Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
Search And Display From Webtrends
Web Trends announced update to its product line as drives harder on the ad business. The company announced Webtrends Ads – according to the release – “an end-to-end, data-driven solution for creating, measuring and improving performance marketing acquisition across global search networks, the Google Display Network, and Facebook Ads.” Read the release.
Cookie Lawsuits
Specific Media is being sued by a well-known attorney focused on consumer privacy online over alleged improper use of Flash cookies according to Ryan Singel of Wired. This is the third privacy-related lawsuit filed this month. Others include a “zombie cookie lawsuit” and a Demand Media/Disney lawsuit. Read more about the Specific Media filing.
Google, Phones, Facebook
On The Business Insider, Goldman Sachs analyst James Mitchell offers a reason for the new Google calling feature in Gmail. TBI paraphrases Mitchell: “Google’s ulterior motive is less about disrupting the teleco industry and more about driving engagement within Gmail and its social networking activities to better compete with Facebook.” Read more.
Local Targeting Images
Image Space Media added “local targeting” capabilities to its self-serve, in-image ad platform, AdStart. What’s local targeting? “-a subset of AdStart’s geo targeting, [which] limits the scope of the advertising reach to a particular physical location. By identifying a searcher’s IP address, a search engine can deliver ads specifically for that location, making ads even more relevant to readers.” Read more.
Real-Time Search
Everything is real-time! Google followed up its real-time search enhancements of late last year and has now made a home for it at http://www.google.com/realtime. In addition to the site-of-its-own, other real-time updates include the ability to geotarget results, if you will, and view conversations. Read more.
Rewarding Mobile App Users
MobileBeat’s Dean Takahashi covers Flurry’s new AppCircle Rewards program as the mobile ad technology firm announced “an iPhone marketing program that rewards users who agree to download recommended apps.” According to Takahashi explains AppCircle’s inner-workings: “AppCircle analyzes the apps that a user has on his or her iOS device and then recommends apps that the user will most likely enjoy.” Read more. A virtual currency strategy is now layered on top of AppCircle with the new rewards program. In a rev share with mobile publishers, Flurry is rewarded by app developers who pay to have their apps downloaded on cost-per-download basis.
Privacy Harm
The Wall Street Journal’s Digits blog interviews Ryan Calo of Stanford University Law School, who recently “released a draft of a paper titled the Boundaries of Privacy Harm that is set to be published in the Indiana Law Journal next year.” Calo defines privacy harm, “In the paper I use the analogy of assault and battery [to describe two types of harm — called “subjective” and “objective”]. Assault is apprehension about getting hit, and it’s separate in court. You can go after someone for making you feel like they’re about to hit you. Battery is actually getting hit. Subjective privacy harm can be triggered if you’re creeped out. … Objective privacy harm is when a person’s information is used against that person [as in a denial of a job or a malicious attack]. ” Read more.
Former Yahoo! CDO On Exchange Strategy
Former Yahoo! Chief Data Officer Usama Fayyad discusses Yahoo!’s decision to pursue an ad networks and exchanges strategy in 2007 after Yahoo!’s new search marketing platform, Panama, was released. He was not pleased at the time. Fayyad tells TechCrunch in a video interview: “I was of the camp that said ad exchange is the wrong thing for Yahoo to do, primarily for two reasons: because Yahoo is a big publisher itself so it’s a competitor so how could it run an exchange, can we expect Google to put its inventory on Yahoo, or Microsoft? The other one was that, exchanges as we all know, publishers will never put their premium inventory on exchanges they only put their crap inventory, so to me an outlet of crap inventory is not necessarily a very interesting thing.” See the interview.
The Social Viewthrough
On the Media6Degrees blog, Lauren Crane and Gabriel Celis discuss the value of an introduction enabled by social targeting – specifically, how brands meet consumers in the rollicking world of social media. Read more about this take on viewthroughs.
Discussing The Investment Markets
Safeguard Scientifics CEO Peter Boni discusses his company’s investment strategy and what he sees as a growing IPO and investment space in an article on TheStreet.com. When asked about his most promising portfolio companies, Boni identifies demand-side platform MediaMath. Read more.
Video Platform News
In-stream video advertising platform Adotube announced the commercial availability of its product. In a press release, company CEO Constantine Goltsev said, “By allowing advertisers to access the whole video ecosystem with any asset using any size ad buy, we are facilitating ad buys, both large and small.” Read more.
