Metamarkets Grabs Mad Cash; Akamai CEO Sagan To Leave In 2013; Adscale Says German Display Thrives

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Big Data, Big Funds

In a November 2011 interview with AdExchanger, former Metamarkets CEO David Soloff described his company’s focus: “We deliver visibility into high volume, and high velocity datasets from data-heavy, platform businesses – and, in particular – online advertising which has these coming in from all different directions, and that we capture and store.” Soloff has since moved to an advisory role with the company as co-founder and CEO Mike Driscoll is now opening up to an offering of a broader analysis of “big data” to “increase revenue, improve user engagement and enhance operational awareness.” The company says it has received $15 million ($23.5 million total raise) from Khosla Ventures to pursue the new goals. Read the release. And, a bit more from Peter Kafka on All Things D.

End Of Era

Akamai CEO Paul Sagan is leaving the company at the end of 2012 as its latest earnings results beat Wall Street profit expectations. Bloomberg quotes analyst Sameet Sinha, “They’re positioning themselves as a cloud-computing applications-services provider, while their competitors just sell core CDN. Paul has been around a long time in a tough industry.” Will he go out with a spree of ad-driven glory? Cloud services + advertising OS = beautiful music. Read more from Bloomberg. And, here’s the call transcript.

The CEO Talks

In a video interview, AppNexus CEO Brian O’Kelly tells Bloomberg that his business is growing a rate of 150% a year with 230 people. Is an IPO far away? See it. In answer to a reporter’s question about Yahoo!, O’Kelley wonders about investment has been made in Yahoo!’s Right Media Exchange in the interview and then deftly turns the interview toward the company’s relationship with Microsoft. O’Kelley also talks display media in Facebook and thinks it is a “search-like” ecosystem behind the Facebook login – but there is a sense he sees an inevitability of Facebook getting into the more standard world of display in the future.

Partnering For Profit

Joining MediaMath and Turn, X+1 announced a partner program of its own as it looks to create a one-stop shop, audience buying platform. The difference from other programs appears to be its focus on creative agencies. From the release: The program is “designed to equip creative agencies to help their marketing clients build data-driven, multi-touchpoint campaigns and bridge the gap between creative, audience-driven media and direct customer touchpoints.” Both CEO John Nardone and President/COO Peter Massey have strong ties to the agency world. Read more. Also, the company let loose with its Quick Start program for offering a standalone DMP to marketers. Read the release.

Amazon Reports

Amazon’s revenues continue to race ahead as the company reported “net sales increased 34% to $13.18 billion” for Q1 2012. Read the release. The Kindle was on “fire.” On the call with Wall Street analysts, the ad-related news was pretty much non-existent. Read the transcript on Seeking Alpha.

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Making Social Ads

The research and development group has given birth to a new social ads product at The New York Times. How it works: “A brand selects articles from any of the Times Company’s Web sites that are consistent with the brand’s content strategy. The Ricochet Platform (patent pending) then creates a unique Web address that binds the brand’s advertising to those articles for a set duration…” And then.. read about it. And, read Ad Age.

Achtung Display

Germany online marketplace adscale reports on a new study using its analyzer (see it) which compares company data for 2011 versus 2010. Adscale claims its marketplace saw strong results as real-time bidding expands: “The average cost per thousand contacts on adscale was just under 10 per cent (+9.8 per cent) over the 2010 level. Rates increased especially significantly in the second half of the year, to 26 per cent over the same period in 2010.” Read more (PDF).

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