Criteo Seeing Quarterly Growth For Retargeting; Facebook's New Ad Platform; Why People Don't Click

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

Ad Retargeter Reports

Is an IPO far away for personalized ad retargeter Criteo? They’re already reporting quarterly results like a public company – well… public companies must report all their revenues. According to a press release, among Criteo highlights in Q1 2011 in comparison to the previous quarter (Q4 2010): “70% increase in impressions served; 90% increase in absolute campaign clicks; Average click-through-rate increased 13%; Nearly 2x increase in sales generated for advertising clients.” Read more.

Targeting Health

Ad network/data management platform Lotame said that they recently assisted the Centers For Disease Control with raising awareness around seasonal flu shots with a display campaign. MediaPost’s Laurie Sullivan provides details on the campaign which included this insight: “If given the opportunity to run the campaign again, AED (a nonprofit agency) and Lotame admitted the two companies would reduce the number of targeted segments to those that performed best to achieve even better results.” Read more.

Facebook On Ads

According to Adweek’s Kari Lipschutz, Facebook is launching a new platform – Facebook Studio – especially made for the ad industry. She writes that the plaform “targets ‘marketers, creatives, and fans.’ Its creators are hoping to facilitate the sharing of ideas and industry feedback on new campaigns, while putting a spotlight on best practices.” Read more.

Making Ads Matter

In a post tantalizingly titled, “Advertising, the Fallacy of Perfectibility, and the Best Minds of My Generation,” angel investor and ad tech savant, Jerry Neumann, unleashes a thesis that encompasses the past century of advertising and leads to today’s “click.” He concludes, “The people who are thinking about how to get people to click on ads are of two types: those who just want you to click on the ad, and those who want to put an ad in front of you that would be valuable for you to click on. Saying that the latter is somehow of ephemeral benefit is misunderstanding what is economically worthwhile. By matching the right ad to the right person, we can provide information even while allowing everyone to have their own individual tastes.” Read on, McDuff.

From Russia With Clicks

Media measurement and analytics firm comScore has re-kindled its “Natural Born Clickers” fires and aimed them at the Russian display advertising business. Once again, internet users with a heavy propensity to click on ads show themselves as a disturbed, wild-eyed lot. From the report’s press release: “Further analysis showed that heavy clickers behave very differently online than the typical internet user; on a monthly basis, they spend over two and a half times more minutes online and consume twice as many pages as non-clickers.” Read more. And, there’s this: “The top 20 percent of clickers – represent just 2 percent of the online population in Russia but generate 58 percent of all display ad clicks.” Download the full report (sign-up required).

WOM And The Facebook Ad Network

Writer Rob Hof authors a detailed feature on Facebook titled, “You Are The Ad,” in the MIT Technology Review. Hof summarizes what he sees as an ad strategy different from other big portal and tech players: “In essence, the company is pushing a highly charged version of word of mouth, long seen as the most valuable of all marketing because people view friends’ recommendations as more credible than marketers’.” Read more. In the piece, the company claims it isn’t going to launch a Facebook ad network. -We’ll see.

ROI Metrics In Social

On ClickZ, marketing strategist Heidi Cohen looks at tracking ROI in social media where the outcomes can be a bit soft around brand and awareness. She identfies five social media metrics that she sees as essential parts of “tracking” a social campaign including reach, branding, actions, costs, reputation issues avoided – with this last one, Cohen explains: “Consider social media marketing a cost avoidance to preserve your reputation and brand.” Read more.

Moving Away From Display

In preparation for an IPO, real estate site Zillow has revealed its revenues for the past couple of years which shows a pattern of moving away from reliance on display. Adweek’s Erin Griffith writes, “In 2009, Zillow earned 22 percent of its revenues from the marketplace and 78 percent on display advertising. Last year the chunk earned on display dropped to 57 percent; marketplace revenues more than doubled.” More here.

Why Display CTR Sucks

AdKeeper has sponsored a study which look into why display advertising has such crummy clickthrough rate. According to the company, “The top reason people don’t click banner advertisements is because they do not wish to be taken away from their current online activity. The study sought consumer input to explain the 2010 industry average click-through rate (CTR) of 0.09 percent for online advertising.” Read more.

Expanding India Ads

Google told India’s Economic Times that it sees the time as right for expansion of its company’s ad services in India. Economic Times Shelley Singh says Goog is “expanding the sales team, entering into partnerships with advertising agencies, increasing focus on mobile and display advertising, reaching out to small-and-medium businesses (SMBs) who at present don’t advertise at all and lastly, its betting on cloud – software services available on the tap to companies big and small.” Read more.

California Gold Rush

A meaty piece on the venture capital world and the swirling stacks of cash being thrown at tech startups was published in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal. The WSJ’s Monica Langley describes the frothy scene in detail wherever everybody is a VC, but closes with a sobering quote from Mark Maples, an early Twitter investor, who says “‘I haven’t done any deals’ in this year’s first quarter, ‘because it’s crazy out there. It’s a true California Gold Rush.” Read froth.

But Wait. There’s More!