Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
Levy Discusses Publicis Checkbook
At The Abu Dhabi Media Summit (location, location, location), Publicis CEO Maurice Levy reiterated his ad holding company’s position that it is open to buying digital media companies. Levy told the media – including BusinessWeek -, “We are in a very strong cash situation and we might find a collection of small or medium-sized operations.” The article suggests the company has $489 million to spend. Will it be on a DSP? Read it.
MDC Acquires The Experiential
MDC Partners announced that it had acquired a majority interest in experiential marketing firm, TEAM Enterprises, based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. “Experiential” marketing could include “Spectacle Events, Retail Product Demos, Mobile Touring” and more according to the release.
Experience it.
Search Business
Yahoo!’s search engine continues to die a slow painful death according to Business Insider’s Jay Yarow who looks at the latest search rankings from ComScore: “Yahoo’s search slipped to 16.8% in February from 17.0% in January.” J.P. Morgan’s Imran Khan notes the 10%+ increase in total search traffic among all engines. Get more search facts here.
Norwest Venture Loads Weapon
Pui-Wing Tam of The Wall Street Journal writes that Norwest Venture Capital is starting to put to work the $1.2 billion fund it created in late 2009. The first recipient of funding is NY-based data warehousing and business intelligence firm, 1010data, which has “won” $35 million. 1010data is led by Joel Kaplan, who was “Managing Director and head of research and technology for all non–equity trading at UBS North America.” Bring on the data solutions! Read more from WSJ.
Stumbling For Ads
Rarely-heard-from-anymore, web surfing toolbar, StumbleUpon, announced an upgrade to its advertising system as the company is pitching engagement in the form of “stumbles” (users click in the toolbar to say they like the site) as the key optimization element: “The more users like it, the more traffic you get.” See it.
Facebook’s Open Graph API
Facebook is about to make its publishing capabilities even more ubiquitous sometime in Q2 as “The Open Graph API will allow any page on the Web to have all the features of a Facebook Page” according to Facebook Developer Wiki. Read it. The Wall Street Journal’s Jessica Vascellaro posits that the expanding web of Facebook will eventually “give it more concrete data to deliver ads and services against.” Read more.
Murdoch On Transparency
Also from the Abu Dhabi Media Summit, Rupert Murdoch kicked things off with a keynote address urging the Arab TV media community to open up. His exhortations ironically echo digital’s promise: “A more transparent advertising market means having effective tools to measure who and what people are watching. Advertisers and creators need metrics that tell them who they are reaching and how effective their message is – or else they are simply throwing money in the dark. A more transparent advertising market will also encourage media buyers and sellers to compete for business.” Read the transcript.
China’s Media Challenges
In Media.Asia, two media agency heads discuss the complexity of the Chinese media market. In discussing the biggest challenge, Michelle Ko of MEC China says, “I would say managing media inflation is always the challenge. There are so many changes in China such as regulation…” Li Yifei of Vivaki Greater China tells Media.Asia, “The biggest challenge would be that you’re negotiating with a lot of local companies.” Read it all.
The Mythical VP Sales & Marketing
Former Siebel exec and current InterWest Partners VC, Bruce Cleveland, says Sales and Marketing should never be mixed into one role. He writes, if a “CEO comes into our office to take us through their business, introduces the management team and describes one of the executives as the ‘VP Sales & Marketing’ – at that point, I stop listening and start thinking about how I can end the meeting on a professional note.” Read more.
Auditude Snags Another Video Ad Client
Video ad platform, Auditude, announced a deal with entertainment site, DailyMotion, to monetize their video content. The potential size of this deal could be good for Auditude continues to land client sites with huge scale (Comcast, MTVN and MySpace) as DailyMotion reached 66 million unique users according to ComScore in January 2010. Read more.
Rubicon Project Adds Mobile
Publisher yield optimizer, Rubicon Project, added mobile to its toolkit. Sara Kimberley of Brand Republic writes that the company “has teamed up with mobile advertising platform mOcean to offer premium web publishers mobile ad serving, campaign management and ad network optimisation.” Read more.
Future Ad With Ray Kurzweil
Futurist, author, inventor, Ray Kurzweil discusses the future of digital marketing in an article on iMedia Connection. “Targeted advertising today is based entirely on keywords, but in the future it will be based on a deeper understanding of the specific personality, desires, and needs of each consumer.” Read the interview.
