Horizon Chooses Adap.tv For Video Ads; Transparency Builds Brands; CEO Change At Technorati

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

Agencies Moving To Platforms

Agency Horizon Media announced a new partnership with Adap.tv and its Adap.tv for Advertisers product which will be Horizon’s online video advertising campaign management system of choice. In addition, the companies said in a release: “Together Horizon Media and Adap.tv plan to explore proprietary research initiatives that deepen visibility into the power of video across channel. By surfacing new value-rich environments, Horizon Media can maximize clients’ buying power in a tightening marketplace.” Read more.

NY Times Machinations

SVP of digital ops for the NY Times, Martin Nisenholtz, is taking over responsibilities for Cella Irvine who was let go as CEO of About.com as the site’s performance has flagged recently. The Wall Street Journal puts it bluntly, “Ms. Irvine’s replacement comes as About.com faces unprecedented headwinds after years of being a reliable source of growth and profits for its parent company.” Read more. Meanwhile, Ad Age’s Nate Ives says that The New York Times flagship news website is experiencing lower traffic these days, but Ives puts it in perspective: “The paywall introduced by The New York Times at the end of March is hurting traffic to its website, as expected, but perhaps within acceptable levels.” Read more.

Transparency Builds Brands

In advance of his appearance at the Conversational Marketing Summit, Evidon CEO Scott Meyer speaks to brands in a Federated Media blog post titled, “Building Brands Through OBA Compliance.” He writes, “What’s interesting is that the conversation to date about the road to better privacy controls for consumers is nearly always laced with the gloom-and-doom, using fear (of inquiry, lawsuit, inclusion in the “What They Know” series, etc.) to spur the ad market into action.” Meyer sees a silver lining. Read more.

Technorati CEO Change

Technorati announced that CEO Richard Jalichandra is stepping down and becoming Executive Chairman of the Board (which is like.. Chairman of the Board with sugar on top) and SVP/GM Shani Higgins will take over chief executive responsibilities. According to Adotas’ Gavin Dunaway, “Higgins – who previously held senior management roles at Infoseek/GO/Disney, Ziff Davis, Benedek Investment Group and Tacit Software – joined Technorati in 2007, heading up strategy and day-to-day operations for advertising sales, business development and the advertising network.” Read more.

Biebermetrics

In a blog post titled “Why Every Internet Marketer Should Watch the Justin Bieber Movie – Never Say Never” by former Adify-er Jim Larrison, who is obviously a huge Bieber fan. No… wait. There’s something more than just Bieber and his inimitable hair for Larrison as he writes, “You can’t ignore the cold hard facts, that a 16-year old boy has in effect transformed the social media landscape and has ignited one of the most important, and hard to reach, demographic segments in history.” Larrison shows you Bieber’s impressive social stats. Enough to make any VC jealous.

Varick Wants Trust For Exchange Buying

According to AdWeek, MDC Partners trading desk Varick Media has chosen Trust Metrics to police content on its behalf when buying from exchanges. AdWeek’s Lucia Moses quotes Jeremy Hlavacek, Varick’s vp of strategic partnership and client services, who says, “We think this will help us get more clients and go deeper with existing clients. We want to say yes, we’re safe, but we’re also appropriate.” Read more.

Private Exchanges In Review

Seamless Web’s Sara Livingston writes an opinion piece on AdMonsters and wonders aloud whether private exchange models are just vertical ad network redux. But, she adds, “I think the real potential lies in what it can do for advertisers, which is to finally scale RTB, making more high quality inventory accessible via RTB & through DSPs.” Read it.

When Behavioral Targeting…

In an article on ClickZ, Amy Manus of agency NuRun gives her tips on how best to implement behavioral targeting on ad campaigns. One tip she emphasizes: “Leverage retargeting separately. While retargeting is a form of consumer behavior, the performance for retargeting is significantly higher in terms of engagement and direct response metrics than standard types of behavioral retargeting.” Read all the tips.

Infographic Friday

It’s Spinback’s (now Buddy Media’s after yesterday’s acquisition announcement) social commerce graphic – see it!

Financing