Yahoo! Releases Q4 2010 Financials, Display Up; MediaBank Divides, Says It Will Conquer; TRAFFIQ Gets Creative With Tumri

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

Yahoo! Earnings, Display Looking Up

Yahoo! released its Q4 2010 financials and “Revenue excluding traffic acquisition costs (“revenue ex-TAC”) was $1,205 million for the fourth quarter of 2010, a 4 percent decrease from the fourth quarter of 2009.” Read the release (PDF). Yahoo! earned $312 million less costs associated with another round of 600 layoffs last month and added that Q1 2011 will likely see a 4-10% drop in revenue in comparison to the year earlier. More (smaller) layoffs, too but the company said its merely “re-allocating” as it hires in other areas. CEO Carol Bartz painted a rosy picture for display on the conference call according to the Seeking Alpha transcript: “Display was a bright spot for us this past year and quarter. Q4 grew 16%, 27% sequentially, and 2010 grew 17% over 2009, all on an ex-TAC basis. In fact, we believe our growth in Display significantly outpaced the market according to numbers from the IAB.” It was so rosy, the company also broke out the display numbers in the release. Also, APT was a topic as Bartz said, “By the end of this year, we will have the U.S. and some of the big international markets on the new APT platform, which really — by the way, something like 75% of our orders, our marketplace in the U.S. is now on APT. (…) APT just gives us a much better job, a much better way to manage the inventory, manage the yield, a new predict engine, all of those things that will allow us to do a better job targeting Display.” There was no mention of Right Media Exchange.

Taking The Fall

Tsavo Media, owners of over 300 websites from a variety of verticals is laying off up to 40 employees according to local Canadian media. Cyberplex, Tsavo’s owner since May, said the “workforce reduction was called a cost-savings measure linked to business uncertainty stemming from the merger of Yahoo! and Bing, according to local Canadian media.” Get the full story here on RPC impact for local ads.

TRAFFIQ Gets Creative

TRAFFIQ announced that its adding the dynamic creative capabilities of Tumri to its media buying platform. According to the release, “TRAFFIQ clients will be able to access the Tumri Ensemble self-serve platform and deploy dynamically-generated, personalized, ads.” Read more.

Google Hiring

Looking for a job? If you can get through the HR gauntlet a boatload of new jobs await you at Google. The Associated Press reports, “Google Inc. plans to hire more than 6,200 workers this year – boosting its work force by at least a quarter – in the biggest expansion yet by the Internet’s most profitable company. ” Read more.

DMPs Are More Than Shiny

Forrester’s Michael Greene provides his thoughts on the Demdex/Adobe deal from last week and says, “Data management platforms are more than just a shiny new object. Data-driven media buying is real and — barring regulatory Armageddon — there’s no turning back for digital advertisers and publishers.” Read more.

MediaBank To Acquire

PaidContent’s David Kaplan reports on MediaBank CEO Bill Wise decision to separate the marketplaces and agency functions into two separate businesses. Furthermore, Wise told Kaplan “that the company is ‘aggressively seeking out acquisition targets.'” Wise adds later, “We’re trying to take the dynamics that are second nature on the digital side, we desperately want to apply it to other media.” Read more. And, read the release.

Wearing The “I”

Media6Degrees announced on its blog that it will work with TrustE to provide consumers with what it calls the “Enhanced Notice Icon” as it looks to comply with online behavioral advertising self-regulatory guidelines. From the Media6Degrees blog, “When we serve an impression with the Enhanced Notice Icon, it will have an “Ad Choices” link in the top right corner, and look like…” See it.

Data Visual

Pablo Cohan, Manager, Product Planning and “Data enthusiastic” at MediaMind shares one of his favorite data visualization examples on the MediaMind Creative Zone blog. The data viz is the result of “a contest to change the way we look at a blood test results.” See more.

Facebook Ads + User Gen

Facebook launched a new feature called “‘Sponsored Stories’ ads, which let marketers utilize messages from their “likes” community for paid promotions on the site. The ads contain word-for-word Facebook user posts, while appearing in the right-hand column with other paid promotions on the website.” Read more from Christopher Heine on ClickZ.

Dipping Toe In TV

Adap.tv and its video ad serving solution for publishers said it took a step closer to the TV space as it made a deal with a company called Flingo “to enable publishers to reach and monetize millions of Internet-connected devices including TVs, Set-top boxes and Blu-ray players.” Read the release.

But Wait, There’s More!