Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
EU Cookie Business
The European Union is having difficulty finding an acceptable solution for the management cookies after it passed a tough law in the EU last year. The law’s “meaning” is the issue. In the end, “European regulators in Brussels promise guidance by early next year. The EU’s 27 member nations are supposed to codify the rule into national laws by May. But each country might interpret the law differently, creating a nightmare of conflicting standards. The upshot could be no meaningful change to how cookies operate now,” according to a new Wall Street Journal article. An informative read.
Retargeting “Like”
RadiumOne (AdExchanger.com Q&A) announced that is harnessing the power of Facebook’s “Like” function for retargeting purposes. AllFacebook reports, “How it works is this: Companies will pixel (or place cookies) on their web pages to mark visitors. RadiumOne will use that information to find visitors on Comscore 500 websites and show them ads with a call to action to “like” on Facebook the brands they’ve visited on the web.” And then RadiumOne adds lookalike targeting to increase scale. Read it.
Better Advertising Banks $9.5 Million
All Things D’s Peter Kafka reported yesterday that Better Advertising had received funds for its online ad privacy business. Kafka wrote, “Better Advertising says PE firm Warburg Pincus has led a $9.5 million investment round in the company, joined by some of the startup’s managers. That’s a little bit confusing, because some of that sum represents convertible debt that has now become equity, and the company won’t break out how exactly much new money just showed up. But CEO Scott Meyer says the majority of the $9.5 million is new.” Read more. And, Better Advertising’s CEO Scott Meyer says in a release, “This funding will enable us to work with even more companies in delivering on the promise of full industry implementation of the Self-Regulatory Principles and meaningful transparency in interactive media.” Read the release.
The New York Times’ Ashlee Vance looks at the B2B products and services exchange phenomena and left-for-dead Ariba which fought on after the bubble burst and is moving well-beyond its original promise. Vance writes, “The scale, reach and fluidity of the Internet have started to reshape supplier networks with a level of sophistication not foreseen even by the zealous pundits of 10 years ago. On Ariba’s exchange, companies deal in items as varied as steel, fats, oils, name badges, pickles, plastic bottles, solvents, taco seasoning and cardboard. Increasingly, companies trade in services, too, placing bids for legal and janitorial work, for example.” Sounds familiar! Read more.
Data Mining For Dollars
Marketing Charts lifts from an Aberdeen Group report showing in graphical format that real-time analytics enhances data mining. From the report, “Best-in-class organizations are much more likely to use real-time analytics collection (67%) than industry average (42%) or laggard (38%) organizations. In addition, best-in-class organizations have higher levels of using customer segmentation tools (65% compared to 62% and 49%, respectively) and automated rules-based process engines (45% compared to 35% and 32%, respectively).” See the chart.
DSP Prediction Retrospective
From his company’s blog, Triggit CEO Zach Coelius takes a look predictions he made in 2009 for 2010. Coelius thinks he was pretty close for most of his predictions except for the one where he said an agency would buy a demand-side platform: “I was totally wrong on this one. I continue to be surprised at the level of denial in agencies about the value of owning technology as their core businesses are increasingly becoming automated.” Read more.
Social Influence And The Drive To Buy
Near and dear to anyone considering a campaign in social media is the idea of leveraging connection to reach a target audience while achieving adequate scale. MIT Technology Review’s Erica Naone takes a look at recent research about social influence and quotes one academic who states, “For most real-life scenarios, social influence does play a big role, because we want to do what our friends do, and we trust their opinions, and we want to fit in and be up-to- date.” But, that doesn’t mean we’re going to buy something adds Naone. Read “Who Cares What Everyone Else Thinks.”
Hiring The Digital Native
Ad Age’s Michael Learmonth notes the current hiring frenzy for the “chief digital officer” role at companies such as Time Inc., Gannett, Clear Channel and Wenner Media among others. Big media needs someone(s) to help guide their digital strategy. Former Associated Content CEO Patrick Keane (who is now evidently at CBS having left Yahoo! after AC’s acquisition) identifies the big media predicament for Learmonth, “These are multi-billion-dollar businesses, not science projects. They need people who are native to that industry and have that experience.” Read more.
A Little Froth Will Do Ya
On his personal blog, more commentary on the angel investing business from kbs+p’s digital maven Darren Herman who dabbles in the angel world. Herman thinks the fact so many have entered into investing in start-ups will figure itself out. He writes, “These frothy times will weed out the morons, or more importantly, the people who deserve to be weeded out. Maybe the term moron is way too harsh, but it’ll weed out angels who are either a) way too green, b) investing on ego (I see quite a bit of this), c) people with no sense of simple math. Is that a bad thing for the angel ecosystem? Not if you ask me.” Read more.
Transparency, Please
According to research from his company, Turn’s busy CTO Xuhui Shao tells MediaPost’s Laurie Sullivan, that when it comes to ad targeting, he “estimates up to 40% of publisher Web sites do not reveal the exact URL to brands. Evidently, some publishers selling low-quality spaces choose to bundle in ads with other sites, so advertisers can’t distinguish the difference.” Read it.
Spies In The Aisles
Amazon has created a new app called Price Check for the iPhone that allows users to comparison shop as they walk the aisles of their favorite big box retailer. The app uses the phone’s camera to scan a barcode and check the product’s current price at Amazon. Buy now! See the video from ClickZ’s Jack Marshall. The implications are pretty simple here, too… depending on a user’s buying history or a myriad of other factors, Amazon could just go ahead and undercut the big box retailer’s price on any product in real-time in order to close the sale.
Reselling Ad Verification
Mpire announced that it has entered into a reseller agreement with Aol’s ADTECH ad serving platform as “ADTECH’s sales and account management teams will offer customers and prospects the option to easily verify, measure, and protect their campaigns using Mpire’s AdXpose solution.” Read the release.
Creating Media
If you’re a publisher and think your site’s aggregation of twitter accounts isn’t relevant as guaranteed, sponsored inventory, think again says AdGent Digital which has created a widget that provides sponsorship capabilities to Urban Radio network Radio One. Read the release. This follows AdGent’s recent re-branding and launch of its own video ad network as ad network models, in general, continue to evolve.
But Wait. There’s More!
- Adap.tv Continues the Rapid Expansion of Its Marketplace With the Addition of Top Publishers – Adap.tv
- Retailers Significantly Increase Search Advertising Spend Ahead of Black Friday and Cyber Monday – SearchIgnite
