Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
R U Sharing Video Ads?
Ad Age’s Michael Learmonth looks at the online video ad and how marketers are increasingly mesmerized by “the share”. Learmonth notes the competitive set for video ad sharing companies, “A new generation of video-seeding firms that launched to provide technology, seeding expertise or analytics (…) Tubemogul launched a demand-side platform for video; Sharethrough a network video as content; and Visible Measures launched a spinoff network Viewable Media for user-initiated viewing.” Read more.
Velti Buying Chinese Ad Exchange
After reporting results ($29.6 million in revenues/$1.3 million in gross profit) that beat Wall Street expectations for Q1 (read the release), the mobile marketing services and technology company also announced that it would buy the remaining interest of CASEE, a Chinese mobile ad exchange – a company in which it already owned a 33% stake . Read the release. Velti bought mobile ad exchange/ad network Mobclix last October.
MediaMind Momentum; Value To Hit $400 Million
Ad tech firm MediaMind reported momentum in Q1 2011 as the company had gross revenues and profits of $18.9 million and $2.3 million respectively. Citing MediaMind’s Smart Trading product, and Facebook and China opportunities, ThinkEquity analyst Robert Coolbrith described a rosy outlook to investors, “Our $18 per-share 12-month price target is based on an EV/EBITDA multiple of 10x on our 2012 EBITDA estimate of $29.8M, yielding a target enterprise value of approximately $298M. Adding in $104M in net cash, we derive a target market value of approximately $400M, or roughly $18 per share.” The Company said it expects gross revenues in the $100 million range. Read the earnings release. Of note, in addition to its ad serving product, MediaMind is squarely in the demand-side platform business with Smart Trading. See the product page.
The Agency As VC
Hill-Holliday media exec Adam Cahill examines “The Agency As VC” in an article on ClickZ. He writes, “Instead of just being the evaluator of an array of existing opportunities, some agencies are starting to take a much more active role in actually shaping the future of startups that are creating those opportunities.” He talks to kbs+p’s Darren Herman who is leading the charge for his firm’s VC efforts. Read it.
Privacy And The Password
The Business Insider points to a video interview with Kim Cameron, a Microsoft engineer who just left the company last week says TBI. In the video, among other observations, Cameron shares, “Many people inside Microsoft, Google, Facebook, all the others, see this user-centric stuff actually can be good. User-centric advertising can be more effective than shotgun splattering of ads all over us, or profiling that alienates us and makes us feel like robots are running our lives….Over time, those things will come to the fore in certain companies, and those companies will have an advantage.” See the video and here why he thinks mobile means the death of the password.
About That $500 Million
Regarding that $500 million which Google has salted away in order to pay for an expected settlement with the U.S. Justice Department, more details have surfaced as The New York Times’ Claire Cain Miller reports, “The United States attorney’s office in Rhode Island is leading the investigation into pharmaceutical advertising on the Web search engine and the Food and Drug Administration and Justice Department are also involved.” Read the story.
China And India Configuring Privacy Laws
According to BNET’s Erik Sherman, “Big privacy-law changes in India and China are about to turn data-processing outsourcing into a hurdle-leaping, paperwork-generating mess.” Sherman doesn’t reference the ad business specifically but given the recent privacy debate in the U.S. and Europe, maybe he should. Initially, he sees the changes as “a major challenge for Western companies that use Indian firms as back office processing centers.” Much more detail here.
But Wait. There’s More!
- How Drudge Has Stayed on Top – The New York Times
- Yahoo’s China Feud Turns Ugly, Stock Falls – The Wall Street Journal
- IBM researcher talks up Watson’s potential – VentureBeat
- Why did Microsoft pay $8.5bn for Skype? Is it because it wants to beat Google? – The Telegraph
