Amazon Buying The Pipes; Acquisitions For The Funnel

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Amazon Buying The Pipes

It’s not ad technology “pipes” but it’s something similar for books. Yesterday, the company announced the acquisition of a social network for book lovers and authors called Goodreads. paidContent’s Laura Hazard Owen writes, “Goodreads is (…) likely to be less open with access to its data now that it has been acquired by Amazon. In the past, the company has shared information about how its readers discover and buy books and about their digital reading habits, presenting the data at conferences and in blog posts.” New data for tuning Amazon ad exchange ad campaigns? Read more.

Acquisitions for The Funnel

Marketing software provider HubSpot has snapped up two more startups—Chime and PrepWork—reports TechCrunch’s Anthony Ha. PrepWork delivers emails with background info (hence the name) to brief users on upcoming meetings and Chime pulls together the notifications from a user’s web apps into a single feed. HubSpot picked the apps to help it “humanize bottom-of-the-funnel interactions,” writes HubSpot founder and CEO Brian Halligan in a blog post. Here’s TechCrunch’s take.

Not So Great Sharing

New data from 33across acquisition (Jan. 2012) Tynt shows that those shares you’re recording as success metrics need deeper analysis. “While science stories are shared at high rates (12% of page views), the percent of clickbacks (link clicks/shares) is only nine percent – while the average for all categories is almost three times higher at 24%.” Read the release.

Serving Agencies

In Ad Age, Jason Del Rey reports that agencies are feeling the cold shoulder from Yahoo. But, Jeff Lanctot, chief media officer at Razorfish, says there’s a bigger story: “My view is that if Yahoo can win over entrepreneurs, it will help drive innovation,. If they innovate, that will help win over consumers. You know what agencies flock to? Innovative companies that consumers flock to.” Read more. Yahoo only cares about making a great product right now. The final iteration is years off, but that’s the goal. Plan/build, then revenue Nevertheless, eMarketer claims ad spending is “back” at Yahoo here.

Retargeting Misconceptions

How to overcome retargeting misconceptions is the gyst of a think piece by Rocket Fuel’s Jarvis Mak on iMedia Connection. He opines, “Not all prospects are created equal. Prospecting partners can bring in varied customer segments. How much should you pay for your very best prospects? If one partner brings in prospects that are twice as valuable as another partner, it doesn’t make sense to hold them both to the same standard.” Segment your retargeting. Read more.

The List

The list used by unsuspecting media buyer/planners to select their favorite ad network has received its latest update. comScore publicly released the results of ad networks, exchange and DSPs with the largest reach in the U.S. in February. Keep in mind – a lot of this is pay for play. And with impression-based audience buying through demand-side platforms – real-time or not – the comScore list seems irrelevant. Download it for fun (PDF). A publicly-available, unduplicated reach metric across DSPs/networks/exchanges would be cool if someone could figure that out. Get crackin!

S’up At Google

Attention San Francisco shoppers: Google wants your ~~money~~ help. The search behemoth confirms that it’s testing something called a “Google Shopping Express” delivery service as online reaches offline (Ebay is too). Read the blog post.
Next, Google says you can use any of its patents free-of-charge and never get sued. Well… not quite. But it delivers strike against patent trolls and copyright law (Microsoft offered its strike, too.). Read it.
And, there are new improvements to Google’s RTA (real-time analytics – just made that up!). Read more.
Finally, for those of you affected by a malfunction of DoubleClick ad serving “interfaces” yesterday, things are ok says the DFP Twitter account. A Google spokesperson says this affected “legacy” account holders only. So there, you legacies.

Have A Life

Former Right Media CEO Mike Walrath offers a tip to startup types in a rare post on his personal blog: “When I started Right Media, I had a bit of an unusual set of circumstances for a startup founder. I was 26 and had 2 young children (and a 3rd arrived not too soon after). I was also commuting from Long Island to NYC at the time. If I was going to be successful as a founder AND husband and father, I had to find a way to make all that work. I wasn’t willing to fail at business OR at life.” Here’s how he says he managed to do both.

You’re Hired!