IAB Takes Over Digital Upfront; More On Federated Media Display Shift

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

Upfront Momentum?

This past spring’s attempt to formalize Digitas’ NewFront — the four-year-old online ad sales-focused event designed to capture the attention of media buyers attending the TV upfront presentations — was a big production. And now, the Interactive Advertising Bureau says it will produce the show. “The impression that it was owned by a single agency looked like it would impede future growth,” IAB CEO Randall Rothenberg told the NYT’s Tanzina Vega. “They wanted the optics to be much more inclusive of the broader digital ecosystem.” Read the NYT’s report or check out the IAB release.

FBX Price Premium

Bernstein Research analyst Carlos Kirjner believes Facebook Exchange will offset price pressure on Facebook’s traditional ad revenue, as noted by AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka. “If the Exchange wasn’t around, [Kirjner] says, conventional ad pricing would drop 5 percent next year, and 5 percent the year after that. But after factoring in the growth of Facebook Exchange, which adds a big pricing premium, Kirjner figures those ads will remain flat next year, and drop a bit in 2014.” Read more.

Real Tryptophan Bidding

By its nature, RTB volume rises and falls with consumer internet traffic. In the case of Thanksgiving, that means a big fall-off in bid volume as Americans unplug to spend QT with loved ones. Mediapost covers Accordant Media data finding “average daily trading volume for RTB impressions fell between 10% and 30% during Thanksgiving week vs. corresponding market averages.” More.

Federated Media’s Growing Pains

“Conversational marketing” specialist Federated Media has the online ad industry talking about it a lot lately, and not all of it is positive. The company, which recently said it would shift away a bit from direct sales in favor of its programmatic tools through its Lijit unit, is the subject of a long post-mortem by Business Insider’s Alyson Shontell, who discusses the grousing about CEO changes and challenges presented by rival upstarts like Say Media, which has embraced FM’s old direct sales model wholeheartedly. “Say took FM’s model and did it the right way,” an otherwise unidentified ex-FM staffer says. “It’s the company FM should have been.” Read more. Related: read about the death of the banner (again).

Do Niches Need Data?

Well, who doesn’t need data these days? Jeff Roberts, writing in paidContent, concludes that niche publishers, who by their very nature don’t attract a varied audience, can probably continue to go without the use of private exchanges and the like. As one unnamed New York publisher told Roberts, “While we are a BlueKai customer, our experience is that most advertisers do not require audience segmentation data as part of their buy… My guess is that it’s probably more important for publishers with a more mass audience. Our audience is relatively targeted (and valuable) already and so segmentation isn’t needed to get the audience advertisers are seeking.” Read more.

Ad Network Review

On his personal blog, Adobe product marketer Jonathan Beeston ruminates on the pros and cons of a possible Facebook ad network. He sees a downside for publishers, “Publishers losing control of their audience is a step back. How can they bake in their own 1st party data to keep value of their proprietary audience segments?” Read more. Fun post.

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