Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here
PubMatic Banks $45 Million
Sell-side platform PubMatic announced a hefty “mezzanine” round raise of $45 million as it looks to build out and, perhaps, even acquire sell or buy-side tools in preparation for an IPO. Peter Kafka interviews Goel about his company on All Things D. See the interview. According to the press release, “This mezzanine financing caps a period of growth for the company which includes year over-year revenue growth in excess of 150 percent.” Read it. August Capital led the new funding which included existing investors DFJ, Nexus Venture Partners, Helion Ventures and Silicon Valley Bank.
Extreme Reach Makes Its Play
Swing and a miss.. at least for now, as Bloomberg reports that rival Extreme Reach has tried to buy MediaMind owner DG (Digital Generation) for nearly double its current stock price – that comes out to about $600 million. Read more. Bloomberg reports, “Extreme Reach was told that the combination with Digital Generation might raise antitrust concerns, said the person, who declined to be identified as the deliberations are private. The company, which bid with Providence Equity Partners, has been excluded from the process…” Anti-trust? Really?
Make Mine Mobile
The IAB and PriceWaterhouse Coopers have taken a crack at new advertising figures in the mobile space for last year. According to a release, “Underneath the global figure of $5.3 billion (€3.8 billion) for 2011 are regional shares of: Europe 25.9%; North America 31.4%; Latin America 3.5%; Asia-Pacific 35.9%; Middle East & Africa 3.2%.” Read it.
Look at you, Transforming Business Model. It’s already acquired mobile marketing services company Amobee in March, and now Singtel is getting its hands on part of mobile ad exchange, Nexage. Nexage announced a new $10 million round of financing Read more. Punit Chiniwalla, director for SingTel’s investment arms says in the release, “Mobile advertising has quickly shifted from an experimental market to being an integral part of the advertisers’ ability to reach and compel consumers.” Who’s the next telecom or wireless company to make a big, mobile ads move?
Privacy Peons
Cory Doctorow, writing in MIT’s Technology Review, wonders if we’re all sheep grazing the privacy landscape, kept in line by so many ad platform sheep dogs nipping at our heels. And he argues Do-Not-Track is ineffectual. “There’s no built-in compliance mechanism—we can’t be sure it works unless auditors descend on IT giants’ data centers to ensure they aren’t cheating.” And he sees similar problems with mobile data collection. Read more.
Spending Growth Through Simplicity
Financial analogies are no longer de rigueur in online ad media circles, but Adchemy CEO Murthy Nukala embraces the wonkiness anyway, in a post on PandoDaily. Nukala compares the online ad ecosystem to Exchange Traded Funds, and says the former could grow by 1,000 percent over 10 years, just as the latter has. To get there, he says search managers are moving away from tracking hundreds or thousands of keywords and instead grouping their search buys around categories intent. “Savvy search marketers are now organizing their campaigns around their consumers’ underlying intent instead of keywords, and simplifying their campaigns by 1,000 times.” Read more.
Microsoft Gets VPAID
Microsoft is reportedly backing away from serving targeted ads via the set-top box, and perhaps, it’s because the company looking more closely at concentrating more its online video ad sales. In a blog post by Microsoft Ad Services GM Jennifer Creegan, Microsoft says it has enabled VPAID, the brand-friendly video ad format endorsed by the IAB, for inventory on MSN, MSNBC, and the Microsoft Advertising Video Network. The move reflects the interest of the portals, especially AOL, to focus on the low hanging fruit of their third party ad services as the owned and operated sites within attempt to find ways to compete against Google’s and Facebook’s growing display strength.
TV’s Loss
We keep hearing that consumers are watching more TV than ever before. And we also have been hearing that people aren’t using their DVR to skip ads that much. Well, VC David Pakman offers a more nuanced view of TV viewing and advertising these days, saying as we avoid more broadcast spots, “Advertisers will begin to spend less on TV,” particularly amid the rise of IPTV viewing. Inherent in that is a why online video will ultimately dictate how TV ads are bought and sold. “Online video is becoming so performance-based, that advertisers now can pay only when someone has actually watched the commercial and not pressed the “skip this ad” button,” Pakman writes. “If you really care about making sure someone sees your commercial, online is the only place to show it.”
Scoring The Page
Sharing platform ShareThis announced the launch of its Social Quality Index (SQI) as the company hopes publishers can use the The release explains, “SQI provides publishers and advertisers with scoring insights across 27 key content categories. ShareThis has developed a patent-pending, proprietary algorithm that derives a raw social traffic score by evaluating a site’s share data such as outbound shares, inbound clickback traffic and page views.” This sounds like a way for publishers to measure the value of their pages – which has been a technology gap that many publishers have continued to harp on. Eventually, if it’s valuable to bidders, it could be part of an RTB auction. Read more.
Retargeting Nightcap
On ClickZ, AdRoll-er Adam Berke takes apart the pitfalls and opportunity of optimizing a display ad retargeting campaign. For example, he notes,”If a retargeting vendor is getting compensated and measured by clicks, it’s only natural that they err on the side of being in front of a user more times in order to get that click. If incremental lift is the goal, the vendor needs to tread more carefully. A lift-oriented strategy will focus more closely on the average number of impressions prior to conversion and prioritize exposure during that period, while tapering off after the point of diminishing returns.” Cap that frequency.
The Resulting Customer
On iMedia Connection, MediaMath CEO Joe Zawadzki delivers the data-driven Kool-aid in a think piece on what customer results are best. He writes, “Thanks to machine buying, billions of impressions can be daily scored for each advertiser and each creative or offer to determine the right price to pay to produce the desired outcome as he sees it with “How to successfully navigate the new digital landscape.” Read it.
Studies & Surveys
- Accenture Video-Over-Internet Consumer Survey 2012: Winning the Battle for Consumer Trust – Accenture
- Sojern Research Reveals National Travel Trends – press release
You’re Hired!
- Paul Prior Joins ZEDO as President; New York Office Expands – press release
But Wait. There’s More!
- TruSignal Partners With eXelate to Bring High Value Audience Targeting Segments to Online Advertisers – press release
- NOW Do You Hate the Click? – Doug Weaver
- IgnitionOne Introduces Integrated Earned and Paid Facebook Ads Management Solution – press release
- The Age of The Algorithm Is About More Than Ads – Cory Treffeletti on MediaPost
- Talking Ad Tech: Datonics’ Mike Benedek – Advertising Technology Review
- myThings Expands US Market Operations, Offering True CPA Retargeting to American Marketers – press release
