Elementary, My Dear Watson; Hashtag Exchange

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Elementary, My Dear Watson

From yesterday’s Smarter Commerce Global Summit in Nashville, Tennessee, supercomputer “Watson” is apparently coming to marketing in a much bigger way. An IBM release offers, “Watson will serve as an assistant in helping line of business leaders from CMOs, customer service agents and sales leaders transform the customer experience…” What’s that mean, you ask? A big computer is going to help the marketer figure out the “big data” stew. A keyword to all this is improving “engagement” with consumers at-scale. Read more on GigaOm. Will they become an acquirer in the ad tech world to pull in the paid media channel? Seems possible. In the meantime, download IBM’s new 2013 marketing report.

Hashtag Exchange

Is the hashtag exchange far away? We’ve prognosticated previously about a hashtag-targeted exchange as one extension of Twitter’s programmatic strategy. Now, Inside Facebook’s Brittany Darwell gets wind of hashtags on Facebook. Among the use cases, Darwell’s source suggests, “users will be able to hover over a hashtag to get more information, similar to what they can do for people, apps and pages, as seen below.” Better intent data in a social context, perhaps. Read more.

Portals Are The New Black

In a think piece on Ad Age, kbs+p’s Darren Herman says a “cookieless world” is imminent. And he thinks big publishers stand to benefit: “The more traffic coming to your web properties, theoretically, the more you can use big data to help optimize the advertisements and experiences for consumers. We never thought portals would be popular again, but they stand to be large beneficiaries of this evolved ecosystem.” Read more.

Going Cross-Channel

AT&T is going cross-platform by serving targeted ads online through mobile and on TV via its AdWorks Blueprint platform. AT&T will use anonymous data it has collected along with third-party data for the ads. Online ads are served through their Online Audience Network, and the TV ads will run through their Television Audience Network. Read more.

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The DIY Agency; YouTube’s Dynamic Change

The New York Times IdeaLab toyed around with a new way to make banner ads effective by implementing an interactive element to the ad. Wisk, the advertiser, was pleased with the results, although it didn’t give any numbers. “What sets them apart is the amount of experimentation they’ve done,” says Dan Buczaczer of VivaKi on Adweek. “A lot of the elements they’re experimenting with on the editorial side are the ones brands are interested in for marketing.” Read more.

Raising The Drawbridge

Ad targeting tech company Drawbridge (AdExchanger Nov ‘12 and Mar & May ‘13) is featured in Fortune as CEO Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan discusses her company’s differentiation. From the article: “The startup has paired over 471 million devices so far, yielding complete desktop and mobile user profiles that number in the hundreds of millions. Travel booking site Expedia is already testing Drawbridge’s ad solutions. Drawbridge’s next step?” Read about it.

Programmatic Gourmet

Gourmet Ads launched a new ad exchange powered by AppNexus. Benjamin Christie, president and founder of Gourmet Ads said, “Leveraging the AppNexus platform, we’ll be expanding our programmatic offering for brand advertisers and agency trading desks. Recently we’ve seen a spike in requests for the development of custom private ad exchanges and we see this trend continuing well into 2013.” Read the release.

Welcome Ads!

On Digiday, Jack Marshall looks at the so-called interruptive “Welcome Ad” format that you might see when first arriving at a publisher site – as high as a $150/CPM, says Marshall. He surveys an industry voice: “‘The costs are crazy, so we don’t usually recommend them to clients,’ [Mediassociates’ Ben] Kunz added, despite his views on their efficacy. The agency sees better return on investment for many clients when buying standardized inventory or through exchanges.” Read more.

Funding Programmatic

Mobile attribution company HasOffers successfully raised $9.4 million, led by Accel Partners, in its latest round of funding. HasOffers has two SaaS products: HasOffers.com and MobileAppTracking.com. “We’re seeing a market shift in online advertising from the CPM or display oriented world of the past to a more programmatic, performance based approach,” said Rich Wong of Accel Partners in the release. “Mobile advertisers are igniting that progression by demanding real user engagement from their advertising partners. Read more.

Funding