Turn has announced today that it will offer a white label version of its buying platform to agencies and advertisers. (Read the release.) Previously known as a network and exchange, Turn will now let buyers buy media from the same sources that Turn-the-network does for its clients with its Exchange Trading Desk product. In addition, it will offer a full-strength version of its platform (called “Private Network”) to agencies who are looking to buy beyond the Turn inventory pool such as direct publisher relationships or other networks or exchanges. For example, taking a look at TRAFFIQ’s announcement early this week with Havas, Havas Digital could license (hypothetically) Turn’s Private Network product and then use it to buy TRAFFIQ inventory as well.
Redwood City, CA-based, Turn joins a rapidly-expanding field of buying platforms that includes Invite Media (Q&A), MediaMath (Q&A), [x+1] (Q&A), AdBuyer.com (Q&A) and CPM Advisors (Q&A) to name a few.
It’s shaping up to be quite a race.
Google Exchange Plans EXPOSED!
- “The 45 buyers and sellers on the current version of the exchange will be the first to test the new exchange before it fully launches in September.”
- “Google plans to take a 20% cut of publishers’ earnings via the exchange.”
- “Spot Exchange (the next rev’s name according to NMA) will launch first and take real-time, non-guaranteed inventory” with a reserved inventory exchange to follow.
CPMs Are Back! – Says PubMatic
Yield optimization company, PubMatic, says CPM fires are starting to grow hotter in its latest “Ad Price Brief.” (PDF) Display CPMs have experienced a big turnaround having risen 35% since the beginning of the year and only ~10% below rates of a year ago. More coverage from BusinessWeek’s Rob Hof as he interviews PubMatic CEO Rajeev Goel who observes that trends contributing to CPM increases include a drop in the number of sites relying on advertising as a business model and innovation in the marketplace which is eliminating waste.
AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka isn’t buying the positive report entirely but adds that after his own check of publishers “They differed on the degree of enthusiasm for the remainder of the year, but both cited demand from entertainment advertiser, as well as consumer packaged goods..”
PubMatic also announced five panels for its AdRevenue Conference including the topical, “The Blurring Lines of Ad Exchanges, Ad Marketplaces, and Ad Networks,” to be held on October 8 in New York City. Visit the conference site for more info.
Fair Deal for AdBrite
Jennifer Saba of Editor and Publisher covers the formation of a new organization of over 1,000 publishers called The Fair Syndication Consortium whose “strategy is to track sites that swipe and re-use content from the original creators. The Consortium would then contact the site as well as the networks serving ads for compensation.” This is a daunting task but may be the equivalent of what the music industry has done. If content creators can scare a few high profile and alleged content swipers it would seem possible that so-called “swiping” could diminish. On the other hand, if they go too far, they could lose links (the web’s currency) from the many sites linking out from article snippets. AdBrite appears to have managed to position itself as the ad network of record who will monetize this swiped content as well as member “premium” content.
Today’s AOL-Armstrong-Display Ad story
The drumbeat continues for AOL’s new plans as CEO Tim Armstrong is featured, yet again, in a major publication – an interview with Saul Hansell of the New York Times. Armstrong defiantly tells Hansell, “Nobody owns the display space today” and suggests that AOL specialized content could attract big players in the CPG space such as P&G with their out-sized, brand dollar budgets.
No Vertical Love
In AdAge, Simon Dumenco interviews CEO Rich Antoniello of magazine publisher Complex Media and inquires about his vertical ad network business – a “premium vertical ad network for discerning style- and trend-focused young men 18 to 34.” (You know who you are, People!) Antoniello takes the hard line about exchanges in regards to his 23-site network, “we do not supplement any of our inventory by selling it at a huge discount on yet another ad exchange.” Take that! Until real-time, impression-level bidding with liquidity is achieved, it may be hard to convince publishers and vertical ad network execs like Antoniello that exchanges will improve their CPMs. Of course, if exchanges do offer better CPMs, where does that leave his vertical ad network in that pubs could go direct to the exchange? Hmm.
If Al Franken was an Ad Network
According to the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard website (@NiemanLab), a new ad network comprised of liberally-minded sites such as Mother Jones, Air America and The Nation. Called the Ad Progress Network, it’s intent is to cut out the middleman – a familiar refrain these days. “Advertisements can be frequency-capped, geographically targeted and demographically targeted,” says the company’s website. I’d say someone is using “cookies”! It’s not so bad, is it?
Finally, in case you have been sleeping for 24 hours straight (congrats, by the way), Amazon bought Zappos.com, the shoe people, for $920 million (was $847 million). M&A is back!
