Google Widget To Aid Display Strategy?; Platforms Are Too Expensive; WPP Seeing 6% Growth This Year

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Widget Race

Like, Follow, now… +1. Google announced on Wednesday that it’s letting any web publisher add its “+1” widget button to its website and the implications are big. AdExchanger.com has kinda covered this one before but the fact any publisher can add this button means Google will be getting even more “signal” to its search results which ultimately affects digital ads – display, video, mobile, etc. From the L.A. Times, “The wider roll out of the +1 Button marks Google’s first attempt at getting its social-sharing button spread across the Web. Announced in March as a challenger to Facebook’s Like Button, the +1 Button would previously only show up in Google search results.” So if you’re a publisher can you afford to not have the “+1” button? As Google moves to a more curated search where “+1” matters, publishers will likely want a healthy number of +1s to stay relevant in curated search listings. And all of that drives traffic to and through ads on a publisher’s website. Read more. And, drink the +1 from the Google blog post. The SEO people are going to love this one (no pun intended).

Platforms Are Too Expensive

In a piece titled “Inefficiencies created by new buying platforms” on iMedia Connection, Kamal Kaur, display ad network VP at RadiumOne, argues for the ad network and against the platform buying (DSP) world. She says, “Platforms brought efficiency for advertisers to buy the inventory cheap. But, the eCPMs for the publishers are poor at best. Furthermore, buying through a platform has only layered on additional costs in the form of data sources.” Read more.

Personalized Ads Don’t Always Work

MediaPost lays out new findings from researchers that say all that stuff we here about personalized ads is hogwash – for the most part. After looking at campaign data from from Havas’ Artemis database, MIT researcher Catherine Tucker explains one challenge to MediaPost, “For example, when an advertiser observes me abandoning a shopping basket with a pair of sneakers in it, it does not mean that it is necessarily effective to use that information to showcase sneakers in every subsequent banner ad I see for the firm.” Whoa! Not true for me. When I abandon a cart, I want ads. Read more. And, review Tucker’s research list here.

Ad Network Consolidation

The APAC region saw consolidation on Tuesday as India’s Komli Media continues its roll-up strategy with the acquisition of a Singapore-based online advertising firm named Aktiv Digital. Komli Media CEO Prashant Mehta tells afaqs! that the combined entity will expand the company’s “reach from 50 million users to more than 60 million users, worldwide. He indicates that Komli Media will further strengthen its presence in other Southeast Asian markets.” Read more.

RTB Love Note

Personalized ad retargeter Criteo pops up on the DoubleClick Advertiser blog with the latest real-time bidding (RTB) case study about Google’s DoubleClick Ad Exchange. Criteo VP of Marketing Karen Dayan says that her company is seeing good results with RTB, “For many publishers we regularly deliver CTRs of 1%–which is huge, when the average display CTR is closer to .1%.” Read the post and learn about “the brain.” And, download the case study.

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Daily News Roundup

Not For Sale!; Johnny On The Spotify

Raging Audience Targeting

Rob Graham creates a nice linkbaiting title (“5 Things That All Digital Marketers Should Know About Audience Targeting”) and then delivers the goods in a think piece on ClickZ. Tip #5 warns, “Expect everything that you know about targeting to continue to evolve. When I provide training sessions on audience targeting I am often loath to discuss specific technological solutions because we dwell in the middle of a raging river.” Grab your paddle!

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=151348

To DSP Or To Buy Direct

ClickZ’s Kate Kaye frames her article from the start, “Data-driven targeting, DSPs and ad exchanges seem to dominate today’s display ad market, but when it comes to reaching key policymakers, some advertisers still see value in buying direct.” It’s not all wine and remnant roses for political display ad campaigns. Read more.

Agency Sustaining

WPP reported that its earnings are looking A-OK this year as The Wall Street Journal’s Ruth Bender reports, “WPP, the world’s largest ad group by revenue, said it still expects organic revenue—a key ad industry measure that strips out acquisitions, disposals and currency effects—to grow more than 6% this year as it continued to post strong growth in the U.S., but also in the U.K., Eastern Europe and Asia.” Read more (subscription).

Technorati CEO Exits, Enters

Technorati CEO Richard Jalichandra (AdExchanger.com Q&A) announced that he’s moving to startup MapMyFitness in Austin, Texas. TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington writes, “Jalichandra joined Technorati in late 2007 after a stint as a Entrepreneur-In-Residence at Battery Ventures. He previously held a variety of executive positions, including at Fox Interactive Media.” Read more.

The Murky World Of Startup Investment

Peter Kafka looks at the S-1 for the just-announced Groupon IPO and the details of previous rounds provide a clinic on how – sometimes – new rounds of funding for startups merely go to existing investors looking to lessen their risk and take money off the table. Kafka summarizes, “Groupon raised a total of $946 million in two funding rounds last winter. It kept $136 million of it help run the money-losing company. The remaining $810 million was paid out, via stock purchases, to CEO Andrew Mason and some of his backers (…)” Read more. And, see the S-1. Another summary from AdWeek is here.

Performance Marketing Machine

On Digital Moses Confidential, the lead gen/affiliate marketing blogger looks at performance marketing and the possible outcomes for those starting or running direct response businesses. He isn’t so sure that performance marketers want anything (acquisition, IPO, take venture capital, etc.) other than to make money: “The question we haven’t asked yet is do we want to build exitable businesses? As an industry, the answer is we haven’t decided, but based on actions, the answer looks like no.” Read more.

Site Rep Adding Mobile Ad Engagement

Evolve Media is at it again with another announcement. This time its not the addition of a new website or site network to its site rep business. The Gorilla Nation owner is adding mobile video and engagement ads to its toolkit through a strategic partnership with mobile ad network AdColony, which has something called “Instant-Play™ and Videos-For-Virtual-Currency™ (V4VC™) technologies” for the mobile web. Read it.

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