EU Adding Privacy Icon; PubMatic Offering Audience Segmentation To Publishers; Facebook Ecommerce

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EU Privacy Icon

Industry groups in the European Union are adopting a behavioral icon similar to the U.S. in advance of coming behavioral advertising regulation in May. ClickZ’s Jack Marshall writes, “Designed to give European consumers choice around how their data is collected and used online, it is intended to satisfy new E.U. laws that come into force at the end of May.” Read it. Marshall finds out that the EU icon “may” be different than the U.S.’s.

Selling Direct And Data

As part of it’s sell-side platform offering, PubMatic is providing audience segmentation data via third-parties to publishers so that they can use it in their direct sales pitches and calling it Audience Data on Demand. According to a release, “PubMatic’s Audience Data on Demand will be adding more leading data providers to the collection of initial launch partners, eXelate, Quantcast, and Proximic.” Read more.

Ecommerce And Retargeting

GameStop announced that it will be using Adgregate Markets technology to build out its Facebook commerce business. GameStop has 1.8 million followers and combined with Facebook’s ability to allow for retargeting of followers within the Facebook site, this would seem to be a money-lined virtuous circle between Facebook commerce and advertising. Read the release. Facebook is building its own Internet.

Optimizing For Marketers

[x+1] announced a new, major update to its marketing platform with “Origin.” According to a press release, Origin allows marketers to “optimize and manage all inbound interactions on websites; connect and synchronize all outbound communications across display, email and mobile; and centralize data from all sources, allowing data-driven insights from each channel” to inform other channels. Read more.

Mohan Picking Up Tab

According to an article in TechCrunch, Google has paid out significant retention bonuses and raises to high-level executives at the Company as Twitter may have been about to snatch them away. TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington writes, “Google offered Pichai $50 million and Mohan $100 million, respectively, to stay, say multiple sources. In what could be called an IQ test, both accepted Google’s offer.” Read more.

Publishers Are Over-Reacting

The Rubicon Project shares CEO Frank Addante’s presentation from Digiday’s Digital Publisher Summit. Titled, “Realizing The True Value Of Digital Experiences.” Among the points made by Addante, “Publishers are over-reacting: they aren’t able to capture value so they’re throwing up pay-walls – blocking consumers from content and shifting burden to them to monetize it (opposite of the Internet promise of content access), they fire ad networks because of concern about pricing…” Read more.

Social Media Referral

New data from Foresee says that social media taketh but it does not giveth away. MediaPost’s Erik Sass reports on a new study, “Fewer than 1% of visits to Web sites come directly from a social media URL, according to ForeSee, which conducted 300,000 consumer surveys on more than 180 Web sites across the private and public sectors…” Read more.

Cisco Returning To Plumbing?

Cisco’s shareholders want the company to get out of the consumer business and return to its B2B infrastructure roots according to Bloomberg. Bloomberg’s Joseph Gallante writes that CEO John Chambers will make some “targeted moves” which may include junking some of its consumer businesses such as the Flip Video camera and Linksys home networking. Read more. How about the B2B ad business?

Infographicgasm

Analyst Lou Kerner tweets about a new infographic “showing how money and connectedness work in [Silicon] valley and fuel social media companies. Download it from the New York Times here (PDF).

You’re Hired!

ValueClick announced earlier in the week that David Yovanno has returned to the fold as GM of Mediaplex, ValueClick’s technology division, after a three year hiatus. Yovanno “will have overall responsibility for Mediaplex’s operations, as well as driving cross-selling opportunities between Mediaplex and the ValueClick Media division.” Read the release.

But Wait. There’s More!