AudienceFuel Consolidates Itself; eBay's Data U-Turn?

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Pub-Side Consolidation

AudienceFuel has been acquired by Clever On Demand says TechCrunch’s Anthony Ha who adds that Active International has made another investment in the combined companies to be known as AudienceFuel. Is Active looking for a digital version of barter? Clever on Demand CEO Troy McConnell tells Ha “the two teams are working to integrate their services. (…) Clever On Demand by filling inventory with ads from multiple networks, AudienceFuel by allowing publishers to exchange inventory with each other (as illustrated in the diagram below).” Read more. And, see the new AudienceFuel exec team.

eBay’s Data U-Turn?

On ExchangeWire, Phuong Nguyen, Head of Advertising UK at eBay, discusses a new partnership with Rubicon Project to provide what he claims is the “UK’s largest private ad exchange.” He adds that the exchange has a reach of 17 million monthly unique users, up to five billion impressions and the “data insights from shopper-ready consumers.” As you may recall, eBay pulled its intent data out of data exchanges in 2011. It appears the intent data may be “back” in a private exchange model. Read more. And – how about this piece on Wired about Ebay’s acquisition of 6-person Svpply – retargeting for all products everywhere? Imagine the datasets.

The Ad Data Wave

Data-driven, digital, audience buying gets a tip of the cap in a “big data”-meets-tech piece by The New York Times’ Steve Lohr. He writes, “Rocket Fuel [CEO George] John says [he] is using some of the ideas he worked on in the 1990s as a doctoral student focusing on artificial intelligence at Stanford — research that was supported with government dollars from the National Science Foundation and other agencies, as is so often the case. In the last few years, building a business around those ideas has become achievable and affordable. ‘And a lot of it has to do with the underlying technology,’ Mr. John says.” Read it.

Butter or Parkay?

BlueKai CEO Omar Tawakol offers opinion on All Things D on whether it’s better to have more data or a great algo. He writes, “If you have to choose, having more data does indeed trump a better algorithm. However, what is better than just having more data on its own is also having an algorithm that annotates the data with new linkages and statistics which alter the underlying data asset.” Read more. Tawakol wasn’t done with opinion-making. Yesterday, he tweeted, “Targeting advertising = free content. If Amazon values ads at $15 per person on kindle. How much per person for all content owners?”

Retargeting Freight Train

The ecommerce world is all hot and heavy about retargeting and the ability to hit bottom of the funnel intenders with an ad or two. Witness the reported success retargeter Mythings is enjoying in the U.S. MyThings managing director Michael Swope tells Internet Retailer that “his company has signed 60 U.S. merchants since it opened its first U.S. office in Scottsdale, AZ, nearly six months ago. “‘Ten of the companies myThings has signed agreements with are in the Internet Retailer Top 500,’ says Swope, who adds that the company is on target to sign more than 100 U.S. merchants by the end of the year.“ Read it.

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First Look Fun

Is Google’s Preferred Deals having trouble gaining traction? Maybe. In an interview with AdMonsters’ Gavin Dunaway, Google Senior Product Manager Drew Bradstock admits there have been challenges with the “first look at inventory” product and adds, “Both parties have had to be quite honest in terms of the volume of inventory publishers will offer, and also about how much of the available inventory a buyer will purchase. Once publishers and buyers began being open about their expectations, these deals started transacting very well. Ad Exchange’s Preferred Deals offer system has really cut down on the time required to find new potential deals and on the effort required to get an offer live.” Read it. This product was originally “Direct Deals” – read this Aug. 2011 interview with Google’s Scott Spencer when he explained the product’s features and offered a compare/contrast to a private exchange.

Agencies Venturing

Adweek’s Tim Peterson reports that agency executives are looking to get cozy with the startup world and VCs as Darren Herman of kbs+p Ventures, Deep Focus CEO Ian Schafer, 360i vp David Berkowitz and Anthem Worldwide svp Mark Silva are creating the Technology, Advertising and Startup Council (TASC). If agencies and edgy new startups can partner, everybody benefits – that seems to be the idea anyway. Read it. A bit more on Darren Herman’s personal blog here.

Gallic Exchange

Audience Square, a new French ad exchange, is set to go live in the coming weeks. Telecompaper says “It will bring together Le Monde, Les Echos, Liberation, M6, Express-Roularta, Le Point, Next Interactive, RegieObs, RTL and Prisma, which collectively have 75 websites and over 25 million unique visitors.” Read it.

The Consultant Seller

On Digiday, Business Insider prez Julie Hansen invokes a comment by Ustream Group’s Doug Weaver and says, “I think Doug is right that our sales teams will need to become truly consultative to succeed. They will embrace technology not for its own sake (shiny new objects) but for the real ROI benefit it offers clients when we use it right.” Read it.

Ads For The Retina

Fotopedia is claiming that ads in its visual travel magazine for the iPad, which “are specifically targeted to people’s interests, deliver an average click-through rate of 3.5%, with some ads reaching as high as 10%.” “Native” ads that use beautiful, high rez photos likely helps (i.e. good creative). Read more about Fotopedia’s ad platform.

Geo-Infographic Monday

If you’re using Google search and living in different parts of the world, Google has different auto-complete options for your search query. See the BBC’s quasi-infographic.

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