Yieldbot Funds For Search Intent; Gamers Have Their Intent, Too

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Searching For Intent

Yieldbot, which specializes in capturing real-time intent data through search keywords and, consequently, connects publishers with search advertiser budget, just raised $5 million, led by RRE. According to AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka, “Mendez said his company is now doing a ‘mid-seven figure’ run rate, up from essentially zero in the last year.” Read more. As Yieldbot CEO Jonathan Mendez says on his company’s blog about the funds and opportunity ahead, “It’s still early days. We’re travelling through uncharted territory of first-party big data mixed with real-time decisioning.”

Gamer Intent

Want to advertise to gamers? YouTube is evidently a good place to reach them, says new research by the video site’s owner, Google. “First, as gamers moved from researching to purchasing and playing, we discovered that they viewed brand-released and community-created videos, but relied on them at different times. Before a game came out, fans mostly watched content released by the brand, such as announce, gameplay demo and launch videos.” Read the report here.

Pay Me

In a think piece on Ad Age, Nancy Hill, CEO of the 4A’s, argues against delayed payment strategies by marketers when paying their agencies. Outside of advertising, people don’t accept delayed payment for services and these new schemes would severely damage the advertising ecosystem, she says. Hill adds, “The actions of these advertisers are not brave but greedy, and the naked self-interest involved is not only far-reaching but downright disgusting.” Read more.

RTB And Search

Quantcast CEO Konrad Feldman lays out some reasons for advertisers to look at real-time bidding (RTB) from a “value” perspective rather than just a “cost” one in a Marketing Land column. “What’s that mean?” you ask. He thinks search advertisers have a leg up on RTB because they are used to bidding based on keywords and micro-segments of audiences. Read more.

New Zynga CEO

After some speculation, it’s official: Former Xbox exec Don Mattrick is leaving Microsoft for troubled online gaming company Zynga, where he will be CEO. Founder Mark Pincus is stepping down as CEO, but will remain as chairman and chief product officer. “Don is unique in the game business. He can execute in multiple domains – hardware, software and network,” Pincus said in his blog post. Read more. And, read the Wall Street Journal coverage here.

Privacy Talk

Another chapter in the PRISM saga: The U.S. appears to have been spying in the European Union. GigaOM’s David Meyer explores the advertising industry’s outrage at this latest revelation by asking one question — why? Apparently big Internet companies are lobbying in the EU and were close to having provisions in a privacy bill that would sway in their favor until a spotlight was put on the whole situation. Read more.

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