Meeker Publishes Internet Trends; Apple Billions; Search Retargeting Squeeze?

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Meeker Internet Trends

Wall Street oracle Mary Meeker still has her Internet Trends report on her to-do list even though she joined venture firm Kleiner Perkins recently after a long stay at Morgan Stanley. Meeker and company have cranked out the latest edition of the report which created its original buzz back in the bubble days at the turn of the century (cue sound of horses on cobblestone streets.). See the report. She remains enamored with the mobile channel similar to last year’s report. But she also has a section titled, “Advertising – Lookin’ Good” (start Slide 35) for you ad types -and, that’s all of you, I believe.

Apple Billions

Apple posted its financial results for its fiscal Q4 2011 and it missed earnings expectations by only making a profit of $6.62 billion. Do not fret, Apple fan boys. Apple management guided Wall Street analysts higher with their Q1 2011 predictions.
Read more on the WSJ. And, read the Apple quarterly release. No ad talk, but lots of hardware talk on the earnings call – transcript here. When will Apple start buying up some content companies? Is the auction coming for Viacom similar to the one for AdMob which Google won?

Search Retargeting Squeeze?

Google announced that it would add a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) to search on Google.com. From the Google blog, “When you search from https://www.google.com, websites you visit from our organic search listings will still know that you came from Google, but won’t receive information about each individual query.” Oof. If you’re retargeting users according to organic search queries on Google, your data resource is about to dry up. Read more on the Google blog. On Search Engine Land, Danny Sullivan talks about the announcement with Google search guru Matt Cutts who says this will only impact 7% of search queries from Google.com. And, he reiterates that paid search links will not be affected. Read it.

Digging The DSP Data

The digital ink is flying over at DSP MediaMath this week as company COO Ari Buchalter follows CEO Joe Zawadzki’s Ad Age piece, with an iMedia Connection missive that dives into the weeds and then some. We love weeds here so let’s dig in: “As any data modeler knows, being able to single out the top decile, or in this case the top hundredth of a percentile, generates massively disproportionate returns. It’s no different here.” Phew -those are some good weeds! Buchalter thinks he knows how to judge whether a DSP works or not. See if you agree.

Offer Ad Network

Hey…. how about a Groupon-like offers business that uses a mobile display ad network and leverages geo-targeting to deliver the latest deals? It exists! TechCrunch reports that Adlibrium differs from Groupon’s offer system in one key way: “It doesn’t take commissions – instead, [Adlibrium] charges for setting up a new campaign.” Read more.

Super(Display)size Me

On ClickZ, Hollis Thomases takes up the “big ads” story and reveals Adfusion’s “Panoramic” ad. This ad unit apparently has everything but a soda fountain as Thomases explains that they “give us media planners a lot more space with which to promote our advertisers. Of course, web publishers still have to balance the line between the content that attracts the user in the first place and the ad experience…” Ad sizes continue to grow which ideally drives share-of-voice, higher CPMs, fewer ads per page (and therefore scarcity), and finally attracts brand dollars driving awareness rather than generating clicks. Supersize you.

Ad Ops Rules And Reasons

Linkbaiting without remorse, ad ops maven Ben Kneen titles the latest piece on his personal blog, “Top 8 Reasons to Work in Ad Operations”. He leads off, “#1 – There’s no better place to learn about digital advertising – Because the Ad Ops department controls and operates the ad server as their primary responsibility, almost everyone else in the company depends on them for something.” Read ’em, all.

Startup Equity

Former Dapper-ite and Yahoo! refugee (he left in late July), seller Chris Zaharias, takes up the subject of startup equity on his personal blog and researches how much people know about their options agreement when they sign on to a startup. Zaharias has surveyed 19 people thus far and notes that among the results, “Over half don’t know what a ‘trigger’ is, and only one quarter have one. People – you may as well get down on your hands & knees and pray before signing your offer letter, ’cause that’s how much control you’ll have over the outcome if you don’t understand triggers.” Click Pray Read.

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