Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
$30 Million More For Video
Video advertising tech and solutions provider TidalTV – led by Ad.com’s former CEO and co-founder Scott Ferber – announced a healthy, new $30 million round of funding led by New Enterprise Associates with participation from Comcast Interactive Capital and Valhalla Partners. According to the release, the company will invest the new funds in global expansion, talent and product development. Read more. GigaOm notes that TidalTV has raised $61 million in 3 rounds of funding. Read it.
Ringleader Gets Big Customers
ClickZ’s Jack Marshall reports that Aol and Microsoft is enlisting the tech and services of mobile fingerprinting company Ringleader Digital as the two companies explore cookie-less solutions in order to “track and target ads served to mobile and tablet devices more effectively.” Read more. Ringleader CEO Bob Walczak discusses the privacy lawsuit which he says his company has learned from as he says they’re pouring on the transparency.
For Ad Networks
Undertone CEO Mike Cassidy makes the case for ad networks in a think piece on Ad Age. “Proponents say that private exchanges will directly connect buyers (agency trading desks) and sellers (publishers), thus eliminating the network (viewed as the non-value adding middleman). In fact, the exact opposite is happening.” Read more.
Microsoft’s legal counsel chief, Brad Smith, announces on his company’s legal blog, “Microsoft is filing a formal complaint with the European Commission as part of the Commission’s ongoing investigation into whether Google has violated European competition law. We thought it important to be transparent and provide some information on what we’re doing and why.” Read more. Search Engine Land’s Greg Sterling breaks down the complaint here.
Bloggin’ Product Dev
Invite Media CEO Nat Turner has returned to his personal blog after a hiatus likely associated with his company’s growth and eventual acquisition by Google. In his most recent post, Turner talks about the disconnect that can develop between engineers and product teams and adds, “I think we found a happy-medium with a short meeting with 2-3 engineers and 1-2 product people where the engineers in the room were the “official owners” and the product people started the meeting by explaining the problem and why it mattered.” Read more.
Aggregating POS Data
On his Screenwerk blog, Greg Sterling is a busy man as he talks to Point-of-Sale (POS) data aggregator Retailigence and its CEO Jeremy Geiger who says, “Nordstrom and BestBuy are leading edge in terms of thinking [about data, APIs, etc].” However he told me it’s still tough to get things done even with the more forward-looking retailers, because of organizational divisions and inertia. Yet the direction of the market is unmistakable: there will be increasing amounts of local product inventory data available via APIs like Retailigence’s.” Good article. Read more.
Broad Targeting Best
Simulmedia’s Dave Morgan comes out in favor of broad segmentation vs. 1-to-1 targeting in his “Online Spin” column on MediaPost. He says, “I am a big proponent of focusing first on using data (such as Zip code-level viewing, census and sales data) to create better broad, anonymous targeting segmentations, rather than trying to created granular profiles of individual viewers or households.” And then he offers his reasons here.
Q1 M&A Activity
Boutique investment bank Jordan, Edmiston Group (JEGI) has published its Q1 2011 M&A Report overview which it says shows “that M&A transaction value for the media, information, marketing services and technology sectors reached $12 billion in Q1 2011, representing a 16% increase over Q1 2010. The first quarter of 2010 had seen an 83% surge in deal volume and a nearly seven time increase in transaction value over Q1 2009 levels.” Read more (PDF).
DataXu Adds Video
DataXu announced DXvideo on Wednesday as it says it has added online video buying to its cross-channel, demand-side platform offering. Dave Martin of agency Ignited says in the release that in a Universal Pictures campaign, DataXu’s new video product offered improved performance and scale versus “other traditional tactics we tested — including behavioral, demographic, and content targeting.” Read more. And, see the case study.
Brands, This Ain’t Gonna Be Easy
Shoen Yang of Right Media’s professional services team visits the company blog to talk about brand marketers and the challenges and opportunities available through an exchange. Interesting to see RMX clearly targeting the client as opposed to the agency. Yang offers seven challenges which marketers can face such as, “Fragmentation: Instead of the 25 TV media providers with which you’ve locked in contracts during an annual upfront, you’ve got 300 networks who may or may not be releasing inventory at any given moment, and 50 tech providers…” Read more.
College Grads and Startups
RapLeaf’s Travis May discusses why he joined a startup instead of other options in a blog post on VentureBeat. He begins, “Two years ago, as a Harvard senior studying economics and math, I was faced with the inevitable decision – what to do after graduating….” Ripple dissolve… He offers three, clear “principles” on why an entry-level job in a startup could be the right choice. Read more.
The Group Offers Eyechart
Jay Weintraub reports that his new Daily Deal Summit schedule for next week has hit its 300-attendee goal and then some. He offers an “eyechart” visual to encapsulate the new show’s particpants. See it here.
But Wait. There’s More!
- What’s The Most Difficult CEO Skill? Managing Your Own Psychology – Ben Horowitz on TechCrunch
- New Hires At Complex Media Network – press release
- Scripps Partners with Yahoo! to Drive Consumers to Local Businesses – press release
