Behind The Bot; Cross-Channel Money

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Behind The Bot

The focus on fraudulent impressions driven by the “Chameleon” botnet discovered by London-based ad measurement and viewability firm Spider.io this week continues to evolve. Dr. Douglas de Jager, CEO of spider.io, writing in Adweek, investigates some possible (inadvertent?) sources for the bot. In a plea to one company, Alphabird, de Jager asks Alphabird COO Justin Manes, “Justin, will you please reveal the source(s) of these cheap text ads—for the good of the industry?” adding, “The source of these ads is most likely behind the Chameleon botnet, or at least knows who is behind the Chameleon botnet.” Read more.

Cross-Channel Money

Tapad announced a new, $6.5 million round of funding. The company has evolved from its mobile DSP positioning (March 2011) to “cross-channel targeting” (February 2013). All Things D’s Peter Kafka notes that Tapad backers include “former DoubleClick CEO David Rosenblatt and AppNexus founder Brian O’Kelley, who pitched in on a $1.8 million round in 2011.” Sources tell Kafka that Tapad is valued at $140 million. Read more.

Data Individualism

Ok, so creative agency skepticism about big data is nothing new, but BBH founder John Hegarty really goes for the jugular in a panel at Advertising Week Europe. AdAge covers it. “I think there’s a great problem here – throughout history we have fought for our freedom to be an individual, and you’re taking it away from us. I think there’ll be a huge backlash to that and [brands] will have to be very careful.” But, Mr. Hegarty, is it individualism or anonymity we’ve fought for? More.

Google’s AdKeeper?

You can keep ads, keep your favorite AdExchanger articles, keep that family pancake recipe – it’s Google’s new Keep. Google software engineer Katharin Quan writes on the Official Google blog, no less, that Google Keep is available on Android and one can “access, edit and create new notes on the web at http://drive.google.com/keep and in the coming weeks you’ll be able to do the same directly from Google Drive.” Read it. The GOOG continues to look for ways to create and leverage first-party data. – but, is it Evernote inspired? Doesn’t matter to Om Malik as he writes on GigaOm that Google Keep could meet the same fate as Google Reader.

Engaging Ads

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Netflix Ditches MAUs; Streaming Into Trouble

Web analytics firm Chartbeat gives up some ads engagement data on Marketing Land: “When viewing an article for a five-second period, only 50 percent of readers were able to the identify the ad on the page after viewing it; but, when the viewing time was increased to 15 seconds, 70 percent of readers were able to identify the ad they had seen, proving that readers were more likely to recall a brand when their Engaged Time on a page with an ad was increased.” Read the whole thing.

Mac Attack

For the longest time, Mac users could rest comfortably that hackers didn’t attack their computers with malware. Well, those days are over, as The Next Web’s Emil Protalinski warns that a new trojan taking aim at Macs has been discovered that installs an adware plugin across Chrome, Firefox, and Apple’s Safari browser. Doctor Web notes that adware isn’t limited to Mac’s OS X,” as criminals naturally profit from affiliate ad network programs regardless of the platform. The company chose to analyse attackers targeting Macs, since their interest in users of Apple-compatible computers grows day by day.” Read more.

Native Video Ads

Nielsen came out with a new case study that shows native video ads beat pre-roll ads in driving favorable responses from viewers. Sponsored by native advertising platform Sharethrough, the study tracked five advertisers who played a native video ad—a stand-alone video placed next to the site’s content—and a pre-roll version of the ad. Nielsen found that the native ads generated a much higher brand lift at 82% versus 2.1% from the pre-roll ads. Get the study here.

Paid Media Spark

Content may be king, but even great content isn’t enough, according to Forrester analyst Tracy Stokes. In her new report, “How to Build Your Brand with Branded Content” Stokes notes that “creating great content is one side of the coin.” To reach consumers, brands need to build “an amplification plan” that uses “paid media to create a spark.” More.

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