Yahoo Makes A Purchase; The Three Datas

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Mayer Makes A Purchase

After much speculation about what Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s acquisition targets should be, the company has announced the purchase of mobile, social recommendation service Stamped. Mayer’s first acquisition as Yahoo’s chief has a small ironic twist, as Stamped was started last year by two of her former Google colleagues, Marketing Land’s Matt McGee notes. Read it. The deal price hasn’t been release, but Techcrunch’s Colleen Taylor cites unidentified sources who estimate Yahoo paid something “in the double-digit millions.” Read more.

P.S., Marissa…

Darren Herman, the Media Kitchen’s chief digital officer and a self-described Yahoo shareholder, has a lot of advice for the Yahoo’s Mayer on issues of growth, pursuing a Big Data strategy and acquisitions. His “open letter to Marissa,” posted on Business Insider, warns of tough competition from Google and Amazon, but thinks Yahoo’s scale remains an asset. On acquisitions, he’s dubious about buying one of the established DSPs or SSPs. If Yahoo needs something on top of Genome or Right Media, just buy an ad tech firm that just opened its doors. On mobile, Herman thinks no expense should be spared. “Why not go and acquire the mobile exchange portion of the Luma Landscape?” he asks. Read more.

Facebook CTRs

Some good news for Facebook advertisers: response rates on Facebook have risen in the last year while average prices are down, at least according to one report. Inside Facebook’s Brittany Darwell covers the findings from Strategic PMD Spruce Media. “Clickthrough rates are up 57.2 percent since Q3 2011, suggesting that users are finding ads to be more relevant and interesting. CPCs have decreased 18.2 percent, which allows advertisers to improve their margins while getting more volume from each ad viewed. And CPMs have increased 27.5 percent, meaning Facebook is making more money per impression.” Read more.

Dissecting The AdWords Funnel

In a way, Google’s unprecedented scale and reach in search makes asking the question, “How does Google make money?” seem beside the point. But where it makes its money, primarily through AdWords, is worth a closer look. Larry Kim, founder and CTO of search marketer Wordstream, has taken a microscope to the ad budgets and performance of roughly 2,600 companies and used the results to create a detailed infographic on Wired. Check it out. He also analyzed the balance of Google’s revenue streams and concluded, “In the end, huge increases in ad impression volumes and clicks more than made up for declines in cost-per-click and click-through rates,” he told Wired’s Ryan Singel. Search Engine Land’s Pamela Parker has more.

Hiring A Rolodex

In a think piece on The Makegood, MediaMath Sales Director Ellie Windle discusses the challenges of hiring a sales rep in ad tech. She offers an anecdote: “Their background seems like a great fit, and they are name-dropping like Kim K at a Beyoncé concert. There are few red flags, but they seem to know all the right people and you need to fill this position ASAP, so you make an offer. They negotiate an insanely high base, which you pay, because by now you think you have to have them. They join your company.. and do not sell ANYTHING.” Don’t hire for the Rolodex, says Windle. Read more.

Pay Packaging

Former Right Media CEO Mike Walrath pauses from his post RMX-life to review the pay package recently filed through the SEC for new Yahoo! COO Henrique DeCastro. Walrath chides media analysis, “Is it a rich pay package? Hell yes. Does it come close to guaranteeing 62M as much of the reporting on the package suggests? Hell no.” Read Walrath’s breakdown of the package.

Optimization Primer

AppNexus is pushing out a white paper that aims to “demystify display optimization” for performance based ad buyers. It covers points such as “translating goals into spend,” “calculating valuation,” and “letting the algorithm learn.” Download the paper.

Studying Audience

At the recent Digiday Agency Conference, eXelate’s David Fischer provided an overview of a recent industry audience targeting study made in conjunction with Digiday. Among the insights he shared, “While most marketers tend to talk about data as one homogeneous mass, Fischer said that there are three kinds of data: third-party data, custom data, and validated data — data that is ‘validated by industry organizations to eliminate inefficiencies in demographic data and optimize audience clusters.'” Read more. And, you can download the study here (PDF).

But Wait. There’s More!