PubMatic Acquires Mobile Tech Company; Collective Hires Ebay Exec As New CFO; Lang Makes Moves At Time Inc.

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PubMatic Adds To Mobility

PubMatic announced the acquisition of MobiPrimo as the company looks to bolster its efforts in mobile in the sell-side platform (SSP) space. The release states, “The transaction will allow PubMatic’s mobile platform to integrate directly with the leading mobile networks, ad servers and demand-side platforms (DSPs). In addition, the acquisition more than doubles the number of employees on PubMatic’s dedicated mobile development team.” In fact, the acquisition will add 16 developers according to the company. Read the release. MobiPrimo was co-founded by Aditya Kulkarni and Samir Karande (LinkedIn) who positioned the company around “Location enabled mobile search solution for local businesses, web, enterprise data as well as local store on your mobile,” according to MobiPrimo’s website. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Collective Adds CFO

Collective announced the hiring of former PayPal exec and eBay North American Marketplaces CFO, Aman Verjee (LinkedIn). In announcing the appointment, Collective CEO Joe Apprendi did not hint at an IPO for his company, rather, acquisitions and products, “Collective has aggressive goals for future M&A opportunities as we work to consolidate and automate the data-driven advertising landscape.” See the “About Us” on Collective.

The House Of Time

New CEO Laura Lang is putting her executive team into place – hell or high water. First, she’s fired two exec, hired Bain to do some consulting on how to get the media behemoth headed in the right direction (that’s a sweet contract), and then, “The three-man trifecta that ran Time Inc. for most of 2011 after Jack Griffin’s ouster seems to have cemented its place. Lang announced the creation of an Office of the Chief Executive comprised of the troika’s members, corporate executives Howard Averill, Maurice Edelson and John Huey,” according to Adweek’s Lucia Moses. Read more.

iPad For Ads

Forbes’ Rob Hof says that the iPad is going to be a big deal for online advertising in a Forbes article. He writes, “Advertisers can run rich, colorful brand ads in a way that never has worked well on the PC, because despite its name, it’s not very personal, or at least not cozy like an iPad you can touch.” Read it. On Street Fight, the iPad is seen having a beneficial impact on local ads. Localeze’ Gib Olander says, “Already tablet owners are proficient local searchers — 64% conduct local searches on the device daily and 86% of local tablet searches result in a purchase, according to our 2012 Local Search Usage Study. With SIRI hopefully to be one of the new iPad 3 features, these rates will continue to grow.” Read it.

Display DOOH

Don’t forget the out-of-home display ad. Harris Corporation doesn’t want you to forget because it helped deliver a campaign for its 7-Eleven client across an in-store ad network. Brick and mortar matters! From the release, “The new Nielsen Fourth Screen Report confirms 7-Eleven TV advertisers are reaching targeted demographics and attracting viewers, with approximately 93,500,000 monthly ad exposures. The report arms media buyers with valuable audience metrics on one of the nation’s largest digital out-of-home networks, with targeted impressions rivaling the top four broadcast TV networks.” Read it.

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Engagement And The CFO

Sure, everybody’s talking about engagement being the new ad metric. But what is “engagement”? BzzAgent’s Brian Carroll provides an observation on the CMO’s challenge in the C-Suite in an opinion piece on Ad Age: “The problem is that CFOs aren’t impressed with engagement. “Likes,” and the like, represent value, but not ROI. ROI is a financial metric and it must be stated in dollars and cents. There’s no column on the balance sheet for likes. Likes are the new click-through rates –- an abstract statistic that really makes sense only to the resident digital-media guru.” He sees the need for “old tools.” Read it.

Co-Opping Display

SQAD announced in a press release yesterday its new WebCosts Index which looks at display advertising CPMs gathered from a cooperative of sources. The index is then used as a forecasting tool by subscribers. A finding: “Comparing the WebCosts Leading 15 sites for 2011 against 2010 there were eight that showed a decline in Average CPM and four that remained steady in its respected category and three that showed positive gains.” Overall, SQAD says that CPMs remained steady with “premium content sites” faring a bit better. This could a data feed, eventually, for programmatic futures markets. Read the release. SQAD has been around the 70s and provided reports from aggregated data in the TV and Radio markets.

Money-Back Guaranteed

Undertone returns to a form of the “money-back guaranteed” idea it originally proffered in 2008 saying that it will provide brand-lift or else. Gavin O’Malley covers the story for MediaPost, “‘This is an industry first,’ said Eric Franchi, co-founder of Undertone — before noting that certain publishers, including Forbes, already offer such guarantees. (Forbes representatives did not return requests for comment by press time.) The ‘Standout Brand Guarantee,’ so-called, is being powered by a partnership with Vizu, which is providing real-time data based on consumer feedback.” Read more details.

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