GroupM On Digital Spend Potential; KN Expands Latino Market Capabilities; Quantcast Serving Privacy Icon

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

Digital Spend Potential (DSP?)

Citing upheaval in the Middle East and the tsunami in Japan as key factors, WPP Group’s GroupM announced that it’s adjusting its predictions for global ad spend from a 5.8% increase to a 4.8% increase for 2011. On the digital front, GroupM Futures Director Adam Smith says in a release, “Digital advertising spending accounts for 20 percent and more of measured advertising in countries where it is most developed, but it still has real growth potential even in those nations. A recurring theme from such countries is the commercial utility of behavioral targeting and web video, even among traditional ‘brand’ or ‘awareness’ advertisers.” With digital business at stake and a significant investment in technology, GroupM and WPP are looking to lead the charge with today’s behavioral advertising discussion. Read the release including a breakdown on spend by geography (PDF).

Collective/Tumri

After bringing Collective and Tumri together, LUMA Partners banker Terence Kawaja provides his take on the transaction. Kawaja sees a transition occurring among some players in the ad network space, “Over the last few years several enlightened ad network operators have begun a transformation of their business to a more sophisticated multi-solution approach. There are three tenants to this transformation: (i) the amalgamation of a services solution set, (ii) the application of advanced technology to improve advertiser ROI, publisher yield and consumer relevancy, and (iii) more of a focus on ‘upper funnel’ solutions that address the all-important brand/premium/guaranteed marketplace.” Read it. And, read more from paidContent’s David Kaplan who brings the deal together here.

Not Believin’ The Hype

DIGIDAY’s Mike Shields publishes an interview with top Turner exec Walker Jacobs who has by and large had a negative view of ad networks as it relates to their use by large publishers. On private exchanges, marketplaces, ad slots, etc., Jacobs tells DIGIDAY: “With private exchanges, I’m sort of taking a wait-and-see approach. I’m an interested observer from the outside. I’m highly skeptical of branded publishers that believe they can have a secondary non-premium revenue stream that peacefully co-exists with their core business.” Direct sales only, thank you. Read more.

Third-Party Data Biz

VivaKi’s Marco Bertozzi hands over the login to his personal blog and lets Paul Silver, head of product at VivaKi’s Audience On Demand UK office, run wild. Silver has an itch to scratch with the use of third-party data for ad targeting. He summarizes, “All in all, there are some murky practices still happening with regards to 3rd party data. I think industry needs to clean up the data space somewhat before anyone starts cashing in on the latest Gold Rush…” Read more.

Priming The RTB Pump

Need a primer on the real-time bidding business (with a Googley POV)? You may want to check out the IAB’s recent Interactive Insights Webinar titled, “The Arrival of Real-Time Bidding.” Appearances include Forrester Research’s Joanna O’Connell and Michael Greene as well as DoubleClick Ad Exchange product dude Scott Spencer. See it.

Addressing Latino Audience

Online panel research firm, Knowledge Networks (KN), said that it wants a piece of the latino market research biz as it announced the acquisition of California-based Garcia Research Associates (GRA). KN says GRA is “a firm well-known for its thoughtful approaches to measuring the growing influence of Latinos on commerce and society in the U.S.” Read the release.

Getting The Long Tail To Comply

Quantcast is in the online privacy business. According to Edmund Lee of Ad Age, the company announced that it has partnered with industry org Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) and will provide the privacy icon for free to any publisher making “less than $2 million annually from targeted advertising. Anyone already making use of Quantcast’s analytics tool, which is also free, will now be able to incorporate the About Ads icon, a mark of participation and a link that allows people to opt out of ad targeting used in the ad.” Similar but different from Evidon, this is another way a company is creating a revenue model around privacy. Quantcast is helping small publishers with compliance, and by signing up for Quantcast’s tools, small publishers audience is available to media buyers which compensates Quantcast. Read more.

Showing QPS

In a SlideShare presentation from their recent appearance at an Amazon Web Services (AWS) customer event, retargeter TellApart reveals some stats shedding light on the company’s queries per second (QPS) and bidding capabilities with the help of AWS: “Google’s Real-Time Bidding SLAs allow… 120 milliseconds to accept bid request, lookup user, predict CTR & conv. rate, calculate eCPM bid and return ad tag… We do this in 7ms… 10,000+ times per second.” See more.

Publisher As Artist

Rallying the digital “seller” in all of us, and revisiting his self-described, hyperbolic and metaphoric post from the previous week on measurement, Upstream Group’s unrepentant Doug Weaver delivers his latest musings with still more metaphor as dappled oil paintings of the French countryside issue forth: “If you wait around for the rising tide of uniform measurement to raise your boat, you will be left high and dry. It is still your job to innovate, push the boundaries of value creation and account for it all through an impressionistic mix of sources and approaches.” Visit Doug’s gallery.

Empowering Thru Regulation

Evidon has scored the participation of David Vladeck, Director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection for the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, for its upcoming “Evidon Empower” conference on July 19. Vladeck will keynote the afternoon-long event which will be focused on online privacy, of course, and includes a broad cross-section of participants from the digital ad ecosystem industry. Read more.

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