Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
comScore Reports On Display, And Reports
In advance of its own earnings release, comScore looked at its web-wide stats and announced that “Facebook accounted for more than one-quarter (25.8%) of all U.S. display ad impressions in the fourth quarter of 2010 — up from 23.1% in the prior quarter,” according to Mark Walsh of MediaPost. Read the deets. Meanwhile, back at comScore HQ, the company release its quarterly earnings report which showed a healthy 47% increase in revenues but a $.03 loss per share. Read the release.
Trading Desk Dollars
AdWeek took a look at the agency trading desk business and came away unimpressed – so says AdWeek’s Katie Feiola: “The great in-house trading desk experiment that the big four agency holding companies—Publicis, WPP, Omnicom, and Interpublic—launched in the last few years appears to have yielded lukewarm results.” Feola cites the number of clients currently running through the trading desks as a barometer. But, what remains opaque here is total spend. Show me the money! Read more.
Advertiser Leakage
Like a data-driven spy novelist, Adometry CEO Paul Pellman reveals “A secret concern in the data leakage story” on iMedia Connection. And, he’s not piling on the recent Lotame/Krux Digital scrum. And, I’ve read better spy novels. But, Pellman thinks it’s time to take the data targeting story (and “leakage” story) and start addressing the advertiser’s first party data as well as provide an understanding of “what happens to ads as they cycle through various ad networks, media properties, and other online publishers.” Read more on iMedia.
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt continued his investments in the start-up world as “online video advertising company Eyeview Digital Ltd. has raised $1 million from outgoing Google CEO Eric Schmidt through his Innovation Endeavors, Gemini Israel Funds, Lightspeed Ventures, and Gigi Levy” according to Globes Online. Globes says this brings Schmidt’s personal investment to $1.5 million and overall Eyeview investment to $6 million. Read more.
Facebook VP On Microsoft
New Facebook VP of Global Sales Carolyn Everson says that when judging between the opportunity at Facebook and that of her former employer, Microsoft, it’s pretty simple: “Microsoft is a huge corporation with many different businesses and significant revenue, of which advertising is a small piece of the pie. Here, our core revenue streams are driven by advertising, so I feel very much at the center of how Facebook is going to evolve.” Sweet Home, Ads. Read more.
Buzz For Ad Exchanges
The Center For Digital Democracy has taken “the Nestea plunge,” yet again, into the world of online consumer privacy and called out Google for its Buzz issues… C’mon, you know what I mean – that Twitter-like thing that Google had for a while. Buzz! Read the release. The ad exchange model is not left out of the mix as page 7 of the CDD’s comments reads: “The Google/DoubleClick Ad Exchange must be required to adopt a range of additional privacy and consumer protection safeguards. The DoubleClick Ad Exchange ‘includes over 40 ad networks from the U.S. and Europe, including most of the 25 largest ad networks in the U.S.’ As we explained in our 2010 complaint on real-time bidding and user auctions, few (if any) consumers know of—or have been asked to approve—the sale of their data and the subsequent use of that data, such as ad targeting.” Read the CDD comments (PDF).
When Buyers Aren’t Buying It
On ClickZ, CEO Mike Baker of demand-side platfrom DataXu dons his reporter hat and interviews Dave Martin, SVP of media at Ignited to get his thoughts on the online video ad business. Martin discusses some of his biggest barriers to spending more online telling Baker, “We’ve also witnessed some ‘black hat’ operations on the back-end of a few campaigns. For example, pre-roll tags were converted to in-banner tags, and our video ads eventually ran on auto-start below the fold, with the sound off. Bait-and-switch antics like this are very concerning, and reduce confidence in video as a viable channel for brands.” Read more.
April M&A
Boutique investment bank Petsky Prunier has published its April 2011 report on mergers and acquisitions and things look pretty good to the M&A junkie: “Total of 238 deals worth approximately $16.1 billion was announced in April 2011. Transaction volume for the month was up 226%, while aggregate deal value was up 483% from April 2010.” Read the whole report (PDF).
But Wait. There’s More!
- Sites That Send Shoppers What They Might Like – The New York Times
- Um, No, Search Is Not The ‘Worst’ Form of Advertising – Ad Age
- Big data and the big privacy problem – ZDNet
