Meredith Goes Native; What Yahoo Needs

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Meredith Adopts Native

Battling falling CPMs and banner blindness, Meredith Corp. is the latest publisher to hop on the native ad bandwagon. The first glimpse of sponsored content will surface later this month via FitnessMagazine.com, which relaunches Wednesday. According to Meredith SVP and Chief Digital Officer Andy Wilson, the publisher’s writers could get a crack at producing branded content. “We’re continuing to look at what involvement we have from the editorial side,” Wilson said. “We’re keeping an open mind.” Meredith will roll out the native spots across its top 10 sites, including Better Homes and Gardens, Allrecipes.com and Parents. The publication has yet to name participating advertisers. Digiday has more.

Yahoo Ad Tech

Yahoo sits on a boatload of cash from the Alibaba IPO, and it needs to do something with it. Purchasing an ad tech company to make it competitive (hopefully) with the likes of Google, Facebook and AOL would be a good start. Then again, Yahoo’s had a lot of starts in ad tech, and has consistently hit the wall well before the finish. The WSJ’s Mike Shields examines Yahoo’s struggles with the ad tech tools it’s already rolled out, now bundled under the Yahoo Advertising banner. As VivaKi exec Sean Kegelman points out, Yahoo has a lot of holes to fill: “They are just playing catch up in display, and they are nowhere in video. They need help in mobile too. There are a whole bunch of components of their stack where they need to either build or buy. It’s indicative that they are still far behind.” Read it (subscription).

Mobile Video Mediation

Mobile’s hot, video’s hot, but what about mobile video? “Mobile video mediation platform” and stealth startup Aerserv revealed itself to the world Monday via VentureBeat. Basically, the technology is designed to let publishers prioritize which ad networks fill their available mobile video ad slots. In the words of company CEO Josh Speyer: “Mediation just means that we allow publishers to take how they sell, who they sell to, and what the ad formats are, and govern the risk and reward of additional monetization.” Ad mediation isn’t altogether exotic – MoPub, now owned by Twitter, has offered it as a free value-add since 2012 – so Aerserv seems to be differentiating via its focus on mobile video.

The Oracle Of Business Data

On Wednesday, Oracle and B2B intent data provider Madison Logic partnered to make more than 100 million anonymous business profiles available to advertisers. “B2B marketers have long relied on marketing automation and sales efforts to reach their target audience but they are missing a huge opportunity to continue that dialogue across paid media,” said Oracle Data Cloud VP Peter De Temmerman in a press release. Madison Logic VP of programmatic data solutions Greg Herbst will lead the Oracle partnership.

eBay’s Q3 Earnings

Still experiencing minor aftershocks from its cybersecurity breach back in May, eBay reported a 12% increase in Q3 revenue to roughly $4.4 billion, and a small uptick in mobile-enabled commerce volume from $62 billion last quarter to $63 billion in Q3, up 27%. (Earnings release PDF.) eBay and PayPal both generated double-digit customer growth, reaching 157 million active registered accounts and 152 million active buyers, respectively. Though there was no mention of eBay’s mobile ad network (announced in September, with an expected Q4 launch), there was talk of how Apple Pay will impact the overall business.

CPG On TV

Simulmedia is licensing Nielsen Catalina Solutions’ marketing platform, AdVantics On Demand, with the aim of upping reach and sales for Simulmedia CPG TV ad clients. Nielsen Catalina Solutions CEO Mike Nazzaro said the partnership signals a shift to behavior-based TV planning. “This will help drive a critical focus on sales results and create more opportunity for TV to have a major effect on advertiser goals,” he added. Read the press release.

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