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One Good Turn
One of the early ad networks to morph into a DSP, Turn Inc. has closed a huge $20 million in Series D funding led by Greenspring Associates. Turn will use the new capital to fund its “explosive growth,” build up its infrastructure and expand its European operations. Read more from PaidContent’s David Kaplan.
Tracking The Spend
In its 10th quarterly overview of the online ad landscape, The Rubicon Project found that despite the ad recovery, Q3 was typical as its Rubicon 20 Index, which monitors the top premium sites, tracked a seasonal dip at the start of July as advertisers pulled back from their end-of-the-school year/early summer budgets and began saving it up for the holiday season. There was expected flat growth from the second quarter to the third, driven by seasonality. However, Q3 ’10 was much more stable than Q2 ’10, with 29 percent less volatility of spend in the period. Meanwhile, year-over-year ad spending jumped, as the Rubicon 20 Index increased an average of 25 percent in Q3 ’10 as compared to Q3 ’09; the stability of spend was significantly greater as well. Download the full report here (Registration Req.)
Online Ads’ Hot Nine Months
Although the final numbers for the year aren’t out yet, but 2010 appears to have been as strong a year for online ads as expected. Looking at the first nine months of 2010, WPP Group’s Kantar Media said display advertising had the second largest growth rate among the media categories, rising 7.7 percent compared to the year ago period. Only TV was stronger, rising 10.5 percent. Most notably, display advertising’s growth surpassed the total ad market, which was up 6.4 percent between January and September 2010. Read more.
In a post-exchange world, Fuor Digital’s Josh Dreller asks, how will the ad nets adapt in order to stay relevant and profitable? For one thing, simply promoting their efficiency and reach isn’t going to cut it anymore. Unique, customizable products and clear data opportunities are what it’s going to take to maintain relevance. Read more on iMediaConnection.
Synthesizing Social And Display
While some big brands have has started to get more serious about their display ad campaigns via the social networks and microblogging sites, many small and large brands are limited in their high volume approach, notes Samir Soriano, director of Marketing at ReTargeter, in a Business Insider piece. The challenge of tracking the ROI of a social media brand campaign is that it’s more complex than the straightforward, simple approach to e-mail or search efforts. So these efforts tend be kept separate. But by converging social media and display plans together, marketers will be able to realize significantly more value than they could by keeping the two areas split.
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Daily Roundup
Google’s Like Button
There are a lot of people out there addicted to hitting that “Like” button on Facebook. And when Google sees something it “likes” it either goes out and buys it or adapts it for its own needs. In this case, Google appears to have chosen the latter, as the search giant filed for a patent application that was published last week that suggests it has developed a tool visitors can use to share information that they’ve found with others on social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other sites, according to SEO By The Sea’s Bill Slawsk. It makes sense that Google would try to find ways to outflank Facebook, as Mediaweek’s Mike Shields gleaned this dire prediction for the search giant from JP Morgan analyst Imran Khan, suggests that the social network poses a serious threat to Google’s Web traffic and revenue dominance. Khan advises Google to go after the mobile search market – immediately.
API Is King
The explosion of open API’s into wider use has been predicted for years, but if the experience of Programmable Web is any indication, the tools have finally arrived. There were 1,019 new APIs added to our API directory in 2010, two times the number added in 2009. Greater trends on the web are being played out, as social APIs were the most popular and the influence of mobile is clear, writes Adam DuVander, PW’s Executive Editor. With all the growth in API’s, that means there’s even more data out there just waiting to be harnessed.
Extra-Targeted PR Campaigns
Following WPP’s acquisition of interactive public affairs ad shop Blue State Digital, the ad holding company’s PR unit, Burson-Marsteller has struck a strategic partnership with advocacy consultant Targeted Victory. The PR shop will likely take advantage of Targeted Victory’s partnership with Targeted Victory has developed with one of its partners, online ad tech firm Lotame Solutions on its proprietary technology dubbed the Audience Targeting Platform. This platform is used for pre-campaign audience discovery, in-campaign activation and optimization, and post-campaign analysis. Read more in the release.
You’re Hired!
Tony Nethercutt, who has held executive sales posts at AdMob, Yahoo and YouTube has signed on with mobile ad network Mojiva as General Manager. Read more in the release.
