Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
The WSJ And Data Collection
In a detailed opinion piece, BlueKai CEO Omar Tawakol takes issue with the recent Wall Street Journal article series called “What They Know” and adds, “is misleading at best and damaging to the online industry at its worst. We need a less polarizing discussion. One side implies that cookies are evil and therefore we should all just pay for content.” Furthermore, Tawakol thinks, “By showing consumers exactly what is known about them, we allow those who want free content to permit targeting and give them control over what data they want us to use and which they don’t.” Read more in Ad Age.
Yahoo! Execs Shift, RMX Update
According to Michael Learmonth of Ad Age, Yahoo!’s interim head of sales Hilary Schneider has dropped the “interim” from her title and takes over the role previously inhabited by Joanna Bradford who moved to Demand Media. A Yahoo! spokesperson tells AdExchanger.com that Seth Dallaire will be “responsible for Yahoo! sales adoption of the Right Media exchange in addition to working closely with DSPs and Agency trading desks. Ramsey McGrory continues to be responsible for the Right Media exchange business and strategy.” Read about more Yahoo! exec machinations on AdAge.
RTB Is The Story For 2010
Nick Saint of The Business Insider brings together elements of recent funding such as AdMeld’s and Invite Media’s acquisition and declares in the title of an article, “The Rise Of Real-Time Bidding Is The Biggest Online Advertising Story Of 2010.” He asks AdMeld CEO Michael Barrett if he thinks “RTB would completely replace the old model of ad networks.” Guess so. Saint writes, “He gave about the most straightforward answer we’ve ever received to a question like that: ‘Yes, actually. in the fairly near future.'” Read more.
The Corp Dev Team
Liz Gannes of GigaOm provides a concise overview of corporate development execs at major technology companies. Gannes writes about Quantcast investor Cisco and its lead exec, Derek Idemoto, “He said he thinks video is underhyped, and that he’s particularly interested in data. “The most, and most relevant data might win,” [Idemoto] explained.” Read more.
Networks And Transparency
Giving an example from the travel industry, Adometry CEO Jim Ewel says that transparency is needed from the big ad networks today. He writes, “There will always be room for networks and exchanges with different degrees of transparency, just as today both Hotwire and Expedia co-exist in the travel market. But the current almost total lack of transparency in some networks, particularly the big four (AOL, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo!), is detrimental to the industry and unnecessarily protective.” See what he means.
InterPublic Group Earnings
Late last week, agency holding company InterPublic Group reported Q2 earnings with better than expected earnings and revenue. The WSJ’s Jodi Xu writes, “$82.5 million, or 15 cents a share, up from $27.8 million, or four cents a share, a year earlier. Revenue increased 10% to $1.62 billion.” Read the WSJ. From the earnings call transcript, CEO Michael Roth commented on acquisition potential for IPG: “Do we see using that to do any large acquisitions? Right? I mean, that’s the other part of it. And as we’ve said, we don’t have any big holds on our offerings. So we’ll be very strategic in both discipline as well as geographic area. And I think what you saw in the U.K. is an of example that. We’ve used about $150 million as an objective in terms of acquisitions, and we’re consistent with that in our overall plan. So there isn’t a need for us to take that cash and go out and buy a huge traditional agency or a digital, whatever. We will use our cash to invest in our businesses, do strategic acquisitions and, as Frank indicated, focus on our ratings and our balance sheet.” Read the transcript on Seeking Alpha.
The Facebook Channel
From Infectious Media’s blog, agency exec Martin Kelly believes that Facebook is in the process of disrupting display advertising in a big way. He argues that between the well-known search and display channels, “Facebook have started to build their own advertising empire, ignoring this equilibrium, and fast creating what would appear to be a completely new channel.” Read more.
Visual Audience
On Adotas, Milabra CEO Sam Cox writes, “Most sites are inconsistent and jumbled and we have to find a better way to place our ads in an environment that maximizes their ability to deliver campaign results.” Cox advocates for a visual approach. Read more.
The Flight To Compliance
From the PerformLine blog, a summary of thoughts on the recent LeadsCon event. The company blogger writes, “If the theme of the 2009 LeadsCon East was “Flight to Quality”, then I would say the theme of the 2010 NYC LeadsCon East was most definitely “Flight to Compliance.” Read more.
Agencies Need Tech
Amielle Lake, CEO of agency Tagga Media, boldly says that agencies need to own technology in her iMedia Connection piece. She says, “Remember, technology products can scale far more efficiently than humans. Brands will stick to their agency if the results are there and it is more cost effective to outsource to them than bring it in-house.” Read it.
