Stick a fork in Widgetbucks as Mpire is shutting down the publisher widget ad network as it will concentrate on its AdXpose business. Mpire CEO Kirby Winfield tells Xconomy, “We are AdXpose. Widgetbucks is on life support. Now it’s about [ad] verification and optimization. We want to be the Omniture for advertising and online, specifically within display.” Read the article.
