Rubicon Project Adds CFO/COO, Eyes Future; More System Integrator Talk For CMO; Metamarkets Shuffles Management

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.

Rubicon Adds COO, CFO

Sell-side platform The Rubicon Project announced that Brian Barnum has been hired as CFO and COO. The former TNS and Business.com CFO emphasized his IPO experience in a press release. The release also noted the size of two acquisitions in which Barnum was involved ($415 and $350 million) – is this Rubicon Project’s target price? CEO Frank Addante added that in 2011 Rubicon’s platform grew “from 15 billion monthly bids to more than 1 trillion and impressions traded [grew] 60% to now more than 120 billion monthly.” Read it.

It’s Official

Adobe announced that its November 30 acquisition of media buying platform Efficient Frontier is now official. Read the Adobe-supplied FAQ (PDF). David Karnstedt, the CEO of Efficient Frontier, takes on a new role similarly titled to that of Todd Teresi, who left Adobe for Apple. According to the FAQ, Karnstedt will “lead Adobe’s efforts in advertising” and report into SVP and GM Brad Rencher. Also in a release, Adobe emphasizes that the Efficient Frontier platform brings to its Digital Marketing Suite “real-time bidding technology for display advertising that is placing millions of dollars of bids today.” Read more.

More Private Exchanges!

Looking to leverage its publisher network, Collective UK says it has partnered with Adap.tv to provide a private exchange/marketplace for its video platform. From the release, “Combining Adap.tv’s RTB technology with Collective’s audience data, Collective’s private exchange will offer pre-roll video advertising space across targeted audiences and premium publishers in real-time auctions.” Read it.

System Integrators And The CMO

System integrators like Accenture Interactive and Deloitte are on the march toward the CMO’s office. In a piece on Ad Age, Kunur Patel offers, “Consider that Deloitte recently acquired mobile shop Übermind for a reported $40 million after the Seattle agency entertained a range of suitors, including agency-holding companies. Having made its name in systems integration and enterprise technology, Deloitte is adding the creative and design chops that built consumer-facing products…” Read more.

Metamarkets Changing, Extending

GigaOm’s Derrick Harris says Metamarkets’s business is evolving which has resulted in co-founder and CTO Mike Driscoll becoming CEO, while co-founder and former CEO David Soloff, will keep his spot on the board as well as becoming entrepreneur-in-residence at Roger Ehrenberg’s IA Ventures. Does Soloff have another idea cooking? Read more. New CEO Driscoll tells GigaOm, “Metamarkets is going to start extending it to also provide analytics for other industries, such as gaming and social media.”

When Targeting Goes Wild

Former Yahoo! and current Inadco COO Dave Zinman takes a rare turn on his personal blog to note some contextual advertising fun. He writes, “Online ad companies make huge efforts to increase the relevance of ads, but most of the ads served to people fall short simply because of frequency. Internet users see over 2000 ads per month! Once in a while, however, the veil is pierced and users can not only see the targeting working, but see it not working. Today, it was not working to hysterical effect.” Read more fun.

Bidding Down Under

MediaMind goes Down Under and talks to Mark Lomas, commercial director of IPG Mediabrands’ Cadreon in Australia, about “one of Australia’s first intent-based, geo-targeted campaigns” for client ZUJI, and APAC online travel retailer. Cadreon’s Mark Lumas talks about the campaign, “We were also using dynamic database-driven content with geo-targeted messaging and mashing technologies together, so it was quite a challenging implementation for everyone. No one had ever done anything like this before in this market, so it was important that we got it right.” Read more.

Flat Display

Efficient Frontier continues to crank out its quarterly digital marketing reports as the company says in a release about Q4 2011, “Display spend remains flat quarter-over-quarter. However, Google’s Doubleclick increases exchange display market share by 19% YoY. Due to both inventory constraints and shifting strategies by Yahoo for their Right Media Exchange, Google extended significant share gains in biddable display.” The data is taken from EF’s own clients as opposed to a wider industry survey. Servicing search advertising remains Efficient Frontier’s key product. Get the report (pay with some PII). And, read the release.

Don’t Take Ads For Granted

Adweek’s Katy Bachmann talks to Association of National Advertisers’ chief Bob Liodice and EVP Dan Jaffe about that advertisers can expect in the year ahead. Read it. In response to a question about how the ANA ensures that the U.S. Congress doesn’t take advertising for granted, Jaffe responds, “For a number of years, we’ve conducted a study analyzing the impact of advertising on jobs and economy in the US. It’s a strong tool to use because it’s broken down by congressional district and state. It’s one of the reasons we were able to effectively respond to concerns about ad tax proposals.”

San Fran Wagon Train

It’s a tech wagon train! The Business Insider’s Boonsri Dickinson reports on a presentation by angel investor Ron Conway who believes tech companies are migrating out of the valley and into San Francisco. Dickinson adds, “Something like 1,500 companies employ more than 30,000 people [in San Francisco] — a number that’s coming close to the last tech bubble.” Read more.

But Wait. There’s More!