Efficient Frontier Adds Agency; Clickable Adds $12 Million; Media6Degrees Adds Planner

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

Efficient Frontier Buys Agency

Efficient Frontier is starting to look like an ad agency holding company with its acquisitive ways. The search marketing platform – and display and social, too – announced the acquisition of Australia’s Downstream Media after having purchasesd social agency Context Optional in May. Ad Age’s Michael Learmonth says that the Aussie firm is one of the biggest digital agencies in the region and adds, “Downstream Marketing was already using the Efficient Frontier platform for its campaigns in Australia, so [CEO David] Karnstedt said he expects the transition to be relatively seamless. It will be Efficient Frontier’s 10th office outside the U.S.” EF is looking into mobile and video, too. Read more.

Clickable Gets $12 Million

Brands that generate rivers of cash flow are more than happy to act as a strategic investor. Having built white-labeled tools for American Express’ OPEN brand (which targets SMBs) such as SearchManager and YourBuzz, Clickable CEO David Kidder announced AMEX is its latest investor along with its existing group of VC. From his company’s blog, Kidder writes, “Today, we’re excited to announce an even deeper partnership with American Express through their leadership in our $12 million series C funding. (…) With our new funding, we will continue to aggressively accelerate Clickable’s product innovation and market development throughout our entire portfolio of online advertising solutions.” Read the Clickable blog post. VentureBeat says this brings the company’s total raise to $32.5 million. Kidder tells TechCrunch he wants his company to be the “Adwords of Social.” Read it.

Agency Of Outcomes

DataXu CEO Mike Baker returns to the digital pen and paper in a think piece on ClickZ. He has 5 ideas on how agencies of record (AOR) can thrive in the digital age. #1 is what he calls “Offer Outcome-Based Relationships. Baker admits, “Sure, clients might balk, but consider putting your own skin in the game…which leads me to the creative side of the equation.” Read about the “creative” side.

Display Or Else

TRAFFIQ’s Chief Product Officer, Eric Picard, takes the pulpit at iMedia Connection and delivers “3 ways the display industry must change — or else.” Or else? That’s right. Picard sees digital, display darkness ahead unless… he urges, “Media buying and selling needs to get more efficient. If you compare efficiency (i.e., costs) of buying and selling traditional media versus online media, there’s a very clear difference. I’ve been told by numerous sources that the efficiency is between 10-15 times less efficient for big spenders for buying online versus offline media.” See the light. (source: @prnaylor)

Data-Driven Life

AdWeek’s Chip Bayer writes about what’s after Web 2.0 – data-driven content with a splash of “real-time” – in a special “Digital Issue” for AdWeek. He quotes Flite CEO Will Price who has his own take on what needs to happen to display, “In the real-time world there’s a reason display ads are doing such a poor job of delivering brand messages—they haven’t yet adapted to being part of the customer’s ever-changing stream. Being active and agile is more likely to produce work that makes a brand resonate.” Be the stream.

Rime Of The Ancient Yahoo!

Still sailing the digital media seas with a leaderless ship, Yahoo! will report its Q3 2011 earnings after market close today. Citi’s Mark Mahaney is cautious and sees continued softness in Yahoo! display results: “Valuation remains intriguing, but there is no Top-Line Turnaround Story Proof. Catalysts (Asia assets liquidation) are identifiable, but less certain given Alibaba partnership disputes. In the meantime, MSFT Search transition is not going smoothly, YHOO’s Display segment faces significant competition & management is leaderless.” With former CEO Carol Bartz no longer a part of the earnings call, it will be interesting to see if reporting about the company’s results becomes more transparent – or changes in any way. This could be a moment to reveal a few tasty tidbits for a potential acquirer who is still sitting on the sidelines. Visit the Yahoo! IR site for the webcast. Meanwhile, Omnicom’s PHD President, Craig Atkinson, tells the Wall Street Journal that his agency isn’t spending like it used to on Yahoo!. Read more on sale talks, too (subscription).

Make My Plan

In what looks like a move into comScore and Nielsen’s wheelhouse, Media6Degrees is launching a new product called “Planner” next week according to MediaPost’s Laurie Sullivan. She writes, “For advertisers, the report (Planner) provides a list of the best publisher sites. For publishers, the report provides the same for advertisers. The tool relies on technology that creates matches based on data collected from Web page tags, or code, placed on advertisers’ and publishers’ Web sites.” It’s the buy-sell planner. Wait a second.. no.. it’s the trader planner! Trade more.

Emotive Targeting

BuzzLogic announced its Spectrum online advertising platform targeting brand dollars. The company’s tech crawls the web’s pages and performs page-level categorization according to emotive attributes says the company. A press release adds: “This is sourced real-time and without the use of cookies. Emotive-based targeting captures the emotional connection an audience has with specific page content.” Emote here.

The Display Quarter

Efficient Frontier FTW! Looking at the digital ad spend trends of its own clients, Efficient Frontier announced the results of its Q3 2011 Digital Marketing report. Display was in the mix: “Exchange Display Spend Increased 7% Quarter over Quarter: Advertisers’ demand for display is rising as performance continues to garner additional investment. More modest gains on a same-advertiser basis are expected while new advertiser demands for exchange buying options remain high.” Read the summary on the EF blog. And, download the report (pay with some PII).

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