Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
MediaMind Offers Video Ad Tool
MediaWeek’s Mike Shields writes that MediaMind (was Eyeblaster) is now delivering the Video Ad Selector tool to CBS as it looks to solve this problem: “Display ads are often too small, or too tucked away to the side to properly showcase brands’ big money TV ads.” Simply, the tool puts choice in the hands of the consumer and lets them make the video ads bigger. Read the details.
TRAFFIQ Adds Agency Partner
TRAFFIQ announced a new partnership with MAGNET Global, a network of independent ad and marketing agencies. According to the release, “TRAFFIQ will be the digital media platform of choice for MAGNET member agencies worldwide.” This builds on other recent partnerships including Havas Digital and TAAN, an agency network. Read more.
EMC Eats Big Data Plum
EMC acquired Greenplum yesterday for $300 million if Om Malik’s sources are to be believed. Read more. Malik writes on GigaOm, “[Greenplum] caught the big data wave early. More recently it has added a layer of business intelligence to its offerings, which is one of the reasons why the company became attractive to EMC.” Is a DSP or ad network next? Crunch that data!
Bloomberg looks at how Apple’s iAd is using intent data collected through its iTunes platform for advertising purposes – and iAd, specifically. Rob Candelino of Unilever says the behavioral targeting through iAd has been working well. Adds Bloomberg, “Unilever, which began working with Apple in May on a campaign for its Dove Men+Care soap, is using iAd to zero in on married men who are in their late 30s and have children.” Read more.
The MySpace Ad Deal
More news on the MySpace search advertising deal which is currently serviced by Google through next month in The Wall Street Journal – With the site’s traffic down 13% year over year, it appears MySpace will focus on audience. From the WSJ: “MySpace executives say they are focusing on increasing the percentage of the U.S. population of 13- to 34-year-olds who visit the site each month to 75% from 50%. MySpace President Mike Jones adds, ‘My goal is to saturate that specific audience.'” Read more.
Google On Transparency
Perhaps reacting in part to recent news and/or rumor about AdWords and AdSense accounts being suspended without warning, Andres Schabelman of the AdSense Policy team tries to clarify on the Inside AdSense blog, “Our intent is to keep Google’s content and search networks safe and clean for our advertisers, users and publishers. We seek to be as transparent and consistent with our decision making.” Transparency positioning appears yet again. Read more.
The Concentrated Bet
Roger Ehrenberg of IA Capital Partners reveals his move from angel investor to venture capital maven as well as his investement philosophy on his Information Arbitrage blog. In an addendum to his post,. Regarding why his firm invested in such companies as MetaMarkets and The Trade Desk, he writes, “We always take a syndicate-based approach to investing, working with top firms and individuals to create the strongest and most strategic investment group possible. We expect a single concentrated bet to return a significant share of the fund’s committed capital.” Read more.
Seed Investor Crash?
A “seed fund crash” has been a hot topic in the blogosphere recently. Angel/see investor and Hunch exec Chris Dixon doesn’t see a crash coming and expects seed funds to outperform VCs for one important reason. He writes, “[Seed investor] portfolios contain the same companies as top-tier VCs except the they invested in earlier rounds at significantly lower valuations.” Read more.
Brian McAndrews On Display
On the Searchandise blog, in the first of a three-part interview, Madrona VC and former Microsoft ad exec, Brian McAndrews says in an interview that he sees three key areas where Display is becoming more like Search: the use of data, real-time bidding and creative. On creative McAndrews thinks, “If companies can generate display creative on the fly inexpensively, the ability to better target display ads is significantly enhanced.” He’s a multi-variate believer. Read more.
MediaCommerce
The Wall Street Journal notes that media and ecommerce are uniting as real, value-added content proves to help move product. Couponing and discounts appear to be at the core of the strategy outlined in the article: “The question is whether young people will remain motivated to do the sorts of tasks that marketers find valuable in exchange for discounts. “The goal is never to purchase behavior,” said [CEO Kathy Savitt of youth-targeted Lockerz] but rather to channel existing behavior into forms that can be monetized. Read more.
A Desk For Tech In London
Shared work spaces are very attractive to early stage start-ups not looking to be burdened by a long-term lease. To that effect and with momentum growing for European tech startups (read the Economist), TechHub will be offering space to all startup types – for a fee – in London beginning next week. Read more. (source: Image Space Media blog)
25 Websites, 82% of Ads
In AdAge, eMarketer’s David Hallerman reprises a couple of the graphics we noted yesterday on his company’s site in regards to display advertising. Looking at IAB figures by site size released earlier this year, he notes (there’s a graphic here, too), “A closer look at those revenue figures shows how many major websites represent a small slice of the market. More than 82% of revenues from the total U.S. online advertising market go to just 25 web publishers.” See it.
What Ad Exchanges Don’t Provide
On ClickZ, Aaron Shapiro a partner at HUGE, an NYC-based digital agency, says that ad exchanges lack in several areas. He writes, “Ad exchanges don’t provide the benefits marketers get from being associated with a high-quality media brand – a necessity in some cases for effective brand recognition. And second, exchanges only place ads in standard banner sizes.” Read more.
Data Visualizing Soccer
Sure you can have loads of data spewing at you from all directions, but how do you display it and make it actionable, let alone interesting? Take a soccer game’s data, for example. That’s exactly what graphic designer Michael Deal did using the time each team controlled the ball as one data point among many for recent World Cup soccer games. See it on the Umbro blog.
Display And Gmail
AdAge’s Edmund Lee looks at how YouTube, Gmail and Google Finance among others figure into Google’s display advertising plans. In regards to Google VP Neal Mohan’s remarks last week about Gmail ads, “Mr. Mohan did not detail what a display unit might look like in Gmail, and a company insider said it has yet to work out the specific ad requirements against those properties.” Read more.
ROI Tradeoff
According to recent Efficient Frontier data, Sameera Inapakutika says that when you target geographically on certain keyword combinations, this can dramatically affect your return-on-investment. For example, Inapakutika writes, “In the New York area, Keyword 1 paid 89% higher CPC and got 21% fewer clicks in the geo campaign when compared to the national campaign. Data across other regions for both keywords shows a similar trend.Read more. (source: @dherman76)
