Yieldex Gets $10 Million For Publisher Analytics; Mediabrands Taps Faciliate For Workflow; Network And The DSP

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

Yieldex Collecting

Predictive-analytics-for-a-guaranteed-inventory-world company, Yieldex, announced new funding and investors yesterday as Triangle Peak Partners (also in Marin and Tremor) and Hearst Interactive Media anted up along with existing investors to the tune of $10 million. CEO Andy Nibley says little in the release about what the money will be used for other than sales and the publisher-side product core. Read more. Yieldex is steadily collecting an impressive client list as publishers look to optimize and increase yield for their guaranteed inventory. Surely this is catching the eye of Big G. Will Big M step in? Another? Read a summary from PaidContent’s David Kaplan, who notes Amazon’s ongoing investment in Yieldex. Hmmm.

Mediabrands Facilitates

MediaPost’s Joe Mandese reports that MediaOcean, the result of this week’s MediaBank-DDS merger, has a new competitor floating in its midst as “Australia-based Facilitate Digital Holdings, has signed an agreement to process all of the front-end digital workflow for all of Mediabrands’ agencies” in the U.S. The plumbers are on the move. A big win for Facilitate as Mediabrands looks for an edge in the back office after serving Mediabrands in Europe. Read more. Facilitate says their secret sauce is “the cloud.” Interesting to note that Facilitate, established 2001, is working with some GroupM agencies according to the “About Us” on their website. Donovan is a client at WPP, too. The plot thickens!

Online Video Trending

Blackstone Group banker Ken Allen offers his views on the online video industry in an interview on the Blackstone blog. Allen sees continued, superior performance of online video as a key driver in growth: “This performance has led to CPMs that are on par with, or greater than, what we see in the offline world with TV. Due to these underlying trends, we believe branding dollars will shift away from television and into the Online Video channel over time.” Read who he thinks the winner and losers will be online.

Opening To The DSP

Casale Media announced that it has agreed to let Turn’s demand-side platform buy on its ad network. The press release discusses Casale’s goal of providing access to Turn’s advertisers. Read the release. The question for Casale, which has announced its own exchange, is, “How do I let more DSPs buy inventory without jeopardizing by relationship with publishers?” For publishers who are happy with the monthly check from Casale as it morphs its ad network model, there may be no desire to look for more demand for their non-guaranteed/unsold inventory. Also, Casale likely requires “first look” at inventory from any publisher – this keeps DSPs and other ad networks further down the ad network waterfall as “testing” comes at a cost to the publisher. The delicate dance into a data-driven, per impression world continues for the traditional ad network.

More Predictive Is Best

Speaking of predictive analytics, Fast Company’s David Zax looks at Visual Revenue (AdExchanger.com Q&A from January) and looks to optimize publisher revenue yield by the page. CEO Dennis Mortensen tells Fast Company, “We created a predictive analytics platform that can assist editors in deciding what to promote on their home page. if you think about it a webpage is like a marketplace.” Writer Zax says companies like VisualRevenue may be a threat to IBM and SAP. Read more.

Talk To Me About Ops

AdMonsters corrals Upstream Group’s and publisher advocate Doug Weaver for an interview in advance of his Admonsters Ops keynote next week. Weaver indeed has “Ops” on his mind as he says, “Operations should be the ones looking at the health and capacity of the system and being willing to occasionally save sales from itself. The focus shifts from ‘What could we do?’ to ‘What should we do?'” I’ll do it! Read more.

Stopping Burn And Learn

BlueKai CEO Omar Tawakol takes to the pages of adotas and says the days of “burn and learn” – spending budget to see what works and what doesn’t – are steadily coming to a close. He says that “The next revolution of audience targeting eliminates this practice of ‘burn to learn’ by giving media buyers data on a large enough scale that will enable them to make better and informed decisions before spending media dollars through analytical solutions.” Analytics is the theme of today’s newsletter. Analyze more.

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