Instagram's Agency Deal; CBS On Data Brokers

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

Instagram’s Agency Deal

Omnicom plans to spend up to $100 million on Instagram, according to Ad Age, in a new deal confirmed by Facebook and the agency holding company. With this new deal, Omnicom agencies will have the ability to create ads on the platform. The process will be manual and Instagram will be selective of which photos are used for ads. The plan right now is to have a sponsored photo show up in a user’s news feed that will then stay there for an entire day, even if that user logs out and then back in. Read more. Programmatic is a ways away, it seems.

Data Fears

Privacy concerns aren’t going away anytime soon, especially as mainstream news outlets are reporting on the practice of data collection and use, such as the latest article from CBS. The news outlet points out the many ways personal data can be distributed, such as to prospective employers or for marketing. “We think that self-regulation has been very effective. … I think that consumers ought to understand that the Internet is an advertising medium,” said Bryan Kennedy, CEO of Epsilon. Read the rest.

App And To The Right

Flurry takes a look at data from its mobile “pipes” and finds rocketing growth for what it calls personalization apps, a.k.a. Launchers, on the Android platform. From the Flurry blog post: “Q1 2014 (and the quarter is not over yet) usage is higher than all of 2013. While the cumulative reach of these apps is still relatively small (30 million monthly users in the US), the usage growth is eye catching.” Read more. Related from The New York Times: check out this new “micro-network” for “device specific content” being launched by Cartoon Network – it’s all apps.

Mobile And Newspapers

The FT reports on new projections for mobile revenues in the United Kingdom by eMarketer: “Mobile ad spending in the UK will surge 90 per cent to £2.26bn ($3.8 billion USD) in 2014. Meanwhile, newspaper ad spending will fall 5 per cent to £2.06bn.” Read more (subscription). The FT says that Google’s search ad revenue is responsible for a large part of mobile revenues today.

IPO Surge

There is IPO fever among companies now that hasn’t been seen since 2007, with many of the companies being tech-oriented, according to The Wall Street Journal. In the first two months of this year, 42 companies went public, compared to 20 that went public in the first two months of 2013. “If companies feel like they need any more money in the next two to three years, sophisticated companies are doing it now,” said Kevin Hartz, chief executive of Eventbrite. Read on.

Tumbling Ads

In the WSJ, Mike Shields reviews Yahoo Tumblr’s ad prospects. He writes, “Ad executives say Tumblr appears to have lost momentum among advertisers since the acquisition, partly because its ‘native’ ads – which are designed to look like other blog posts – are now more common on other sites.” Read it (subscription).

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