Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
AOL Ready To Gobble Up Start-ups?
According to PaidContent’s David Kaplan, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong said at a Goldman Sachs conference that despite AOL’s lagging performance in display this year, things will be improving in 2011. But, more cost cutting will be ahead: “We want to run a very profitable media company and we’re combing through every thing we have at a detailed level. You will see a mini-version of the cost restructuring we completed earlier. You’ll also see more partnerships.” Read more. All Things D’s Peter Kafka says that Armstrong also indicated the $100 million cap on acquisitions is being lifted. Read about it.
TARGUSinfo Gets Analytical With Pulse 360
TARGUSinfo and performance marketing company Pulse 360 a new multi-year agreement that will provide TARGUSinfo’s AdAdvisor data to target audiences. According to the release, as part of the deal, “Pulse 360 is subsidizing access to AdAdvisor audience composition analytics against click and conversion activity for all advertiser campaigns on the Pulse 360 CPC text ad network.” Read more.
New Ad Placement Data
ValueClick and Comscore partnered up on a white paper that takes a look at the different types of ad targeting and how they perform. According to the release, data was used from 130 campaigns and, no surprise, “retargeting” works with better cost efficiency and nearly 10x the performance of “contextual.” And yet, “contextual’s” reach was more than 2x “retargeting.” What’s a marketer to do when they want to scale? No easy answers it would seem. Read the release. And, download the study that will be presented at next week’s IAB MIXX conference (sign-up required).
AdReady Announces New Platform
AdReady joins the growing list of updating media platforms as the “AdReady Version 3 Display Advertising Platform” contains a list of new features including, “Advanced Media Planning Intelligence– The advanced media planning engine leverages accumulated knowledge from more than 20,000 campaigns executed on the platform,” according to the release. Read more.
In-Banner Brand-Lift Surveys
MediaMath announced that it is partnering with Knowledge Networks (KN) and integrating KN’s in-banner surveys “for display, rich media and video campaigns” into MediaMath’s TerminalOne demand-side platform. According to the release, KN Dimestore’s surveys “identify brand lift and effectiveness in real time. This enables marketers to measure then adjust campaigns in flight, optimizing media spend.” Read more.
Web Start-up Valuations Rising
Up periscope! The Wall Street Journal says that private, consumer-targeted web firms are seeing their valuations rising to “dot-com boom” levels. The WSJ cites Blippy, Foursquare and Quora as firms with little or no revenue who have created valuations in the 10s of millions of dollars in less than a year. Read it.
Ad Network Reports
Ad network Burst Media reported a loss for its first half of 2010 revenues. According to RTT, the company’s Giant Realm and Burst Media UK acquisitions increased both revenues and costs, “The company’s total revenues for the period were $17.3 million, up from $12.1 million in the same period last year. Cost of revenues grew to $10.05 million from $6.3 million, while operating expenses rose to $10.3 million from $6.88 million in the comparable period previous year.” Read a bit more.
Kapost Automating For Publishers
Publishers looking to scale their editorial team may find Kapost a compelling solution as it aims to automate the newsroom. Kapost, a product of David Cohen’s Tech Stars, has raised $1.1 million from a selection of investors including High Country Venture and Highway 12 Venture among others. Read more on TechCrunch.
NetMining Gets Reckitt Benckiser
Reckitt Benckiser which has a load of well-known consumer brands and also well-known for squeezing every nickel out of video ad networks by leveraging the promise of a big media buy last year has partnered with Innovation Interactive’s NetMining and helped perfect Netmining’s new “audience targeting capabilities for video.” Read more.
Stephen Colbert Interviews Google CEO
It’s true. He did interview Google CEO Eric Schmidt and the subject of consumer privacy and the algo came up in true Colbert-style. See the video on the LA Times blog.
