Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
More HuffPo/Aol
The coverage of Aol’s acquisition of Huffington Post has been extensive in the past 24 hours. Here are a few highlights.. The Daily Beast’s Dan Lyons (a.k.a. Fake Steve Jobs) writes about potential problems having to do with Aol CEO Tim Armstrong’s sales roots, “Sales guys deal in numbers. But journalism is about words. Sales guys live in a world where everything can be measured and analyzed. Their version of journalism is to focus on things like ‘keyword density’ and search-engine optimization.” Read more. Effective with the announcement of the acquisition, The Business Insider says that Huffington Post CEO Eric Hippeau has moved on. Read about it. Media pundit Jeff Jarvis says he is bullish on the acquisition saying, “To think that content must be something that is created only by content companies that pay content people to create it is, like or not, outmoded. Content is no longer scarce, people. It is abundant.” Finally, from his personal blog, ADTECH/AOL Advertising’s Ben Roodman, who has been on board during the last few rocky years, thinks with superior acquisitions such as TechCrunch and HuffPo along with major technological revamping, AOL is getting its groove back: “Right now we’re experiencing jackhammers of the AOL Technologies Utilities revamping the neighborhood for a beautiful futuristic suburban media powerhouse of tomorrow.” Read the full article.
Mobile, Email, Display, Sucks
The Australian notes that email marketers using display ads aren’t taking into account the mobile browser and its special constraints. John Merakovsky, managing director marketing services Asia Pacific at Experian, makes some excuses for marketers saying, “Mobile has had so many false starts I think a level of fatigue has set in with marketers being told now is the time. But this time the smartphone revolution is being consumer driven and what it means for marketers is they have to tailor for it.” Read more.
Non-Profit Brands
Reading between the lines, it appears that non-profits may have been tiring of having their non-profit brands stuck in PSA fill inventory on the Google Content Network – inventory that was often undesirable enough that Google wasn’t willing to show paid ads. According to the Google AdSense blog yesterday, times change as Google will continue to pledge a certain amount of impressions for non-profit causes through its Google Grants program -but not as a backup PSA. Read more.
In a Facebook profile update forwarded to AdExchanger.com, AdWeek writer and Twitter personality Brian Morrissey announced that he has left AdWeek and will join Digiday as Editor-in-Chief beginning February 21. This is a coup for Digiday in the ad trade wars as it looks to add a significant editorial voice to its publication and match the momentum of its conference business. Nick Friese of Digiday’s parent company DM2 confirms the hire in a tweet here.
Omnicom Buying Again
Omnicom Group continues it’s mini buying binge (one more acquisition makes it a full-fledged buying binge) as it follows Friday’s acquisition of The Modellers with the long-rumored acquisition of Communicspace. Forrester Research’s Tamara Barber comments on the acquisition: “Communispace is the 800 pound gorilla of market research online communities (MROCs), and they have built a strong business by being innovators around how to use communities, paired with stellar client services. They are especially adept at catering to large brands with significant research budgets and deep partnerships with vendors.” It’s all about the data. Read the release.
Social Video Goes Mainstream
Social video targeting has gone mainstream, and Sharethrough has the numbers to prove it. The social video tech firm increased its agency client base by 43% and increased its revenue by 236% as brands invest an average of 250 percent more in social video media buys compared to the year before. “Sharethrough’s rapid growth over the past year reflects the maturation of social video as a mainstream strategy for brand advertisers, and we anticipate an explosive 2011 as more advertisers see the value of a content-driven approach to advertising,” said Dan Greenberg, CEO and founder of Sharethrough. Read the full release here.
Yahoo Gets Personal
Yahoo may not have bought HuffingtonPost.com, but the other major online content portal still has some tricks up its sleeve. At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, CEO Carol Bartz will announce that Yahoo “is developing a publishing platform for applications that would let users get personalized content on their phones and other mobile devices.” The platform will analyze declared preferences, search items, social media and other sources to serve users the most relevant content. Read the full article here.
Mobile Display
Karim Temsamani, Google’s first head of mobile advertising who quietly joined the team in October, tells Reuters that “Google’s mobile ad efforts are much broader than Apple’s, focusing on display ads, search ads and other types of ad formats aimed at consumers using various types of smartphones.” Read the full article here.
Akamai Ads
Akamai reports its Q4 2010 earnings on February 9 and Citibank analyst Mark Mahaney offers his thoughts in a note to investors:
“1) Near term, we view Akamai as a beneficiary of the clear recovery in Online Retail & Advertising; 2) Medium term, we believe that the overall growth outlook for eCommerce and Internet Advertising should power reasonably robust growth rates for AKAM; and 3) Long term, we believe that HD Video will emerge as a new Secular Growth driver for Akamai.” View the Akamai IR page.
Email In A Browser
The New York Times’ Alex Mindlin “drills down” on some comScore data which shows that youngins from ages 12-17 aren’t using email in a web browser like old people do. Referring to the younger crowd, comScore analyst Andrew Lipsman tells the NYT, “At this stage in their life, many of them are communicating through Facebook and texting.” Read more.
Automating The OOH
Online out-of-home marketplace AdStruc announced on its company blog that it now offers a proposal generator that “enables sellers to instantly search through their inventory on ADstruc, select specific units and then add them to a client branded proposal. The typical arduous process of charting and mapping is now completely automated.” See it.
DSPs Lack
Struq CEO Sam Barnett splashes cold water on the demand-side platform buzz in an opinion piece on Adotas saying, “DSPs lack the advanced technology to derive the best results from complex raw data, they disregard the individuality of advertisers with a one-size-fits-all approach and they neglect the importance of creative customization when targeting users.” But wait, there’s more.
Mohan Tweeting, Wojcicki Featured
Google’s VP for display advertising products, Neal Mohan, can’t keep his fingers off the “Send” button as he posts tweet #7 since he began tweeting Jan. 17. In this tweet (cue the music), Mohan posts a link to a San Jose Mercury News article about “Susan Wojcicki: The most important Googler you’ve never heard of.” For us Google watchers who already know (of) Wojcicki, we look forward to more compelling tweetage from Mohan. Read the SJ Merc News piece. And, follow Neal Mohan on Twitter.
You’re Hired!
Bridget Bidlack has joined TRAFFIQ as vp of product management under Chief Product Officer Eric Picard. Bidlack is most recently of demand-side platform Turn and before that AdECN with her roots in Picard’s old company (before it was acquired by MSFT), BlueStreak. Read the release.
ValueClick Views
More from the Wall Street analyst contingent as Ben Schachter and Tom White of Macquarie Securities offer the following on ad network/online ad co. Valueclick which reports earnings on 2/15: “For the quarter, we will be looking for evidence of success/momentum in VCLK’s (ValueClick’s) newer vertical network products, key to VCLK penetrating the fast-growing branded display market this year. VCLK’s Owned & Operated segment will also be a focus area, following reports (including from LookSmart) that the YHOO/Bing search integration negatively impacted PPCs/monetization for YHOO’s syndicated search partners during the quarter.”
But Wait, There’s Even More
- Tackling Video Click-to-Play Vs. Auto-Play Pre-Roll Advertising – MediaPost
- Beyond Clicks: Nailing Down Ad Effectiveness – Adotas
