Triggit Targeting For Amazon; Clearspring Sharing Data Through BlueKai Exchange; Specific Media Buying MySpace?

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

Amazon And DSP Triggit

Yesterday, All Things D’s Peter Kafka announced that demand-side platform Triggit will offer DSP services to e-Commerce giant Amazon.com. Kafka writes, “Amazon has noodled with Web ads in the past, but has confined itself to selling space on Amazon.com and other sites it owns, like IMDB.com. This is the first time it has branched out into ads on third-party sites, and that could be a big deal …” Read more. Though Amazon declined to discuss any details, Triggit’s announcement amounts to the first public confirmation of Amazon’s entry into the DSP and ad exchange world as the company looks to leverage its advantageous position as a data-driven, e-commerce publisher and target (or retarget) consumer intent. This is a great feather-in-the-cap for Triggit. Read the release on the Triggit blog. There are likely many facets to a DSP business with Amazon. Both bottom-of-the-funnel and top-of-funnel opportunities can be in-play here. Brand marketers could buy exchange-based media through Amazon, of course. Amazon could also be running a “private exchange,” if you will, through which DSP tech would target users according to various data points whether on Amazon properties or elsewhere. In absence of Amazon guidance, there continues to appear to be a commitment to build an internal display ad solution if the Amazon job board postings are to be believed. Will they eventually acquire, too, to do it? Don’t know.

Also, check out this positioning regarding selling media on its own sites (according to this job posting) through Amazon’s stealthy Adzinia unit which echoes Kafka’s remarks about IMDB: “Adzinia is comprised of the growing stable of premium advertising properties: Amazon.com, IMDb.com and DPReview.com. We are leveraging Amazon’s world-class personalization technologies to build highly-relevant ads for our advertising partners and customers. The position is located in our Seattle office and reports into the head of our Display Advertising Operations.” Premium, baby! Brands, right this way. For Amazon, the display initiative will not just be about remnant retargeting for bottom-of-the-funnel direct response purposes. And it will not just be DSP-based as direct sales will make sense just like any large publisher who can offer such marketers products associated with buzz phrases such as “share of voice.”

The Sharing Data Exchange

Looking to expand the sales opportunity of the company’s proprietary social sharing data, Clearspring announced that it has entered into the data exchange space via BlueKai’s data exchange product to sell social audience. According to the release, “Clearspring’s key Influence and intent-driven audiences across verticals such as auto, travel, finance, and retail are now available for brand marketers who are looking to tap into the viral benefits of social sharing.” Read the release.

Engagement And Uncle Milty

Drawing from the days of Milton Berle and Texaco Star Theater, MediaBank’s Bill Wise thinks online metrics are a-changing in a MediaPost column. He writes, “When will the impression die completely as a metric? Probably never. But as more opportunities arise for measuring engagement, and as impressions (and even clicks) mean less and less all the time, we’ll have to all learn new ways to make our numbers engaging.” Read it all.

Specific Media Buying MySpace?

Imagine that headline a few years ago when MySpace was the champ and Facebook was the distant up-and-comer. The demise of MySpace has now led to a fire sale as All Things D’s Kara Swisher that ad network Specific Media is one of the few bidders having a look at the withering social starlet of bygone days. She comments on the final stage of the auction: “The two names – Specific Media and Golden Gate Capital – that are now in the forefront for an acquisition deal that News Corp. hopes to complete by Thursday, its fiscal year end, have not been among the acquirers mentioned previously in the myriad of reports about the deal.” Read more.

Land Of The Rising Ad Exchange

When is Google’s DoubleClick Ad Exchange and its real-time biddable features going to start having an impact on Japanese display inventory? Sooner rather than later according to an article by ClickZ’s Adaline Lau. She writes, “An industry source revealed Google has been poaching local media agency professionals to join the Google AdX team in the country. And last week, Google met up with agency professionals in Tokyo to give an update on its AdX.” OK, not quite a launch but it looks like Google is continuing to expand its global, ad exchange reach. Read more.

Automotive Ad Spend

The porting and use of offline data to online continues to be a bit of Holy Grail, as does better attribution models, and ad summos announced yesterday that it’s targeting both as it will bring Polk offline data to the world of online behavioral targeting. ad summos CEO Curt Viebranz claims in a release that in combination with his company’s analytics capabilities and Polk data, marketers will get “insights into whether their media spend influences vehicle purchases.” He adds, “Moving beyond proxies for purchase such as tracking hand raisers or leads will be a game changer.”Read it.

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