Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
VivaKi Ventures Transitions
VivaKi Ventures has transitioned from the investment phase to the integration phase according to a ClickZ article by Zach Rodgers. Rodgers says that VivaKi investments such as Adap.tv, Aggregate Knowledge, Tumri and others will continue to be integrated into the VivaKi Nerve Center toolkit, but the venture unit will back away from further equity investment. Sean Kegelman, SVP of Partnerships at VivaKi, will get what remains of VivaKi Ventures responsibilities. Read more. With an impressive list of tech companies in-house (likely including another unnamed DSP or two), the Nerve Center appears to have enough technology for now.
A Health-y IPO
Waterfront Media is taking the IPO plunge in a public offering that – if successful – will raise $100 million according to PaidContent’s Joseph Tartakoff. Don’t be confused though – it’s no longer Waterfront Media. It’s Everyday Health, the owner of 25 health-related websites which fill the Google search result pages with paid ads and organic results – not to mention heavy spending on the Google Content Network. Read more. And, here’s the S-1.
Hearst Thinking Mobile
In a release, Crisp Wireless announced its new mobile ad serving technology (Adhesion) for the mobile web which continues to show the ad above-the-fold even though the consumer is scrolling down the page. The company said Hearst Magazines Digital Media is one of the first publishers to sign up for the service. Read the release.
It’s all doom and gloom for display advertising as Meredith National Media Group president Jack Griffin tells Folio that “there’s no getting around that display advertising on the Internet is going to be no one’s salvation. There’s not enough of it while the inventory is infinite. There is a tremendous imbalance of supply and demand.” Jack, seems to me you need a supply-side platform! Anybody got one? Read more.
Calculating The IRR
If your investor puts in $100,000 and gets back $25,000 a year, that’s a 25% annual return on investment, right? Wrong! And, Union Square Ventures’ Fred Wilson tells you why on his blog as h distills the best procedure for calculating the investor’s rate of return or … IRR. Read it.
Video Ad China
You may not have heard of Ad China, yet, but the newly-formed media platform is forming key partnerships with the country’s largest media players including HunanTV and China Network Television in order to realize some impressive scale as it rolls out its online video ad platform. With a reported growth rate of 20% in 2009 for the online ad industry in China, any early online ad infrastructure plays have a significant opportunity that could be leveraged globally. See the release.
More Better
Media consultant Steve Smith opines on MediaPost that “building a privacy RoboCop with muscle ultimately helps simplify a verification process that could become dizzying and inefficient very quickly.” Specifically, Smith points to Scott Meyer’s Better Advertising as Robo as the privacy tools race marches on. Read more from Smith.
Lotame Offers Preferences
From the Lotame blog, the advertising platform company announced the launch of the Lotame Preferences Manager (see it here). Like many companies such as Yahoo!, Google, Bizo and even the National Advertising Initiative (NAI), you can now opt-out of cookie tracking. But, you can also ADD data with Lotame’s version “so that Lotame can serve [consumers] ads that better match their expressed preferences.” Read more.
Still Predicting
On the AdRoll blog, after much hemming and hawwing, AdRoll’s VP of Biz Dev and Marketing, Adam Berke, has released his 2010 predictions in time for 2010. They were worth the wait. Berke predicts attribution, a key to brand dollars moving online, will finally take off and “At least one yield optimizer disappears/changes its business model. There are too many players, too much marketing that is way ahead of product, and too little value being created for all 5-6 to maintain the status quo.” Read the insights.
Raising A Round With LinkedIn
I like The Business Insider’s title for this news item: “Irish Startup Raises $230,000 Using Only LinkedIn.” Ah, the Irish! The software company raised $230,000 in 10 days by sending out invites to invest on LinkedIn. Read it.
Mediabrands Has 4 CEOs
AdWeek’s Steve McClellan reports that when Mediabrands CEO Nick Brien leaves to become CEO of IPGs McCann Worldgroup, his former job at Mediabrands will be co-owned by no less than four people. And one of these four candidates will win the job after a year. From here, it has the makings of a full season of “Big Brother”. Read more.
