MSNBC.com Becomes NBC.com?; Facebook Sharing Data

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.

Was MSNBC.com, Now NBC.com?

There’s long been speculation that NBC Universal could take full control of MSNBC.com from Microsoft, its partner in the website venture. Adweek’s Mike Shields hears that the Comcast-owned network is considering it. “The site benefits heavily from its prominent placement on the MSN portal, and that’s something NBCU will be hesitant to give up,” says Shields, though a new content sharing deal could probably be arranged.

Facebook Shares More Data

Facebook is giving developers better means to track shares, clicks and other interactions with their apps. In the past, the Insights reporting tool “has not indicated how many individual users performed the above actions, meaning that the numbers would have looked the same if one user published 20 stories, or if 20 users each published one story,” notes a Facebook blog post. Now they can. TheNextWeb adds the impact could help low-performing apps especially. “Developers will now see how many unique users have seen and accepted their Facebook authorization dialog. This type of information can help a company figure out why their app isn’t converting to actual new users.”

Display-ing Tweets

Betabeat’s Jessica Roy gets a little breathless about geo-targeter LocalResponse’s tracking users’ tweets as a basis for showing them related display ads. Roy notes, “This is great news for advertisers, who have long struggled with the best way to reach their most likely customers, as well as content producers who can charge a higher premium for better targeted ads. Plus, it will only pick up on public social media accounts, so your embarrassing statuses on Facebook are safe, as long as your profile is private.”

Mobile in Cannes

The Cannes Lions ad festival will have something new this year: mobile vendors. AdAge’s Kunur Patel talks to Velti, MMA’s Greg Stuart, and other mobile players who are planning a presence. “It’s a big step for an industry that’s previously concentrated its efforts — and marketing budgets — at tech events like Mobile World Congress or CTIA. Those events have long been the domain of the carriers that have wielded so much power over the industry.” Read More.

ROAS Vs CPA

Rocket Fuel’s Jarvis Mak looks at the gooey world of online ad metrics and helps clarify a few things along the way in a think piece on iMedia Connection. He writes, “A better measure than cost per acquisition would be return on ad spend (ROAS), calculated off of the order amount when the transaction occurs. Obviously, there are high-end versus low-end customers, and it is quite possible to bring back low-end customers at a much faster clip than high-end customers. In fact, this was the case for one of our financial services campaigns.” Read more.

Infographic Friday

kbs+p’s Darren Herman does his best “Caves of Lascaux” imitation and inks a drawing on the addressable market shared between what today’s entrepreneurs are building and what agencies want. See it now!

Being Public