Omnicom And Programmatic; Cookieless Retargeting

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Omnicom Programmatic

Dan Salmon, analyst at BMO Capital Markets, hosted a meeting with Omnicom CFO Randy Weisenburger on Wednesday. In a note to investors after the meeting, Salmon writes, “With [Omnicom] having reported earnings last week, the conversation focused primarily on the long-term impact of the shift to digital on margins. Investors were eager to learn about the impact of programmatic ad buying: Omnicom believes it generates higher operating margins, but incremental technology investment washes out the benefit on an ROE basis. Today, the total media buying and planning business is about 11%-12% of Omnicom’s revenue, while the still-small programmatic piece of it is profitable.” Read more (PDF).

Facebook Parses App Development

Facebook continues to build up its mobile business by acquiring Parse, an app development tool for Apple iOS and Google Android. Parse is particularly focused on paid apps, so this could be a bid by Facebook to move away from a clear mobile ad strategy and ecommerce offerings. Doug Purdy, Facebook’s Director of Product Management, says in an official blog post that the two companies have already been working together and not much will change in terms of Parse’s branding. What’s the appeal of owning Parse? Purdy writes that Parse “removes the need to manage servers and a complex infrastructure, so you can simply focus on building great user experiences.” Read more.

Mobile Growth

Although highly fragmented, the audience for mobile apps has caught up with similar-sized audiences for other media, according to a new study by mobile analytics firm Flurry. “We conclude that the U.S. audience that is reachable through apps, albeit more fragmented, is now roughly equal to that which can be reached on laptops and desktops,” writes Mary Ellen Gordon, director of industry insights and analysis at Flurry, in a blog post. Read more.

Cookieless Retargeting

Sequential Media has teamed up with supply-side platform Beanstock to bring cookieless retargeting to desktop and mobile with their domain relevancy algorithm. The platform, currently in beta, also claims to prevent “data leakage” for publishers. “‘Do-not-track’ is forcing the issue and frankly doing retargeting a favor, as there needs to be a way to scale without cookies,” said DemandBase’s Louis Moynihan. Read the release.

Russian Display

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But Are They Really Integral?; Don’t Pontificate, Verificate

Russian search company Yandex reported that its display advertising revenues grew 48% in the first quarter of 2013, which comes to 648,000,000 Russian rubles; in US dollars, assuming this editor has done his math right, that equals $20.8 million in revenue. Read the release. The company grossed $257 million in the quarter overall (for comparison, that’s about 25% of Yahoo’s quarterly revenue). Nevertheless, under-the-radar Yandex is growing quickly.

Censorship Requests Increase

Google released their seventh Transparency Report – which outlines government requests for “censorship” of internet content – and saw that the numbers have skyrocketed: “As we’ve gathered and released more data over time, it’s become increasingly clear that the scope of government attempts to censor content on Google services has grown.” Specifically, in the span of five months Google received 2,285 government requests to remove 24,179 pieces. Read more. Related: As you may recall on Google’s earnings call last week, the company said the removal of websites with pirated content from its ad network meant a short-term revenue hit for Big G in Q1.

The New Data Scientist

The demand for data scientists – people who have the skills and training to pull business insights out of big data – is so high that startups are stepping in to fill the gap, observes AdAge’s Kate Kaye. “Their goal, in a nutshell, is to automate tasks once assigned to a data scientist or teams of technologists, making big-data capabilities possible for smaller companies,” Kaye writes. Read more.

WPP’s Sorrell Bets On Google

Wasn’t it just a few years ago that WPP Group CEO Sir Martin Sorrell was calling Google the ad holding company’s “frenemy?” Well, whether or not he regards the search giant as a best bud, Sorrell predicts that in a few years Google will get the lion’s share of its ad spending, with News Corp. moving from first to second place in WPP’s media expenditures. Techcrunch’s Ingrid Lunden recorded Sorrell’s pronouncement from the FT’s Digital Media conference. Sorrell also noted that digital now comprises 34% of WPP’s $72 billion annual ad spend, rising “from zero to over one-third in about ten years, the age of Google.” Read the rest.

Programmatic Future

DoubleClick by Google, a Programmatic I/O sponsor, has created an infographic and a video highlighting how buyers and sellers can collaborate effectively in the programmatic future. The video is from AdExchanger’s Programmatic I/O conference in San Francisco on April 8. See it now!

Earnings