Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
Optimizing Travel Display Ads
Rita Chang of Advertising Age profiles agency, Click Here, and how it’s using Teracent’s multi-variate, display ad campaign management system to effect real-time updates and optimization for advertiser Travelocity. Chang notes that as a result, Travelocity’s cost-per-transaction is down 79%. Read more.
More Marketing Budget For Tech
Technology companies are strutting their stuff this fall as marketing budgets extend into the 100s of millions of dollars according to Ben Worthen and Jessica Vascellaro of The Wall Street Journal. The WSJ tech companies such as Microsoft, Yahoo! and Google are trying to be “first movers” in an attempt to sell products after the global economic slowdown. Read more.
The Digital Billboard Display Ad
Audience is everywhere and the digital billboard is here to target audience in their cars, for example, as Financial Times’ Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson looks at the billboard biz in the UK. Edgecliffe-Johnson says that outdoor ad companies have been collecting data on who each billboard’s audience is as they pass by each day and are ready to leverage this data on behalf of advertisers. Read more.
AOL On Board
In preparation for AOL’s spin-off, Time Warner has named a board for AOL which includes Michael Powell, the former FCC chair, and VC Bill Hambrecht according to Cécile Daurat and Sarah Rabil of Bloomberg. In total there are eight new board members which includes the chairman a.k.a. CEO Tim Armstrong. Other “boarders” are Richard Dalzell, a former CIO at Amazon.com Inc.; Karen Dykstra at Plainfield Asset Management; Patricia Mitchell, president of the Paley Center for Media; Fredric Reynolds, formerly of CBS; consulting firm pres James Stengel; and Jim Wiatt, former CEO of the Williams Morris Agency. Read about it.
ComScore released information about social networks sites that target users in the United Kingdom. According to the audience analytics company, more than 1 in 4 UK display impressions are on social site such as Facebook, MySpace and so on. Read more.
New Tech Ops Blog
Pete Emerson who works at AppNexus has started his own tech ops blog. In one of his initial posts, “Making my own bed and laying in it,” Emerson admits that he’s broke his own rules recently and details some of his process, which many tech ops types can likely relate to. Read more.
Beware Of The Botnet
Click Forensics said in a release that its Q3 2009 data on search advertising audience quality said that click fraud is on the rise with botnets compared to all the fraudsters. Click Forensics believes that the recent rise to 42 percent from 33 percent may be due to increasing sophistication of botnets. Read all about it here.
Going Lux, Targeting Addresses
TRIBUNE365, a “multi-platform sales organization” of Tribune Company, announced yesterday the debut of LX365 Luxury Media Network. Do not mistake this with a snazzy new car. This is a cross-channel ad network among seven newspaper properties within Tribune Company which “target affluent and locally-engaged audiences in key upscale markets across the U.S.” Read the release. Or, visit www.trb365.com/lx365.
Ad Age’s Nat Ives says that TRIBUNE365 also intends to roll-out a pay-wall next year that will require users to register and possibly divulge their home address so that advertisers can target more precisely. Don Meek, president of Tribune365 tells Ives, “We will eventually be able to target a physical product to a household address, a digital product to the digital user in that household and a mobile product to the mobile user in that household.” Read about it.
Customer Advisory Board
Eric Ries blogs on Lessons Learned that a customer advisory board can have significant, positive impact on the product development process. This “bottoms up” approach includes having engineers use their real names in posting and contributing to forums for user feeback as well as “routinely conducting in-person usability tests and interviews.” Read more.
Reply.com On Conversion Rates
Paul Boutin of VentureBeat looks at Reply.com’s findings that it says show its lead generation capabilities provide advertisers a 50-100% better conversion rate than display or search. Reply.com’s service looks to pre-qualify leads before offering it to do an advertiser. Reply.com attributes part of its success to the traffic it gets from Google. Read more
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Real-Time Search
It just “feels” like this is yet another tipping point in display: real-time search. If advertisers can tighten the feedback loop and get the pulse of the consumer or target audience in real-time through bottom-of-the-funnel search, it would appear that display only gets more valuable. Read about real-time search developments from the Deal.
Eurostyle: From Microsoft To AOL
Danielle Long of NewMediaAge says that AOL has hired Christian Peck as VP of Euro ad products and operations. Peck comes from Microsoft where he was partner solutions director for Microsoft EMEA and, before that, Atlas Advertising. Read about it.
Mobclix Adds Advertising.com Others
Mobile ad exchange, Mobclix, says that it will be serving ads from Advertising.com and Traffic Marketplace into its exchange. MocoNews’ Tameka Kee says that if Mobclix and others want to compete with AOL’s Third Screen Media and AdMob, they may need to broaden their advertising partnership channels. Read more.
