Weather, Beer, Ads; Mapping Credit Card Data

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Weather, Beer, Ads

The term “weather targeting” is bandied about with some frequency, but its meaning can seem a little…foggy. Is it more than predictive umbrella peddling? Digiday shares findings from The Weather Company that suggests media buyers should indeed watch the skies. For instance, in Chicago, “Four consecutive days of below-average summer temperatures will spike beer sales by 20%.” Atlanta has its own weather-to-beer quirks. Read it.

Mapping Credit Card Data

Credit card companies are increasingly selling transactional information to data firms, generating new revenue streams and potentially raising privacy alarms. AdAge’s Kate Kaye covers a few examples: “Using the Mastercard data, a burger or pizza chain might use the system to push promotions to neighborhoods in which people spend more than the average at fast-food joints.” Zip+4 targeting and vague audience segments (e.g. “frequent transactors”) seem to be the rule here. More.

Commodity Markets

Jeff Green of demand-side platform The Trade Desk revisits the difference between financial and ad markets in a piece on MediaPost. He relates this anecdote: “I was given a stark reminder of online advertising’s often singular place in the commodities market after speaking with a Ph.D. student who…had been studying the habits of corn pricing on commodities markets. He informed me that there were essentially over 125 variables that make up the value of corn. With human behavior in the equation there are virtually an infinite number of variables.” Read more.

Slow Growth At Agency

On Monday, agency holding company Publicis reported less-than-expected sales growth in the first quarter of 2013. Read more on Bloomberg. Nevertheless, BMO analyst Dan Salmon notes, “A strong quarter of net new business ($2.1B vs. $800 mn in 1Q12) gives management confidence in the back half of the year. Overall, we take a wait-and-see approach ahead of the analyst day on April 23 in London, where we can get more detail on management’s efforts to reach its 2013 organic growth target of 3.2%-3.6%.”

Cookie Crumbling

In Adweek, Tim Peterson investigates the demise of the third-party cookie and listens to a variety of industry voices. Acxiom’s Geoff Amborn tells Peterson, “In a cookieless world, publishers with business models that naturally collect strong names and addresses and other personally identifiable information are going to be able to…connect into CRM databases. For publishers that have a weak PII story, they’ve been more heavily reliant on the cookie world.” Trouble ahead for some – perhaps the “long tail?” Read more.

Infographic Wednesday

Buying platform Rocket Fuel is dipping its toes in the sell-side if a new infographic is any indication. See “Audience Extension.”

But Wait, There’s More!