TubeMogul Revenue Grows; Yahoo Continues Struggling

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

Brands Turn On The Tube

Video DSP TubeMogul grew its revenue by 70% in Q3 to $46.5 million. Total ad spend increased 65% to $103.4 million, as the company signed preferred video platform partnerships with brands like L’Oréal USA and Dannon. TubeMogul also teamed up with 50 publishers and broadcasters to launch a programmatic direct offering, called Select Access, with 4 billion available impressions projected for 2016. “TV is still the best way to quickly build reach with a target audience,” said Brett Wilson, TubeMogul’s CEO, but added that “after the initial burst of spend, the implication is you end up reaching fewer and fewer new people with more and more ad exposures.” TubeMogul’s new cross-screen planning system is designed to mitigate that. Results.

YaWho?

Yahoo appears to be on a negative swing, with its recent dismissal from the Snapchat Discover Page, tepid stock growth and an exodus of executive talent. Now Kara Swisher reports for Re/code that embattled CEO Marissa Mayer has brought in McKinsey & Co. to make some tough calls on units to shutter, invest in or sell. Yahoo still aims to rebuild around its core ad business once it’s down to fighting trim. Sources tell Swisher that Mayer has been demanding execs agree to three- to five-year commitments, which precipitated key departures. Read it.

Give And Take

One of the standing retailer complaints about ecommerce markets is that they convert on single sales, but deprive the brand of potential lifetime customers. Publishers are finding much the same with Facebook. The social media giant shares fun-size revenue bites via its Instant Articles and ad products, but the actual referrals back to publisher sites have dropped by a third so far this year, according to data from SimilarWeb reported by Digiday’s Lucia Moses. Facebook says it’s a result of more content on the site diluting the reach of individual posts, not deliberate fiddling with referral knobs. More.

Ad Blockers Under The Glass

Google is preparing a study of ad-blocking habits to identify precisely what motivates the practice. Frédéric Filloux writes in The Monday Note, “A (large) unspecified number of people will go through what is called a Cognitive Load Test in which users are compensated for reading as many articles as possible. Different series of stories will carry various ads formats, ranging from the most invasive to the lightest.” Filloux goes on to discuss the implication of rampant ad blocking for publisher sales teams and marketing organizations, and how those constituents should respond to this slow-motion disaster. Read on.

Direct vs. Brand?

Seth Godin pens a blog post on the confluence of brand and performance marketing. TL;DR version: It’s uncomfortable for all parties. “If you’re a direct marketer, your peers are going to push you to make ads that are more palatable to a brand marketer’s sensibility,” Godin writes.
“The problem with this, of course, is that you’ll end up neither here nor there. You won’t be culturally embraced the way an actual brand marketer can be, and you won’t generate the yield you were looking for.” Read it.

But Wait, There’s More!