Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
Yahoo!’s McGrory On Openness
Gavin Dunaway interviews Yahoo! VP Ramsey McGrory about Right Media, Yahoo! and even McGrory’s army days in a comprehensive, two-part interview on Adotas. McGrory once again does not mince words in a not-so-veiled reference to Google when discussing the difference between ad networks and exchanges. He says, “They talk about that being an open market, but that ain’t it. If the market is OK with having one big ad network, then that means everyone deals with the intermediary — the network — rather than dealing with each other. That provides marketing leverage for network to dictate price.” Read Part I and Part II.
Networks And Exchanges Event
During ClickZ’s new Connected Marketing Week in San Francisco this August, there will be a full-day (August 17) session co-sponsored by the IAB called, “Future of Display: Ad Networks and Exchanges” which will include the participation of IAB Networks and Exchanges Committee co-Chairs David Moore and Jay Sears. Click here for updates on the growing agenda.
Watching Both Screens
According to Mediaweek’s Mike Shields, Yahoo! and Nielsen partnered on a new study which reveals that people are watching TV and surfing the web at the same time. Shields references the study, “More women (77 percent) claim to do so than men (73 percent). The average multitasker spends over 2.5 hours per week using the Web and TV at the same time, and the total time spent multitasking has surged by 19 percent over the past year.” Read more.
LucidMedia CEO Ajay Sravanapudi debunks what he sees as myths surrounding demand-side platforms. Among the five myths he identifies, Sravanapudi thinks there will not be hundreds of DSPs saying, “There is no shortage of organizations claiming to be a DSP. But you can count on one hand the number of solution providers able to deliver a truly successful DSP campaign (perhaps even minus a couple of fingers). In the heyday of networks, there were reportedly more than 300 ad networks out there, but few had a significant amount of their own proprietary technology.” Read more on iMedia Connection.
Mexico Data Law
A new data protection law has gone into effect in Mexico. According to the Independent Association of Privacy Professionals’ (IAPP) website, “. This new law regulates the legitimate collection, processing and disclosure of personal data held by the private sector. Its purpose is to ensure that privacy and the right to informational self-determination of individuals are guaranteed.” Read more. (source: @betterads)
Amazon And The Newspaper
Jonathan Mendez looks at recent newspaper efforts online including paywalls. He writes about newspapers, “What they have done on the digital side over the past decade is build highly matrixed organizations for sales, operations and analytics all around one thing, advertising. Unfortunately, the skillsets needed to sell content online are most similar to e-commerce, not advertising. When Jeff Bezos buys a newspaper it may stand a chance.” Read the post.
Facebook Travels
Facebook has made its own travel purchase after Google bought airline reservation software maker ITA earlier in the week. The social network leader bought NextStop which PaidContent’s Joseph Tartakoff describes as featuring “short, Tweet-like reviews of businesses and locales around the world.” But, Tartakoff thinks Facebook is more interested in Nextstop’s ex-Google employees. Read more.
Microsoft And The Startup Enterprise
The New York Times notes that startups are spurning the use of Microsoft enterprise software saying, “The loss of access to start-ups has already proved damaging to Microsoft as companies like Facebook and Twitter that rely on free software have grown from fledgling operations to Silicon Valley’s latest booming enterprises.” Ad network InterClick’s President Michael Katz adds his take on the article in a tweet: “We built our whole stack on MSFT & I think we’ll be ok.” Read the NYT article.
Creating Content On The Farm
Niki Scevak shares a case study on his Bronte Media blog about what he calls a content experiment “to study the economics of ‘content farm’ undertakings.” Scevak bares all as he buys a domain, requests articles to be created, and shares the pricing along the way in addition to his expectations of profitability. Though a small scale experiment, one can see how large scale stuff works, too. See it.
You’re Hired!
On ClickZ, Zach Rodgers interviews Microsoft’s new VP of U.S. sales and marketing, Keith Lorizio who has been promoted from within and said his “primary focus going forward will be to improve the company’s media analytics offerings to brand advertisers.” Read more. Meanwhile, Yahoo! has hired former Microsoft online exec Bill Shaughnessy as SVP of Product Management according to Kara Swisher of All Things D. Former VP of Search Sales at Omniture, Chris Zaharias is now the new VP of Sales at Dapper. Not surprisingly, in his LinkedIn profile he writes, “I’m responsible for revenue generation at Dapper (…)” – Dapper also launched a new website here. Peer39 announced that it has hired Alex White as VP of Product and Account Management.. White’s former employer is Yahoo! where he worked as Director, Global Product Marketing and, prior to that, at Right Media Exchange. LinkedIn here.
Why I Invested
On his personal blog, Atlas Venture’s Fred Destin shares why his firm invested in AdSafe Media, which announced a $7+ million new round of funding this week. Destin also discusses trends he’s seeing in online display including: “Now the level of complexity, whether we are talking about real-time bidding or not, is quite staggering. It’s the domain of technology-enabled solutions, of maths and data science.” Destin adds his Real-Time Advertising presentation used for a fireside chat with DataXu’s Mike Baker – DataXu is an Atlas company, too. Check it all out here.
