Good news in the world of online advertising according to the latest quarterly forecast from Publicis’ ZenithOptimedia Group. MediaPost’s Joe Mandese writes that the agency believes that global ad spending online is gaining share in 2009 will reach 10.1%, a 1.5% increase since their last estimate in April. The Wall Street Journal takes Zenith’s spin in another direction as its article on the research is titled, “ZenithOptimedia Predicts Gloomier 09 Ad Mkt Picture,” preferring to focus on traditional dollars.
And speaking of The Wall Street Journal, the Quantcast Media Program PR freight train continues in today’s WSJ as Jessica Vascellaro interviews CEO Konrad Feldman. Richard Lowden, vice president of sales at the Weather Underground, tells the WSJ that Home Depot recently bought ads on their website through the program. (WSJ subscription required – or use Google.com backdoor by entering title of article, “Quantcast Shakes Up Ad-Targeting Model” and searching.)
Current CEO John Batelle talks about why he has never considered Federated Media an ad network among other topics in an interview with VatorTV’s Bambi Francisco.
IAC’s Barry Diller said last week that poor performance in display is to blame for the downturn at Evite which recently suffereed layoffs. Read more in Bizjournals.
MediaWeek’s Mike Shields has discovered that the music industry is seeing a paradoxical opportunity with display advertising. As described by Mike Rich, VP of AOL Entertainment, users may listen to music but come back to a music site which can be a natural engagement moment” – presumably for display advertising. Shields cites CBS’ Last.fm as pushing “Personalized Visual Radio, a format designed to encourage users to listen to and ‘watch’ playlists.” Music can look good?
Robin Wauters declares that the ad network consolidation is continuing in his TechCrunch post detailing a European transaction where Hi-Media bought AdLink Media in a deal which is hard to quantify even in an English translation of the press release. (Here’s the original French version of the release for francophiles.)
