Emarketer Crowns Google Display; Nielsen’s eGRP Crew

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

Google Crowned Display King

Google has been battling Facebook for dominance of the total display ad market for over year, ever since Yahoo was ousted by the two after a long reign. Now, eMarketer is ready to declare a winner for 2012, saying the search giant will earn more U.S. display advertising revenues than any other company, topping the market with a 15.4 percent share, according to eMarketer. “There are several factors underpinning Google’s ascent to market leader, including the continued strength of its ad network, video advertising on YouTube and mobile display advertising on AdMob,” eMarketer says, adding that Facebook’s slight revenue shortfall ahead of its IPO was also a cause. Read the release.

Ford’s Digital Wish? Straight Talk

What’s the biggest obstacle holding back brand dollars online? Simple confusion, says Ford CMO Jim Farley in an interview with Digiday’s Brian Morrissey. “Digital for most marketers is very intimidating. Your media partner has to hold your hand.” He recalls fondly one media rep who told him his ad was wretched. “I will never forget that person saying my ad was wrong. He said, ‘I got your money, but you’re making a mistake.’ I wish that would happen more regularly in digital.” Read the Q&A.

Opening China

Display ad platform OpenX is continuing to build up its position in Japan and is using the country as a launch pad for a planned China expansion, ClickZ’s Adaline Lau reports. “Whether it’s Japan or across Asia, we are deeply committed to the region,” Jason Fairchild, OpenX’s chief revenue officer, says. Read more.

Striking Back At Patent Trolls

Cloud computing provider Rackspace says its been hit with another patent lawsuit, simply for hosting a site called GitHub. Rackspace is going on the offensive, calling out its attackers, PersonalWeb Technologies, as patent trolls, Alan Schoenbaum, Rackspace’s general counsel says in a blog post. Read it. “It’s apparent that the people filing the suit don’t understand the technology or the products enough to realize that Rackspace Cloud Servers and GitHub are completely different products from different companies,” he writes.

Collective Decision

Ad tech firm Collective is ordering its company-wide sales team to get certified by the Interactive Advertising Bureau. Certification requirements including an exam (get your application here if you dare). “The interactive landscape is too competitive—and too complex—not to make sure that your executives are fully equipped with the intricate knowledge base and skill sets they need in order to thrive,” explained Jed Savage, EVP, Media Sales and Strategy, Collective. Read the release.

Nielsen’s eGRP Posse

Nielsen has saddled up a bunch of ad platforms to support its Online Campaign Ratings product, which offers apples-to-apples measurement for cross-media advertising. Turn, DataXu, FreeWheel, and Audience Science are among the 15 new “pardners” equipped for the high noon showdown in measurement town. Press release.

DoubleClick Updates

When DoubleClick announced its unified stack back in June (i.e. the Digital Marketing Manager), it was really announcing its plans for the coming one to two years. Much of the integration work still lay ahead of it. Well, now it’s begun in earnest according to a post on the DoubleClick Advertising blog. For example, the re-built bid manager of Invite Media is in working order ad Google claims, “Customers using the new Bid Manager to target, optimize, and buy display media have seen improved performance, including seeing 16% more inventory due to infrastructure improvements that reduce our latency with exchanges.“ Read more.

Enter ‘Salesforce Marketing Cloud’

Salesforce unveiled the first fruits of its Buddy Media and Radian6 acquisitions — called the Salesforce Marketing Cloud — at its Dreamforce conference. Unilever’s VP, global media innovation, Babs Rangaiah, likes it: “Unilever has fully embraced this social transformation and a partner like Buddy Media, now Salesforce Marketing Cloud, empowers us to scale our social programs globally and across many brands. This is incredibly valuable,” he says in a canned statement. Press release.

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