Microsoft Says IE Compromised By Google; comScore Say Video Ads Growing 30% In A Year

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Microsoft Says IE Compromised

“Grenade!”…. Microsoft has joined the “privacy settings” scandal/fray growing around Google and claims that IE’s privacy settings have been compromised, too. Given Microsoft and Google’s mutual corporate enmity, this latest flare-up is not a total surprise. But, the allegation by Microsoft is not small and the lawyers on both sides must have dollar signs in their eyes. Corporate VP Dean Hachamovitch says, “We’ve found that Google bypasses the P3P Privacy Protection feature in IE. The result is similar to the recent reports of Google’s circumvention of privacy protections in Apple’s Safari Web browser, even though the actual bypass mechanism Google uses is different.” Read about it. This all follows last Friday’s news when, according to The Wall Street Journal and their researchers, it was learned Google had been going around Apple’s Safari browser privacy settings and setting cookies for Google ads and services leaving no opt-out for users. Google claims this was all inadvertent and the functionality has since been disabled. Late last night, Google’s responded to Microsoft – read it here on AdExchanger. Oh, and Facebook is embroiled in this one too – as ZDNet’s Emil Protalinski summarizes.

Smartphone Demos

Nielsen says that recent smartphone purchases show a discernible demographic breakdown. From the Nielsen Wire blog: “While overall smartphone penetration stood at 48 percent in January, those in the 24-34 age group showed the greatest proportion of smartphone ownership, with 66 percent saying they had a smartphone. In the same age group, 8 of 10 of those that had gotten a new device in the last three months chose a smartphone.” Get some pretty audience graphs for your powerpoint prez.

Brightcove Goes Public

Are the public markets getting more friendly to online tech companies or are investment bankers getting better at pricing the offering? On Friday, online video delivery platform Brightcove raised $55 million and saw its stock rise over 30% in the first day of trading. $55 million isn’t a lot compared to some IPOs or exits, and neither is the company’s $377 million valuation. See the ticker. But they do have $55 million to play with and if they can grow, they could be an interesting acquisition candidate for companies such as Akamai.

A Publisher’s Reach

In the UK, ABC, which provides auditing of print and digital publications, is causing pain for some publishers who are creating iPad versions of their publications. Because there is more than 5% difference in the iPad publication compared to print, they cannot include the iPad subscribers in their circulation figures. Advertisers want to see big circulation numbers and so, too, do publishers, of course. James Tye of Dennis Publishing, “It is frustrating because for titles such as MacUser, 30% of the sales now take place on digital editions. It’s not giving our advertisers the complete picture. ABC would argue that they can find it out by turning over the page but unfortunately, this is the real world and planners and buyers are busy. They want to make a decision and move on.” Read more.

Aiming At Panel Measurement

In a think piece on ClickZ, Kevin Lee sees three different objectives to Google’s recently-announced Screenwise panel project through Knowledge Networks. Beyond the objectives, Lee believes, “…as Screenwise grows, the data Google gets from its panel may eventually replace Google’s need for comScore or other research firms, plus Google will have the raw data available to slice and dice any way it chooses for itself or others. If Google positions Screenwise membership properly, it may be in a position to build a huge panel very inexpensively.” Read more.

Multi-Touch

Drawing from a recent proposal (See “Casually Motivated Attribution For Online Advertising” – PDF) from a group of Media6Degress researchers including himself, Brian Delassandro offers his views on attribution on the company blog. He presents three core concepts of multi-touch attribution including standardization, ad effectiveness, and goal alignment – for which Delassandro adds, “Every attribution system should be designed with incentive alignment in mind.” Read the first in a series of promised posts here.

Video Rankings

comScore released its pay-for-play, January 2012 rankings for video ad networks in the U.S. yesterday. The company said that the number of video ads delivered drooped from 7.1 billion in December to 5.5 billion ads in January. Presumably this drop is due to Q4 ad spend pumping through December’s video ad ecosystem. See January 2012 results. If you go back one year to comScore’s January 2011 results, 4.3 billion video ads were delivered. Year-over-year, U.S. video ad networks have seen an increase nearly a 30 increase in impressions according to comScore.

Video IP Ads

In Australia’s B&T, BBC Worldwide’s Rob Leach notes the viewing of the recent Super Bowl online by several million unique visitors and the upswing in IP-delivered video programming. Leach sees a future that his employer, which owns plenty of content, may not be ready for. He writes in an opinion piece, “When the advertising inventory and delivery process improves to match this growth in eyeballs, could advertising replace licence fees as the primary revenue stream?” Read more. Yesterday, Nielsen confirmed that IP-based video viewing is on the rise in the region. Read more.

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