Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
Ad Network And Publishers In Mediaweek
Following last week’s article in which Mediaweek reporter Mike Shields identified several publishers who claimed that ad network, InterCLICK, had misrepresented their inventory, this week, each is given the Mediaweek microphone to state their case. Read more. InterCLICK quotes Razorfish VP of search marketing, Matt Greitzer, who says that many of the publishers mentioned in the article are available through the DoubleClick Ad Exchange. Among the publisher responses, theStreet.com claims their inventory had been misrepresented by InterCLICK, and Todd Haskell, VP of sales and ops at The NY Times says, “It is impossible for an ad network to deliver any impressions [against NYT inventory]. Any assertion otherwise is incorrect.”
The Audience Layer
Doug Weaver of the Upstream Group lays out a few tips and tricks for media leaders looking to leverage the audience buying trend. Weaver writes: “Create a Trading Desk: Segregating and centralizing the audience selling activity inside your organization is a good idea. Keep your ‘page sellers’ focused on selling the value of placement. Let your specialists manage the relationships and requests from DSPs and interact with your optimizers.” Read more.
Local Ad Heat
The San Francisco Chronicle covers the local online advertising battle that it sees brewing between Google, Yahoo!, MSN and, yes, Apple. Mobile is believed to be a key driver in opening up local online ads with “mom and pop” stores where search has been less successful according to the article. Yodle, Millennial Media, Foursquare and Gowalla are mentioned as well. Read more.
Using data from a recent report by the 451 group, Cyrus Sanati of the NY Times’ Deal Book blog looks at signs of a rebound in the area of tech company mergers and acquisitions. One good sign: “Deal makers were busy in Silicon Valley last quarter, announcing 841 deals, the highest number since the second quarter of 2007.” Read more.
A Display Of Google Arrogance?
This week’s Mediaweek has a feature story that looks at whether Google is getting to big to succeed in new areas of opportunity such as display. Moreover, one unnamed agency voice notes what he/she perceives as Google’s arrogance: “I find it really scary. They have every intention of relegating agencies to just a strategy function.” Read more.
Another Exec Leaves Yahoo!
MediaPost’s Mark Walsh chronicles the departure of Yahoo!’s Chief Product Officer Ari Balogh who announced that he would not leave in June. According to Walsh, Wall Street analyst Ben Schachter sees this as a definite negative for Yahoo!: “He was instrumental in the potential turnaround at Yahoo and a key lieutenant for CEO Carol Bartz.” Read more. These departures can’t be good for morale, to say the least.
View-Throughs And CPA
The AdRoll blog looks at CPA pricing for retageting and notes the use of view-throughs or or assists with marketers. “We’re seeing our most-savvy advertisers develop a model where they divide up the value of a conversion and attribute a portion to the first impression delivered to that user, a portion to the assist (view through,) and a portion to the last click that leads to a conversion.” Read more.
Video Ad Inventory
Video ad marketplace, adap.tv, announced a partnership with Grab Networks late last week. The partnership will bring access to more online video inventory according to the release. Grab Networks will also “use the adap.tv onesource online video ad-serving platform.” Read it.
Targeting ATM Audience
In the UK, Pizza Hut is taking its audience targeting strategy to digital out-of-home and the local ATM. From the press release: “The restaurant chain is working with atmAd to drive restaurant footfall by specifically targeting consumers using the cash machine during the last week of each month, coinciding with pay day.” Read more.
Facebook Analytics
A Facebook analytics platform called Kontangent has raised $1 million from a collection of well-known angel investors who sharpened their teeth in the social gaming business. Among other features according to TechCrunch, “The platform provides powerful A/B testing across any viral channel (a button, an invite or a notification) that sits inside Facebook. Kontagent also offers developers viral optimization tools to track the virality of the application on Facebook.” Read more.
Mobile And The iAd Platform
Co-founder Krishna Subramanian of mobile ad exchange, Mobclix, checks in regarding the iAd platform and critiques its expected impact on the mobile advertising market. He writes, “iAds will increase the overall eCPM of iPhone and iPad apps; scaling rich media campaigns across 30 Billion impressions will be a monumental challenge; HTML5 creative adoption will be an on going process.” Read more. On his yardley.ca blog, Flurry’s Greg Yardley is more unequivocal about impact of HTML5 saying, “Once agencies start realizing that they can either build an ad unit twice (once in HTML5, once in Flash) or just do it once in HTML5 and forget about it, Adobe risks ending up as nothing more than an HTML5 authoring tool.” Read it.
The Right Media Degree
Looking to receive your Master’s in Right Media Exchange? (The MRMX!) Yahoo!’s Right Media is now accepting applications to a series of courses with such titles as “Dynamic Pricing (dCPM),” “Remarketing with Segment Pixels,” and “Pricing Types.” No word on an actual diploma. See it. And, register.
New CEO At Valueclick
Late Friday, it was announced that CEO Tom Vadnais is retiring and that his post will now be assumed by the company’s executive chairman of the board, James Zarley. Zarley has been with the company one way or another for the past 12 years beginning with responsibilities at Commission Junction (Linkedin profile). Read more.
The Innovation Officer
MDC Partners has a new Chief Innovation Officer and its Faris Yakob. According to MediaPost, Yakob was an executive vice president and chief technology strategist at McCann prior to joining MDC. Read more. Need more? – see Yakob’s tumblog here.
Looking For Google Search Cracks
eWeek’s Microsoft Watch blog says that the fact that Yahoo! search is no longer tanking in terms of reach could be a good thing for Microsoft’s Bing search engine. eWeek’s Nicholas Kolakowski says, “If its market share is truly evening out, then it could give analysts a better idea of how much market share Bing stands to inherit once Microsoft becomes the back-end search platform for Yahoo’s various Web services. In turn, that gives a better idea of the competitive profile that a ‘roided-up Bing will present vis-à-vis Google heading into 2011.” Read more.
The “I” In ROI
On the Brand.net blog, COO and co-Founder Andy Atherton looks at a recent study that says Behavioral Targeting works a lot better than untargeted advertising. He points out that – given the figures – BT also provides a lower return-on-investment, adding, “if BT isn’t “earning its keep” in the pure online environment…, it’s certainly reasonable to have a healthy skepticism of how well it might perform in driving offline sales.” Read more.
Inside Aol.’s Seed
The New York Observer’s Molly Fischer looks at Aol’s content machine strategy known as “Seed” and what a recent survey unearthed by The Business Insider says about Seed’s potential contributors including such qualifiers as “Don’t feel qualified; Concerned about being rejected; Pay too low.” Read more.
The Four Faces Of Salespeople
Blog machine and VC, Mark Suster, provides what he sees as the four types of salespeople available: journeymen, mavericks, superstars and trouble. Trouble isn’t someone that Suster recommends as you could likely guess. But mavericks are another story: “Every organization needs maverick sales people. They hit your home runs. But … they DO NOT make good sales leaders.” Read more. Alan Pearlstein says on his Cross Targeting blog chimes in that salespeople who are good at “selling ice to an eskimo” are also lying – and that’s not good. Read it.
