Quantcast is going ahead with its efforts to offer a new opportunity for marketers who wish to leverage the millions of Quantcast pixels all over the Internet that can help provide insight into audience. Dubbed the “Media Program” (see release), here are the details from Quantcast:
The Quantcast solution applies marketers’ unique customer interaction data from their media campaigns, search activity and brand website visitation to discover the distinctive audience characteristics of their most valuable consumer segments. Lookalike models then identify larger, similar consumer groups across the web. Marketers connect with publisher inventory to purchase these audience definitions, in real time, at scale.
Peter Naylor of NBC Universal and Ed Montes of Havas add some color to the release. AdAge’s Michael Learmonth, who takes an ill-advised swipe at DogTime Media, notes that a lot of large publishers use Quantcast in order to effect better sell-through of their inventory including Time, Inc. No doubt integrating Quantcast’s cookies with any exchange’s cookie set will be important in driving the new product.
The NY Times’ Eric Pfanner covers the apparent kumbaya occurring between Internet firms such as Google and Microsoft and ad agencies as users continue to stay online more and offline with traditional media less.
The OPA’s plans to create more friction in online advertising are moving along swimmingly as MediaPost’s Gavin O’Malley notes that 37 sites are ready to implement really big ads. As we’ve noted before, the ad sizes will eventually float on to the exchange as publishers (OPA or not) will look to fill unsold inventory and increase revenues.
Social media marketing and optimization company, PopularMedia, was sold to email marketer StrongMail for an undisclosed sum. This new combination may seem odd for those who believe direct marketing (which includes email marketing) doesn’t belong in the social media world.
Finally, Tara McMeekin of Newspapers & Technology highlights local newspapers using “Wave2 Media Solutions Web-based iPublish suite of tools to anchor” their self-service advertising initiatives, lower overhead and create new revenue streams.
