Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
Apple Allowing Google Ads
“Apple Inc. doesn’t appear to have barred Google Inc. and others from selling targeted ads inside iPhone and iPad applications, after implying several weeks ago that it might do so,” says The Wall Street Journal. But, the ability to block non-Apple ad networks is still written in the Terms of Service. Read more.
eBay Axes Ad Program, Grabs Search Data
PC World’s Juan Carlos Perez notes that Ebay is dropping its AdCommerce program (similar to AdWords) which allowed eBay marketers to buy pay-per-click placement in its search results. The company believes the PPC program was not providing the best results for the user. – Didn’t Google overcome this issue through a quality score? – Either way, Ebay appears to be harnessing its site’s U.S. search data – for some reason. Read more on PC World. And, read the announcement on the Ebay AdCommerce blog.
Phorm Functioning
ISP-level targeter Phorm has found a home in Brazil. ClickZ’s Jack Marshall tracks the company’s recent progress as Phorm has sent its first invoice to a Brazilian ISP for over $1 million. Phorm has already raised $70 million for its controversial form of targeting technology which captures user data at the ISP rather than the browser which provides less, if any, controls for the user. Read about why they need more financing.
In late June, eMarketer chief David Halloran and his team produced a webinar called “The Keys to Online Display Advertising.” In the deck for the webinar, there are contained many helpful data points for online advertising types such as you. See the overview. Download the deck from SlideShare. And, you can also view the webinar.
Allen & Co. Conference This Week
Allen & Co. is producing its annual you-gotta-be-a-big-deal-to-attend conference this week in Sun Valley, Idaho. Noting that Google’s acquisition of YouTube originated at this conference, Jessica Vascellaro of The Wall Street Journal writes, “The techies and their deal-makers are likely to be brainstorming more potential combinations and content-swapping deals between AOL Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc., as all three plot ways to compete with ever-expanding Google.” Read more.
Dell And The Data Center
eWeek covers the latest acquisition in the data-driven tech world as “The company announced July 1 that it is acquiring automation software vendor Scalent Systems, which provides shortcuts intended to make data center infrastructure easier and more efficient to operate. “Read more.
The Data-Driven Creative Agency
Gustav von Sydow of Burt shares his presentation deck at the recent Cannes Lions ad festival which offer insights on his company’s data-driven ad tech work with its target client – the creative agency. Von Sydow says, “The thesis (currently a work in progress) is that the existing workflow is actually quite ok – no need to ‘reinvent the agency’ – so long as you start integrating “the four feedback loops” of Agile advertising.” Read the blog post. And, download the deck.
Local.com Acquiring Local Stuff
Local.com acquired Octane360, a marketing services company which provides local advertising for domain owners. According to a release, “Local.com acquired the assets of OCTANE360 for $5 million in cash and stock with an earnout of up to $5.9 million if certain performance criteria are met in the two-year period following the closing.” Read more.
The Data Moat Is Not Enough
Having proprietary data – or a “data moat” – may not be enough according to FlightCaster’s Bradford Cross on his personal blog. Cross writes, “If you are B2B, you may get away with shoveling data to customers through an API. If you are B2C, consumers don’t want to consume data – they want their problem solved. Even for most B2B cases, it is not the raw data but some productization around it that customers want. They want actionable information, which is not typically in the form of probability distributions.” Read more.
Publisher CPM Power
On his company’s blog, Scout Analytics’ Matt Shanahan argues that increased segmentation of a site’s audience leads to increased scale and opportunity for the publisher: “The smaller and more targeted the chunks, the more segments that can be packaged and the bigger the pool of potential advertisers. The larger pool means increased demand for impressions and better CPM revenue.” Read more.
Yahoo! Targeting News Audience
Capitalizing on the mountains of search data that Yahoo! has its disposal, the company will start a new blog today called “The Upshot” which will cover news and info related to the day’s most popular search queries. James Pitaro, VP of Yahoo Media told the NY Times yesterday, “This idea of creating content in response to audience insight and audience needs is one component of the [data-driven] strategy, but it’s a big component.” Read it.
Facebook Valuation Down?
From his Bronte Media blog, Niki Scevak notes that Facebook may have lost value since November if numbers in a recent Sarah Lacy about Elevation Partners in Facebook are to be believed. Scevak writes, “So assuming the shares are both the same (common stock from early employees) that means that the investment has declined in value by one-third.” Read more.
Greeks Step Back From Tax
Looking to close its goverment’s massive shortfall, Greece announced that it would tax all Greek-based websites a whopping 21.5% for all internet ad revenues but… after intense lobbying efforts, cooler heads prevailed. No tax. Read about why online journalists in Greece are still not happy. (p-e-n-s-i-o-n)
