Extending GRPs To Mobile; Acqui-Hire Blues

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Extending GRPs To Mobile

In their TV “Upfront” presentation yesterday, Nielsen announced that it is extending its Online Campaign Ratings product to mobile apps. “What’s that mean?” you ask: “ABC will be able to measure audience demographics and understand the reach and frequency of online campaigns across ABC content on the Web and in mobile apps.” Read the release. Marketers are looking for better ways to extend and understand their media buys across traditional and digital channels.

Acqui-Hire Blues

While Yahoo dives deeper into its acqui-hire spree, entrepreneur-turned-VC and prolific blogger Mark Suster exposes the dark side of acqui-hiring. Acqui-hires who are wooed for millions of dollars hurt the buyer, Suster points out, by telling loyal employees “if you want to make ‘real’ money—quit.” As Suster argues, “So why not announce big, hairy audacious goals on recruiting the best mobile talent with sign-on bonuses and retention plans? And reward your existing top 10% of employees handsomely.” Read more.

Visualization Is Coming

Speaking of acqui-hire, Twitter has acqui-hired a company in the data visualization space called Lucky Sort, which has three or four people, says Linkedin. TechCrunch breaks down the transaction here. Lucky Sort’s website notes that the company’s current contextual analytics product will be shut down as it goes full bore on whatever comes next at Twitter. Neu Ventures’ Jerry Neumann was part of the original seed stage of financing, says Crunchbase – as was former Invite Media CEO Nat Turner. Big data visualization company MetaMarkets had been rumored to be the apple of Twitter’s eye a couple of years ago.

Mo’ Data Blues

In an age of cheap and abundant data, many brands are still using legacy approaches that stymie marketing partners. SapientNitro data/analytics guy Stewart Pratt tells AdAge’s Kate Kaye that the big problems are inflexible architecture, a cost-saving mentality that prevents analysis of today’s huge datasets, and a need for training. He says, “Because data has historically been so costly for large companies to collect, maintain and process, they tend to limit the amount of information captured to the bare necessities and adopt analytics techniques designed for understanding small data samples.” Read it.

Pirate Wars

Dan Peak’s Veri-Site has been hunting online money launderers for a decade. Now the company is working with GroupM Interaction North America COO John Montgomery on developing software that generates lists of offending websites, so advertisers like AT&T and Unilever never run messages on fraudulent sites, reports Adweek’s Katy Bachman. “People have bought into [the idea] that it’s a problem,” Peak says in a Q&A. “In the next year or two, we will go a long way toward taking steps to screen and block.” Read more.

Cookie And Big Pubs

The potential demise of the third-party cookie is the subject of much debate these days (see Eric Picard’s recent column suggesting it’s no big deal). In Mediapost, eXelate’s CEO Mark Zagorski argues that major publishers could experience some pain as well if the cookie falls into disuse. “Killing the third-party cookie will not save branded publishers,” he writes. “On the contrary, new, even stickier technologies, and an ad-tech industry whose focus is performance and delivery efficiency, will continue to innovate and push forward.” Read more.

Pandora’s Way

Investors and the music industry are hoping that streaming internet radio player Pandora figures out a sustainable revenue model soon. Max Engel, director of Product at SpinMedia, writes in Hypebot that the company’s advertising moves are going in the right direction. “Pandora already has worked to bolster its ad platform to create a display ad network that can bridge the desktop and mobile,” Engel says. “The company could potentially take its ad platform and possibly take it off-network so other music sites could benefit from their deep customer insights and targeting.” Read the rest.

Next Stop: Brazil

Tag management vendor Ensighten is pushing into Latin America through its new partnership with Lima Consulting Group (LCG), a digital marketing agency with offices in São Paulo, Brazil and the United States. From LCG founder and managing partner Paul Lima’s perspective, “Ensighten changes the way we work with our customers and quickens their digital marketing cadence.” Read the release.

You’re Hired!