Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
eXelate Releases Intender Report
Data exchange, eXelate, released the “eXelate indeX, a research report based on audience interest and purchase intent trends observed by its data lab.” Among the findings, Apple’s iPad announcement ignited purchase intent for portable computing products – Google’s Nexus One phone showed no effect on intent. Read the release. And, download the report.
UK IPO Blow
The Wall Street Journal’s Hester Plumridge (great name!) reports that the UK IPO market took it on the chin yesterday as Travelport cancelled its $1.78 billion initial public offering. The company, which specializes in transaction processing for the travel industry, blamed “market instability, investors also seem to have been spooked by its high leverage and poor earnings visibility.” Read the release. And, read the WSJ’s take.
Microsoft Marketing Move
Is Microsoft feeling the need to position itself better or more appropriately in the marketplace? Ad Age covers the appointment of a chief creative officer, Gayle Troberman, at Microsoft – a position which Ad Age’s Abbey Klaassen terms “a relatively rare one among client-marketers” and adds that Troberman was “general manager of Microsoft’s advertising and customer engagement, leading global advertising” -and a whole lot more. Read about it.
Nicholas Carlson of The Business Insider covers the potential showdown of Google and Microsoft over the AOL search deal as apparently Google is not going to backdown from any Steve Ballmer bullying. Carlson says his source says, “Googlers are talking about plans to be to be ‘aggressive’ during negotiations.” Get the mud wrestling pit ready – and read more.
UK Branding Measurement
Gustav Von Sydow, co-founder of creative analytics firm, Burt, takes issue with Nielsen’s UKOM Audience Planning System (APS) which went live in Europe on February 10th according to Nielsen’s site. UKOM says that it offers brand advertisers the ability to “have the foundation reach & frequency data they need, with the quality required for planning brand advertising across online media.” Von Sydow doesn’t think it will work and says in New Media Age, “Online branding campaigns aren’t delivering enough impact. No one’s getting any better at understanding why, and I don’t see how UKOM will change that.” Read more.
TargetSpot On MySpace
ClickZ’s Kate Kaye covers a recent deal between online audio ad network provider, TargetSpot, and MySpace. The social media site has been testing Target spot 30 second audio ads on various places within the MySpace user interface as it looks to leverage the music and audio strengths that MySpace is known for. Read more.
The Whiz Kid Drain
Entrepreneur and VC Chris Dixon suggests from his blog that every time a talented, young whiz kid decides to join a huge mega-conglomerate such as Google or Goldman Sachs or AdExchanger.com (wait, not the last one), an opportunity is lost as the world will be a little less “wealthy, innovative, and interesting.” He blames culture for this move to a world of safety. Read more.
When Targeting My Friends…
PR firm Edelman released a study that said “75% of consumers don’t believe their peers will give them good advice or information about a company.” Oh man, is that whole “targeting birds of a feather” thing up in smoke if Facebook friends don’t trust each other? Not so fast… maybe. Read more from Marketing Vox.
Pass The Patent Portfolio
Mobile ad network Jumptap has been busy at the U.S. Patent Office as the company announced that it has been issued it’s fourth patent in 8 months. The latest patent involves “The patent relates to a computer-implemented method for targeted distribution of sponsored content item of a first or second sponsor to a plurality of mobile communication facilities whose respective users…” And it goes on and on in the release. More from Wireless Week.
300 Million Views
According to TechCrunch’s Leena Rao, Next New Networks saw 300 Million Views in 2009 and that the company is reporting “it doubled revenue from 2008 to 2009 and saw a 70% increase in the number of sponsors.” Profitability is evidently right around the corner.
Encoding.com Raises $1.25M
alarm:clock takes notice of SaaS company Encoding.com and the announcement that it has raised $1.25 million in Series A financing led by Metamorphic Ventures. The company “operates a cloud-based, video encoding Software-as-a-Service for site operators hosting video.” Looks like a potential Cisco acquisition from here. They have the Flip – now they need to encode the video. Read more.
UK IAB And VAST
The IAB’s Video Council in the UK announced that it “has received the backing of publisher and broadcaster members to enforce Video Advertising Standard Templates (VAST 2.0) in the UK” as standardization in online video advertising continues to proliferate. Read it on the IAB’s UK site. Jack Wallington notes on Brand Republic’s IAB blog the initiatives benefits: “Reach, frequency and additional third party reporting.” Read it.
ValueClick Looking For Violators
ValueClick announced that it’s looking to improve network quality of both its own branded network and that of Commission Junction. The company said in a release that it has renewed its deal with Cyveillance to provide “real-time content monitoring to deliver early warning of potential violations of the networks’ publisher terms and conditions.” Read the release.
