Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
WPP Spot Runner Suit Tossed
David Kaplan of PaidContent reports that WPP’s suit against Spot Runner, “a web-based TV creative ad agency”, has been thrown out by a New York court. WPP had said in the suit that its investment in the start-up had been diluted unfairly due to Spot Runner stock sales. Read more.
Leathern On Fraud Study
Rob Leathern of CPM Advisors reviews a recent advertising fraud study on his Zeronomy blog and alleges that the methodology used by mPire and Radar Research is flawed saying among other things, “Certainly, you shouldn’t create an experiment and call it representative of the marketplace when your experiment by design will seek out the very thing you are looking to measure.” Despite the concern, in the end, Leathern says he supports mPire’s AdXpose product. Read more on Zeronomy.
The NYC Start-Up Scene
Union Square Ventures’ Fred Wilson will be presenting at Clickable’s monthly speaker series and he shared the PowerPoint presentation that he will use on his popular blog. His challenge was to tell the story of NYC startups and what makes creating a startup unique in New York City. View the presentation:
Hispanic Market Digital Budget
Hispanic ad news site, Portada, covers their recent conference devoted to the Hispanic market in the U.S. and the evolving media space including digital. Marketers from Macy’s and DeWalt say that integration of digital and magazine advertising is still just in its beginning stages. And, according to the article, overall ad budget allocated to the Hispanic market continues to lag in comparison to the share of the U.S. population which is Hispanic (17%). Read more.
No Ads For Now On Twitter
AdAge’s Michael Learmonth review Twitter’s ad revenue prospects and finds that Twitter is not in a hurry to add advertising to its most popular microblogging service which has been reportedly valued by recent investors at $1 billiion. Read the article.
Going Below The Fold
MediaWeek’s Mike Shields covers recent findings that he says showed video ads from Tremor Media below the fold on certain websites. Tremor Media says that it quickly responded to stop the below-the-fold ads which were in violation with their policy and contract with the publisher. Read more.
N.B. But in the comments section Tremor Media’s VP Marketing Shane Steele responds: “Delivering above the fold placements is critical for achieving brand advertisers’ goals. It has It has always been our policy and contractual requirement that our ads run above the fold with all of our publisher partners. Unfortunately the situation with Puff.com was slightly mischaracterized.” Moreover AdExchanger.com has learned that Puff sent a note to Tremor about its error: “I wanted to set the record straight since the story in MediaWeek misrepresented the situation involving Tremor Media’s advertisers on Puff.com. We were aware that it has always been your policy as written in the contract, that you do not allow advertising below the fold. Puff.com has invested heavily in building a premium video section with valuable, above the fold video placements that advertisers demand. However, we inadvertently ran a small number of impressions for several advertisers below the fold on one page. In the future we pledge to vehemently enforce the above the fold policy. More importantly, we accept responsibility and apologize for the error on our site and the misrepresentation in public of your long standing policy to keep all advertising above the fold.”
Google Is Online Video
According to the video view counters at Comscore, Google sites totaled more than 10 billion views during August which included reach of 161 million U.S. internet users. Video on Google websites comprised nearly 40% of all video views in the U.S. with YouTube driving the lion’s share of views. Read the release. Separately, Google agreed to a licensing deal for YouTube with Warner Music according to The Wall Street Journal.
Fake Steve Jobs Calls For Newspaper Demise
From the Newsweek Techtonic Shifts blog, Daniel Lyons, who is best known for the blog he created in 2006 called “The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, is calling for the end of newspapers that are just barely hanging on. Lyons also says that journalists will find jobs in developing news models such as the one popularized by Huffington Post. Read more.
Forbes.com Gets New Pres
Anna Maria Virzi, ClickZ reports that Forbes.com has named a new President and its former CTO Michael Smith who started with the company in 2000. Virzi says Smith will have operational control of the popular business news website. Read more.
Starcom’s Swinand Speaks
Andrew Swinand, President of Global Operations at Publicis/VivaKi’s Starcom MediaVest Group, tells livemint.com that even though digital only represents 4% of ad spend in India and China, he believes its way under-invested. Read more from the interview.
DOOH Wikipedia
Looking to create a central repository of information in regards to best practices in the digital out-of-home business, industry leaders have banded together to create The Digital Content Circle. Russ Curry talks to its leading proponents – Olivier Debin of Dagobert, and Denys Lavigne and Arsenal Media – on the Daily DOOH. Read more.
