New York Times Digital Subscription Pricing Arrives; No AdSense For Facebook Apps - Still; AdXpose Certifying Networks

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.

10 Days Until NYT Subs

Publisher Arthur Sulzberger announces on his company’s NYtimes.com site that beginning March 28 (but testing started in Canada yesterday), you can get your very own digital subscription to the New York Times or, you can just stay the way you are and get access to 20 articles per month (or you can use a referral backdoor like Google). See the pricing. All Things D’s Peter Kafka covers the pricing and notes the Times willingness work with (pay) Apple for having an Ipad App subscription model. Read it. Ad Age has a Q&A with NYT CEO Janet Robinson here.

No AdSense For Apps Cont’d

There’s still no AdSense allowed for Facebook apps and a post on Inside Facebook says that Facebook has started to enforce the “No AdSense” rule as a developer has shared his pain in a forum. Inside Facebook’s John Constine writes, “Some might see the policy enforcement as the precursor to further restriction in the future, and could cite it as a reason why not to build on the Facebook Platform. The restriction could push developers to switch to Facebook ads, generating revenue for the site.” Read more.

Real-Time Bennies

MediaMath’s Ari Buchalter publishes a lengthy article on iMedia Connection describing what he sees as the benefits of the real-time, RTB, ad world when it comes to premium/guaranteed (not remnant) inventory. For example, Buchalter argues for the private exchange model and, presumably, the demand-side platforms (DSPs) that buy from them, “Premium buys executed independently across multiple publishers often wind up hitting the same users repeatedly across different media. (…) By bringing all premium buys within one (real-time) system, the private marketplace solution enables true global reach and frequency management…” Read more.

Make My Data

On the Rapleaf developer blog, more big data talk for you big data lovers. Rapleaf’s Brian Duxbury writes about the debut of a piece of “Rapleaf’s internal infrastructure, a distributed database project we call Hank. Our use case is very particular: we have tons of data that needs to get processed, producing a lot of data points for individual people, which then need to be made randomly accessible so they can be served through our API.” Read more.

The Marketer’s Org Chart

On Christine Overby’s Forrester blog, the analyst interviews Kraft Foods SVP of Marketing Dana Anderson about her thoughts on the next decade in digital marketing. Anderson demurs on the full decade but offers some near term perspsective: “On both client and agency sides, new jobs are being created that recognize the importance of both technology and creativity simultaneously. So, as these left and right brains are thankfully mashed together in a singular role, job titles such as ‘creative technologist,’ ‘marketing engineer,’ and ‘information architect’ are beginning to appear on org charts.” Read more.

Speeding Load Times

AdSense product dude Richard Rabbat says that AdSense network publishers will now enjoy faster load times for the ads. He writes on the Insider AdSense blog, “Last year, we ran tests that showed AdSense adding 12% on average to the time it took to load various pages from top web sites, so we set out to make this better. We’ve now developed a new ads delivery technique to improve the speed…” No code change necessary. Read more.
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Agency Not

Triggit CEO Zach Coelius, whose company is rumored to be under the watchful eye of a potential acquirer, shares his thoughts on the digital space with ThinkEquity analyst Robert Coolbrith. Coelius doesn’t mince words when discussing his company’s strategy: “Our take on this is we chose not to be an agency tools company. A number of the other DSPs have chosen to be tools providers to the agency trading desks. We think that’s a long-term mistake in terms of the margins associated with working with agencies, which tend to be very slim. Really, it’s a tough road.” Get the interview here.

Certifying The Network

Where once perceived, ad verification company, negative selling was seen as predatory by ad network-like companies, times change. Mpire’s ad verification company AdXpose says interclick is among the “highest quality solutions” and “consistently performed in the top-tier across numerous campaigns, compared to other DSPs and networks in the same media buy.” Read more.

Branding, Media, Beer

Epic Media Group biz dev dude Matt Monahan writes about social media’s impact on brands and media and audience buying rears its audience-buying-head yet again. Monahan writes, “Here are the three main practices to building Brands on the Social web, and they’re pretty much the same principles as you’d employ in throwing a great keg party. First is Social Advertising to buy the resources to construct their owned audience channels.” #2 is Social Marketing. #3 is Social Media. Read more about the social brand brew.

The Next Amazon?

No wonder they didn’t sell for $6 billion to Google. GroupOn thinks it’s worth $25 billion according to Bloomberg which quotes sources with knowledge of a possible IPO by the crowd-buying juggernaut. An analyst tells Bloomberg, “Closely held consumer Internet companies like Groupon are ‘being valued as though they are going to be the next Google or EBay or Amazon.'” Careful of that bubble popping! Read more.

But Wait. There’s More!