Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
Mobile Is Still Going To Be Big
Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker still thinks mobile is about to hit its stride and told the audience as much during her presentation at the Conversational Media summit in NYC on Monday. Matthew Ingram of GigaOm paraphrases Meeker, “She also said that the level of innovation in the technology sector was currently one of “unprecedented intensity,” both from incumbents and newcomers.” Sounds like all of ad tech to me! Read more. See the latest version of her “Internet Trends” report on SlideShare.
New Ad Sales Leader At Microsoft
After more than a year of searching, Microsoft officially announced the hiring of Carolyn Everson who joins Microsoft Advertising as “Corporate VP, Global Ad Sales and Strategy.” Everson hails most recently from MTV Networks where she was COO and EV{ of U.S. Ad Sales. Read more on the Microsoft Advertising blog.
AOL Is A “Start-Around”
According to Brian Stetler of The New York Times, David Eun, who is president of AOL Media and Studios, says that AOL is a “start-around.” Speaking at a Hollywood Reporter event during New York’s Internet Week hoopla, Eun admitted that AOL is going through tough times right now but promises things will get better – and also suggests that newspapers and video may be a key to success. Read what he means by “start-around.”
MediaPost’s Wayne Friedman covers a new report from IPG’s Mediabrands’ Magna Global that says BILLIONS of dollar are at stake in online advertising as the $61.0 billion expected this year will grow to $100 billion by 2015. The question for many researchers will be: when does digital TV ad spend merge with everyone’s digital ad spend predictions. Read more.
Ad Networks Welcome On iAd Platform?
Peter Kafka reports on All Things D that Apple’s Steve Jobs has made good on his promise to allow the inclusion of other mobile ad networks on Apple’s mobile platform – kinda – they still appear to not be able to collect user data. Kafka identifies the change in Apple’s Terms & Conditions and points to Jobs’ comments last week at the D8 Conference: “Jobs either changed his stance or spelled it out, depending on your perspective: Apple wasn’t interested in banning rivals to its iAd platform, he said — it just wanted to cripple third-party analytics companies like Flurry (read more on this bit here).” Read more on the change.
On Associated Content Plans
PaidContent reports that Yahoo! may designate its recent acquisition, content machine Associated Content (AC), as part of the Newspaper Consortium. From the Burst Media blog, CEO Jarvis Coffin thinks business may be coming back to the newspaper model and says that it will require AC “to be more grown-up and thoughtful and make it less nimble in the “just-give-them-what-they’re-searching-for” business, and it might even lead [AC] to regard the Associated Press as the new competition not, say, Demand Media.” Read more.
Demand Media Brings Talent & Expert Network
Maybe this is the future of news? – harnessing Long Tail publishers. Mediaweek’s Mike Shields covers Demand Media’s new Talent & Expert Network which he says is “a platform designed to attract new content producers” and “grassroots” publishers in particular – those who may write frequently but can’t market themselves. Read more. And, read the release.
Maximum Viable Product
The lean startup and minimum viable product has been a mantra used by many in the startup world as they try to speed a product to market as fast as possible – and iterate from there thanks to customer feedback, or fail. Researcher Bradford Cross thinks differently and writes on his personal blog, “The yang of minimum viable product is aggressive hypothesis testing, feedback, and sharp customer focus of minimum viable product. The yin of maximum viable product is product enthusiasm over product satisfaction, product over-performance over product performance, and the virtue of selfishness and solving your own needs over the needs of the majority vote of your users.” Read more. (source: @metamx)
More Mobile Funding
Foundry Group led by Brad Feld has taken $5 million from its coffers and given it to BigDoor Media and its founders, CEO Keith Smith and Jeff Malek. The team started Zango – a company with a dubious history that the founders readily admit. According to TechCrunch, BigDoor offers an “automated platform that allows website and mobile application publishers to add game-like mechanics and loyalty programs to their sites and apps.” Read more.
Mobile Ad Network Invades
Christopher Heine of ClickZ looks at inMobi which wants to challenge AdMob and Apple’s iAd ad network in the U.S. InMobi is three years old and built its original customer base in Asia, Africa, and Europe according to Heine, who learns from InMobi VP Anne Frisbie that the company already has 2 billion monthly U.S impressions through its international publishing partners. Read more.
Adometry Adds Advisors
Adometry announced the members of its new advisory board: Alan Schanzer of Undertone Networks, Jay Friedman of Goodway Group and Maggie Finch of Microsoft’s Advertising Publisher Services (APS) division. In that an advisory board can reveal what lines of business a company would like to develop in the future, Adometry appears to be focusd on ad networks, agencies… and Microsoft! -No surprise as CEO Jim Ewel spent 12 years in Redmond. Read more (PDF).
Twitter’s Active Membership
Erick Schonfeld of TechCrunch covers the Conversational Media Summit in NYC yesterday and quotes Twitter stats from Twitter’s COO Dick Costolo who says Twitter receives “190 million visitors per month and generating 65 million Tweets.” Interestingly, most users don’t tweet, they just consume. Schonfeld notes, “How many of those 65 million Tweets are automated spam is not clear.” Read more.
