Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
AOL Predicts Display Rev Decrease
In a 10-K filing today with the Securites Exchange Commission, AOL revealed that its expecting its display ad revenue to be down from a year ago in Q1. According to Barron’s Eric Savitz, the company blamed the decrease on “an ad sales reorg that reassigned most of its accounts, among other factors.” Read more.
Googler Gets Marketing Job
Former Google affiliate network chief, Chris Henger, has been tapped to run Catalina Marketing’s Digital Services group according to TechCrunch’s Robin Wauters who adds, “Henger served as a member of the executive team at Performics, an interactive marketing firm specialized in search and affiliate marketing, which was acquired by DoubleClick.” Read more.
Sir Martin Sees Q2 Strength
In London, Sir Martin Sorrell told the press that he sees organic growth in store for WPP Group in Q2 but admitted that the growth is compared against a weak Q2 in 2009. Sorrell added, “It’s nothing to be proud of yet that we are forecasting flat revenue. We won’t declare victory until we see growth.”
Read more optimism from Bloomberg.
MediaMath Announces MathClarity, Agency Biz
Demand-side platform, MediaMath announced a new product feature for its TerminalOne platform called MathClarity, which the company says provides clients actionable insights through analytics and data visualization. Also from the release, MediaMath is working with agency holding companies as MathClarity “is already being used to generate insights and custom reports for MediaMath clients – including dozens of agencies within all seven of the top agency holding companies.” Read the release.
Omnicom Forms New Retail Agency
Apparently figuring it needs to address its retail clientele, Omnicom announced the creation of Retail 3, “which stands for retail strategy, retail activation and retail metrics” according to Mediaweek’s Katy Bachman. The focus will be local and include a range of services from “event activation” to digital marketing. Read more.
Google Vs. Apple, Round 83
Google has been indirectly slapped with a lawsuit by Apple as HTC, a mobile tech provider, was directly served a patent infringement lawsuit and Google’s Android product was made the example. All Things D’s John Paczkowski writes, “Google figures prominently in it simply because of the sheer number of times “Android products” are called out in the complaint.” Read more.
Ad Exchange Hype
MediaPost’s Joe Mandese covers the release of an annual survey by investment banking firm AdMedia Partners that finds among media executives and investors, “ad exchanges” is the second most overrated online business opportunity next to “social media networks.” Bah humbug.
BBC Cutting Online
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is proposing draconian cuts in its online strategies as austerity measures are overrunning the publicly-owned UK media company. The private sector which competes with the BBC is happy after years of complaining that the BBC was over-reaching. The NY Times’ Eric Pfanner writes, “The BBC proposed a 25 percent reduction in its spending on the Web, as well as the closure of several digital radio stations.” Read more.
Ad Networks Drive Tune-In
ClickZ’s Lisa Lacy covers HGTV’s effective use of an online ad network to drive tune-in for an HGTV show called, “Design Star.” “The large-scale display campaign ran on the Google Content Network, PlatformA/AOL Advertising, and ValueClick from July to September last year” and HGTV claims that the campaign improved viewership by 55%.
Read more.
SF Event, DSP Smackdown Audio
On the Dapper blog, the company made available audio from last week’s advertising event, which included a smackdown challenge, and also announced the line up for a March 24 event in San Francisco. The panel will echo themes from the NYC event last month and include execs from Yahoo!, AppNexus, Dapper and analyst Bill Morrison from ThinkEquity. Read more and register here.
AOL Sells Affiliate Marketer
PaidContent reports on AOL’s offload of affiliate network, Buy.at to London-based affiliate marketer Digital Window. “Now Armstrong’s AOL, through the former Mediaglow division (now AOL Media) is placing emphasis on being a niche web content publisher and, some might say, downplaying its ad proposition,” writes PaidContent’s Rob Andrews. Read more.
February CPC Pricing
From the Efficient Frontier blog, observations on pricing for last month’s cost-per-click campaigns as seen through EF’s client campaigns: “While automotive CPCs experience a seasonal decline, the decline in finance CPCs dropped significantly. This is not surprising… We have noted in the past that the financial vertical spend and stock market performance is very tightly correlated.” Read more.
Optimizing The Startup
Startup marketing guru, Sean Ellis, looks at “Optimization mistakes that kill startups” including optimizing customer acquisition too early in the process, a lack of deliberate methodology in discovering channels and optimizing them and something Ellis calls “killing the love.” Read about it.
More Links:
- Mobile’s Data Usage & Revenues Disconnect – GigaOm
- WideOrbit Creates Electronic Exchange For TV spots – Broadcast & Cable
- Brightcove Scores European Gains – InformationWeek
- HootSuite Mobile Gets Ads with 140 Proof – ReadWriteWeb
- Brands and publishers work on Web video strategy – DMNews
