Video Ads Under The Microscope; Adobe Adding To Its Social Marketing Stack; Google Showing Performance, Literally

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

Video Ads Under The Microscope

In “The Wild West of Online Video Ads,” a hard-hitting new article from DIGIDAY’s Mike Shields looks at an example from what he says is a Blinx screensaver which served a Tremor Video video ad as well as a few other examples where unnecessary video impressions are generated. Shields writes, “The ads call into question what sort of value the advertisers got, and are example of how the online video ad industry is a fast-growing market that tends to play just as fast with the rules.” Read more.

Make My Stack Social

Marketing stack maker Adobe announced its new “Adobe Digital Enterprise Platform for Customer Experience Management.” That’s the ADEP for CEM and whose purpose appears attribution-driven for mobile and social as the release explains, “The platform enables enterprises to build immersive, multi-channel digital interactions for today’s social and mobile customers. A significant milestone in the delivery of its CEM vision, the new offering by Adobe gives enterprises the ability to bring together marketing and IT (…).” The witch’s data brew – Marketing and IT! Read more. And, read Laurie Sullivan’s interview in MediaPost.

eBay Closes GSI

It’s official. GSI Commerce is now a part of eBay as the $2.4 billion transaction officially closed yesterday which brings GSI acquisitions Fetchback and ClearSaleing under eBay’s “roof.” If you ever wondered what it looks like when eBay takes over in King of Prussia, PA (GSI’s HQ), see the balloons here.

The Admeld Scoop

TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington takes a wider look at how he sometimes delivers breaking news such as his scoop around Google’s acquisition of Admeld two weeks ago. Arrington writes, “A couple of weeks ago I apologized to the CEO of AdMeld for writing about their acquisition without even contacting him to let him know beforehand or ask for a comment. He wrote back ‘the call would have been nice.'” Read more.

Showing Performance, Literally

What if every display ad unit had the number of clicks, or CTR, or reach it generated – right next to the ad unit. Google is apparently experimenting with such a scenario in Google paid search ads. According to Search Engine Land’s Pamela Parker, “A Google spokesperson confirmed that the display of clicks was part of a very small experiment on the look and feel of search results pages. It’s not clear exactly how clicks were calculated — are they on that particular ad creative or on every ad featuring that landing page URL, or on every ad placed by that advertiser?” Read more. This could speak to the social search strategy and the +1 button – and even a social display strategy down the road – as users learn what “the hive” thinks about certain ad executions.

Zeal For Behavioral Ads

In the Washington Post, writer Michael Rosenwald does a little experiment which he calls “Operation Track Me More” in an effort to see what all this hubbub is about online privacy and behavioral ad targeting. He shares, “I can’t report that I did this with trepidation, that I trembled as my browser opened, that the lights flickered, that privacy advocates dispatched National Security Agency operatives to pry my cold fingers from the mouse. There was none of that. It was easy. I did it with zeal.” Read about the zealotry.

The Online GRP

Looking at the IAB’s Making Measurement Make Sense (MMMS) initiative, comScore research guru Josh Chasin offers his thoughts on MediaPost on the initiative’s quest to find some sort of audience-based “currency.” The online GRP has often been suggest as such but Chasin retorts, “The question isn’t, are GRPs appropriate in digital; rather, the question that emerges is, are GRPs sufficient? The answer is no.” Read it.

Finding Product/Market Fit

On his personal blog, entrepreneur and angel investor Chris Dixon points to a start-up’s unique opportunity when there’s something called a “product/market fit.” Coined originally by investor/entrepreneur Marc Andreessen, the concept means that you’re “in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.” Easy enough, right? – except that you need to predict that product/market moment in time. Dixon offers a few tips.

If I Was In Cannes…