Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
CPM Tea Party
Shelby Bonnie, the CEO of Whiskey Media – and the co-founder of CNET – , says on TechCrunch that it’s time to kill the CPM as he speaks to his media publishing brethren who can’t seem to get a break as CPMs decline while inventory floods the market. Varick’s Darren Herman calls Bonnie on suggesting “CPM” is a performance metric on his blog. Visit the TechCrunch article here.
AdBrite On Contextual, In-Text Display
Looking to add another line of revenue, AdBrite announced on Friday that it was offering CPC banner ads in addition to contextual, text ad links as part of its “InLineAd” product originally popularized by Vibrant Media. Read the release.
Convincing Marketers About Display
MediaPost’s Mark Walsh looks at last Thursday’s Advertising Week panel discussion that included execs from Facebook and Google. Walsh writes that the execs were trying to convince marketers that online advertising works – in particular display advertising. Eileen Naughton of Google’s media platforms group is quoted as saying, “Half of all display ad dollars in the U.S. are display ad dollars.” Better be! Read more. For an Ad Week round up from the NYT’s Stuart Elliott and Stephanie Clifford, click here.
Rafat Ali’s PaidContent.org and ContentNext may be getting shopped by its UK owners, Guardian News and Media, according to a story by Sam Gustin on the AOL Daily Finance blog. Guardian originally purchased ContentNext for $30 million in 2008. Alan Meckler of WebMediaBrands (formerly JupiterMedia) may be a candidate to buy ContentNext according to the report. Meckler sold Internet.com for $18 million in August and purchased Mediabistro for $20 million in 2007. Read more.
If The Shoe Fits
AdAge reports that Mullen has been chosen by Zappos as its agency of record (AOR) after a lengthy, and at times, controversial review process that was originally open to almost every agency on the planet. No word if skater Rodney Mullen’s “Mullen” brand shoes currently for sale on Zappos has any influence on the final decision. Read more on AdAge.
Re: That Viagra Spam
Ars Technica’s Jacqui Cheng reveals that those annoying Viagra emails you get in your inbox are estimated to generate $4,000 a day for Russian email list owners/spammers. Who are the knuckleheads stupid enough to click on the links in these emails? Nobody’s saying. Read more.
Magazine Party Over
Stephanie Clifford of The New York Times says a recent McKinsey & Company project is recommending cuts (up to 25%) in the budgets of some of the high profile magazines at Conde Nast. As digital eats away at the rag trade, the big budgets of the past will no longer make sense. Read more.
Display In The Middle East
Trade Arabia looks at a recent research piece from AT Kearney looking at Yahoo!’s purchase of Maktoob, online community catering to web users in the Middle East. Christophe Firth, a consultant from A T Kearney’s Media Practice says that Yahoo! is in good position to capture the Middle East display opportunity. Read more.
