Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
Technorati Goes Vertical
Mediaweek’s Mike Shields covers the acquisition of the SV Moms blogger network by Technorati. “SV” stands for Silicon Valley but the network encompasses many more blogs than just the “SV” area. See the list. Mediaweek says that “Technorati plans to use SV Moms, which consists of 400-plus bloggers, to kick off a women’s channel – technorati.com/women.” Read more. Technorati CEO Richard Jalichandra points out that this better positions the company with brands looking to target the household-budget-wielding demo. From the Technorati blog, it is revealed that “SV Moms Group Co-Founder Jill Asher [will become] the Editorial Director of Technorati.com and Blogcritics.org, and SV Moms Group editors Akemi Bourgeois and Vanessa Druckman will become the editors of the Technorati Women’s Channel.” Read it.
Influencing Intent
The Wall Street Journal’s Suzanne Vranica hobnobs with some big brand automotive marketers and their social media experts and discovers that intent is being driven in part by influencers on Twitter. Marketers like Lexus are reaching out to young tweeters who have large followings and asking them to “talk automotive.” Ford’s Scott Monty says, “People trust people like themselves, and when we can tap into these people, it will sound less like Ford tooting its own horn.” Read more. There is no reason that a targetable dataset can’t be created from what people are saying. In other words, if 500 Twitter followers are listening to someone talk about Ford, they could be targeted to receive Ford ads. The Twitter ad network is bubbling within.
Audience Vs. Placement
On Datran Media’s Aperture blog, Scott Knoll writes that even with all the excitement around audience targeting, “context and placement still matter. In fact, placement is often the most important component of a successful ad campaign. You can set your sights on a specific target audience, but if they never see your ad it’s not going to make a bit of difference.” Read more.
Former Right Media Exchanger Pat McCarthy, is intrigued by Facebook’s “rise up the display advertising charts” and wonders where it will lead. He thinks Facebook is much different than MySpace and observes, “One thing I’m curious to see if Facebook becomes a bigger threat to publishers by starting to use their social network to create their own socially-built or heavily socially-enabled properties. What would a Facebook News site be like? Or Facebook Sports? Facebook Entertainment?” Read more.
ad:tech Signal And Noise
ValueClick marketing’s Tony Winders delivers his thoughts about the recent ad:tech festivities in NYC on his personal blog. Winders reports a good experience, “Typically the signal-to-noise ratio at ad:tech is so bad it requires you to speak with 10 people to arrive at a single qualified conversation on the show floor. But I’m pleased to report that the efforts of ad:tech chairwoman Sarah Fay and the DMG management team to pull the show back from the brink of being an affiliate vendor-fest appear to be working.” Read more.
The Underutilization of Retargeting
AdRoll is featured in the Ecommerce Times as CEO Aaron Bell talks shop. Among many, he answers a question about why retargeting isn’t more prevalent in digital marketing: “There are a couple of reasons. Brands traditionally haven’t looked at display as having a high ROI or being a significant performance channel. Typically, over the last 10 years, it has been search engine marketing that has been the breakout channel. And when you think about it, search engine marketing makes sense: It produces a positive ROI — the advertiser spends one dollar and makes more than one dollar in sales.” But wait, there’s more here.
Cranking Content
Yahoo! announced that it will be supporting a boatload of blogs to drive new revenues. ClickZ’s Douglas Quenqua explains this new extension of Associated Content which was purchased last May (seems like last year!): “By allowing all users to publish on its sites, Yahoo could gain traction with those looking for a brand-name platform on which to share their creative content. The strategy has paid dividends for sites like Huffington Post and Salon, which have long allowed everyday people to publish blogs on their sites.” It’s all about the page views, baby!
More Retargeting!
Samir Soriano of ReTargeter.com offers a piece about retargeting on iMedia Connection. He offers three basic tips on display ad banner design to the retargeting neophyte: “Use a button: Having a well-designed button with a succinct call-to-action has been proven to boost your CTR; Keep it simple: A simple design with clear messaging and branding can is always helpful; A/B test: Try using multiple creative sets to find your most effective messaging.” Read more.
The Event Business
You didn’t think you’d see another Kawaja video before the end of the year, did you? You did? Good for you as LUMA Partners’ Terence Kawaja released another video in his series of advertising tech industry send-ups. This one covers the boondoggle of the event business in honor of his recent visit to the Monaco Media Forum. See “Monaco Media Madness!”
