Publicis Buying Aegis?; The Move Toward Transparency; Meredith Buying Publishers, Serving Audience

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Publicis Buying Aegis?

Marketwatch’s Ruth Bender reports that Publicis CEO Maurice Levy is not interested in acquiring agency holding company Aegis’ media business in spite of news reports. According to Bender, Levy said at last week’s Cannes ad festival, “For the moment, we don’t have any ambition in that area. But we are following what is happening. I would say we’re attentive, not interested.” Read more. Another Publicis, acquisition smoke screen?… ripple dissolve… 2009… Razorfish.

Transparent Performance

Last week, it was Google testing a new feature which added the number of clicks an ad received to paid search results on Google.com. This week, Microsoft Ad Center’s “Quality Score” nubmers take centerstage as Search Engine Land’s Matt Van Wagner notes the difference between Google and Microsoft’s scoring. He says, “Microsoft has expressed their interest in driving greater transparency into how its ad ranking systems work by providing quality scores for every keyword and match type in your account and how those scores change over time.” Overall, is “transparency” the Trojan Horse into the Google juggernaut? Maybe. But Google can (and does) flip that switch, too. Opening the AdSense black box seems inevitable here as technology and innovation force open the proverbial lid. Read more.

The Real Facebook Display

CEO Brian Wiener of Dentsu-owned 360i answers a few questions from Brian Morrissey on DIGIDAY. So, what gives with Facebook display ad momentum? Wiener says, “As I tweeted last week as soon as I saw the eMarketer report, categorizing Facebook in the display category is fairly misleading. Facebook has created a category of social advertising that is a cross between search and display.” And, he’s just getting started. Read more.

It’s The Data Within The Audience

Writing to the media masses, Jeff Jarvis says on his Buzz Machine, “Rather than concentrating on total audience, we should concentrate on the net future value of each reader. Where does that value reside? That question raises a fundamental strategic -and religious- issue: We in news and media keep saying that our content has value. Well, yes; no one will disagree. But we need to ask whether the greater value resides in the content or in the relationships and data it can spawn.” Yes! Read more.

Buying Publishers

Looking to improve its online food diet, Meredith announced that it was buying EatingWell Media Group. The WSJ’s Russell Adams writes that EatingWell Media Group “publishes the bimonthly magazine EatingWell, and this week is starting Recipe.com, which will consist initially of a quarterly magazine, a website and other digital assets.” Everybody loves food. Read more (subscription). Meredith looks to leverage its own audience of what it says are 75 million middle-income women who are underserved by the food mag category. Read the release.

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The Daily (Mail’s) Dose Of Medicine; No Time To Wait On Pause Ads

Marketer Maturity

Appealing to marketers, [x+1] has commissioned a piece from Forrester Research titled, “A Maturity Framework For Digital Marketers.” Among other topics, the piece breaks down the types of marketers out there ranging from Traditionalists (bad) to Multichannel Mavens (now we’re talkin’). Describing Traditionalists, Forrester offers, “Traditionalists are comfortable with the status quo. They rely on tried-and-true marketing channels like TV, mail, and print; digital typically functions in their organizations as part of bundled media buys with those traditional channels …” Download the paper here (pay with a little PII).

OpenRTB Without Admeld

On the DataXu blog, Aaron Kechley, vice president of products, looks at the OpenRTB standard in a post-Google/Admeld world. Admeld is part of the OpenRTB standards team so its unclear what the next step is with OpenRTB and Google once the acquisition is approved by regulators (Yes, it’s going to be approved. At the very least if DoubleClick can be, there’s no way this won’t be approved.). Baker closes with a request, “So, to my colleagues in the industry: Yes, we compete with each other every day, and we will continue to do so! But we must also cooperate to expand the common ground we’ve found in the connected world of RTB (…).” Read more.

Print Watch

The Guardian reports that UK media trade, New Media Age, among others is printing its final rag and going online-only except for a monthly, printed supplement in Marketing Week. The Guardian Katherine Rushton writes, “Dozens of jobs have been placed in consultation and a number of the company’s publishers and editors are understood to have left the building.” Read more.

Mo’ Xaxis