Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
Selling And Exchanges
Mediaweek’s Mike Shields says that several financial website publishers – such as Bloomberg, TheStreet.com and WSJ.com – dispute ad network InterCLICK’s assertions that it can re-sell their inventory. interCLICK president, Michael Katz, told Shields that his company had done nothing wrong saying “that interCLICK was able to purchase inventory on WSJ.com through Google’s ad exchange.” Read more.
Google Retargeting and Australian Publishers
According to Australian publication, The Age, Australian publishers are taking action following Google’s announcement about retargeting late last month. “Fairfax Media (owner of The Age), News Limited, Yahoo7! and Ninemsn said they would block the data-tracking devices, or cookies, which Google uses to track internet users as they move around the web,” writes Julian Lee of The Age. Honestly – that doesn’t make sense. But, later in the article, clarity breaks through – it appears that Google’s AdSense has been entirely removed from these publishers which represent 44% of the inventory in the Australian market. Read more.
More Cookie Business
In “Google, Yahoo and others use online history to target advertising,” Mike Swift of San Jose Mercury News highlights some of the initiatives being driven by anti-behavioral advertising advocates who say “most Americans do not want advertising tailored to their interests, particularly when it requires tracking their online movements.” One such privacy organization will present a shareholder proposal at Google’s May 13 annual meeting which will presumably look to slow or stop Google’s interest-based advertising efforts according to the article. Read more.
In addition to clarifying he is not Michael Rubenstein, Mike On Ads’ Mike Nolet looks at ad serving and its challenges. Nolet sees real-time bidding as separating the men from the boys, so to speak: “If RTB volumes grow as I expect they will throughout this year we’ll see a lot of companies struggling to keep up by Q4. Some will outright fail. Some will simply stop to innovate — only a few will manage to continue to both scale and innovate at the same time.” Read the post.
TV Online Drives Video Ad Acceptance
ComScore came out with a new study which says that consumers who watch online TV shows online are much more willing to view advertiser messaging than the duration of current online commercial breaks. “Online advertising’s “sweet spot” is between 6 and 7 minutes per hour, substantially higher than the approximately 4 minutes per hour that is currently consumed by ads delivered online as part of TV content. ” Read the release.
CPCs Are Way Up; Put On A Happy Face
According to Efficient Frontier’s Director of Analytics, Siddarth Shah, the online economy is rebounding. “Retail continues to show strength. While CPCs increased only 2% month over month, they are 10.5% higher than last year. The automotive sector also had a good month. CPCs jumped 12% month over month and are 25% higher than last year,” says Shah. Read more.
To Close The Beta, Or Not
The Venture Hacks blog has been exploring the idea of whether or not a closed beta is a good idea. Quoting Rob May, founder of Backupify, he was initially worried that people would steal his idea – and not only that – “I was also embarrassed by the quality of the product when I demo’ed it. But ultimately, some early users loved it and that kept us going. By releasing an early buggy minimum viable product, we got a pretty big lead on everyone else.” Read more.
The Bounce And Yieldbot
From his Optimize and Prophesize blog, Yieldbot’s CEO Jonathan Mendez discusses what he sees as one of the challenges of search engine optimization – slowing the “70-90%” bounce rate of incoming, natural search visitors. What’s it gonna take? More relevance and Yieldbot, of course. Read more.
Sizing Markets
According to Hunch chief and angel investor, Chris Dixon, you’ll be better off garnering the interest of venture capital investors if you try to discuss your target market’s size in a narrative format rather than quantitatively – especially if that market size is less than $1 billion. Dixon writes, “The only way to understand and predict large new markets is through narratives. Some popular current narratives include: people are spending more and more time online and somehow brand advertisers will find a way to effectively influence them…” Read more.
Getting Your Degree In Web
From his Buzz Machine blog, Jeff Jarvis identifies Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s (RPI) efforts to create a Web Science degree a la the idea which Sir Tim Berners-Lee evidently had at Davos. So far, no truth to the rumor that RPI will offer an AdExchanger.com degree next year. Read more from Jeff Jarvis. And, read RPI’s press release.
