A Billion Users On Facebook; Orange Adds Hispanic Audience Exchange

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A Billion Social Creatures

Facebook’s billion-user milestone is no less remarkable for having been long expected. But it may have overshadowed an even more amazing stat: The company now reaches 600 million users on mobile alone. Despite growth in mobile Sponsored Stories, Facebook is still seeking a proper way to monetize this ballooning channel. Greg Sterling, writing on his Screenwerk blog, argues the big value in mobile is around SMBs, and Facebook is falling way short. “Until the company can bring structured local and mobile ‘utility’ to Facebook users it will have difficulty across the board in monetizing SMBs or delivering real value to local consumers.” Read more. Or read Facebook’s blog post.

Privacy, Ads, Facebook

Privacy Choice’s Jim Brock takes Facebook to task on his company’s blog saying that the social giant “shows little interest in the industry’s privacy initiative.” He offers four ways, in particular, including, “They don’t show the ad-choices icon. The icon is supposed to be a universal signal to consumers that their behavioral information is in play with an ad, so they get why it may feel creepy and can easily opt-out…” Native “ad choices” icon to come? Read more.

Hispanic Private Exchange

On Portada, news of expansion of Orange Ad Market’s exchange footprint takes centerstage. The company said that AppNexus will power a private exchange intended to provide real-time biddable access to U.S. Hispanic audience. Giuliano Stiglitz, CEO Orange Advertising Americas also tells Portada, “Orange Advertising will stop using other Ad-Exchanges (like Yahoo’s Right Media): “From now on we will only use our own exchange for that part of our inventory which we intent to sell on an RTB basis. Our main business remains guaranteed buys of premium inventory. Despite the fast growth of RTB we still believe very much in the guaranteed model.” Read more.

Agencies Vs Procurement

Ad holding company CEO Miles Nadal of MDC Partners decried the continued propagation of procurement on the client-side in an appearance at an Advertising Week event. MediaPost’s David Goetzl quotes Nadal, “The client procurement activity barely allows you to make a reasonable rate of return, let alone having sufficient incremental dollars to be able to invest in R&D.” Read more about agencies’ procurement perceptions.

Multiple Screens, Stories

With consumers glued to various screens, often at the same time, the content business, from advertising to programming, will have to adjust to what Rishad Tobaccowala, VivaKi’s chief strategy and innovation officer of VivaKi, figures is a “ninety-degree arc” between the horizontal and the vertical screens. Writing on his personal blog, Re-inventing, he says, “Marketers will have to learn how to tell stories using multiple screens. They will also have the ability to enhance storytelling and data gathering and collapse the funnel from awareness to transaction.” Read more.

More DSPs, The Better

Rubicon Project’s Jay Sears interviews Omnicom/Annalect’s Scott Hagedorn on the Rubicon Project blog. Hagedorn discusses his unit’s trading desk – Accuen – strategy, “Annalect and Accuen believe that a multiple DSP approach is the right one for a client. After doing quite a bit of research, I believe that the inventory footprints are very different with each DSP. It’s all about the reach.” Read more.

Streaming Videos ‘R Us

The blurring lines between marketers and media producers, e-commerce and branded entertainment is the newest hope for struggling big box retailer Toys ‘R Us, which is in the process of launching its own streaming video service to better compete against the likes of Amazon, the WSJ’s Melodie Warner reports. Read it. The service is being powered by Rovi Corp. in collaboration with Adobe.

No ‘Race To The Bottom’

Many major publishers still have lingering fears that RTB really means a “race to the bottom” in terms of premium ad pricing. Andrew Casale, VP of strategy for Casale Media, writes in The Makegood that publishers should seek multiple bids per impression from demand side platforms as a way to get the prices they want. “If buyers and sellers look at multiple bids per impression as a creative opportunity instead of just a means to increase clearing prices, this could reinvent the entire buy-sell process in RTB. This could potentially unlock more brand dollars and, in turn, make RTB a more effective part of ad sales.” Read more.

‘Preferred’ by Tumblr

These days you’re not a real player in social until you have a vendor ecosystem. Tumblr jumps on the bandwagon by granting “preferred analytics provider” designation to Union Metrics, which measures social trends and buzz for a brand clientele. AllThingsD’s Liz Gannes writes, “What’s interesting about this idea is how late it’s coming about relative to Tumblr’s popularity — especially considering Twitter’s developer ecosystem has become so fraught.” Read more.

But Wait. There’s More!