Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
Quigo And Tacoda Names Cut
In the speed of a tweet, AOL Advertising announced through its Twitter account that the Quigo and Tacoda names were company names non-grata. (All that trademark work for nothing!) OK, they didn’t announce on Twitter – it all starts in this Media Week article as Tim Armstrong discusses the AOL makeover underway. Read more.
Omnicom Prepares To Acquire
The Wall Street Journal’s Suzanne Vranica reports that Omnicom Group has created a new unit called Omnicom Digital which will be focused on “digital acquisitions, developing new technologies and housing some of its digital start-up businesses, including its analytics firm” for the ad agency holding company. (Whoa. When you’re talking Omnicom, there’s now Omnicom Group, OMG Digital, Omnicom Digital and OMD. Scorecard, please.) Read more.
Investment Firm Analyst On Ad Hedge Funds
Jordan Rohan, Managing Director and research analyst at RBC Capital Markets, appears to be drinking the ad exchange Kool-Aid when he writes in a MediaPost opinion piece, “Maybe there are more similarities between advertising and finance. There are ad exchanges patterned after financial exchanges.” Read more.
Fox Interactive Name and Management Change
Was: Fox Interactive Media
Now: News Corp Digital Media
NDM (They left off the “C”.) also shuffled its management according to PaidContent.org’s Rafat Ali. Jorge Espinel, who blogs on SpectatorBytes, was among those “named” – as EVP Strategy and Corporate Development. Read more including the release.
AOL Blue Plate Special: $4 Billion
As Peter Kafka notes on AllThingsD, the rumored sale price for AOL is heavily discounted from even Google’s write-down of it’s five-percent, AOL investment early this year as Time Warner is putting AOL on the block by year end (After thinking about it… if you want a write-off, wouldn’t you say that it was worth more than it actually was?). Read more.
Out-Of-Home Ad Network Gets $6.5 Million
DIgital out-of-home (DOOH) ad network, TargetCast, picked up $6.5 million in Series A financing according to Paul Boutin of VentureBeat. Claremont Creek led the round with Draper Fisher Jurvetson participation. DFJ Managing Firector, John Fisher, will join the board. Read more. It’s all about buying audience across digital!
Visible World And Tumri Go Cross-Platform
Visible World (AdExchanger.com Q&A) and Tumri (AdExchanger.com Q&A) have announced a partnership which will bring Tumri’s new, online video capabilities for its multi-variate, creative optimization platform to Visible World’s digital TV ad targeting capabilities – effectively bringing TV and online ad targeting together with one solution. Presumably, this should make attribution models increasingly efficient. Read more from Kate Kaye on ClickZ.
Planning Tool In UK
MediaPost’s Mark Walsh writes that Nielsen will launch a new planning tool for online campaigns in the UK. The tool called UKOM Audience Planning System (APS) – whoa, that’s a lot of acronyms – will enable media buyers and planners to understand reach and frequency for their online buys in a bid to compete with tools offered by Quantcast and Comscore. Read more.
Burst Media Gets New CMO
Hiring from within, Burst Media announced that Chuck Moran will be elevated from his role as VP of Marketing to Chief Marketing Officer. According to Boston.com, Moran has moved up the ranks at Burst since he originally joined as research manager in 2001. Read more.
The Professor Survey
Professors from UC Berkeley and The University of Pennsylvania spoke to The New York Times’ Stefanie Clifford about their recent telephone study of 1,000 people that they say shows 2/3 of Americans object to online tracking by advertisers. It does not seem as if it was explained to survey respondents that tracking is anonymous and that there are benefits of anonymous tracking – just a couple of questions about “customized discounts and customized news.” Read more.
What’s An Agency Worth
In Ad Age, Jason Schlossberg, President and Co-Founder of PR Firm, Kwittken & Company, looks at how agencies have commodotized themselves to a degree in the recent downturn and what they can do to create “value” in the future for themselves and for their clients. Like any decent PR person, among his suggestions is: “Identify exactly what makes your agency truly unique from the competition and make sure everyone knows about it.” Read more.
World’s Best Presentation
Slide presentation upload site, Slideshare, recently ran a contest for the World’s Greatest Presentation. The winner was not an ad technology or media company or media company. It was Dan Roam who offered a presentation on healthcare solutions, which breaks Guy Kawasaki’s 10-slide rule for in-person presentations – but whatever. ReadWriteWeb covers the winning presentation and SlideShare’s steady, impressive growth. Read more.
In case you’re curious, here is the winner:
