Swiss-Based Publigroupe Adds SSP; Centro Adds Digital Veterans

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

Adding The Sell-Side

In Europe, marketing services company Publigroupe is going end-to-end as it announced the acquisition of 85% of the shares of sell-side platform Improve Digital. Improve founders Joëlle Frijters, CEO, and Janneke Niessen, CIO, will continue to guide the company as a Publigroupe “independent entity.” Read the release. In April, Publigroupe signed up for a joint venture with demand-side platform MediaMath and formed Spree7 to enable programmatic buying for agencies.

Retargeting The Second Time

In a Magnum Opus of a Tumblr blog post, former CEO of One Riot and current Walmart international mobile products dude, Tobias Peggs, writes about the future of retargeting. This is what ends the post, “What I’ve outlined in this blog post is a small step away from what was envisioned in Minority Report… and you could pretty much piece it together today (replacing retina scanning and billboards for a Twitter ID and a mobile phone ;). Sure, there are plenty of holes and inaccuracies in what I’ve outlined – but that’s why it’s a blog post not a business plan. What i do know for certain is that there are smarter folks than me who are thinking more diligently about this space, and building out the required technology platforms that will turn into humungous business. The first time I was retargeted on Facebook, I thought that was magical…” Read about the second time.

Microsoft Gets Clear On Data

For all of Microsoft’s pronouncements that making “Do Not Track” the default option in its latest Internet Explorer browser was a sign of new openness and transparency, the Congressional Bipartisan Privacy Caucus had other views when it came to the software giant’s new Terms of Service, the NYT’s Edward Wyatt reported. Read it. In response to Congressional concerns, Microsoft will now explicitly tell users that some of its web products would produce or promote targeted online ads, which remain outside of its browser. “One thing we don’t do is use the content of our customers’ private communications and documents to target advertising,” Microsoft said in a statement.

Salesforce/Buddy Media Deal Details

It turns out Salesforce spent a little more than the previously reported figure of $689 million on acquiring social media marketer Buddy Media this summer. AllThingsD’s Arik Hesseldahl has the details from the company’s 8-K filing, which shows a closing price of $745 million. Still more: “Among other things, Buddy Media generated $18 million in sales, with a loss of $20.6 million during the first six months of 2012, giving it run rate to between $36 million to $40 million. “Remember that [previous Saleforce acquisition] Radian6 was, at the time of its acquisition last year, doing about $50 million annually,” Hesseldahl writes. “Assuming that it has grown since then, when combined with Buddy’s run rate, the ‘marketing cloud’ is already a $100 million business.” Read the rest.

Online Video And Its Discontents

Along with mobile, digital video has been one of the fastest growing areas of web advertising the last few years. The problem is, no one outside of perhaps YouTube or Hulu, is really bringing in self-sustaining dollars. Digiday, as part of a promotion for an upcoming conference, spoke to Deep Focus CEO Ian Schafer about the opportunities and lingering frustrations with the medium. “We’re still looking at interruption as being the key driver for online video,” Schafer says. “I would hope that we can figure out a way to get beyond that.” Read more.

Not Waiting For FB’s Mobile Model

Adknowledge’s AdParlor unit is a Facebook Strategic Preferred Marketing Developer, and just ahead of the social network’s Tuesday afternoon earnings, it said that they are now offering mobile app installs via Facebook on a cost per install (CPI) pricing model. While Facebook barely has its mobile revenue model out of the gate, AdParlor is banking on some big moves over the next few months, even as mobile remains a fraction of online ad spending in general. “In initial tests we have run using this ad unit, we have seen consistent CTR’s between 1- and 2 percent from engaged users,” said Kristaps Ronka, CTO at AdParlor. In other words, it’s a start. Read the release.

Centro’s Hiring Spree

Media buying workflow specialist Centro has brought in two digital ad veterans as part of a larger growth strategy, which is predicated on better ties to the agencies. The two latest additions are Scott Neslund, who most recently was president of Publicis’ Moxie Interactive unit and is now Centro’s SVP for media; and former Undertone marketing chief Kelly Wenzel as its new CMO. “We needed to get our software to a certain level of automation before we thought we’d be ready to go big,” Centro CEO Shawn Riegsecker told Mediapost’s Joe Mandese: “That time came when we came toward the end of this year.” Read the rest.

Audience Nodes

Interclick-er Jason Lynn makes an appearance on the Yahoo Ad blog and talks about his company’s Genome audience buying solution. (Yahoo! acquired Interclick a year ago.) Lynn talks about Genome’s ‘brain’ known as Online Segment Manager (OSM) saying that it “currently has 1.5 million nodes, or unique data facts, such as ‘BlueKai Sedan Auto Shopper’ or ’Yahoo! Sports Enthusiast,’ which can be leveraged against any of our clients’ campaigns.” Read more.

AudienceScience’s Mobile Future Is Now

Digital marketing company AudienceScience isn’t waiting for mobile advertising to catch up with the wider online ad market. To get a jump on things, the company is introducing mobile targeting tools into its Gateway offering. “We have a trove of unique data points that are only available through the AudienceScience Gateway, pointing to IAB stats that showed mobile ad spending accounting for only for 2.1 percent of Internet advertising. “This number is expected to rise to 15.2 percent by 2016. We are offering advertisers a powerful way to target customers across devices and channels.” Read the release.

Mitt’s RTB Platform

Both presidential campaigns doubled their RTB spend in Q3 compared to Q2. But if the election were purely decided on real-time bidding activity, Romney would win, Rubicon finds and Mediapost reports. “Romney dominated Obama by a margin of seven percentage points of total RTB political category spending. Obama’s campaign actually trailed a U.S. government campaign on child abuse by nearly as much of a margin.” More.

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