'Buddy' Deal for GroupM; Maxing The CPM With Rising Stars; Vizu Measure Lift On Mobile

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‘Buddy’ Deal for GroupM

Business Insider’s Jim Edwards sees “mandate” written all over a new preferred vendor deal between WPP and Buddy Media. “With Sorrell wanting to see his $5 million stake in Buddy Media pay off, there will be pressure on GroupM buyers to move their business from rival agencies—TBG, AdParlor, Adaptly, Blinq Media, 22Squared et al.—to Buddy Media and the Brighter Option unit it bought in February.” (Read more) But the agreement’s not exclusive, says GroupM Interaction CEO Rob Norman: “We will continue to work with other partners but believe this consolidation will offer our clients and teams the opportunity to develop consistent high performance in a rapidly developing market.” Under the deal, GroupM’s MEC, Mindshare, MediaCom and other units will throw their considerable weight behind Buddy Media’s social ads product.

Maxing The CPM

On iMedia Connection, Rare Crowds CEO Eric Picard says that publishers need to start using the fancy new IAB ads which provide larger screen real estate for the advertiser. He writes, “Publishers also need to make sure that these new units are not held aside as special options and used like rich media has been used for more than a decade now — as the way to preserve floor price. Yes, that’s a good thing for us to do; publishers should be preserving floor price wherever they can. But if we don’t aggressively move off of the long-in-the-tooth formats from 2002, we’re going to continue to see overall CPM erode.” Read more.

Have Brand Lift, Will Optimize

Don’t believe online campaigns can be optimized for brand metrics? Vizu wants to teach you different. Fresh case studies for GE, Mary Kay and Jones New York aim to show social, custom content, and other brand ad types deliver lift in mushy metrics like brand recognition and purchase intent – and that such intelligence can be fed back into campaigns. Read them and lift your purchase intent for Vizu’s products.

Tremor Goes Mobile

Ad network Tremor Video is looking to carve out a greater niche across mobile, as the space finally begins to close in on something close to the scale major advertisers and media buyers demand. The company’s introducing its Mobile Creative Platform for all the major smartphone models including Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android systems. “Mobile advertisers and publishers are making great strides into new formats like HTML5, but they still have trouble delivering a consistent ad experience across the mobile landscape,” said Yichel Chan, VP and GM, Mobile and CTV for Tremor Video. Having a single format for serving mobile ads on all major devices could be a good step to making that happen. Read the release

Selling The Ad Network

Video search engine and ad network Blinkx reported its fiscal Q4 earnings yesterday and also divulged the particulars of its acquisition of ad network Burst Media (read 2011 AdExchanger Q&A), which eventually sold for nearly $40 million considering Blinkx’s rising stock price. From the release, “The purchase consideration comprised equity of $29.3 million, $0.5 million cash and $1.4 million of costs associated with the acquisition and amounts owing to Burst Media Corporation shareholders. As a result of movement in the share price between announcing the agreement and completion, there was an up lift to the equity consideration of $9.2 million bringing the overall equity to $38.5 million and total consideration to $40.4 million.” Read more.

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Is TTD The New Goliath?; Amazon Adds More Ads

As Good As TV

Sony is turning to ad serving platform ZEDO for its Multi Screen Media (SONY Entertainment Television India) unit to help improve the performance of ads on its online video player. And by “improving,” the company believes it will be more reflective of the kind of premium experience associated with broadcast. Sony will use ZEDO’s VAST video ad platform for the ads in place of its existing SAAS-based system. “TV advertising is still the best,” said Roy de Souza, founder of ZEDO. “I believe that as publishers run VAST video ads on the web, online advertising will become as good as TV.” Read the release

Fewer Stupid Advertisers

On ClickZ, Andrew Goodman looks at how Google runs its business and wonders if there is trouble ahead: “More and more advertisers doing a better job at measuring is largely good for Google, because it puts the price of a click on a solid foundation. If one advertiser decides clicks are too expensive, the market is smart enough to step in and buy the same click for roughly the same price. But has Google forgotten that more measurement leaves fewer stupid advertisers in the auction whose pockets you pick when you anticipate a weak quarter or two?” Read more.

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