Levinsohn Talks About Yahoo!'s Future; Taykey Gets $9 Million For Ad Platform; Math And Commodities

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

Levinsohn Speaks On Yahoo!

All Things D’s Kara Swisher interviews Yahoo! Americas EVP Ross Levinsohn, who says that the company gets a raw deal. On the content/media side, Levinsohn said that Yahoo! needed to develop a voice and move beyond its aggregation days. On the advertising side, he said that more solution selling was in order in response to advertiser complaints about how difficult it is to work with Yahoo!. See the interview and learn about Levinsohn’s hair care products.

Ad Platform Gets $9 Million

Taykey (AdExchanger.com Q&A) announced that it has received Taykey $9 million in funding for its online ad platform. Funds will be used for feet on the street (sales) and hiring engineers. From the release: “Using real-time data and trend analysis, Taykey’s proprietary algorithm not only tells you where your audience is, but tells you where they’ll be next – providing advertisers with a constant stream of the right audiences at the right time.” Algos, real-time – it’s the digital ad ecosystem! Read the release.

Ads As Content

Agencies are responding to the marketer’s need to be closer to the content and ad holding company WPP Group says it will be entering the world of content creation as a result. “The group, Palisades Media Ventures, will create news and public affairs video content for digital and TV platforms that will be sponsored by major marketers,” says MediaPost’s Wayne Friedman. News items which are created for broadcast by marketer dollars is an age-old tactic. Read more. These promo clips will make even more sense in an addressable world -and, ch-ching for agencies and content creators who come up with ideas around the marketer’s goal.

Banning The Pirates

Keeping with the content theme and WPP Group, Ad Age’s Michael Learmonth notes the creation of a Group M (part of WPP) digital media buying blacklist which bans media buying from those sites which have been identified as pirating content. Group M COO John Montgomery tells Learmonth, “Great content fuels the web, and if that is being illicitly distributed, we feel it’s a problem for the long term.” Read more. Message: Marketers we care where your ads are placed.

Math And Commoditization

Following up her Math State op-ed, Loredo Group’s Kendall Allen hits another hot button topic on Ad Age: commoditization of display ad inventory. She offers what she thinks are several keys to a solution including: “Premium media companies must be willing to take a chance — and work with brands to create strategic, powerful executions.” Read ’em all.

HuffPo Passes NY Times

Aol’s Tony Conrad evidently has access to the latest comScore numbers for web publishers as there’s no official press release yet. He tweets, “WOW – Comscore confirmed that HuffingtonPost.com traffic for May has surpassed NYTimes.com traffic for first time — 35.5MM vs. 33.59MM.”

Predictions For Display

Google’s Neal Mohan was busy this week running between conferences. The guy surely has a Vespa to skitter between NYC traffic. If so, he and his Vespa made it to the IAB show this week where Mohan “made six predictions about how display advertising will change for the better by 2015″… drum roll, prediction #1: “The number of display ad impressions will decrease by 25 percent per person. Today, people are bombarded by online ads, but they don’t connect with most of these ads in a meaningful way. I believe the trend will be for people to ultimately see fewer, but better ads.” I love predictions! Read ’em all on the Official Google blog.

The Importance Of Being Quality

Speaking to its own semantic technology, Peer39 released a survey of what it says media buyers think about the importance of page quality. Nearly half of respondents said 75% of all campaigns need “quality controls.” And, they said more.

Online Privacy