Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
Ad Networks Still Hot
Ad networks are continuing to grow -and being in the mobile space doesn’t hurt either. Rhythm NewMedia announced a $10 million Series C funding round with lead investor QuestMark Partners and follow-on investment from existing backers Lightspeed Venture Partners, Morgenthaler Ventures, and Rembrandt Venture. Read the press release. And, read a summary from TechCrunch covering Rhythm’s “premium” mobile publisher focus.
What They Can Learn
Former PR guy at Mediamind in Brazil, Pedro Sorrentino, gives his “5 Lessons Madison Avenue Can Learn From Startups” on Mashable. The first of his lessons involves the importance for marketers – and agency professionals helping marketers – “to be T-shaped professionals.” This doesn’t mean you need to have your arms out all day. In fact, Sorrentino believes in versatility for all: “It’s important to have a wide vision and understanding of everyone who’s involved with the campaign that you’re working on. This versatility saves time and brings more ideas to the table.”Read more on Mad Ave tips and tricks.
RTB For Search
Kevin Lee looks into his crystal ball on ClickZ and predicts the end of advertising… No, no, no. He thinks that in three years, search engine marketers are going “real-time” in their bidding as Google makes search engine keywords biddable not just by the keyword, but the audience who entered the keyword. Lee says, “Real-time bidding of PPC search ads is great for all three participants of the online ecosystem: the searcher, the engine, and the advertiser. Let’s delve into this a bit more deeply…” Please do -here. Standalone DSPs, DSPs within ad networks and trading platforms appear well-positioned in this world as they bid off a cookie across digital channels including search and display.
The Russians Are Coming! And, it’s a good thing in that the initial public offering market has dried up in comparison to the days of riches and ether in the late 90s and early 2000s. Bloomberg features Russian investor Yuri Milner whose company (Digital Sky Technologies) is buying stakes in social media properties such as Facebook and Zynga Game Network. He tells Bloomberg that his company gives its investments the alternative to an IPO and adds, “Some companies want privacy for the next few years and we’ve been playing the alternative by taking 10 percent off the table.” Ch-ching for Yuri and crew – read more.
Google Talks About Its House Ads
On the Google AdWords blog, Lorraine Twohill, vp of Global Marketing, talks about when and why Google uses the practice known as “house ads” in Google AdWords. First, she defines house ads: “Search engines commonly use ads to inform and educate users about services they provide.” The Google house ads appear to cost the company actual dollars just like any other marketer’s campaign – except the dollars go from Google marketing to Google AdWords top line. Read more about Google house ad management.
Privacy Tools For The Consumer
Featuring Datran Media’s Preference Central among other private, web surfing offerings, The New York Times’ Riva Richmond looks at how consumers can maintain anonymity, or control their data, on the web. After reviewing a selection of tools, she concludes, “Even if you do all this, it may not stop the snooping. But these tools may be able to help both deal seekers and privacy seekers alike.” Read more.
For The Data Muncher
Greg Linden points to a presentation by Google Fellow Jeff Dean at Standford: “Some fun statistics in there. Most amazing are the improvements in data processing that have gotten them to the point that, in May 2010, 4.4M MapReduce jobs consumed 39k machine years of computation and processed nearly an exabyte (1k petabytes) of data that month. Remarkable amount of data munching going on at Google.” Schwa?! Read a summary from Krishna Sankar of Dean’s talk.
Mid-Rolls Growing
Freewheel has produced a new white paper providing observations from Q3 2010 across its monetization platform. One nugget: “While the majority of ads are pre-rolls that appear before content, ads that appear within content – mid-rolls – are the fastest growing ad format in the market, indicating that ad loads are becoming more like television.” Read the release. Download the paper (sign-up required).
Consumer Privacy Watchdog
The Wall Street Journal’s Julia Angwin reported last week that in addition to competing online privacy proposals coming from the U.S. Commerce Department and the Federal Trade Commission, “The Obama administration is preparing a stepped-up approach to policing Internet privacy that calls for new laws and the creation of a new position to oversee the effort.” Read more about the “Privacy Czar.” Also – Steve Smith updates the internet ad world with a tight summary of recent online privacy-related regulation events on MediaPost. Read it.
The OOH Exchange?
In what would seem to be another pre-cursor to the open exchange of out-of-home (OOH) media, Starcom has put together a buying system called DOmedia that aggregates OOH media including digital, but some OOH inventory providers are unwilling to use it. According to a Mediaweek article, they say the commission is too high with 2-5% rates. Read more from Mediaweek’s Katy Bachmann. Meanwhile, a company called Ayuda announced a free service which aggregates OOH signage inventory. Read about it on Digital Signage Expo.
Aegis Climbs In Q3
Ad holding company Aegis reported its third quarter 2010 revenues and – like many of its competitors – showed impressive gains. The Guardian quotes from an Aegis company statement: “The faster growing world regions, such as China, Russia and Latin America, experienced ‘robust’ organic revenue growth while North America ‘continued to gain momentum.'” Read it.
For The Love Of Attribution
Aimed at helping search marketers better understand the attribution of conversions according to search marketing-related data points, Marin Software and ClearSaleing announced an agreement. From the release, “The Marin platform is now able to fully utilize attribution data gathered by ClearSaleing for analytics and bid optimization and, as a result, clients can maximize the value of their once separate search marketing and attribution investments.” Read more. Display advertising as a component of attribution analytics can’t be far behind.
Opt-Out Rates Of A Sliver
Better Advertising announced findings from a recent study done in collaboration with Dynamic Logic which looked at how consumers are handling cookie tracking and management of their online privacy as it relates to ad targeting. Among the highlights according to the BA blog, “- Opt-out rates across Better Advertising-powered campaigns are extremely low – 0.0001 percent (less than one per one thousand); – 76 percent of consumers want all companies involved in targeting an ad revealed to them…” Read more. Download the report (PDF).
But Wait, There’s More!
- “Superfish reels in $4M to go window shopping in your browser” – Venture Beat
- Twitter’s Biz Stone talks about this company and local ads – The New York Times
- Infographigasm – Buysight looks at change in advertising in the past 40 years – Buysight’s blog
