Google Updates AdWords Display; TubeMobul And TrialPay For Social Video RTB; PubMatic Gets Apps

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.

Updating Display

Google is more clearly bubbling up the display opportunity for search marketers with a new update to AdWords. According to the Inside AdWords blog, in the weeks ahead, display is getting its own tab in the Adwords interface and will be “built from the ground up to run display campaigns.” To date, display campaigns are more of a feature of search in the interface. Will the long tail bite? – certainly if they understand retargeting. What’s more – Google says it has upgraded its contextual engine to allow for optimization of a contextual, display campaign down to an “individual keyword level.” Read it. ClickZ’s Susan Kuchinskas looks at the update and quotes SEM Zach Morrison who “thinks Google’s upgrade of the AdWords buying system is a shot across the bows of DSPs. ‘This is Google saying, “We know display is going toward DSPs, but GDN is here to stay – and this is why it’s better than those other guys.”‘” Saber rattling! Read it.

RTB For Social Video

Adweek’s Ki Mae Heussner covers a new partnership between video demand-side platform TubeMogul and transactional advertising platform Trialpay that claims to offer real-time bidding of social video audience. She explains, “Unlike companies that serve preroll video elsewhere on the Web, TrialPay doesn’t charge advertisers on a CPM basis, but only for fully viewed ads, Rampell explained. Also, the ads are only seen by those self-selecting into the process—presumably those with an actual interest in the content and, potentially, an intent to buy.” Read more. And, read the release.

Merging The Workflow

Mediaocean CEO Bill Wise provides his company’s story to New Media Age and discusses the ramification of an agency OS. NMA’s Lucy Tesseras explains the near-term challenge, “Ahead of the Mediaocean Operating System launch, the company is looking to take all its digital assets, of which it has 23 since merging the companies, and combine them to create a new digital product portfolio, which will happen over the next six to nine months.” Merge more.

Aggregating Apps

PubMatic is the latest to get into the “app” game with “PubLink” as the iTunes-inspired app model continues to sweep over online advertising with companies like Flite, Adzerk and AppNexus adding plug-and-play functionality which connects to a variety of solutions or “apps.” According to the release, “Publishers can access seven different categories of point solutions via PubLink: audience data, ad verification and privacy controls, enhanced analytics, malware scanning, self-serve ad serving, mobile content optimization and mobile ad serving and mediation.” Read it.

IPOs And Agencies

Marketing automation and email marketing company ExactTarget Inc. gained 32 percent in its first day as a publicly-traded company. Read more. The IPO market is starting to look pretty darn good. According to Bloomberg that gives ExactTarget a valuation at yesterday’s close of $1.6 billion – and that’s on 2011 sales of a little over $200 million. With some ad tech companies wondering how they’re going to exit, adding a (more robust) services layer and selling (more) media on top of their existing tech may be a way to go. Employees might be ecstatic, too, if you believe this article on “equity culture.”

Buying Video Ads

On The Business Insider, 24/7 Media’s Larry Allen offers to advertisers a think piece on the ins and out of buying online video advertising. He writes about inventory challenges, “Early on just about any pre-roll ad was worth about $35+, so increasing the volume seemed logical. Some companies would even set the video to auto play when the page loaded and classified it as pre-roll, regardless of whether the consumer actually engaged with the content.” And today… read more.

Sales Spectacular

Upstream Group’s Doug Weaver revisits some research on the world sales and writes, “…trying to win long-term loyalty through product innovation turns out to be fool’s errand. Turns out that our customers are often just playing along with our own obsession with feature comparison. So then how does one create a sustainable loyalty advantage?” As it turns out, there are many ways. Feed your inner seller.

You’re Hired!