Neustar Elaborates On Its Biz Split; Pandora Integrates With Moat

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New Neustar

Neustar is setting its marketing business free. During its Q2 earnings call Thursday, Neustar elaborated on its plan to split its two key businesses: information services and marketing services [AdExchanger coverage]. Marketing services is growing like a weed, up 56% to $63.9 million in Q2. Twenty-one percent of that growth is organic, with Neustar’s $450 million acquisition of MarketShare last year supplying the rest. CEO Lisa Hook also cited partnerships with Experian and Simulmedia to show how it’s extending its offering to marketers. Read the release.

Monetization Train

Pandora will integrate Moat on its platform, allowing advertisers to buy 100% viewable impressions across its desktop and mobile apps. “Advertisers do not have to pay for measurement using our first-party solution, nor do they have to spend any time with the set-up process,” Pandora wrote in a blog post. The company will also leverage its Ticketfly platform to suggest concert tickets to listeners. “It all relies on the personalization that is integral to the Pandora fan experience,” said COO Sarah Clemens. Pure-play streamers like Pandora and Spotify are burdened by the royalties they must pay musicians, and so finding new revenue streams is key. More at Fortune.

Not-So-Imaginary Gold

Players spending 99 cents for “Candy Crush” re-ups and $99.99 for “Clash of Clans” virtual gold are creating a multibillion-dollar mobile gaming business, according to The Wall Street Journal. The latest example is “Pokémon Go,” which has raked in $120 million to date. “Clash of Clans,” which sold a majority stake to Tencent for $8.6 billion, brought home $2 billion last year. By 2019, mobile gaming revenue will grow from $30 billion to $52.5 billion, according to Newzoo. It follows that publishers looking for some coin from the mobile app install business will hear some big cha-chings in the future. Read on.

Oracle Banks On Cloud

Oracle just dropped $9.3 billion on what could be its commerce cash cow, NetSuite, CNBC reports. It’s among Oracle’s biggest acquisitions ever and, by the way, Chairman Larry Ellison already owns 40% of the cloud company’s shares. Oracle hopes to rival other cloud commerce incumbents like SAP, IBM and especially Salesforce, which ousted several other bidders by acquiring ecommerce giant Demandware for $2.8 billion. NetSuite “pioneered cloud computing by creating the first company … providing business applications over the Internet,” according to Oracle. Not a bad vanity prize, Big Red. More.

Take Me Out To The Ballgame

Been to a major-league sports game lately? You’ve probably been tracked by beacons and other mobile location technologies. Almost all major league baseball parks (93%) and roughly half of professional football (47%) and basketball (53%) stadiums use location tracking devices to provide relevant marketing experiences during games, according to research from proximity sensor research provider Proxbook. People generally think retail when they think of beacons, but professional sports is “by far the vertical with the highest penetration of beacon deployment,” said Thomas Whale, CEO of Proxbook partner Unacast. Sports teams can gain a nice incremental revenue stream by pushing seat upgrade promotions or sponsored content from stadium vendors when fans enter geofenced locations. More at Ad Age.

But Wait, There’s More!