Havas Sees Improved Revenues; Fair Isaac Predicting Behaviors; MoPub And Mobile RTB

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Revenues Up, Budgets In Limbo

Ad Age’s Laurel Wentz reports agency holding company Havas reported its third quarter financial results for 2011 and said revenues grew by 5% year-over-year to $541.8 million. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t dark clouds on the horizon for ads. Wentz reports that on the earnings conference call with analysts, CEO David Jones said, “Havas is seeing some isolated cases of clients looking to cut, while others are preparing both normal scenarios for next year and backup plans that would involve cuts.” Read more.

Predicting Behaviors

An article by The Wall Street Journal’s Scott Thurm reveals that credit score management and data company Fair Isaac is able to predict personal behaviors in areas other than credit. For example, the company is addressing drug prescriptions where the company can predict if a person will take their meds. A quote at the beginning of the article stands out from Fair Isaac CEO Mark Greene in a communication with his company’s investors: “We know what you’re going to do tomorrow.” Read it. Also of note, this is not part of the WSJ’s “What They Know” series about privacy.

Mobile RTB

Claiming the first of its kind, Mopub (AdExchanger.com Q&A) announced its very own real-time biddable, mobile ad exchange called MoPub Marketplace (see it). Mopub CEO Jim Payne tells GigaOm’s Ryan Kim that Mopub’s Marketplace is different from Nexage – let alone Admeld and others – in that it “is not just a real-time bidding operation, but instead a complete ad monetization platform for publishers, who often currently turn to ad networks.” Read it. And, read the release.

Now Funding Mobile

Mobile ad network and SMS publishing platform 4INFO (AdExchanger.com Q&A) announced that it has raised $14 million in new funds from Paul Allen’s Vulcan Capital, Mitsui Global Investment, and previous investors in the company. That brings the total raise to $62 million for the 75 employees or so company. Read more. Similar to company’s like Mojiva (Mocean is Mojiva’s ad serving business), 4INFO is breaking out its technology services business (the AdHaven mobile buying platform) from its ad network business to attempt to remove a conflict of interest.

Ranking Ad Networks

comScore recently released its pay-for-play ad network rankings for September. Read it (PDF). The biggest change is Facebook.com coming in 13th with 75% reach in the U.S. when it wasn’t listed in the rankings in August (PDF). Not sure there was a real change other than comScore decided to put it in the rankings. Given the buy side’s tendency to refer to the rankings as gospel – especially agencies -, Brand.net’s Madhu Vudali points to the rankings and suggests on his company blog that there needs to be a better way to measure networks/DSP/SSPs: “That ‘footprint filter’ may well have made sense at a point in time. But RTB is completely changing that.” He goes on to say, “Perhaps there are startups on the horizon that will challenge existing measurement companies by innovating new methodologies and metrics to help buyers make informed decisions in our new RTB-enabled world?” Read it.

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Executives Rising

Data company Datalogix, which provides online and offline products, announced that it has elevated Eric Roza to the CEO role. Former CEO Rob Gierkink will continue to serve as Chairman. Gierkink noted, “…We’re very pleased with the double-digit annual growth we’ve seen in our direct mail business and the confidence our clients have shown in our team and our capabilities.” Read more. Over at Maxifier, former AudienceScience CRO Denise Colella is now the CRO of online ad optimization company, Maxifier. Read more.

Proud Panelist

Upstream Group’s Doug Weaver announced that he has been assimilated and will become part of Nielsen’s household panel. Weaver describes the adventure on his blog as received his Nielsen care package, “From the moment the diary and supporting materials arrived in the mail, this became an exercise in anthropology for me. If you’ve never been solicited to complete a ‘TV Diary,’ it’s like stepping into a Potemkin village frozen in the age of Cosby and Cheers.” Get the real thing.

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