Valassis Launches New Brand.net Product; Medialets Gets Funds For Mobile

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Merging Online

Valassis has rolled out a new product offering associated with its Brand.net acquisiton in June. Using “Purchase Precision Technology,” Valassis says that the new tech is underpinned with the merging of online and offline data as well as “access to decades of proven media intelligence coupled with real-time digital insights” – not to mention “sub ZIP Code level” geo-targeting. Read more. Valassis has been about “local” offline – and now is moving online.

Yesterday’s Ad Tech Funding

Venture capital strikes again! Medialets has corralled another round of funding for its mobile ads marketplace tech. The $10 million round ($28.4m total) is led by Greenspring Associates. Read a humble Medialets blog post. One never knows – from the outside – if insiders are taking money off the table in an investment like this. But, as you all know, mobile remains hot. Everybody wants a piece of the action. Read VentureBeat’s summary.

Retargeting China

J.P. Morgan analyst Doug Anmuth and his team have put together a report on eCommerce in China in the wake of their coverage of B2C Ecommerce player Dangdang. Anmuth writes, “We expect China eCommerce market to grow at a CAGR of 43% from 2012 to 2015 to US$401.7Bn, accounting for 8.1% of retail sales in China. This compares to average overall retail sales growth of 18% in China for the past 5 years. Within the entire eCommerce value chain, we favor platform providers and comprehensive B2C retailers to smaller vertical retailers, as economy of scale and scope will be the ultimate driving force behind the winners.” It would seem a big (understatement) online marketing opportunity is ahead in China – spurred by Ecommerce growth. Companies like AdChina and iPinYou – let alone international players – hope to benefit.

DMP Signals

IDG TechNetwork offers an update on its data management platform (DMP) in BtoB Magazine. Known as “TechSignals” (see July interview in AdExchanger), IDG says the DMP manages first-party data emanating from “110 million monthly unique visitors and billions of ad impressions on IDG’s direct and affiliate networks and its ad exchange—and third-party data…” Read more. IDG’s Pete Longo identifies what he sees as the DMP benefits: “When advertisers are looking for a very specific, hard-to-find audience, they’re willing to pay a premium.”

Go Long

Following up Adweek editor Mike Shields piece, Upstream’s Doug Weaver sees lessons to be learned for ad tech-ians. He writes, “Build your company and your services to last 25 years, not 25 months. Build products that grow new value and create new revenue, rather than simply finding incremental savings in an already collapsing banner market.” Read more.

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More Than Just Brick And Mortar; Surfing The CPCs

What Is Premium Inventory?

Jack Marshall surveys industry types in a piece on Digiday. ZenithOptimedia’s James Kiernan, chimes in, “We tend to define premium inventory based on factors such as supply and demand in the marketplace, how contextually relevant and credible it is to a select category and if there’s a strong track record with regards to performance.” Placement is secondary says Kiernan. Read it.

Facebook Rumor Control

With all the rumors swirling around the slightest change — of even the appearance of one — in what Facebook does, the social network could probably use some help in combating misinformation. Techcrunch’s John Constine rides to Facebook’s rescue today to say that he has solid proof that Facebook purposefully reduced how many users see Page posts in the News Feed to induce higher payments from said Page operators. So what happened? Constine writes: “These Pages appeal to newer Facebook users who don’t Like that many Pages or have many friends. So originally they might have been seeing more of these Pages that later saw their reach drop. But over time these fans added more friends and Liked more Pages. That meant there was more competitions for space in their news feeds, and all their friends and Liked Pages started showing up less frequently.” Read more.

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