Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
ValueClick Reports
ValueClick reported its Q2 results last Thursday and said that it had revenues of $160 million and earnings of 15 cents per share. Though the earnings beat estimates, the revenues missed by $13 million according to Zacks. Read more on NASDAQ. Former Dotomi CEO and now ValueClick COO John Giuliani provided commentary on the earnings call. He noted how his former company is now being offered to other ValueClick media segments: “To date, we’re enjoying good traction in introducing the Affiliate Marketing to the Dotomi customers, and we’ve gone live with an automated version of Dotomi offering into a segment of the Affiliate customers, so crossing both ways. Several new contracts have been signed with the first of those customers now live with Commission Junction.” The traditional affiliate business gets a taste of retargeting. Read the transcript. Also of note, the ongoing transition of the ad network model as CFO John Pitstick reiterated CEO James Zarley’s opening comments on the call, “Our traditional display business has really evolved where we’re doing as much off network through programmatic buying, real-time bidding and exchanges or leveraging our entire data and our optimization. We’ve made a lot of progress there in the last year, whereas a year ago, it was a pretty small percentage of what we did in terms of overall inventory in the media business.” And, read the earnings release, too.
Need more reasons programmatic buying is rapidly gaining traction? Look at the growth of online retailers which can leverage retargeting capabilities. From Internet Retailer, “One Kings Lane brought in $100 million in online sales in 2011, up 300% from $25 million in 2010, CEO Doug Mack says. Mobile revenue represents approximately 22% of sales for One Kings Lane, and within the next few years, sales from mobile devices will overtake traditional e-commerce sales.” And that’s why effective audience-based targeting in mobile will be an increasing need. Ecommerce retailers get to use their valuable first-party data which should solve privacy requirements. Read more.
More Facebook Data, Please
In a panel discussion at a TechCrunch event last week with Facebook Ads VP Greg Badros, new WPP-er and AKQA CEO Tom Beddecare offered his thoughts on Facebook ads. TechCrunch’s Anthony Ha paraphrases Beddecare, “‘Advertisers want more data, and more ways to act on that data. That includes more ways to spur ‘demand and activation’, and using Facebook data to target ads outside the Facebook site. He said that advertisers have a hard time dealing with how quickly Facebook’s ad platform changes. And while he said that Facebook Pages offer a lot of creative opportunities, on the other hand, he finds advertising in the right-hand column ‘very restrictive’ creatively, so it’d be nice to have a little more ‘elbow room’. Read more.
RTB To Grow Facebook
Pivotal Research’s Brian Weiser sent Facebook’s valuation up a billion or so dollars on Friday as he wrote his opinion and the stock market listened. As quoted by The FInancial Post, Wieser said. “Within our universe of coverage, the trend towards RTB reinforces our conviction that Facebook will experience substantial incremental growth as a result of the establishment of the Facebook Exchange (FBX) and related enablement of RTB on Marketplace units sold through FBX.” Read more.
Consumer Controls
In a post on VivaKi’s Storify account titled, “Why the Consumer May Not Be In Control,” VivaKi’s Chief Strategy and Innovations Officer Rishad Tobaccowala challenges digital utopia. He writes, “I have seen enough and see enough both on the technology and the marketer side to not be a pollyannish booster of rainbows forever due to digital technology. Every single technology is two sided and today we must be aware as buyers and consumers that there is a battery of technology and data being used to both make things better and more relevant for us but also to manipulate and tittilate us into behaviors we unknowingly make.” Read more. Tobaccowala will speak at AdExchanger’s Human Centered Automation Conference on September 20 in NYC.
Yahoo Departure
AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka reports that, it’s official, Jim Heckman has left Yahoo to pursue as Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer presumably puts in her own team. Kafka explains, “Heckman came aboard Yahoo when the company acquired his 5to1 ad startup in May 2011; since then he had been a key lieutenant for Levinsohn and had worked on a variety of ad and media deals, including a plan to link the company’s ad-selling operations with rivals Google,AOL, and Microsoft.” Questions remain around whether CRO Michael Barrett and media chief Mickie Rosen are part of Mayer’s plans – or visa versa. Read more.
Publicis-IPG Merger?
A Financial Times blog post made the rounds over the weekend and suggested that Publicis was on the verge of buying competing agency holding company Interpublic Group. Not so fast! Steve McClellan summarizes the swirl on MediaPost, “Today Publicis issued a formal statement (via Reuters) that indicated that the FT Blog story was, well, complete rubbish. No truth to it all. The blog then apologized for the story and basically told readers never mind— usually spot on sources got it wrong this time.” Read more. This rumor doesn’t seem that implausible considering Dentsu’s recent takeover of Aegis and continued agency consolidation.
We Want Facebook Data
On the Adaptly blog, software engineer Rob Hunter discuss the release of their Evergreen social media ad product and some of the challenges with Facebook data as it relates to reaching Facebook page fans. Hunter writes, “It’s not so much inaccuracy (which happens), but Facebook doesn’t always give us the data that we want. Sometimes it’s privacy concerns, sometimes technical limits, sometimes a lack of goal alignment – but every now and again we want to ask a question that Facebook just isn’t willing to answer.” Read more about answers.
The Revenue of Privacy
Ever wonder how Evidon’s Ghostery makes its revenue? It isn’t by leveraging venture capital coffers says Evidon/Ghostery’s “Andy K” (presumably product manager Andy Kahl) on the Ghostery blog. “Evidon’s position as a trusted partner for compliance with the advertising industry’s regulatory standards makes it a naturally trusted partner for industry intelligence, which is why we’re able to sell Ghostrank data. We package that data with other information collected from our lab scanners and, after analysis from our privacy team, we have something the advertising industry is willing to buy.” Read more.
Exponential Audience
On AdMonsters, Exponential’s Doug Conely talks audience buying in an opinion piece. He pivots his piece off of something he calls “audience efficiency.” Conely explains, “We can visualise audience efficiency as a trade-off between how well an audience segment fits a client’s target audience (lift) and the reach. Mathematically, there is no possible selection of audiences that provides the same lift for a given reach or vice versa.” Read it. Wonder what’s going on with the Exponential IPO? It’s been a few months since the Tribal Fusion owner filed its original S-1. The company named a new Chief Product Officer and CMO in June.
What’s ‘Standard’
Last Thursday, comScore announced that the Media Rating Council (MRC) had given its seal of approval to its Campaign Essentials (vCE) suite, “which includes viewability, brand safety, in-country geographic delivery, engagement, and removal of non-human traffic.” Read the release and Josh Chasin’s post on the comScore blog. This follows last week’s news that comScore has sued DoubleVerify, AdSafe and Moat over alleged patent infringements. DoubleVerify CEO Oren Netzer discussed the importance of his own company’s MRC accreditation in his April “State of” interview on AdExchanger. See the entire list of accredited and “under review” solutions on MRC’s site here. It’s unclear what the exact value of accreditation is, but to be sure, everyone wants to be called “a standard.”
You’re Hired!
But Wait. There’s More!
- EA Takes Aim at Zynga Over ‘Sims’ Copyright (subscription) – The Wall Street Journal
- Ten million users is the new one million users – Chris Dixon
- Introducing Congressional District Targeting for Google AdWords – Inside AdWords
- Big Data with TwitterAPI – Twitter Objects & APIs – Krishna Sankar
- First Round Invests In Mango Health – Josh Kopelman
- What Big Ideas Are Changing Your Life? – Julie Roehm on iMedia Connection
