Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
Online Ad Spend Swamis
More good news from those who forecast digital ad spend. Borrell Associates says in a release, “Total online ad spending will grow almost 14 percent, from $45.6 billion, in 2010, to $51.9 billion, in 2011, while local online ad spending is expected to grow nearly 18%, from $13.7 billion, this year, to $16.1 billion, next year. The fastest-growing segments of online advertising are the local sector, anything targeted, and everything involving social media.” Read more.
WPP Group Reports Q2
Ad holding company WPP Group reported strong, second quarter 2010 results yesterday as “profit attributable to shareholders rose to £150.8 million ($234 million) from £108.4 million.” For digital: “In the first half, direct and digitally-related activities accounted for 28%, or $1.913 billion (an annual run rate of $4 billion) of the Group’s total revenues, which are running at the rate of well over $14 billion per annum.” And, the company raised its dividend for the first time in 18 months. Read the release. And, here’s a combative video interview with WPP CEO Sir Martin Sorrell and Bloomberg yesterday regarding results.
MySpace, FAN Are One
Fox Audience Network (FAN) has been placed under the MySpace umbrella at News Corp. The news comes as FAN chief Adam Bain has left for the top revenue generator role at Twitter. From the MySpace/FAN release, MySpace prez Mike Jones said, “By fully integrating FAN’s platform and team, we are in a great position to further leverage FAN’s technology.” With a dwindling user base at MySpace, perhaps this consolidation will present an opportunity to sell the FAN technology and MySpace as a package. Read the release.
TRAFFIQ Growing
Display ad marketplace TRAFFIQ announced that it came in at #50 in the list of fast-growing companies in Inc Magazine’s “Inc 500.” The company made $5.7 million in 2009 and, in a release, CEO Nick Pahade said, “TRAFFIQ has enjoyed significant buyer usage, publisher adoption and revenue growth over the past year, including a 297% increase in revenue for the
first quarter of 2010 as compared to the same period a year earlier.” Read the release. And, see the Inc 500 listing.
Conferencing For Revenue
Publisher-side yield optimizer PubMatic announced the lineup for its October 7 Ad Revenue Conference in New York City. Panelists and speakers include the IAB’s Randall Rothenberg, professor and media pundit Jeff Jarvis, Doug Weaver of Upstream Group and Kyoo Kim, VP of Sales, MSNBC.com. See the agenda and request an invite.
Branding With Superstars
Brand Affinity Technologies announced it has raised $20 million in Series C venture capital. In the release, the company which says it will double revenues year-over-year in 2010 describes itself as ‘”a Platform that advertisers use to identify and secure endorsement talent (…) daily affinity intelligence on more than 38,000 celebrities.” Read more.
Ad Networks And Enron
On the Goodway Group blog, the title for Jay Friedman’s post leaves little room for misinterpretation: “Why The ‘Black Box’ Ad Network Is Going The Way of 0% Home Financing And Enron Accounting.” Friedman declares, “The days where ad networks glamorized themselves as a black box of information which held deep dark ‘proprietary’ data knowledge and secrets is officially over.” Read more.
Dish Network Isn’t Just For Satellites
Dish Network says that it will expand its footprint to online with DishOnline.com, a website accessible to Dish Network subscribers-only with video from major TV network content providers. Dish SVP Dave Shull tells the NY Times: “People are shifting where they watch video, and I want to shift with them.” Read more.
Godin Self-Publishing
Popular digital marketing writer and thinker Seth Godin has announced that he will forego his relationship with publisher Penguin Group owned by Pearson PLC in favor of publishing his future works himself, mostly digitally. Godin tells Jeffrey Trachtenberg of the Wall Street Journal, “One of his many concerns about the current publishing market is that the process often takes 12 months or more to get a new title into the hands of his readers.” Read it.
Technology And The Creative
Kevin Roddy, chief creative officer of Bartle Bogle Hegarty, tells his creative brethren in Ad Age that it’s best to admit you know nothing about digital. He says, “We can admit that we don’t know enough about technologically complex creative ideas better and ask for help.” Once the creative asks for help, the ideas will get better he suggests. Read more.
GroupOn For Everyone
Co-founder Vin Vacanti of daily deal aggregator Yipit says that if big media publishers aren’t thinking about it now, they should be: their very own GroupOn which offers daily deals to their loyal readers (which he’ll no doubt aggregate through Yipit). Vacanti names media brand names like the New York Times and Washington Post as potentially successful arbiters of the group buying conceit. But he advises in his list of tips, “Daily Deals are a reward to your audience, *not* an advertisement.” Read all his tips. (source: @infoarbitrage)
