Cheaper, Future Inventory; Yahoo Shuffling Board

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

Cheaper, Future Inventory

YouTube says it’s an “upfront” contrarian, lowering rates for media buyers in a bid to attract a bigger share of those TV budgets. “Last year we were rigid; we got a few big advertisers with huge checks,” YouTube Sales Chief Lucas Watson tells AdAge’s Michael Learmonth. “We got a lot of feedback about being inflexible so now we are breaking them down into more manageable chunks.” Read more.

More Yahoo Turmoil?

Yahoo Chairman Fred Amoroso announced on Friday that he would not seek another term, after only a year in the post. Observers wonder if the portal is still finding a clear direction. In his official statement, Amoroso suggests he’s stepping down according to his previous plan, expressing confidence in Mayer at the helm and adding, “This is a natural time for me to transition off the board, consistent with what I said a year ago.” Read the release.

Marketing The Trends

On his personal blog, VivaKi’s Rishad Tobaccowala outlines “Six Current and Six Rapidly Expanding Trends Marketers Should Focus On,” also offered at the recent Publicis Investor Conference. Coming in at #5: “The future will be about more access and less ownership – Consumers increasingly want access to content (Spotify, Netflix, etc.) or things (Zipcar, etc.) rather than just ownership. This will also be true in the world of big data.” Read more. Meanwhile, Publicis VivaKi’s agency trading desk offering Audience On Demand has created a new video explaining what it does for clients. See it now on VivaKi-er Marco Bertozzi’s blog.

Video Ad Guarantee

Jun Group has tapped the “money-back guarantee” in an effort to track new video advertisers to its ad network. Adweek’s Mike Shields reports, “Jun is promising buyers that it won’t deliver any pop-under ads, autoplay videos, bogus views or ads on undesirable places (like, say, ghost sites).” Read it. Also, read AdExchanger’s Oct. 12 Q&A with Jun CEO Mitchell Reichgut.

Whither The Audience

On Digiday, Jack Marshall says that ad buyers are frustrated with certain publisher audience development tactics. He notes, for example, Complex.com’s SEO for porn-related terms. Marshall paraphrases Complex CEO Rich Antoniello, who explains that “less than 6 percent of the publisher’s traffic now comes from searches related to the word ‘porn’ and that it’s not focusing on SEO to build audience. Rather, Antoniello said, it’s been investing heavily in editorial staff.” Read more.

Predicting Fraud

Integral Ad Science claims its latest solution can help advertisers in programmatic media fight against fraud, using predictive data to spot deceptive activities on websites. Read more here.

… And Remembering Fraud

Meanwhile, John Battelle contemplates the fraudsters of yesteryear, drawing a link between today’s fake impressions and the shenanigans that played out in search circa 2004: “Think about the history lesson – an emerging new industry, one that was upending the entire marketing ecosystem, was operating under a constant cloud of ‘fraud’ which may have been poisoning nearly a third of the revenues in the space. Yet billions in revenue and hundreds of billions in market value was still created.” Read it.

Live To Serve

On his blog, Darren Herman sings the praises of the service layer and argues that startups who avoid a service model to increase their multiple are missing a key insight: “You want marketers or their agencies to have the best possible experience when using your platform. I define experience by performance and service. This will have a higher chance of keeping them back (and the dollars flowing).” More.

Earnings