Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
Interclick Accused Of History Sniffing
Another lawsuit on “history sniffing” has hit the fan as a 28-page complaint has been brought by Sonal Bose against ad network Interclick. According to Courthouse News recitation of the complaint, Bose said Interclick “uses ‘flash cookies’ and hidden codes that ‘monitored her browsing in ways she would not expect or detect,’ and that ‘invaded her privacy, misappropriated her personal information, and interfered with the operability of her computer – conduct and consequences for which she now seeks relief.'” Read more. And, read MediaPost.
Media6Degrees Gets $17 Million
All Things D’s Peter Kafka reports that ad network Media6Degrees has raised $17 million in a new round of funding led by Menlo Ventures. Kafka writes that CEO Tom “Phillips says his company will end up booking $20 million in revenue in 2010. And he says that by Q4 it had ramped up to a $30 million annual run rate-that is, it will do about $7.5 million in the last three months of the year.” Read more.
Undertone Acquires Site Rep firm
Expanding its publisher network, Undertone announced that it has acquired French site rep firm WWN. David Kaplan of PaidContent writes, “The purchase of Paris-based WWN is intended to expand Undertone’s global reach, as the company works to evolve from an ad network—it dumped the “networks” part of its name not too long ago—into a more general online ad services provider to publishers and advertisers. ‘There’s nothing inherently negative or wrong with the ad network model,’ Undertone CEO Mike Cassidy said in an interview with paidContent. ‘We just find the label too confining.'” Read about it as ad networks continue to diversify and evolve. Undertone also announced a new hire as Steve Goldberg, who was an Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) original gangsta (OG), has joined the company as svp and gm of International to lead the firm’s global initiatives. Read the release.
AdWeek editors take a look at key sectors of the ad economy in a forecast of what’s ahead in 2011. In the digital forecast, Jordan-Edmiston Group’s Tolman Geffs tells AdWeek that it’s good to be “healthy” year for M&A next year and “is basing his prediction on the economic recovery which is happening more briskly in online media, and the amount of cash many big companies have on hand.”Read more. And, download the “Digital” projection (PDF).
The “I” For The Storm
According to a ClickZ article by Kate Kaye, Publicis VivaKi and WPP Group’s GroupM are taking an active role in privacy self-regulation. Kaye writes, “VivaKi is including the (behavioral advertising “i”) icon in display ads for between 10 and 20 clients on a trial basis, in addition to helping clients understand the legal and regulatory landscape surrounding online privacy as it relates to the array of ad tracking and targeting technologies they use.” Read about it.
Do You Know Where Your Holiday Spend Is?
Analytics firm ComScore said in a release that holiday spending online continues to be robust in the United States: “For the holiday season-to-date, more than $21.95 billion has been spent online, marking a 12-percent increase versus the corresponding days last year.” Read the release. And, then there’s today – it’s Green Monday! – a term coined by eBay “to describe the Monday occurring around the second week of December.” See the facts and figures.
Getting Angel Investors
Data-driven, venture capital maven Roger Ehrenberg can’t help but taste the Quora candy and decided to respond to a post about “How To Close An Angel Round” over the weekend. in explaining his view, he begins, “For starters, there are two kinds of (angel investment) commitments – soft and hard. Hard means that once wire instructions are provided and final documents are sent, the money is in the account. Soft means there is an express interest to invest, but there isn’t 100% certainty for any number of reasons.” Read more about commitment.
Malware Hits DoubleClick Ad Exchange
Wired reports that DoubleClick Ad Exchange suffered malware attacks around December if reports from a security research company called Armorize are correct. According to the article, “The malicious advertisement, for gift cards, originates from a bogus advertising agency called AdShufffle, with three f’s in the name. The name appears to be playing off legitimate advertiser AdShuffle.” Read more.
Now Targeting eBooks
eBooks may be yet another new frontier for the data-driven, digital advertising world as The Wall Street Journal’s Emily Steel looks at another possible revenue stream for the book publishing world. She writes, “Marketers are exploring a variety of formats, including sponsorships that give readers free books. (…) Ads can be targeted based on the book’s content and the demographic and profile information of the reader.” Imagine the next Dan Brown novel with AdSense. Why not? Read more.
Facebook Worth Even More
You don’t need to go public to sell your private company shares these days as private market marketplaces like Second Market are proving. Facebook shares remain extremely desireable and TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington prints an email with the latest results from an auction of insider, Facebook shares and summarizes, “The shares hit a roughly $50 billion valuation in a big auction in late November, when $40 million changed hands. Last week the price edged up 1.2% to $21.01. This week’s auction has now closed as well. The closing price was $21.90, up 4.2% from last week. Read about it.
Search, Display And KTD
On his company’s blog, CEO Frost Prioleau of display ad buying platform Simpl.fi reports on the recent Search Insider Summit that he attended. Prioleau’s reflections sync with his company’s initiatives and – potentially – a new acronym! He writes, “Search marketers’ expertise in their clients’ keyword sets, in keyword level bidding, in keyword research and optimization, and in the use of different types of terms (head vs. long tail vs. competitive vs. branded etc.) will make them quick studies in Keyword Targeted Display.” KTD anyone? Read more.
Data-As-A-Service
More and more companies are taking aim at the big data side of the business, as former Applied Semantics CEO Gil Eibaz (you remember Applied Semantics, right? Acquired by Google and became an essential element of AdSense) discusses his new company called, Factual – an “open database” service. Read more. Read more from one its happy investors, Mark Suster of GRP Partners.
Ad Verifier Smack And Survey
Adotas’ Gavin Dunaway interviews Ryan Polley, AdXpose svp of strategic development, and asks how Polley “felt about ad networks always talkin’ smack about ad verifiers. (…) He surprised me by answering, ‘Can you blame them?'” Still, a new study released by AdXpose shows “the love” for ad verifiers as “more than 70% of respondents paid for ad verification services this year, (but) that percentage will drop to 56% as more publishers and networks integrate ad verification technology.” Read more on Adotas.
Invite Media Founder News
The Invite Media team packed a one-two PR punch over the past few days as both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal featured the company and its founders. Read the NYT and a story about the Young Entrepreneur Council. And, IM’s Nat Turner tells The WSJ about his company and another recently-acquired company, Milo, which shared office space in 2007: “Neither of our companies had figured out what we wanted to do. We both had ideas, but through the course of the summer we both changed those ideas. The cool part is we were in that office together and it was basically a think tank. I remember Jack (Abraham of Milo) would come to our meetings and we would go to his.” Read more.
No Business, Like Social Business
Adgregate Markets announced their latest ShopFans implementation. The company says they’re enabling “Social Commerce” for GameStop’s Facebook fans who can now buy World of WarCraft: Cataclysm. See the GameStop shop.
