Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
Yahoo! Takeover Drama: Day 2
Bloomberg reports that according to several sources, Yahoo! has contracted with the granddaddy of investment banks, Goldman Sachs, to “help defend against possible takeover approaches.” “Defend” is a good word here. Many Yahoo! investors are frothing at the mouth after being left out in the cold when Microsoft came calling at a significantly higher valuation a year ago. Shareholders want to unlock their stock’s value. Read more from Bloomberg. Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney offers a few ideas on why a takeover seems unlikely: “1) Size of the deal, which would likely require $25-30B offer (YHOO’s current market cap is $21B); 2) Complexity of the deal, given YHOO’s significant off balance sheet assets (Yahoo! Japan, Alibaba and Alibaba Group); 3) Likely strong opposition from current management (Bartz, Yang & Filo) and probably key board members; and 4) Possible inclusion of AOL would add to the overall complexity.” UBS analyst Brian Pitz says $22-24 per share is possible for a deal – view an interview of Pitz. Dan Primack takes readers through the leveraged buyout possibilities on Fortune here.
Google Reports Big Quarter
Google reported its third quarter earnings yesterday and demolished Wall Street expectations in the process according to All Things D’s Peter Kafka who writes, “Google reports earnings $7.67 a share and net revenues of $5.48 billion. The consensus was for $6.67 and $5.25 billion. GAAP EPS was $6.72.” Read his coverage. Google CEO Eric Schmidt said in the release, “Our core business grew very well, and our newer businesses — particularly display and mobile — continued to show significant momentum.” Read the Google earnings release. Need more? How about $1 billion in mobile ads –read about in Ad Age. And, $2.5 billion in “non-text” display. Read more from Greg Sterling on SearchEngineLand.
Metamarkets On Big Data
Metamarkets (AdExchanger.com Q&A) co-founder Michael Driscoll participated in yesterday’s IA Ventures Big Data Conference in New York. Metamarkets has IA and its chief, Roger Ehrenberg, as an investor. During a panel discussion covered by GigaOm, Driscoll identified “three skills necessary for data-driven start-ups: data munging, the corralling and wrestling of data; modeling, the statistical analysis of data through algorithms; and visualization, the presentation of all the data.” Read which skill determines the “winner.”
Criteo Groweo
Another private ad tech company has provided a modified earnings statement as personalized retargeting company Criteo says that for Q3 2010 its U.S.client base increased by 72 percent. The company also said that it “increased client post-click sales by 400 percent from Q2 2010 to Q3 2010.” Read the release.
ClickZ’s Jack Marshall recaps the effects of the data-driven ad business on last week’s Advertising Week festivities in NYC. He quotes VivaKi Nerve Center’s Kurt Unkel, who says his unit is aiming to be 50 people strong by year end. Among the biggest challenges of his job is eduction internally within VivaKi according to Unkel. He tells ClickZ, “That’s been a big learning lesson for us, getting people’s heads wrapped around the opportunity. It’s complicated, and can be daunting for media buyers.” Read more.
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Data Visualization Fun
TNS has its own version of data mining fun with its Digital Life website at discoverdigitallife.com. Simple statistics such as time spent online globally were never so much fun to mouseover and click. Once you click on the presentation in the middle of the page, it will take a minute to load. It’s worth the wait. You may consider how to report out on your next campaign to higher ups – or lower downs who want your job. See it.
September Video Rankings
The latest ComScore video rankings hit the advertising “sports” pages this week as Hulu, Tremor Media, Bright Roll Video Network and Adap.tv rounded out the first four places “by Video Ads Viewed” in September 2010 Read the release. And, compare it here to August 2010.
You’re Hired
Buysight, formerly Permuto, announced this week that it has hired former Adify executive Richard Johnson as svp of sales and appointed former Microsoft engineer Don Vilen as its chief scientist. Read the release. eBureau has hired Jeremy Longinotti as svp/gm, audience targeting. Longinotti comes form Vizu and Cisco Systems, where he worked on the corp dev team. Read the release.
Ad Networks Are Alive And Well
Undertone CEO Michael Cassidy says in AdWeek that ad network consolidation makes complete sense considering all the innovation happening on the buy-side today. But, he doesn’t see the ad network going away and offers 5 reasons why the ad network model will keep humming such as “Inventory: The foundation for any network is the inventory (…) a significant amount of online inventory, especially high-quality inventory, is not available through exchanges.” Read the article.
YuMe And The Buy-Side Platform
Video video video… seems like there’s a new video ad tech company every day. But, YuMe has been there a relative “while” and announced this week something it calls ACE for Advertisers, which it identifies as a “buy-side video ad management system architected to serve the needs of media agencies, advertisers and agency trading desk.” Read more. C’mon YuMe.. I know you want to say Video Demand-Side Platform, or VDSP.
10 Data Commandments
interclick provides its view on how best to manage and leverage data for online advertising with its very own “10 Data Commandments” – better known as “best practices.” At #3, thou shalt “remember that data quality can vary widely.” The interclick website offers the following explanation for #3: “A targeting audience may appear to work well in testing, but its performance can be highly variable with scale and over time. Always employ quality measurements for all data sources.” See all 10.
Price War Drives Ad Spending
The Wall Street Journal reports that the U.S. grocery store business is in the midst of a price war brought on by other big box-type stores getting into the grocery business. It has translated into an increase in media spend, but the article does not mention that online ad spend is involved. One can only assume that a comprehensive, local online ad strategy by any of the huge supermarket chains would be a requirement. Read the article.
