Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
Adchemy Opens Kimono
Private companies are “opening the kimono.” Following the lead of VideoEgg and Bizo, demand-side platform, Adchemy has provided some insight on its recent revenues and client momentum in a press release. The company said “that in 2009 it grew its revenue by 60 percent and number of employees by 50 percent.” In addition, Adchemy listed a group of key hires and said that they’re opening an office in the Phillipines. Read the release.
VAST At Work?
Video is coming… DSP-Style! In Mediaweek, Mike Shields highlights Collective Media whose technology enables buyers to use data to “to deliver video ads on over 3,000 different Web sites represented by Collective by targeting individual users—rather than by targeting ads based on sites’ content and environment.” Standardization of video formats – such as VAST – continues to play into the demand-side platform model where buying occurs across multiple digital channels (display, mobile, video, DOOH, etc.). Read it.
Ghostery Gobbled
Scott Meyer’s Better Advertising has gobbled up Ghostery, which “alerts you about the web bugs, ad networks and widgets on every page on the web.” Read Rafat Ali’s summary on PaidContent. On the Ghostery blog, the man behind the popular Firefox plugin and current Performable CEO (and past Lookery CTO – he’s a busy guy!), David Cancel, informs users that he will remain as an advisor to Better Advertising which will be “extending Ghostery across more Internet browser versions.” Read the Ghostery blog.
The Wall Street Journal’s Scott Morrison looks ahead to Google’s earnings release on Thursday and any existing crumbs of information that may bring to light Big G’s Q4 2009 performance. Looking at Google the stock, S&P analyst Scott Kessler tells Morrison, “This is a stock that tends to not fare as well when there is material uncertainty that is not fully addressed.” Read more.
Venture Gets Creative
On his A VC blog, Union Square Ventures’ Fred Wilson discusses “The Tug Of War Between M&A and VC.” Wilson notes the growing use of what he calls a “DST deal” by venture firms. DST was the Russian company that bought an interest in Facebook where the “financing was a combination of primary (money went into the company) and secondary (money went to buy shares from employees and existing shareholders).” Read more. According to TechCrunch, Yelp is considering a similar type of deal from Elevation Partners.
The Real-Time Data Feed
John Borthwick, CEO Betaworks among many of his pursuits, discusses real-time data on his “THINK Musings” blog. In his post, he notes recent all-time usage highs for real-time data sources such as Twitter, Foursquare and even URL shortener, bit.ly. He adds that real-time “stream” growth may have slowed in Q4 2009 in comparison to previous quarters. Read more data about the data.
Dipping And Rebounding
Magna is forecasting that ad revenue will drop this quarter but begin rebounding in the coming year according to its new 2010 forecast reported in Ad Age. Another interesting prediction from Magna: political ad spending will increase over 2008 by 15% in spite of the presidential year comparison. Magna attributes the increase to local, political ad spending. Read more.
Entrepreneur On Getting It Done
Louis Marascio says that “getting it done” is a key tenet of being an entrepreneur. He points to an example at his former company, Metreos (bought by Cisco in 2006), where his company cranked out an app for its first client in a week. Says Marascio, “Getting things done is the most important attribute any entrepreneur can have. If you can’t get things done then no amount of hard work will make you a success.” Read more.
Microsoft On Privacy
Microsoft is taking the privacy baton and has announced on its “Microsoft On The Issues” blog that it will “delete the entire Internet Protocol address associated with search queries at six months rather than at 18 months.” Read the blog. Bloomberg’s Stephanie Bodoni notes that this in response to privacy regulations approved in the EU. Read it.
Iphone And Brands And Mobile Ad Biz
On VentureBeat, freelance writer Matthaus Krzykowski looks at how the mobile ad market was built by the iPhone. Krzykowski attributes part of the momentum to brand advertisers who saw the iPhone as an important cog in their media plans: “While may of these brand advertisers ran so-called ‘multi-channel mixed campaigns’ (campaigns that spread the message in various media channels like TV, events or mobile for that matter), the iPhone often was at the core of these campaigns.” Read more.
More Ad Networks Popping Up
Ad networks are not going away anytime soon. According to PaidContent’s Joseph Tartikoff, Image Space Media, which sells ads “in-image” (you didn’t know that was being done, did you?), has raised $2.9 million led by New Atlantic Ventures. How it works: when you mouse over an image, you get an ad that overlays the image. Sounds like friction to me. Read more.
Every Fourth Click
In “Anchor Intelligence Traffic Quality Report: 2009 Year in Review”, AI says that click fraud jumped to 25.7% in Q4. Look on the bright side – how many times have you heard that it’s NOT about the click? And, view-throughs are more important than ever. It’s all good news for display! Call me, Spinmaster, if you must. Download the report here.
