DG Sees Flat-ish Q1 Growth For MediaMind; Clearspring Is AddThis; Drawbridge Looks Cross-Device

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

DG, And MediaMind, Report

DG said its “segment” (MediaMind, Unicast, Eyewonder) generated $31 million in revenue in the first quarter of 2012. Relatively flat. By the way, that’s three display-centric companies reporting varying degrees of flatness – or less than expected growth in their business: Aol (U.S. display), DG and ValueClick (less than expected future growth). Megatrend? Facebook grabbing share? Read the DG earnings release. ThinkEquity analyst Robert Coolbrith provides his Wall Street view: “[DG] reported Q1 results in line with the company’s preannouncement and higher than our forecast; the company also maintained FY12 guidance (adjusted for the Peer39 acquisition). However, management reported that the online business is experiencing near-term headwinds related to merger integration and that pro forma online revenue was flat Y/Y. Despite these issues (which we expect will be temporary), we continue to view [DG] as a value-oriented play on display advertising automation (which we continue to view as among the most attractive growth segments in interactive advertising).”

Rebrand Alert

Chairman Hooman Radfar tells The Business Insider that his company is changing its name to its core product – AddThis, which he says now reaches 1.3 billion uniques per month. That’s a lotta cookies. Read it. And, in an effort to get even tighter with publishers who help generate AddThis’ sharing data, CEO Ramsey McGrory tells AdExchanger that the company is adding more tools and widgets for publishers. Read the release. From here, syncing the product name with the company names is a move toward greater transparency with its publisher community, too. In part, AddThis leverages the datasets collected from publishers in order to sell to advertisers who use it for targeting, after all.

Bridge Goes Down For Mobile

In Adweek, Tim Peterson covers a new startup called Drawbridge started by former AdMob exec Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan. Once again, a mobile ad tech company is looking to solve the mobile Holy Grail – effective targeting. Another twist is that Drawbridge is looking to work across devices and around mobile cookie/privacy concerns. Peterson says Drawbridge claims “it can sidestep that [privacy] issue by algorithmically correlating data to make essentially highly educated guesses as to whether a desktop user and mobile user are one and the same.” Read more.

Optimizing The Display Commodity

On MediaPost, Martini Media’s biz dev exec Bill Rowley cuts to the chase and says display is a commodity and offers a few tips on to make the most of your pork bellies. He admits its pretty basic marketing but says in his last bullet: “Your ad inventory should be tied to original content. Work with your editorial team to produce engaging content that can be sponsored by a relevant brand. Advertisers want to be part of the story.” Read it.

Replacing The Ad Banner

Brian Morrissey interviews Gawker maestro Nick Denton on Digiday. Denton is an ad banner “hater” and thinks “in a couple of years I could see “‘discussion management’ being more important than traditional online advertising.” Can you see social listening tools in an auction environment? Why not? Read more.

CTO Switch

Former Ticketmaster CTO Brian Pike (LinkedIn) is now the new CTO of Rubicon Project according to a company press release. And that’s not all, Rubicon Project is also adding former Ticketmaster Deputy General Counsel Victoria von Szeliski in its counsel and former Yahoo VP of Product Management John Slade as its SVP of Product Management. Read the release. Ironically, former Rubicon CTO and Fox Audience Network CTO John Carnahan has gone to Ticketmaster as its Live Nation ~~CTO~~ CDO and EVP of Data Science and Engineering according to his LinkedIn profile. No word on draft picks that may have been exchanged.

EU Cookie Prep

In anticipation of the EU Cookie Directive, BrightTag has made a deal with TrustE to expand its privacy management capabilities. Read the release. According to a KPMG study, 95% of EU sites weren’t ready by the end of March and that could be trouble as BizReport notes that those in violation after May 26 could “face fines of up to half a million UK Pounds ($800,000).” Read it.

Explicit Intenders

Echoing themes of his SVP of partnerships, Rob Schmults, on AdExchanger recently, Intent Media CEO Richard Harris addresess the traditional ads audience in a think piece on MediaBizBloggers. Harris pours the digital Kool-Aid, “Because of the Internet’s ability to be responsive and react in milliseconds, it’s also possible to take this further and incorporate the notion of real-time. So the ad that is shown not only matches a visitor’s explicit intent, but it does so exactly when and where the visitor is expressing the intent.” Read it.

Infographic Friday

33Across has released another of its Brand Graph studies in infographic form. This one shows that online video viewership is hitting record levels according to its data. See it now (PDF).

You’re Hired!