Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
Time Inc Puts Up Paywall
Nieman Journalism Lab reported yesterday that Time Inc. may have put up a paywall for Time Magazine’s online site. Joshua Benton writes, “On almost every story that comes from the magazine, there’s this phrase: “The following is an abridged version of an article that appears in the July 12, 2010 print and iPad editions of TIME.” Read more. Today, All Things D’s Peter Kafka confirms that there is now a digital subscription for Time online. Read Kafka.
Nielsen Smoke, Fire
Nielsen may be moving too slowly for some. According to MediaPost’s Joe Mandese, the head of Nielsen Co.’s digital media initiatives, Manish Bhatia, has either left or been asked to leave. Mandese’s sources tell him that Bhatia “had been growing frustrated with the relatively slow pace of some digital media audience measurement initiatives – particularly the TV industry’s digital set-top data marketplace – and left to pursue something entrepreneurial in the online industry.” Read more.
The Energy Sucking Client
Les Margulies, president of Media Direction India, an agency in India, takes exception to recent remarks from Unilever VP of Media Rahul Welde at a conference last month. According to Margulies (and this story), Welde wants agencies to work for nearly free – even pay for the right to participate in a pitch. Margulies thinks it may be time to “no” to advertisers such as Unilever. Read more. For all the discussion of the agency model falling apart, the point is well-taken that within certain multi-national marketers, their model may be falling apart, too.
Anchor On Q2 Clicks
Anchor Intelligence released its Q2 2010 Traffic Quality Report and the news is good, “The innocuous invalid rate decreased drastically from 7.0% in Q1 to 0.9% in Q2, representing a 87.4% decrease. Meanwhile, the attempted click fraud rate remained nearly unchanged, as it decreased from 29.2% in Q1 to 28.9% in Q2.” What is the “innocuous invalid rate” you ask? – for example, a consumer double-clicks an ad. According to Anchor, there was a lot less of that in Q2. Read the study overview. Download the study (Registration required).
Deciphering The Guidelines
Amy Manus, a media director at Nurun, discusses what the new IAB guidelines for exchanges and networks mean for behavioral targeting in an article on ClickZ. Manus writes, “the data disclosure section addresses the need to identify data aggregators being utilized prior to the contractual agreement of using the inventory.” Read more.
Behavioral Today And Tomorrow
On Cogblog, Brent Halliburton discusses what he calls “The Value of Vectors in Behavioral Targeting” and breaks down the behavior into three parts: the event, recency and frequency. This is a great post on how data capture works today and what tomorrow may hold when “big data” is successfully managed. Read more.
WPP Group’s And The MIG’s Lesser
WPP Group formally announced that Brian Lesser of The Media Innovation Group (AdExchanger.com Q&A here) has been promoted to SVP and General Manager where “he will be responsible for the development of new technology and media products to improve the process of acquiring, optimizing, and measuring digital media.” Sounds cush. Read the release.
Schmidt Gets (Facebook) Blue Rental Car
Technology could use more Gawker-like moments. Props to Jessica Vacellaro of the Wall Street Journal who is at Allen & Company’s Sun Valley media summit. She writes, “Google Inc. Chief Executive Eric Schmidt and Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg were spotted driving away from the Sun Valley Lodge in Mr. Schmidt’s light blue rental car for a private rendezvous. Schmidt, smiling, was carrying a coffee.” Cream or sugar?.
Getting P&G To Spend
Datran’s Aperture GM Scott Knoll discusses the challenges in campaign effectiveness measurement today. He writes in Ad Age, “Until a company like P&G can feel confident, and can confirm after the fact that its confidence was well-placed, it will keep most of its dollars offline. And it will be right to do so, because there’s no measurement out there.” Read it.
Qualifying The Lead
On the TARGUSinfo blog, TARGUSinfo program manager Andi Cook looks at the oft-debated question of “what are the parameters of a valid versus an invalid lead?” She states, “Truth is, many of the leads generated online are just noise and not viable leads – no matter who generates it, who sells it, who buys it. So ultimately, who’s burden is it to bear?” Read her answer.
Twitter Adds E-Commerce
Twitter is moving beyond just promoted tweets as a revenue model. The company announced a new Twitter account called “@earlybird Exclusive Offers” that will offer time-sensitive deals a la Gilt Groupe, Groupon and Woot. A Twitter spokesperson told the NY Times that “It is experimenting with different models, like a cut of each sale or a fixed price per deal.” Read more.
Video Ad Stats
DG FastChannel’s Unicast division released a new report with a bevvy of insights on performance across vertical video ad channels. Here’s a sample: “Beverage/Spirits produced the highest average interaction rate (8.62%) for all ads served across verticals, followed by Retail (8.24%) and TV Entertainment (5.06%); Consumer Packaged Goods produced the longest average interaction time (56 seconds) across verticals, followed by Sporting Goods (50 seconds) and Technology (36 seconds).” Read the release. Download the report (PDF).
Content Generation Rules
Mike Shields of Mediaweek finds that a group of media publishers and advertisers are circulating a document intended to establish guidelines for the creation of content. The group – The Internet Content Syndication Council (ICSC) – thinks content generation companies such as Demand Media and Associated Content need to be reigned in as the ICSC’s Tim Duncan tells shields, “What concerns us is that most of these new content syndicators are producing low-quality articles that are link based. (…) They are designed to score high on search. That drives down high quality content.” Read more.
CPA Network Predictions
Andrew Wee pens an article on the consolidation of the CPA network world on ReveNews. Wee postulates on the outcome, “My guess is that 5 major CPA networks would be a comfortable number and with 10 networks everyone will be barely chugging along. There could be a second tier ecosystem of small networks which primarily broker or syndicate offers from the large networks and anyway from 50 to 100 small CPA networks might be a sustainable number.” Read more. (source: @mediatrust)
Buying Resonance
On the 360-i blog, Innovation Interactive brand manager Amanda Bird interviews Dave Hendricks, COO of social media technology startup LiveIntent. Hendricks discusses a “resonance” metric for Twitter: “Resonance is earned by creating a engaged, loyal following that retweets and amplifies your message. (…) Users signal that success by retweeting. Retweeting creates resonance. Unfollowing diminishes resonance. We love the whole resonance concept since it’s so core to our offering – making great connections.” Read more.
Adding Video Inventory
Video ad network SmartClip announced the addition of CineSport as a new publisher “for [CineSport’s] new entertainment and pop-culture program to be launched on several of its current affiliate partners.” SmartClip added that Jetcast, Involved Media’s TopTVBytes and iClips are among its list of new publishers, too.Read the release.
