A New metric For Publishers; Google First Look Is In Beta

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

Pay Attention

The Economist and Financial Times have both introduced metrics that charge advertisers based on “temporal activity” (aka time on page, though it may sound like a brain function). Speaking with Mediapost’s Joe Mandese, several media agency execs throw their weight behind the new engagement stats. Audrey Siegel of Assembly says, “Everyone is struggling with what have been relatively blunt evaluations … to develop and analyze various media.” More.

Google’s ‘First Look’ Cometh

Google’s response to header bidding, First Look, is in active beta and accepting publisher partners to test the product. In a blog post, director of product management Jonathan Bellack officially announced the pilot, which AdExchanger wrote about a few weeks ago. He said early results showed a 10% lift in yield. Header bidding cropped up in part because the DFP ad server didn’t allow publishers to put every impression up for sale, so the move is Goliath’s first strike back against David.

Back To School

Programmatic expertise has bubbled up through advertising, tech and media, and now it’s working its way into the ivory tower of college campuses. Digiday’s Shareen Pathak cites former Criteo President Greg Coleman and former NBC ad sales SVP Nick Johnson, who both teach digital media courses. Pathak follows Undertone founder Eric Franchi (who had himself a good day) to a guest lecture at a Fordham class taught by Rubicon Project vet Ed Carey. Carey says students are pushing for expertise in SSPs, DSPs, DMPs, etc., but “there aren’t a lot of tenured professors who can actually teach it as a subject matter expert.” More.

“A” Is For Broadband

Of the nine named subsidiaries within Alphabet (including Google), the most nebulous and interconnected is Access, the company’s push into broadband services, which encompasses Google Fiber. “From the little figures we can grok on Fiber, it may be a bigger concern now for telcos than the pay TV business,” says Re/code reporter Mark Bergen. We don’t really know what’s going on inside Access, or its expensive subsidiary Fiber (which is expected to eat up $2B next year), but we do know AT&T and Comcast are watching very closely. Read on.

But Wait, There’s More!