Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
IBM Optimizing For The Marketer
Here comes Big Blue. IBM announced separate products yesterday targeting the social media and email spaces with Coremetrics Social and Unica Pivotal Veracity Email Optimization Suite intended to provide “marketers real-time data from social media channels,” according to an article on CRM.com. Michelle Eichner, vp product marketing at IBM’s Unica, tells CRM.com, “This is a whole new set of metrics where our industry has never had the ability to say ‘Here are all of my links that were shared, here are the campaigns they are associated with, here is which campaigns are more popular in influencing people to share…” Read more. Read the release. Is display, video, mobile, next? The marketer-targeted sub-headline from IBM’s release is telling, “New software informs and enables marketers with actionable insight.” Read more. Hi Google, my name is IBM.
Brand Dollars And Search
Yahoo! thinks it can attract brand dollars to its search results. ClickZ’s Jack Marshall reported on Wednesday’s Yahoo! product launch: “Shashi Seth, Yahoo’s SVP of search and marketplaces, said it has been developed with advertisers firmly in mind, and that brands will be offered the opportunity to buy real estate alongside it within the next few months.” It’s display in search! Read more. Yahoo! sees “Rich advertiser content” – it’s starting to sound like “big ads” and Aol’s Project Devil. Brands want “share of voice.”
Adding Video Ads To Search
Oh boy. Something new (eventually) to bid on for DSP tech? According to Mark Mahaney in a note to clients after attending Search Engine Strategies in New York, Google is rolling out video ads in the Google search engine result pages (SERPs): “Google announced that it plans to launch a new ‘Media Ads’ format, where Google will show video ads on Google.com SERPs. The ads will appear as small thumbnails with a play button, and when a user clicks on the thumbnail, the ad will expand and take over the Google.com page, playing the video ad. Initially, this will be targeted for movies, but over time, Google plans to launch Media Ads for video-centric segments. For a demo, search for “Lincoln Lawyer.” Google also noted that 10% of all ads currently feature a new ad format that Google has rolled out over the past 15 months (Sitelinks, Product Ads, etc.).”
Futures-focused, display ad marketplace, Legolas Media, announced that it has received $5 million. According to the press release, the round was led by Valhalla Partners and also included existing investors Greylock Partners (Auditude, TellApart, RichRelevance and more) and Blumberg Capital (iSocket, DoubleVerify and more) also participated in the round.” Read more. Legolas CEO Yoav Arnstein tells AdExchanger.com that that the new round will support build out of the sales team among other initiatives.
Branded Environment Audience
Ad network Casale Media says that it has entered the “branded video” space with its new platform called Videobox. In the release, the company promises there’s something in it for publishers, too, including higher CPMs and user control within the branded site – “the user stays within the host site, making it easy for them to return to the publisher’s content.” Read more.
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Daily Roundup
Google The Media Company
It’s proof-positive. Google has its own digital magazine! See it. And it’s for data geeks! Read an overview from News Grange which describes thusly, “The design feels somewhat reminiscent of Wired, with a strong focus on infographics and large photos (but without ads). The articles come both from writers inside of Google and freelancers and the publication is designed and edited by creative agency The Church of London.”
Ad Server Of Record
In a release yesterday, real-time ad platform, AppNexus, let it be known that its serving ads for Canada-based Olive Media as its “ad server of record.” According to the release, “Olive Media has a 71% reach into the Canadian online audience, with over 2,000 publishers in Olive Brand Response, representing over three billion impressions per month.” Read more.
Defining The DMP
BlueKai, whose product line includes a DMP, offers its views on defining the data management platform (DMP) in a new whitepaper titled, “Data Management Platforms Demystified.” As acronyms go, “DMP” in 2011 has been the “DSP” of 2010. The BlueKai paper begins: “Simply put, a DMP forms the backbone of all online advertising operations for an economy that has increasingly become more digital.” Download it here (sign-up required).
For The Mobile DSP Lover
Mobile Marketing’s David Murphy covers a new whitepaper sponsored by UK-based mobile DSP StrikeAds where, among others, former DoubleClick-er and Falk eSolutions founder, Thomas Falk, resides as non-executive chairman. Murphy says among the paper’s key findings: “Agencies are still not treating mobile as a significant advertising channel in its own right: Not all agencies have a dedicated mobile specialist. Those who do will not have the time to fully-develop a mobile campaign for multiple clients simultaneously.” Read more. Download the paper.
AT&T And T-Mobile Means Ads
AdWeek/MediaWeek’s Mike Shields ruminates on the AT&T acquisition of T-Mobile USA and thinks he sees a powerful ad targeting tool on the horizon. He talks to Phuc Truong, managing director U.S., of the mobile marketing firm Mobext who “theorized that given AT&T’s now massive data footprint—with T-Mobile, it claims more than 130 million subscribers—the company could launch some sort of ad product that would use its customers’ data to target ads based on geography, household size and spending habits.” Read more.
Where Are All The IPOs?
On his personal blog, VC Jeff Bussgang tries to get his head around why the IPO action is fewer and farer between than some might have imagined. He points to one issue: “The cause is Sarbanes Oxley and the lack of volume. The effect is that bankers and analysts follow the money. If the rules were more relaxed, there would be more bankers and analysts, for sure. This is the Information Age – analysis and bankers will follow opportunities.” Read more.
Unfragmenting Local Ads
Mpire chairman Matt Hulett looks at GroupOn’s business model from his personal blog and sees brilliance, “The local advertising market is extremely fragmented. Much more than the $3 trillion travel and hospitality industry. Many companies have tried to break-thru to reach small businesses and Groupon’s ability to offer e-commerce to businesses that were not sophisticated enough to do so was and is simply brilliant. And then he offers a nifty graphic to prove his point. See it.
Facebook Ads Getting Real-Time
Ad Age’s Irina Slutsky looks at Facebook’s efforts to enter the real-time targeting world and finds, “The closest Facebook has come to real-time advertising has been with its most recent ad offering, known as sponsored stories, which repost users’ brand interactions as an ad on the side bar.”Read more.
VC Becomes Product Guy (Again)
Satya Patel is leaving his vc role at Battery Ventures and joining the real world. (Oh come on now, I’m just joking about the “real world” thing.) Patel is joining Twitter as a director of product management. In his former life, Patel was a product manager for Google’s AdSense product. Read more on WebProNews. And, see Patel’s tweet announcing his hiring.
Adobe, IBM, HP, Ads
Forbes’ Quentin Hardy looks at Adobe and observes the data-driven thinking around ads including the recent Demdex purchase. He notes the competition ahead for Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen including IBM and HP saying, “IBM just announced it will deploy 1,000 consultants and 1,200 salesmen into its “smarter commerce” initiative, dedicated to helping advertisers figure out the real costs and effectiveness of their online marketing. HP’s new CEO, Leo Apotheker, used his first public appearance to talk about the growing importance of data-analysis software to HP. Read more.
Retargeting Melts
Well of course it is. Outspoken Media’s Lisa Barone live blogged the retargeting discussion from a panel with Chango’s Dax Hamman, Clix Marketing’s David Szetela, and MSN’s James Colborn at the recent Search Engine Strategies conference. Read it all here. Barone’s final words are telling, “My brain is melting.”
New!
Data management company eXelate has taken the wraps off of it’s new branding and website. See it here!
