Recommended Ad; Acqui-Hire In Sunnyvale

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.

Recommended Ad

Google may be inserting a Google+ recommendation of yours — called “Shared Endorsements” — into an ad, according to changes announced by the company on Friday. Google’s terms-of-service page provides a use case: “For example, your friends might see that you rated an album 4 stars on the band’s Google Play page. And the +1 you gave your favorite local bakery could be included in an ad that the bakery runs through Google. We call these recommendations shared endorsements and you can learn more about them here.” Read more. Bryan Wiener, CEO of 360i, tells the WSJ (subscription) that “clicking +1s isn’t yet an ingrained consumer behavior in the vein of clicking on a Facebook ‘like.’” The New York Times notes that this echoes Facebook’s inclusion of recommendations in ads, including its own search results.

Acqui-Hire In Sunnyvale

Yahoo has acquired Bread — a social ads-personalization company — according to CEO Alan Chan on his company’s site, “We are thrilled to join Yahoo’s advertising team in Sunnyvale, where we will be working on developing next-generation solutions for social and mobile publishers and advertisers.” Seven Bread employees will join the company, says TechCrunch’s John Constine, who ponders aloud, “Marissa Mayer has been focused on buying consumer startups as of late, but Bread’s team could strengthen the ad products that monetize Yahoo’s properties. Together they might be able to turn all of the Yahoo feel-good momentum into real revenue.” Read more.

Scrutiny Club

Every form of targeting has seen its share of scrutiny from Washington, and now cross-device ad targeting will be joining the club. With the end of the third-party cookie growing nearer, advertisers are turning to fingerprinting, as Adweek points out. “Such tracking envelopes [sic] users in a digital environment where marketers know their preferences and personal information no matter which device they use while consumers are kept largely in the dark,” wrote Ed Markey in a letter. Read more.

Native Network

Mobile ad network Airpush has made an acquisition of mobile native advertising Hubbl. “Hubbl’s approach to mobile advertising moves beyond traditional mobile ads to create personalized in-app content experiences for users,” said Kushal M. Choksi, founder and CEO of Hubbl. “This creates a win-win scenario where users get a better experience while developers earn significantly higher revenue.” Read the release.

Addressing Home Improvement

Lowe’s is wielding the power of mobile technology in stores to bring online and offline data together in hopes of achieving the holy grail of one-to-one, addressable communication. In an eMarketer interview with Sean Bartlett, Lowe’s director of mobile strategy and platforms, he outlined how purchase history can be tied to a customer’s key fob, eliminating the need for receipts. Store associates also carry iPhones that give them customer information as well as inventory. Read more.

Fraud Impression

Vertical ad network Gourmet Ads has been stepping up its tech efforts against fraud, according to a blog post by founder Benjamin Christie. He writes, “The technology now measures every single impression served both across our directly managed network of food sites and when we buy impressions in the AppNexus Exchange. The main goal of this monitoring was to ensure our client’s advertising was being viewed by real humans and not computerized bots.” Read it.

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