BuzzFeed Adds Kingfish Labs; Programmatic Ads At dmexco

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Buzzfeed Acquihiring

Buzzfeed acquired one-year old Kingfish Labs last week. ClickZ’s Susan Kuchinskas says, “The publisher will use Kingfish’s technology to enhance its ability to target Sponsored Stories on Facebook.” Read more. GigaOm reports that Buzzfeed will add three to its engineering team. No terms of the deal were made available, but the founders of both companies know each other from their HuffPo days. Kingfish had originally started with a “dating” app but then started focusing on making sponsored story campaigns work better. Charlie Wuerzel explains in Adweek.

Programmatic dmexco

CMO.com reviews last week’s dmexco show in Cologne, Germany. CMO.com’s Mike Nutley says that ad automation was a hot topic. He quotes a range of industry luminaries who were present at the event including IAB CEO Randall Rothenberg who argued “that if programmatic trading grows as people expect it to, targeting and segmentation technology will become a commodity, available to everyone. ‘What won’t become a commodity will be creativity and strategy, and they will be what differentiates your offering,’ he said.” Read more.

Retargeting Conversation

Lijit’s Walter Knapp extends his sell-side platform/network thinking and imbibes the Federated Media kool-aid in an opinion piece on iMedia Connection. Knapp writes, “… an urban-style author writing and producing video content about a new electric car designed for city dwellers. The content is authentic, detailed on topics the audience finds interesting, informational and entertaining. The campaign content is amplified over social media and shared among publishers through related content suggestions and interactive display ads.” Read it.

Mobile Display Woes

Mobile advertising performance went under the microscope in a Sunday NY Times article. Christine Chen of Goodby Silverstein & Partners tells the NYT, “‘What makes Web ads so attractive to advertisers is the ability to track actions and optimize accordingly,” Ms. Chen says. Because a smartphone cannot use the same technology, she says, ‘your ability to track and optimize is much more blunt, or in some cases nonexistent.’These limitations depress demand for smartphone ads and lead to low prices.” Read more.

Microsoft of the Future

In a Q&A in the Seattle Times, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says that five to ten years from now, his company will no longer be just a tech company. “I think when you look forward, our core capability will be software, (but) you’ll probably think of us more as a devices-and-services company. Which is a little different. Software powers devices and software powers these cloud services, but it’s a different form of delivery.” Read it.

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Not For Sale!; Johnny On The Spotify

Microsoft: The Agency

Microsoft is opening an agency in San Francisco reports Ad Age’s Cotton Delo. Is IPG and WPP Group in the competitive set (again)? Delo writes, “Microsoft seems to be taking a unique approach with its clients. Google’s efforts have been more on the agency side with its ‘Creative Sandbox,’ a resource for agency creatives to learn about Google products such as Android and YouTube through events and publications. With Studio 415, Microsoft looks to be bypassing agencies and going straight to brands.” Read more.

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