Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
Privacy Prodding In DC
The Hill’s Kim Hart checked in on hearings taking place in D.C. around consumer privacy online and covers Acxiom executive Jennifer Barrett’s testimony regarding, “1,500 possible data points about individual consumers” that Acxiom tracks. Barrett said that “Acxiom receives that information from public records, surveys consumers fill out voluntarily.” Read more.
Kenneth Corbin of InternetNews.com covers the hearings saying, “Members of the two subcommittees are considering draft language of the bill, which could be introduced in the next several weeks.” Read the coverage.
In preparation for yesterday’s hearing in front of Rep. Rich Boucher’s Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet, The Wall Street Journal’s Emily Steel set the stage for the privacy and consumer data hearings and echoed The Hill’s story saying that lawmakers concerns aren’t just about online data, but offline as well. Read more.
ComScore Releases October
No surprise – a whole bunch of ad networks have a whole bunch of reach according to ComScore Media Metrix numbers for October 2009 as the total U.S. internet audience closes in on nearly 200 million people. AOL, Yahoo! and the Google Content Network land in the top 3 for reach among ad networks in the U.S. Read the release.
Microsoft Exiting Ad Serving?
Is Microsoft giving up on the Atlas product line? Gartner’s Andrew Frank thinks that the recent deal between Microsoft and OpenX (with its ad serving tools) may indicate as much as the Redmond giant may start to focus on media-only. He says that Microsoft’s Atlas ad serving product line creates a potential, inherent conflict with media sales efforts. Read his analysis.
Face(book) Value
According to Bloomberg’s Brian Womack, Facebook has a $9.6 Billion valuation if you are willing to trust the current price of Facebook stock through services such as SecondMarket, which bring together buyers and sellers of illiquid assets – in this case, pre-IPO Facebook stock. Read more. And, visit http://www.secondmarket.com/.
Paid Vs. Earned
Nielsen EVPs Pete Blackshaw and Randall Beard co-author a recent post on the Nielsen blog and look at how paid media and (2009 buzz word of the year candidate) earned media can work together saying, “An engaging, even participatory Pepsi game spot, for instance, might trigger a site visit, a Google search, a tweet, retweet, fan-page sign-up, or DVR rewind.” Read the blog post.
Yahoo! Management Machinations
Kara Swisher of All Things D reports that Yahoo!’s CEO Carol Bartz continues to arrange the upper management layer at Yahoo!. There’s even a possibility she will take over the chairman/chairwoman position. Swisher adds some color on the former Right Media CEO and departing SVP Michael Walrath, who “was widely expected to leave Yahoo in July, at the completion of his earnout from the acquisition, sources said, so the move was more sudden than expected internally.” Read more.
Blasting With Display
According to the Google AdWords Agency blog, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was busy having his minions target applicable New York City voters via “blasts” on the Google AdWords platform this past election season. The blog says, “In a recent Google and TNS Compete study for a large automaker, we found that Google Content Network blasts reach 58% of online auto buyers, which is 20% more than a top portal homepage, and 23% of buyers were reached exclusively on sites available only on the Google Content Network.” Read more about it.
Reporter Cleaned By New X+1 Platform
In a behavioral insider column, MediaPost’s Laurie Sullivan expresses her frustration about how nobody talks about behavioral targeting and how it comes together. And then, she met [x+1] CEO John Nardone, who ran “through Media+1’s (audience buying platform) features. I felt almost as if I had experienced a spiritual cleansing.” Read the article.
Ad Ops Exchange Talk
Rob Beeler of AdMonster says that the agenda is set for his organization’s upcoming Network Ad Ops Forum on December 3. The meeting of advertising operations professionals will include presentations from a range of speakers including Darren Herman of Varick Media, Dan Cassidy of Undertone Networks and former TRAFFIQ Director of Media Services, Mary Targia, who will discuss ways ad ops teams can maximize the benefit of working with current ad exchanges. See the agenda.
From The Top of The Funnel
From the eConsultancy blog, Ian Dowds, vice president of Specific Media, presented at a recent eConsultancy event and told attendees, “Don’t forget to look higher up the funnel. Don’t let anybody steal your milkshake.” His point being that display and marketer favorite, search, can work together as display advertising can drive users to search for products. Read it.
Collective On AMP 3.0
Collective Media said in a release that it’s new AMP 3.0 platform allows marketers to meet or scale beyond original campaign goals by seeing “the likely responses of consumers that they did not originally target.” The release adds that Collective’s AMP is “delivering over 10 billion ad impressions per month.” Read more.
The Luxurious Web
After nearly 15 years, luxury brands are warming up to the Web – so says The New York Times’ Eric Pfanner. He quotes Natalie Massenet of luxury brand, Net-A-Porter, as saying that customers want to shop “at work, at home, in bedroom.” All at once? Read more lurid details.