Forrester is predicting that interactive marketing spend will hit nearly $55 billion by 2014, but advertising overall will decline.
On ClickZ, Rocket Fuel CEO George John discusses actionable data in online display with a couple of his own fancy graphs and tables. In discussing the use of optimization tools, John makes this clever analogy: “It’s like the episode of ‘The Office’ where Dwight tries to outsell the company’s Web site. There’s no point in fighting tools; you have to learn to use them. Dwight only wins on TV.”
Ryan Siegel of Wired has written a big, bad, blistering critique of the IAB, BBB and other acronym-ic organizations involved in the recent privacy regulation initiative by the online advertising industry. Siegel says:
“But if this is the best these associations can do, then there is no reason to trust them. Let’s bring in the Congress Critters with badly written laws designed to win votes from the uneducated. Let’s welcome the bureaucrats with their Byzantine manuals. Let’s make online ad networks have to get explicit permission to track us around the web.”
AOL CEO Tim Armstrong continues to shuffle the executive deck. According to PaidContent, “Brendan Condon, head of overseas ops for AOL’s Platform-A (NYSE: TWX) advertising group, is leaving London” and returning to New York City. A UK spokesperson told PaidContent that “we’ll be working with him to determine his next role.” That doesn’t sound good.
“Quantcast is on fy-uh,” as Marv Alpert might say. Today’s Quantcast news is from PEhub which reports Quantcast is looking to raise funds at a $300 million valuation. According to a PEhub source, “the company has already received multiple term sheets, but no identities of the lead investors (maybe strategic?) or if the offered terms match what QuantCast is seeking.”
Ken Doctor of Seeking Alpha discusses the newspaper conundrum online and a new solution called Circulate from CircLabs, Inc. He says that not all previous newspaper monetization efforts have been without success online and adds that, “Inform and Aggregate Knowledge have done a good job of it, on such sites as WashingtonPost.com.”
From Destination CRM comes news that Coremetrics is syndicating “web-visitor data across advertising networks, allowing users to manage and even extend their reach within a single, drag-and-drop interface. The networks Coremetrics has partnered with include advertising solution providers AudienceScience, Choicestream, Dotomoi, OpenX, and [X+1].”
According to UK’s PR Week, Specific Media has appointed a new PR agency to “build brand awareness of the company among the marketing, advertising and media planning communities..”
“The federal Small Business Innovation Research Program, which funds $2.2 billion a year in research and development at small businesses and is scheduled to expire this month,” is causing significant squabbling among companies and venture firms that get funding, according to Kim Hart of the Washington Post.
New Media Age reports that GroupM and Aegis are raising their search profile with new hires. “Aegis Media has appointed Andy Mihalop as its head of search for global clients, while GroupM has made former Sapient head of search Bill Staples its first UK director of search.”
Finally, “Showdown in the upfront corral” has few advertisers wiling to participate in the upfront without significant price cuts. Media companies are holding out for the most part and AdAge has the story.
