Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
Search, Schmidt, Display
BusinessWeek’s Rob Hof goes inside the Mountain View headquarters of Google and is introduced to the human brains within the search engine that try to keep big G on top. Read the article. As an added bonus, Hof includes the transcripts of the interviews he had with Google engineers including Udi Manber, Google’s VP of Technology for search. Read it. His interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt is also posted where Schmidt says, “We are clearly not the leader in display, but we would like to be.” Tim Armstrong, Carol Bartz – even Steve Ballmer… are you listening?
Demand Capture: The Game
“Online is a demand capture tool – and serendipitously the greatest medium ever created for it,” writes Ramp Digital’s Jonathan Mendez as he encourages content publishers to get into what he calls “the demand capture” game before it’s too late. Couldn’t agree more – with impression-level bidding, it’s going to be hard to hide if you don’t have a valuable audience. Read more.
Claire Cain Miller of The New York Times Bits blog covers how digital does not mean the end of the line for traditional media, direct sales teams. Curbed, a local blog network run by Lockhart Steele in several metropolitan areas including NYC, has reached out to the traditional sales team of the venerable Village Voice, which now sells local web ads to “Bob’s Dry Cleaners” and the like on behalf of Curbed. Read more.
The New Age of Ads
Mediabistro produced on a panel called “The New Age of Advertising” with participation from executives at Eyeblaster, Organic, TurnHere, Pandora and Real Girls Media. The panel provided five tips for effective advertising these days including “Sponsor something people care about.” For the other four, read the BayNewser.
Agencies To Hire Digital
It’s not a landslide but 34% of agencies surveyed by recruiting firm “The Creative Group” said that they will be hiring over the next 12 months. About 50% said that staffing levels would stay the same. Megan Slabinski, executive director of The Creative Group, says in the release, “Many firms are particularly interested in expanding their digital presence.” Read the release.
AdRoll Takes Burritos, Improves Flow
Online ad network, AdRoll, said from its blog that after receiving some “burrito bribes,” it rolled out an updated “flow” to its self-service product for advertisers. Want to learn more? A simplified outline is available here.
YouTube Comes To AdSense
The Google Content Network will now be serving up “Promoted Videos” from YouTube as advertisers will get access to the GCN that will allow the to drive from a simple display placement back to their YouTube video quickly and easily, presumably. Read more on the Inside AdSense blog.
URL Meets The TV Ad
Hill Holliday’s VP of Interactive, Mike Proulx, looks at the discussion going on in TV commercial development regarding whether or not to add a URL which drives consumers to an online presence. Some advertisers want to drive to in-store only. Mike argues that adding engagement online can be a key lever. Read more on the Hill Holliday blog.
Cloud Computing Powder Keg
As more and more businesses offload their business critical applications and data to cloud computing infrastructure players, Chris Dixon says that this is a disaster waiting to happen. Dixon makes the analogy that the cloud is to data as banks is to money – and the robbers will a-comin’. Read more.
Responding To The Professors
Last week’s release of a study by UPenn and UC Berkeley professors has begun to elicit some response from the ad community. On the Dapper blog, Dapper’s Paul Knegten says, “How many of us like receiving unsolicited mail based on our shopping behavior, credit scores (yes, credit scores), income, and other cues we seem to ignore? How many of us like getting disturbed at dinnertime by an unsolicited phone call? Both of these activities are opt-out, as should behavioral advertising.” Read more.
The Frugal U.S. Consumer
Jane Crossan, VP at Nielsen, (with many pretty graphs) looks at what she’s calling “The New Frugality” in the United States. Americans, regardless of income, are more wary of how they spend and save, but not quite as extreme in their level of caution as they were last year at this time when the market was beginning its high-speed, descent. Read more.
Jarvis Drinks Audience Kool-Aid
In his search for a better business model for local news, Jeff Jarvis posts on his Buzz Machine blog that you need to cater your advertising to your audience and you’ll make mo’ money. Well, whaddya know? He cites a video of a great, recent speech by This Week In Tech’s (TWiT) Leo Laporte that covers the evolution of his business and how they’ve scaled according to their core audience which has led $70 CPMs according to Laporte. Read the post and see the video here.
