Alibaba Gets Majority Of Revenue From Ads; Salesforce.com Has Good Quarter

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.

All Alibaba’s Data

Alibaba, known mostly for ecommerce, actually makes most of its revenue from advertising. Ad Age reports that Alibaba’s online marketing arm, Alimama, “has teamed up with four first-wave agency partners: WPP’s OgilvyOne China, Omnicom Group’s Nim Digital, Dentsu Inc.’s &C and independent player Hylink. Alibaba combines a massive base of shoppers and first-party user data with data from things like online videos and smartphone map access. Jacco ter Schegget, president of OgilvyOne China, says of Alibaba’s data that “there’s nothing comparable in the West in terms of breadth and scope.” Agencies are licking their chops to tap the exploding Chinese ecommerce market on behalf of their primarily western clients.

Salesforce.com Marketing Clout

Salesforce.com’s Marketing Cloud had a rosy fiscal first quarter, with a 29% increase in revenue year-over-year to $143.2 million. Vice chairman Keith Block, speaking on the earnings call, called the company’s marketing tools, underpinned by the ExactTarget acquisition, the “tip of the spear” for Salesforce.com in its dealings with B2C clients. “The Marketing Cloud is coming up in every conversation we have now with senior marketers. People are voting with their dollars. ” Read the full results.

Mobile Browser Ad Blocking

Adblock Plus launched a mobile browser on Wednesday, built by automatically including Adblock Plus in the open-source Firefox browser. For now consumers can only get it on Android. According to community manager Ben Williams, the Adblock Browser will exit beta in July or August, and may include additional tracking and malware protection. Until now, Adblock Plus was difficult to install on mobile, VentureBeat notes, but it’s also hard to drive installs for a standalone mobile browser, as Mozilla and Opera can attest. The mobile revolution: sand in the ad-blocking fuel tank? More. The debut comes amid reports that mobile carriers in the EU will turn on massive ad-blocking features. More on that.

Cross-Platform Proof

In an attempt to make sense of how continued media fragmentation is affecting ad reach, Nielsen used its Total Ad Ratings to score the effectiveness of 12 campaigns across TV and desktop. Results proved (unsurprisingly) that a cross-platform targeting approach reaches larger audiences than either screen can independently achieve. On average, the campaigns reached 10.4% more people by including digital spots, and reached almost 75% of the target audience. “TV alone reached over two-thirds of the desired audience,” Nielsen wrote in a blog post. “While this is significant, it still was improved upon with the addition of online which contributed 7.7% of reach that was not achieved with TV alone.”

Marketing Tech For Tech Marketers

IDG Communications announced ABM360, a set of tools purpose-built for B2B tech campaigns. The offering combines the first-party data IDG pulls from outlets like CIO, MacWorld, GamePro and TechHive with its lead-gen and marketing services. According to CEO Michael Friedenberg, “[Our] expertise led us to create a suite of ABM products that specifically helps technology marketers identify company purchasing behavior and the people driving these decisions.” Read the full release.

You’re Hired!