Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
Microsoft Brings RTB To Its Mobile Platform
On the Microsoft Advertising blog yesterday, Raj Kapoor, Global Director, Mobile Advertising Products, announced that real-time bidding (RTB) has come to the mobile exchange. He writes, “With this launch, Windows Phone 7 app developers can maximize their mobile ad revenue by leveraging the industry’s first real-time bidded Mobile Ad Exchange, our superior ad targeting, multiple purchase models and leading resellers including Microsoft’s sales force –as well as the large-scale adCenter marketplace.” It will get really interesting when RTB players can finally map their anonymous user cookies from display to mobile and back again. Better understanding of how channels affect each other breeds smarter (and more) ad spending. Read more. Millennial Media has already signed-up for MSFT’s mobile exchange.
$600 Million Dentsu Bid For AKQA Rumored
From his influential personal blog, The Politics of Marketing, Stuart Smith reports that Dentsu has made an offer to buy AKQA for $600 million. He writes, “No discourtesy to AKQA – which is well-respected – but that sounds an awful lot of money – even for an agency that is renowned for setting an impossible price on its independence. And it is: twice as much as it is worth gauged by conventional financial metrics.” Read more. And, read about it on Ad Age.
Yahoo! Pushing Digital TV
Yahoo! provided a presentation and live webcast called “Product Runway” showing off some of its new mostly-consumer facing product updates. Blake Irving, EVP & Chief Product Officer at Yahoo!, was the emcee. Read more on the Yahoo! Corporate blog. From an advertising tech perspective, arguably the most interesting announcement were the Connected TV partnerships which “provide consumers with thousands of video-on-demand content sources, social networks, games, music, shopping, and more — all while watching TV.” DigitalTV continues to creep into the consumer’s everyday.
In a release, audience data targeting, management and measurement company says that now over 500 brands, agencies and publishers are using their system. As a result the Datran-media held division “announced a 243 percent increase in revenue from the same period last year due to increased demand.” Read the release.
Valuing Brands
The Wall Street Journal’s Suzanne Vranica looks at an Interbrand study on brand value and notes that certain brands got whacked due to PR and product blow-ups (think “oil spill”). Harvard b-school professor Stephen Greyser, tells Vranica, “It was a significant year for brand-reputation travails, which hurt the value of many brands.” Read more. And, see a chart of the top global brands.
Yahoo! Loses Ad Tech Exec
SVP of Advertising Products David Ku is leaving Yahoo! to pursue a job-to-be-named-later. TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington quotes Yahoo! PR: “In the eight years David worked for Yahoo!, he led strategy and execution across a number of key advertising product areas, ranging from the launch of Yahoo’s Search Marketing Platform (Panama) and APT platform, to playing an instrumental role in the Yahoo! Microsoft Search Alliance agreement.” The machinations continue. Read more.
Getting More Real-Time
Efficient Frontier is featured in Forbes as writer Quentin Hardy looks at big data and Google’s recent Instant Search innovation. Siddharth Shah, EF’s business analytics director echoes the challenges of today’s display space when he says in regards to search, “Everyone’s algorithms have to become more real-time, and pricing changes will be more predictive.” Read more.
Invite Media And Netezza
Netezza has released another client case-study. This one is with Invite Media was started all the way back in March, before Invite Media was purchased by Google. Finally published this month, it includes this quote from Co-Founder Scott Becker: “As a startup, if you are not constantly in a time crunch, you don’t survive. Rapid time-to-market was central to our strategy.” And, a $70-80 million exit was the result. Download it (PDF).
Audience Investment Management
Adnetik appears to be merging its company’s strategy with the financial markets and the world of audience buying if its sponsorship of a panel at the upcoming FutureM conference in Boston is any indication. Adnetik CEO Ed Montes, Ben Barokas of AdMeld; David D’Alleva of agency SapientNitro; Adam Kasper of Media Contacts; and Quantcast’s Todd Teresi participate in a panel called “Audience Investment Management 101.” Read about it.
The Content-Side Platform
Brian Massey switches from advertiser to publisher viewpoint with his ClickZ column, “The Content-Side Platform.” Beyond a discussion of a simple content-recommendation platform, Massey asks, “Where are the behavioral databases, exchanges, and networks for those who want to actually sell their articles, stories, e-books, videos, Webinars, and audio?” Read his thesis.
The Startup Economy
Brent Halliburton blog on his Cogmap blog about what it takes to create a great start-up economy. He begins, “If you are looking for the ad network metaphor, it is the exchange, duh. You need advertisers to get inventory, you need inventory to get advertisers.” So how to get more of both, so to speak?… It starts with schools. Read more.
Malware Prevention
Burst Media is bringing The Media Trust’s malware detection services to its advertising network according to a release. Jesse McGranahan, SVP of Operations at Burst Media, says in the release: “Malware is an insidious problem on the Internet and consumers have a heightened awareness to it. We have implemented vigilant processes to detect and prevent ad creative infected with malware from running on our network.”Read more.
TV Media Buyers Ache For Data
In Australia, television media buyers are demanding to know more about their audience and want data. The Sydney Morning Herald says, “Media buyers want the commercial free-to-air and pay TV networks as well as the TV ratings service OzTAM to introduce a system that allows them to measure audiences in commercial breaks.” Digital TV solves this one. Read more.
