Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
RTB at Yahoo!’s RightMedia
Right Media’s Senior Manager of Professional Services, Pedro Ponce de Leon, announced on Thursday from the Right Media blog, that the Yahoo! exchange has real-time bidding and that “using Right Media’s predictive algorithms is the best path to take, as it’s in real time and is dynamic. You won’t need to make large capital expenditures to build out the capabilities needed to participate in real-time bidding.” With the Right Media exchange model, APIs appear to be a critical element. AdExchanger.com looks forward to learning more about Yahoo! and RightMedia’s exchange plans in the very near future. Stay tuned!
Was Yahoo!, Now Microsoft
Qi Lu, who became president of Microsoft’s online services division last December, is profiled in the today’s New York Times by Miguel Helft. Prior to Microsoft, Lu helped drive engineering for Yahoo!’s search and internet advertising technology initiatives where he was known for a maniacal work ethic which includes 4 miles of running on a treadmill at 4 a.m. Read more.
Display And Search: A Happy Marriage
Another study is out – this time from iCrossing – suggesting that display advertising’s ability to generate demand combined with search’s ability to fulfill it, remain symbiotic solutions for the digital marketing mix. The whitepaper entitled, “The Effects of Display Media on Search Traffic,” says that “iCrossing found that running a display campaign increased visits from search engines by nearly 14 percent and boosted paid search click-throughs by nearly 15 percent.” Download the paper or listen to the podcast here (signup required). To neatly tie-up results from its whitepaper, iCrossing also has released a report on the importance of cross-channel attribution here (signup required).
Bartering For Media
On Ad Age, Natalie Zmuda and Michael Bush cover the ancient methods of bartering used in today’s media world as flavored ground beef can be traded by an advertiser for a TV spot. What’s next? How about 1,000 cases of Jelly Bellies for a 1 million impressions of a 728×90 at the top of the CNN home page? Read more.
Ad Revenues Up At MSNBC.com
Charlie Tillinghast told Beet.TV that ad revenues are up at the news site. He added that even though the display advertising sector has suffered, video has been strong as various formats including pre-roll, “curtains” and “skins” have expanded the site’s offerings to advertisers. See the video:
Ad Network Buys Aggregator
Admob, an online mobile ad network, has bought one of its supposed primary threats, an aggregator of mobile ad networks called AdWhirl. Matt Marshall of VentureBeat takes a look and reports that AdMob’s chief, Omar Hamoui, said that “The move was made to create an open and transparent mobile ad exchange.” As described by Marshall, the publisher can switch between mobile ad networks using AdWhirl’s system. Though it does give publisher’s control, it does not appear to allow for a true, open auction that you would see with an exchange. In fact, the AdWhirl system seems to offer tools comparable to a website publisher yield optimizer such as AdMeld, PubMatic, Rubicon Project or YieldBuild. Even this comparison would be difficult as there appears to be no automation in determining pricing per ad network in combination with frequency capping. There appears to be plenty of room for improvement in the mobile space and it would not be surprising to see existing exchanges to add this functionality if the return on investment justifies the cost.
Another mobile exchange competitor, Mobclix, jumped into the conversation on its blog on Friday, too, saying that it “allows developers to plug into more than 20 ad networks and transparently monitor their ads.”
Orange Buys Unamis
The Guardian reports on the Friday purchase of UK ad network, Unanimis, by Orange saying that “Orange aims to boost income from the booming UK online advertising market.” Read more.
Sex, Drugs and Blogging
Ah, the life of the blogger. St. Tropez, Pago Pago, Brooklyn… it’s all possible when you live the dream lifestyle of a blogger as outlined in a Sunday NY Times article, “For a Select Few, Madison Avenue Has Dream Jobs” by Stuart Elliott. OK, maybe not but the travel industry is enjoying the blogger construct as a cheap alternative to more traditional PR. Read more.
When A VC Says No
When do you know if a venture capitalist is not interested in your company after hearing your pitch? According to Joe Beninatos (through Bryce Roberts) in his presentation “Raising Capital: Closing The Deal,” the answer is never flat-out “no” so he offers a few signs such as “Have you thought about hiring a ______?” See the presentation which was given “to the fbFund Fund Rev teams.”
Still More Hiring
MediaMath, fresh from its recent funding, announced new hires including Steven Kaufman as EVP of Account Services (formerly of Digitas) and Rick Greenberg as VP of Marketing (formerly of Rosetta). Read the release.
PaidContent.org covers more hires at Comscore, Altimeter Group and Buzzmetrics here.
Networks Are Alive And Well
In Ad Age, Warren Lee, a venture partner at Canaan Partners, points out that ad networks continue to survive in spite of the daily reporting of their imminent demise. In “What Happened to the Ad-Network Apocalypse?”, Lee suggests that increases in inventory and usage as well as several other factors continue to keep the ad network model strong. Read more. Nevertheless, Zach Coelius of Triggit comments from his company’s blog that with the advent of real-time bidding, “those Ad Networks that currently source their media on the exchanges may find themselves scrambling” soon.
AdWords Self-Serve Video Ads
Chantal Todé from DM News covers SpotMixer and a “new deal, officially being announced today, [which] enables AdWords users to create 15- or 30-second in-stream video ads using SpotMixer‘s do-it-yourself ad creation tool.” Read the article.
Publisher Solutions
On MediaPost, Kevin Mannion of Sky Road Consulting looks at a recent Advertiser Perceptions report in “What the Best Sites Know” – as in what successful publishers are doing to maintain prosperity into the future. Audience remains critical, but so does a cracker jack, direct sales team. Read more.
Invite Media Training
COO Nat Turner offered an inside look “visual” of a recent training session for new team members at DSP Invite Media. Not sure what that is on the whiteboard but someone is definitely reading email during meetings.
CMO.com and Omniture
Omniture announced the launch of a new, news aggregation site called CMO.com as the web analytics providers gets into the publishing business via a great domain name. Read the release.
A&E & Lifetime
A&E swallowed Lifetime on Friday as the NBC-Universal-owned network shuffled the deck on who owns Lifetime. Prior to the acquisition, according to Media Life, Lifetime was owned by Hearst and Disney. Now under A&E Television Networks, ownership changes a bit, as A&E is jointly owned by Disney, Hearst and NBC Universal.
Digital Signage As Vortex
There is no “chicken vs. egg” question in DOOH according to Lyle Bunn, Editor, DigitalSignageToday.com who looks at the digital revolution in out-of-home and posits that increases in ad revenue in the DOOH space are driven by improvements in technology – and vice-versa. Bunn says, “The growing numbers of networks and displays reflect the broadening at the top of the [DOOH] vortex.” Read more.
