Nielsen Says TV Biggest, Display Growing; Horizon Gets Viewable

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

TV Eats Display

Nielsen repurposes its Q1-Q3 2013 data released last week, and notes that global online display ad spend grew nearly 33% year over year in that time period. But according to the Nielsen blog, “Despite the rapid growth of [online display] ad budgets, TV continues to reign supreme with a 57.6 percent share of all ad spending and advertisers investing 4.3 percent more into the medium.” Read the blog post.

Acquiring Intelligence

Google is acquiring artificial intelligence (AI) startup DeepMind, Re/code is reporting. According to a source for the story, the company may have as many as 50 employees and is aggressively recruiting in the AI space. The technology could potentially be used for recommendation engines. Read more. Sound familiar, ad gurus? Ad network 2.0 Rocket Fuel has positioned its tech around AI.

CPGs On The Go

Consumer packaged-goods companies are taking on mobile as a way to connect with consumers directly and avoid waste through mass-marketing campaigns. So says Mobile Marketer, which claims brands can reach people through mobile who are already out shopping and are low in the shopping funnel. “Mobile is still the most personal advertising vehicle in the world, and sophisticated brands are really starting to understand that,” said Tim Jenkins, CEO of mobile ad network 4Info. Read more.

Addressable Voting

Satellite TV competitors Dish and DirecTV are working together to bring addressable TV capabilities to political ads. The commercials will be targeted at the household level, according to Ad Age, and the combined audience is about 20 million households. “Political spending is a rapidly growing market and this allows us to go after new money,” said VP Warren Schlichting of Dish Network. ZIP+4 targeting plays right into classic political targeting whether it’s a precinct, ward, county or block. Overlay that with IP addresses and politicos hope for the holy grail of one-to-one communication with voters. Read more.

Viewability Come True

Horizon Media has tested a system that can detect whether an impression is in view before the ad is served. Viewability is hot! Horizon worked with Turn and RealVu to meet viewable standards while bidding programmatically, according to MediaPost. “We really don’t see any value in bidding on inventory that’s not in-view, we’re trying to carve those impressions out and get it as close to 100% possible,” said Donnie Williams, chief digital officer at Horizon. Read more.

System Updates

Acxiom announced additions to its Audience Operating System that give marketers more cross-channel abilities. Some of the new options include audience discovery by vertical, retargeting abilities of email audiences with display ads and real-time feeds. “We believe that the combination of Acxiom data, client data and third-party media data, applied in concert with AOS across channels, will help agencies and marketers generate results that redefine the evolution of 1:1 marketing at scale,” said client Lisa Weinstein, president for global digital, data and analytics at Starcom MediaVest Group. Read the release.

The Yahoo Display Report

Yahoo reports its Q4 2013 earnings today. In advance of the report, ABR Investment Strategy analyst Richard Fetyko said in a note to investors yesterday that Yahoo’s display future remains foggy. “Display segment trends are less clear, particularly in light of the recent forced departure of the COO. Display revenue declined 7% in 3Q13, an improvement over the 11% respective declines in 1Q and 2Q, and we expect those improvements to continue.” You can listen to the earnings webcast at 2 p.m. Pacific/5 p.m. Eastern on Yahoo’s IR site.

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