Spanfeller Sees Digital Ad Sales Ramp; Legolas Positioning For Display Futures Markets; ATT And Display Silver Lining

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

Sparking Ad Sales

In an Advertising Age article, Jim Spanfeller discusses Spanfeller Media Group and the success of its food-focused The Daily Meal site. Spanfeller admits to Ad Age’s Jason Del Rey that things didn’t going exactly as planned initially even though The Daily Meal has 2 million monthly unique users after one year. Regarding ad sales, Spanfeller says, “It’s certainly taken longer than I had hoped.” Read more.

A Guaranteed Future

Positioning itself as offering the “first audience ‘futures’ platform,” Legolas Media offers up a buy-side example of its marketplace with Horizon Media. MediaPost’s Steve McClellan quotes Horizon’s Jason Smith: “While the average online network platform CPM for a specific target audience probably averages $8 to $10, Smith said the price to reach those same audiences via Legolas “is a fraction of that.” Read more. The programmatic side of media buying continues its march on guaranteed inventory. isocket, Brand.net and several others are positioning on the “futures” side. For “futures” to work, inventory suppliers are going to need to be happy with their CPMs, too, versus the risk of letting it go in the spot market or running house ads. Cue the dynamic allocation ad serving machine now!

Keep It On Tremor

Tremor Video announced that its video advertising will now contain AdKeeper’s “keep” button – an industry first according to a release. If you’re a consumer you’ll be able to save your ads for later (the keep!) as AdKeeper aims to create additional opportunities for the marketer including engagement. How did this deal come “about”? Exactly. Says the press release: “Scott Kurnit, former CEO and founder of About, is the CEO/Founder of AdKeeper, and Bill Day, former COO and co-founder of About, is the CEO of Tremor Video.” Read the release.

More Funds, Please

The funding has not stopped! appssavvy whose technology delivers engagement with ads – between levels (etc.) in online gaming/app environments – announced that it has filled out its latest round of funding with new investor Aol Ventures among others. That brings total investment to $10.2 million in the company which also counts The New York Times as an investor. Read a bit more on The Business Insider.

Deal Collapse Silver Lining

AT&T has formally withdrawn its offer for T-Mobile after being blocked by the U.S. government over anti-trust concerns. Read it on TechCrunch. On ClickZ, managing editor Zach Rodgers postulates that this may be good news for display ad sellers as he writes, “AT&T is the second largest U.S. advertiser across all media and the sixth largest buyer of online ads. It spent $186.8 million on paid search and display advertising during the first nine months of 2011, according to Kantar Media. That’s 11 percent more than it forked over in 2010 – all the more remarkable when you consider that the company’s ad spend slowed dramatically in the weeks after it inked the agreement to buy T-Mobile.” Read more.

But Wait. There’s More!