Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
Rubicon Project On Profit, People
According to CEO Frank Addante from his Founders blog, sell-side optimizer Rubicon Project is going to start focusing on profitability. He writes, “We are on track to do $100M+ in revenue this year, and with discipline, will reach profitability in Q4 of 2010.” And efficiencies created by fully-developed products mean less headcount according to Addante who added, “The commitment of resources to these areas that drive our technology (and with that technology, increased automation & efficiency for us and our customers) have led to less need for as many people to do that work.” Read more.
M&A – IBM Buys Coremetrics
There was more M&A yesterday showing that data and its management solutions matter. IBM stepped more forcefully into the marketing analytics business when it announced the acquisition of analytics firm Coremetrics. An IBM executive discounted any thought that Coremetrics was acquired to combat Adobe’s purchase of Omniture last year. Read about it on ClickZ.
New NY Times Frankenstein Lab
The mad scientists at The New York Times announced that they will be creating a testbed site, to be “called Beta620, in July or August. The ‘620’ refers to the paper’s street address on Eighth Avenue in New York,” according to Ad Age. Ad Age also reports that NYT CTO Marc Frons believes Beta620 will allow the company to bring new ideas to fruition faster on the main news site. Read more. According to sources, there is no truth to the rumor that an internal, NYT stoner contingent will create another site called Beta420.
In a post on his personal blog titled, “Fiddling While Rome Burns,” angel investor Jerry Neumann takes issue with contents of a recent AdExchanger.com Q&A with Curt Hecht of VivaKi saying, “[…] let me nip future arguments in the bud: Google is trying to lock up display like it did search. Now you know.” Read more.
DoubleClick And Discrepancies
On the DoubleClick Publisher blog, DoubleClick announced that it is “the first advertising technology provider to achieve end to end compliance with the Impression Exchange,” a standard which the IAB created to deal with discrepancies in ad serving between what different entities might see (such as publisher and advertiser) in terms of impression levels, for example. Read more.
Epic Ads Buys Social Tool
Epic Advertising’s ad network Traffic Marketplace announced the acquisition of “Social Suitcase, a notable social media company with a reputation for providing advertisers with brand campaigns that increase user engagement, monetization and brand impact.” Read the release.
CAC, LTV, Startups
Lightspeed Venture Partners’ Jeremy Liew writes a definitional post on his company’s blog about some key metrics for many startups – where understanding the cost of acquiring customers (CAC) and lifetime value (LTV) of the customer is critical. Depending on the stage of the startup, one or the other may be more important. Read more.
News Flash: Print Hurting
Silicon Alley Insider offered a “Chart of the Day” yesterday which showed the advertising recovery currently rumored/underway is not affecting print, which remains in the doldrums if not descent with a 10% year-over-year decline in ad sales. Read more.
iPad Ad Results Strong
In a study of iPad ad engagement results from textPlus, PointRoll and AdMarvel, the iPad is showing some early, impressive results according to a release from the three companies. “Interaction rates (measuring the number of people tapping to expand and engaging with the ads, as a percentage of impressions) ranged from .9% to 1.5% in the first month of the campaign, up to 6 times the benchmark for comparable click-to-expand ads on the desktop.” Read it.
Ad + Network + Verifier = Smooch
Following Undertone Networks’ Alan Schanzer to ad verification company Adometry’s Board of Advisors, Undertone announced that “Adometry will provide its Veracity ad verification and effectiveness software to advertisers for use on select [Undertone] campaigns. Veracity provides both ad verification and effectiveness metrics to advertisers and advertising agencies.” Read more.
