Chartboost's App Ad Game; Native Ads Hurting Creative Agencies

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

Real-Time Games Marketing

Chartboost, which “allows game developers to reach new users through cross-promotion, make money from their games, and collaborate directly with fellow developers,” has pocketed $19 million in funding from the likes of Sequoia Capital. Read the release. Last February, CEO Maria Alegre told AdExchanger, “It’s hard to get the developer’s app above the noise. To do that, you need to have [our] platform. The thing is, managing distribution power is not that easy, because all these companies are focused on making great games. You also need analytics and manage that in real time.”

Native Ads Plow

On Adweek, Lucia Moses sees native ads starting to plow over creative agencies. “One premium publisher whose site runs a lot of native ads estimated that more than one-third of those campaigns are done in-house or by the client and don’t involve a creative agency at all. The publisher, who didn’t want to be named because, like others, he wanted to avoid appearing to be dumping on creative shops, nevertheless said his staff can do the work at Web-speed and cheaper than a creative agency.” Read more. Barry Lowenthal of agency The Media Kitchen adds, “Publishers know their audience best.”

Offline Strategic Buyers

Om Malik points out 2013 started with major digital acquisitions by two brands, Avis and Athena Health, that would at first glance seem irrelevant to technology. He expects more of this: “Not only do they need the talent, these traditional corporations need a new technology-centric way of thinking if they need to evolve their business models for the post iPhone world.” How could this play out in ad tech? How about more offline ad sellers of all stripes in market for sell-side tech, and major financial, CPG, and other brands sniffing for demand-side products focused on display and video. More.

Case Study: Facebook Drives Mobile Apps

Nanigans shared some results from an e-commerce client that used Facebook’s “mobile app install ads” to drive extremely high volume over a short, 10-day campaign. The Install Ads format uses social referrals and a strong “install now” call to action. The developer in this case spent $325,000 over 10 days, with some individual days racking up $90,000-plus in ad spend. Total ad impressions? A whopping 32.5 million, with 24,300 new installs acquired. More results.

Facebook’s Ad Net Hurdles

Consumer privacy concerns could delay any hopes of a Facebook ad network, ad agencies tell AdAge’s Kate Kaye. “I frankly don’t think Facebook has an appreciation for privacy in the space. … It just isn’t their first or second line of thinking,” an unidentifed media agency source told AdAge, suggesting that the social network has not joined the Digital Advertising Alliance, the self-regulatory privacy consortium, because “they want to stay flexible in product creation and do not want any outside influence to hamper their efforts.” Read more.

Deal Targeting Tech, Talent

Mobile ad network InMobi has bought British contextual ad provider Overlay Media. The price wasn’t disclosed. Techcrunch’s Ingrid Lunden writes that the deal was meant to help InMobi’s ability to better target users through Overlay’s technology and the expertise of its staff. “One of the things that appealed to me about InMobi is that it’s more than just serving out ads,” Overlay head Ian Anderson said of the decision to sell his company. “There are lots of things that InMobi is trying to do to improve life for the developer. I could see them moving beyond being just a pure ad server.” Read the rest.

DMP Mo’

Publisher-side data management platform (DMP) Krux published a press release yesterday on company momentum. No mention on exact revenues but “The company’s client base increased by more than 300 percent in 2012 including new distribution partners Centro and Triad Retail Media, as well as new clients such as Apartments.com, CafeMom, Gatehouse Media…” Read more.

Programmatic Players

AdRoll president Adam Berke tries his hand at predictions for the coming year. He thinks programmatic media is coming to four players in particular: “Pinterest and their supply of potentially valuable product-intent data; Twitter and their abundance of inventory better utilized with external bidders (like FB); LinkedIn and their abundance of extremely-unique B2B data and inventory; Amazon has already announced that they’ll make their data available via RTB, so it would make sense that their owned and operated ad inventory will follow suit.” Read more.

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