New Twitter Chairman; Facebook Plans Ads For Messenger

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140-Character Connection

You thought Twitter and Google were tight before? The microblogging platform just brought on Google’s former chief business officer Omid Kordestani as its executive chairman. The last few weeks have been kind of crazy for Twitter. Co-founder Jack Dorsey returned as CEO, then the company unveiled its Moments product initiative. THEN it laid off more than 300 of its staffers. The New York Times speculates that Kordestani’s appointment “could bring a level of calm and stability.” Certainly, Kordestani brings extensive business connections from his time working at Google. Read more.

Message In A Bottle

Wired goes deep into Facebook’s plans for Messenger, its standalone app that has lately added commerce functionalities. The goal is to support Messenger with advertising, just like Facebook – and Alibaba. “When you’re a business that generates most of its revenues from advertising, it’s just a better business,” Facebook VP of messaging David Marcus tells Wired. “eBay takes a cut of every transaction and listing; Alibaba does all that for free, and makes money from advertising.” Read on.

Want YouTube? YouSpend

YouTube is the future of prime-time entertainment. Well, that’s according to Google, of course. Also according to Google: If advertisers want to reach audiences on YouTube, they’re going to have to shell out. Addressing an audience of around 1,000 ad execs at its Brandcast event in London, Google’s UK’s managing director Eileen Naughton said the cost-per-reach when targeting 16-to-34-year-olds is “optimized when 24% of your budget is allocated to YouTube.” A quarter of spend? It’s a big ask. Read more in The Drum.

Opening Up Shop

Ad platform PulsePoint – recent recipient of $30 million in debt financing – has uncorked an RTB mobile marketplace. CEO Sloan Gaon claims PulsePoint can offer CPM rates equal to or higher than current desktop rates. The marketplace release and Gaon’s promise comes right after Pubmatic released its Quarterly Mobile Index showing that “mobile CPMs are higher and growing faster than desktop CPMs.” First it was the Year of Mobile (for like five years). Perhaps this is the Year of the Mobile CPM. Read more on MediaPost.

But Wait, There’s More!