Online Video Ads Growing; The Promise Of Banner Ads; MDC Arms For Procurement

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

Video Is H-O-T

Hot hot hot… Video DSP and analytics firm TubeMogul says pre-roll is “catching up” with online display ads in terms of inventory with real-time bidding attributes. See the graphic. According to a company blog post, “In the past five months, pre-roll volume grew by an average of 34.9% per month, far outpacing display advertising’s 7.8% monthly growth rate. In November, we are seeing an average of over 200 million auctions per day.” To give you a scale comparison, Yahoo! Right Media Exchange claims it sees 10 billion sold impressions per day.

Ad Exchanges And SSPs

AdBrite CEO Iggy Fanlo discusses the intersection of the sell-side platform and ad exchange models in an opinion piece on MediaPost. He claims that ad exchanges are built around techology (AdBrite runs an ad exchange) and SSPs are built with people and services. Read it. At times, service seems to be a dirty word for the tech industry as successful exits are based on technology rather than services which are thought to be more easily duplicated.

Bit.ly’s Predictive Analytics

A new deal with Verisign is giving URL-shortener company Bit.ly an eye toward the future as MIT’s Technology Review reports, “VeriSign looks up over 50 billion URLs every day and, like Bitly, gets a handle on what people are doing online as a result. In particular, VeriSign’s data could add an awareness of activity outside the social sites where Bitly links are used.” It’s another targeting layer beyond Facebook, Twitter, Google ecosystems. Read more. For now, Bit.ly sees reputation management as a key service.

Ad Spend Sputters

Is ad spending slipping? Kantar Media says that a deceleration of ad spend in TV is underway that has led to a 1.5 % decrease in July and August. September is still being counted. Can automation save the day?? It appears macro-economic factors (recession, war, pestilence) are having some impact. Read more in The Wall Street Journal. There is no mention of how digital trends in particular look, though.

The Future Of Online Ads

On his Reuters blog, media writer Felix Salmon discusses his AppNexus Summit keynote address last week and says that assumptions by online media people need some pushback. Salmon doesn’t see much us for display as he looks at its early days and says, “A few sponsors would buy ads in order to understand the new medium, but there was never anything particularly promising in online banners.” Read it.

Procurement Wars

MDC Partners has decided to enter the battle with client-side procurement with one of its own as the agency holding company announced the hiring of Brett Colbert as its chief procurement officer. Colbert used to be global manager of procurement at Anheuser-Busch InBev. Ad Age’s Rupal Parekh says Colbert will take part in agency-client negotiations which some see as a battle between price and value.Read more. The unspoken wild cards remain automation and innovation which both sides can take advantage of.

Vote “No” On Consolidation

On Operative’s company blog, CEO Mike Leo writes that consolidation is not happening at least if his company’s stats are to be believed: “The number of requests to integrate with our platform is three times what they were just two years ago. These numbers and the activity in the space indicate to me, that consolidation is not happening. The reality is that for every company that is bought, two to three are being created, and driving the need for solutions that solve very big problems.” Read more on the (Operative’s?) Operating System model.

The Amazon Library

Amazon is pouring more goodies into its “Prime” product as it progressively becomes a for-pay ($79) loyalty card. You’ll now be able to borrow one book a month from Amazon if you own a Kindle Fire. Whoa- Amazon the library! Read more in the Wall Street Journal. Unlike some Wall Street analysts who are skeptical about Amazon’s investment in the future, JP Morgan analyst Doug Anmuth is jazzed, “We believe Kindle Fire devices and related sales of digital and physical goods on Amazon could drive $5 billion of revenue in 2012 and $8 billion in 2013.” Content – in this case, digital books – is a key Amazon asset. Books can be a loss leader for anything people can buy via Ecommerce and Amazon. Walmart can’t do that.

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