Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
Bizo On Transparency
Bizo and its CEO Russell Glass think they’ve got the right idea on transparency. In a Bizo blog post called “The Next Generation of Truly Transparent Ads,” Glass gives his answer to “What would it be like if with every ad you saw online, you knew exactly how and why it found its way to your screen?” Read here.
The NYTimes.com View
NYTimes.com GM Denise Warren takes reader questions in a lengthy Q&A on NYTimes.com. She has no new news on charging for content and deflected criticism on larger, obtrusive ads and pagination by saying that it was a necessity for driving ad revenue. Read here.
Hyperlocal M&A Hype
Mary Kathleen Flynn of The Deal says that M&A is heating up for hyperlocal sites which was signified by Google’s recent reported $550 million offer for Yelp. 2009 acquisitions in the space included “MSNBC.com’s buying EveryBlock.com for undisclosed terms and AOL Inc.’s (NYSE:AOL) purchases of Patch Media Corp. and Going Inc.” Read more.
Google: 1st – Others: Next
AOL CEO Tim Armstrong announced that a new search deal with AOL is Google’s to lose as Dow Jones Newswires reports Big G gets “first dibs.” The question is.. first dibs of what? Read more. Also, according to Dow Jones Newswires, Armstrong said to “look for “signs of life” in his company’s domestic display ad business in 2010.”
Display Ad On Google Home Page
In case you haven’t heard, a text ad with a little graphic for the new Google Nexus One phone is on the Google home page as of this writing. Likely a nice place for an ad, if you’re a marketer. (<-understatement). See it. Or visit a screenshot from yesterday.
More UK Data
According to UK’s The Guardian, the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, launched a website on Thursday “hosting hundreds of sets of data” – presumably he had help. Johnson even did a satellite hook-up yesterday with President Obama’s tech chief, Aneesh Chopra, to make the announcement. The goal is to “to encourage people to create “mashups” of data to boost the city’s transparency and accountability.” Read more.
It’s Alive!
Technorati is still kicking as it proudly tweeted yesterday that it has just launched its new self-serve advertising portal for publishers as it looks to grow its blog ad network. See the portal here.
More Agencies, More Ideas
Chrysler has hired FOUR separate creative agencies to run campaigns for various brands as the Fiat-run company looks to find agencies that fit “each brand’s direction.” Among the winners: “the Chrysler brand will be led by Publicis Groupe SA’s Fall.” Or maybe Chrysler wants to see which agency does best with its brand, and then go with that one for everything? Read more from The Wall Street Journal.
Controlling Content
In preparation for the semantic web-focused, Web 3.0 conference at the end of the month, Jennifer Zaino speaks to Peer39’s Amiad Solomon about semantic advertising. During the interview, Solomon comments on large media properties eliminating ad networks from their revenue strategies: “What CBS has done — and others will follow — is bring more control back to its content.” He adds, “[Their content] is worth a lot of money and advertisers should pay to be there.” Read more.
PubMatic On Spend
Josh Wetzel, VP of Publisher Services at PubMatic discusses yield optimization and this year’s plans for the company in a Q&A with Digiday’s John Gaffney. In predicting industry ad spend trends for 2010, Wetzel declines to wear rose-colored glasses, “Steady progress, in my opinion. It won’t be the year in which Coke breaks out 30 percent of its overall budget for the Internet.” Read more.
Keep Testing Says Pincus
On his Bronte Media blog, entrepreneur Niki Scevak points to a recent presentation by Zynga’s Mark Pincus in Stanford’s Enterpreneurial Thought Leaders video podcast. Pincus discusses what he would have done differently with his previous endeavor, Tribe.net, knowing what he knows now. Pincus answered, “[What] I would’ve done is made Tribe a platform to test every configuration because that’s what is so beautiful about the consumer Internet is that it is about repeatable formulas and once you find a formula that works it seems to stay that way forever.” See more here.
Targeting Jukeboxes
And it was writtten.. the demand-side platforms of the future will target jukebox audience. In a deal with AMI Entertainment Network, Argo Digital Solutions’ rVue exchange for DOOH (digital out-of-home) will now let buyers target “more than 15,000 broadband-connected jukeboxes and game consoles.” Read the release. rVue has a cool demo of its DOOH planning tool here.
Maximize GCN
The Google AdWords blog is offering up links to new videos from its Content Network University on “How can I maximize the ROI from Content Network campaigns?” Drink the GCN koolaid here.
More Apple Quattro
From his personal blog, Greg Yardley throws in his opinion on the outcome of this week’s Quattro Wireless purchase by Apple. Yardley offers: “One intriguing possibility: Apple could get quite creative with ad delivery by pre-bundling advertisements with the download and updating advertisements when the device is synced or has a wifi connection. These advertisements could be saved in a central on-device cache, so no HTTP call would be necessary for displaying the advertisement.” And, that’s just the beginning.
Prediction! Microsoft Buys AOL
From the WSJ’s Financial Adviser blog, James Altucher predicts “Five Acquisitions That Should Happen This Year.” Among them, Microsoft buys AOL. Altucher says an attractive upside for MSFT is “Basically, AOL is generating enough cash to pay for its entire market cap within the next three years.” Read the article.
Cloud Trends Mean More Acronyms
Lightspeed Venture Partners’ Ravi Mhatre looks at this “top 5” trends in cloud computing on the VC’s blog. Mhatre says, “Management software to deal with scaled cloud environments moves to the forefront. As infrastructure environments become increasingly dynamic and virtualized, the “virtual datacenter” or VDC will emerge as the new enterprise compute platform.” Read it.
Boston Biz
Venture capital firm Bessemer Ventures is looking to move into a new space in Cambridge as the Boston-area VC business moves from its offices in Wellsley Hills says Boston.com’s Scott Kirsner. “Route 128” continues to be THE location for entrepreneurial endeavors in the state, but the tide maybe the tide is turning toward a more ivy covered location? Read it.
EyeWonder Facebook-ed
Ken Liebeskind of ClickZ writes that an EyeWonder campaign which promoted Fox Home Entertainment’s “Fight Club” Blu-Ray DVD release, ran afoul of Facebook advertiser rules and regulations. You’re not allowed to suck user information in an ad such as a face or a name. Read more.
