The Fruits Of Akamai; Brand-Safe Headache

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

The Fruits Of Akamai

MediaMath formally launched Adroit Digital (see it) on Tuesday, using the technology and the team it acquired from Akamai’s ad business, known as Advertising Decisioning Solutions (ADS). It’s also using part of the name of Adroit, the Boston-based dynamic creative optimization company it acquired in 2010. The new business unit positions itself as providing access to the same data co-op that Akamai’s ADS was built on, with more than 300 companies contributing. Read the release and MediaPost. MediaMath’s managed services business is evolving too, as MediaMath CEO Joe Zawadzki told AdExchanger recently, “We’re not providing managed services at MediaMath. When we bought ADS, the division from Akamai, we took the rest of the trading services team, the managed services team, and merged that with the ADS team, and that has become Adroit. They’re another separate entity.” Also bubbling: MediaMath’s exclusive license of Akamai’s pixel-free tech and access to the data co-op may not last forever, as Akamai could want to cash in and open it up to other platforms that wish to retarget co-op data. A MediaMath spokesperson offered this correction of our previous statement: “Akamai has no control whatsoever over the co-op. The data co-op belongs solely to Adroit Digital, and a company has to become an Adroit Digital customer in order to participate in it or benefit from its data.”

Brand-Safe Headache

Recently, a group of advertisers had to temporarily pull advertising from Facebook because their ads were appearing adjacent to controversial content. Meanwhile, other sites like Twitter, Google’s YouTube and LinkedIn claim they have measures in place to prevent the negative adjacency and, ultimately, the backlash that Facebook received. The NY Times Bits blog weighs in with marketer reaction: “It is up to the social companies to create an environment that provides that level of support and safety for the companies,” said David Reuter, VP for Corporate Communications at Nissan Americas. Read more.

Tailor Made

Daniel Rosen is taking over as new global CEO of WPP’s mobile marketing agency Joule. WPP recently lost chief executive Michael Collins, who moved to Adelphic on May 30. AdExchanger covered the story here. Rosen, who had been in charge of EMEA for Joule, doesn’t hold back in the release: “We’re a business that is tailor made for the next phase of the digital era.” Read more.

Stack Refections

In spite of recent changes, Publicis Vivaki’s Audience On Demand exec Marco Bertozzi pulls no punches on his personal blog and reflects on additions to Google’s marketing “stack,” “…the real success has been where advertisers or whole agencies are swapping to [DoubleClick Search 3] and [DoubleClick For Advertiser] because they are or are about to be heavy users of [DoubleClick Bid Manager] and want to benefit from the frictionless web. I work with people a year ago who were nowhere near wanting to work with DFA and were proudly using Mediamind or Flashtalking etc and have now switched and are happy.” Read more.

Personalizing The Page

Webtrends, one of the not-Googles among web analytics providers, has beefed up its Optimize platform (a targeted landing page tool) with new features. Brands can now use in-session and behavioral visitor data to customize pages, as well as test targeted content, among other new functions. Read the release.

Carving Ad Pie

On his personal blog, agency kbs+p’s Darren Herman carves the digital ad spend pie from a variety of sources and finds that six companies are taking in 55% of online ad dollars. He notes, “Google’s growth is terrific and Yahoo! took a step back in 2013. I’m always amazed to see Google dominating digital ad spend with 41% share whereas the next closest competitor is around 4%. That’s 10x. 10x!” Read more; see the pie.

Amazon’s Next Act

Groceries. Read more. Reuters quotes Bill Bishop, a supermarket analyst who claims that “the company [is] targeting as many as 40 markets, without divulging how he knew of Amazon’s plans.” Oh, Bill. Amazon has been incubating AmazonFresh, as it is known, for five years in Seattle, says Reuters. From an ads perspective, Amazon can potentially offer the ability to close the loop on online/offline attribution as it relates to ad spend.

You’re Hired – Or Appointed!