Cookie Clearinghouse; Shazam The Ratings

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.

Fine, You Can Keep Your Cookie

Mozilla is creating a Cookie Clearinghouse in collaboration with the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, according to Ad Age. The clearinghouse would make provisions for companies to issue cookies in special situations — for example, Facebook’s content-delivery domain, fbcdn.net. “Mozilla is joining the advisory board to formulate the process for creating Cookie Clearinghouse allow-lists and block-lists, with the intention of implementing it in Firefox,” a Mozilla spokesperson said. Read more.

Shazam The Ratings

Do consumers want to “Shazam” ads? Shazam, that little smartphone app that listens to music and tells you what song is playing, is targeting the second-screen trend and rolling out a rating system for measuring TV ad effectiveness. The measurement consists of an ad’s Shazam tag volume divided by the gross rating point (licensed from Nielsen). “Consumers have a one-tap, immediate way to get more information, receive special offers, and even shop on the spot with their mobile device … Advertisers benefit from the direct consumer engagement, and as of today, gain access to insights on the relative performance of their ads airing across television,” said Shazam CEO (and former Yahoo executive) Rich Riley in a release. Read more. The proposed TV targeting layer is reminiscent of some things Twitter is doing around TV analytics.

Marketing The CPA

In support of its own efforts to attract global advertisers, Rakuten LinkShare has sponsored a Forrester study about affiliate marketing within eight countries. From the release, a snippet of the findings: “Over the last 12 months, 68 percent of affiliate channel shoppers made an online purchase from a company outside of their home country.” Read more. And, here’s the study (Pay with some PII).

Small Biz Boost

Advertising accounts for 85% of Facebook’s revenue, according to Reuters, and the company announced that it now has 1 million active advertisers on its platform. A lot of that advertising comes from small businesses that take advantage of the reach and frequency Facebook provides. “Most small business owners start off as Facebook users, then migrate to become page owners, and from there migrate to become advertisers,” said Dan Levy, Facebook director of small business. Read more.

Funnel Cake

Google continues to aim at attribution solutions — for brands, in particular. Googler Stefan Schnabl announces on the Google Analytics blog that the popular web analytics platform can now “break down the separation between clicks and impressions and give a more complete view of the customer journey. When a user views display ads on the [Google Display Network], or video ads on YouTube, and later visits your website and converts, these interactions with your brand can now be captured in Google. Read about Multi-Channel Funnels.

Fabulous Millions

E-commerce darling Fab.com has raised another $150 million, according to AllThingsD. The company valuation is currently at $1 billion, but CEO Jason Goldberg said, “I don’t consider us a success yet … But we believe in our strategy, and believe it’s going to take a good amount of investment to continue to build a ‘wow’ experience and build a great new e-commerce brand.” Of course there are critics who feel the company is growing too fast and won’t be sustainable, fearing another Groupon. Read more.

Picking On The Banner Ad

How many times has someone said the banner ad is dead? Yet, as Altimeter Group’s Rebecca Lieb points out in an iMedia Connection column, it’s still around as a de facto standard. In her own words, “The question isn’t whether or not the banner will die. It won’t. The question is whether it can lead a more meaningful, rewarding life in the future.” Read more.

Amazonian