Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
On Marketers Blaming Agencies
Ad Age’s Rupal Parekh finds that as the pressure gets turned about on the marketing department in a down economy, some marketers are pointing the finger – publicly – at their agencies and their ad compaigns. Parekh quotes a marketing consultant: “The marketer, who is part of the C-suite, needs to own the customer insights and the entire value proposition. …The advertising is only one part of the value proposition. To blame any one single element of the marketing mix, I don’t think that’s appropriate.” Seems like accountability speaks in favor of digital ads. Yet, TV spend continues to rise. What gives? Read more.
IBM Likes Social
A new research paper from IBM says that social is a key area of influence when it comes to purchase behavior. No news there – but IBM is circling within the world of the retailer and the new social commerce whitepaper offers some interesting facts such as: “Of those surveyed, 57 per cent confirmed that their primary motivation to follow a retailer online was to obtain free trials of products or discount coupons.” It’s O2O (online to offline) commerce! Can you track that? Read more from International Business Times.
Google Is (Mobile) Ads
In what could be seen as a precursor of things to somewhat-come with DoubleClick For Advertisers and Invite Media integration, Google announced simply in the title a blog post on its mobile advertising blog, “AdMob is for mobile app developers. AdSense is for mobile web publishers.” So if you’re a publisher running ad code from AdMob on your mobile website, you may want to change to AdSense. Read more. And apps is the domain of Admob. It’s all Google ultimately, but the continued separation points to the nuance and complexity of serving into an app versus a mobile website.
On Search Engine Land, Fuor Digital’s Josh Dreller looks at search retargeting and writes, “Display is changing the value of search as search will become even more valuable for targeting than it has been for the last decade with just buying text ads on search engines.” Dreller quotes Magnetic CEO Josh Shatkin-Margolis who says, “Soon, not doing search retargeting will be a fireable offense for an advertising agency.” Display drives search and vice versa. Read more. And Google +1 buttons drive both. Need more on search retageting? –read this recent Yahoo! Ad blog post. And, read another search-display-related post on iMediaConnection from Shatkin-Margolis here.
Blind Network Pull-Out
UK mobile agency, 4th Screen Advertising, claims in a Guardian article that transparency for mobile inventory remains an important trend. 4th Screen’s Mark Slade comments on last week’s Flurry study on mobile app inventory and says “that in the US and Europe alike, premium publishers and big applications are ‘pulling out of the blind networks’ to either sell in-house or work with specialist mobile agencies.” Read more.
VC, Media Company And Journalist
In case you haven’t heard about it in the blogosphere already, TechCrunch founder Mike Arrington is opening up a new venture capital fund while still remaining a writer (but not editor) of his Aol-owned publication. The fund will received $10 million in capital from Aol. The New York Times’ media columnist David Carr remarks on Arrington’s move and the implications for Aol: “At this point, it seems that AOL executives would open up a lemonade stand in front of their headquarters if they thought it would help their bottom line.” Read more. BuzzMachine’s Jeff Jarvis looks even deeper. Read it, damnit.
More Companies On The Way
On DIGIDAY, Korrelate (was “ad summmos”) CEO Curt Viebranz talks about the trend toward attribution and also offers his view on today’s ecosystem in comparison to the IPO days of yore, “For my part, I think we’re unlikely to see the days of 2007, where we had no less than five strategic exits for $250 million (including Viebranz’ Tacoda!) or more. We are seeing consolidation, and we think it will continue. At the same time, I think there is still room for additional players.” Read it.
But Wait. There’s More!
- In California, Amazon Pushes Hard to Kill a Tax – The New York Times
- Griffin Breaks Silence on Time Inc., What Lies Ahead – Ad Age
- Internet now major force in automotive purchasing process – Specific Media UK
