Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
Print As Loss Leader For Digital
No more Jack Griffin? No problem. Time Inc has been able to iron out its problems with Apple and allow print subscribers free access to the iPad version according to The Wall Street Journal. Apple’s no fool here – undoubtedly many print subscribers will switch to digital-only and then Apple and Steve Jobs can get their cut. Print is a loss leader for digital. Read more.
DSP Grenades
Ari Buchalter wants demand-side platforms and ad networks “To Open Up or Shut Up” in a think piece on iMedia Connection. Buchalter starts throwing the grenades in the first paragraph: “Many demand-side platforms (DSPs) and ad networks that claim to use ‘sophisticated algorithmic optimization’ to determine the value of impressions actually do no such thing.” It’s war! Read more.
Bringing Democrat Dollars Online
ClickZ’s Kate Kaye unveils online ad spending by the U.S. Democractic party for the 2012 reelection campaign of President Obama. Thus far, the dems spent a “whopping” $500k. Huh? This is the party of the Internet’s inventor, Al Gore… where’s the spend? Read more.
In the new hyperlocal trade publication, Street Fight, aiMatch’s Jeff Wood gives his two cents and more on choosing a data partner including ad networks. Wood writes, “As a publisher, you’re the gatekeeper of all the data on your site. Every agreement you make should clearly define who owns the information.” Read more on data, data, data.
Real-Time Druid
Metamarkets is turning on the marketing afterburners with its Metamarkets Labs and a renewed focus on the company blog. In the first of a two-parter, Metamarkets’ Eric Tschetter blog about “Druid.” Good news, Tschetter is not talking about the returns of some scary looking religious dude from the middle ages – it’s much better: “Over the last twelve months, we tried and failed to achieve scale and speed with relational databases (Greenplum, InfoBright, MySQL) and NoSQL offerings (HBase). So instead we did something crazy: we rolled our own database. Druid is the distributed, in-memory OLAP data store that resulted.” Lap up Part I about the engine to the company’s analytics platform. And, check out the fun-kay Metamarkets website.
Engagement For VC
VC and prolific blogger Mark Suster says that the future of advertising is going to be integrated and that it’s all about engagement in a think piece on TechCrunch. He writes, “So the future of helping make the ad industry more measurable (and more online) I believe will be one of helping make ads both authentic & integrated. Trying to relegate ads to the least intrusive real estate of our computers is missing the point. Advertisers pay for efficacy.” Yes they do – pass effective attribution modeling right this way.
The Cloud Is Complicated
Amazon provided a lengthy mea culpa on Friday for the cloud outage the week before which affected many online ad technology companies who rely on Amazon to power their own companies’ services. They just don’t sell books over at Amazon as you likely know. Read more culpa here. GigaOm’s Paul Miller summarizes reaction and impact of the AWS outage and waxes philosophical, “Maybe some long-term good can come from short-term pain and embarrassment.” See the pain.
M&A
- News Corp.’s IGN Buys Hearst’s UGO In Preparation For Game Site Spin-Off – Peter Kafka, All Things D
- Halogen Media Acquires NYC Startup YouCast – The Business Insider
Online Privacy And Ads
- Opt-In Rules Are a Good Start – Randall Stross, professor, San Jose State University – The New York Times
“Here’s the key: the feature, called Login With Facebook, is opt-in only, and users can opt out any time. If they do revoke their permission, all information that was pulled in from Facebook must be purged.” - Data Privacy, Put to the Test – The New York Times
- A Contrite Sony Vows Tighter Security – The Wall Street Journal
Company Financials
- Viacom’s Media Networks, Ad Revs Soar 11% – MediaPost
- IPG Reports $48 Million Loss in Q1 – AdWeek
Financing, VC
- Crisp Media Closes on $6M – PEhub
“Crisp Media, a company focused on cross-platform rich media advertising technology, has raised $6 million in fresh capital.” - Visible Measures tracks a $7.7M funding round – Mass High Tech
“Boston firm Visible Measures Corp. has closed on $7.7 million in an open-ended financing round, according to federal documents filed [last Wednesday].” - 5Qs: Redpoint’s Chris Moore – Digiday Daily
“Brands aren’t going to be stupid forever. With banners and text links you can’t tell a story. When you have video and audio and can reach them at scale it’s different.”
But Wait. There’s More!
- Yale management school, IBM in partnership – BusinessWeek
- Solve Media Launches ‘Solve Media Insights’ Survey Technology – press release
- The Case for Rebranding YouTube – Tod Sacerdoti, BrightRoll – AdAge
