WSJ: Google Anti-Trust Probe Nears; Give Me Brand Metrics; comScore, Nielsen And The Online GRP

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Google Anti-Trust Probe Imminent?

It appears anti-trust litigation is headed Google’s way if a new story from The Wall Street Journal is correct. The WSJ’s Thomas Catan and Amir Efrati write that “issues in the FTC probe are expected to include whether Google searches unfairly steer users to the company’s own growing network of services at the expense of rival providers.” Read about it here (subscription). Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan brings together all of Google’s anti-trust litigation dating back to Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick in 2007. Read it.

Aol On Brand Metrics

DIGIDAY’s Brian Morrissey channels Aol’s Jeff Levick from Cannes and finds out that Levick is think about guaranteed, premium display ads and understanding how they are impacting brands. Morrissey quotes Levick as saying, “The next level is how to gauge offline actions. It’s connecting those two together, online and offline. What does high engagement for a brand mean? There’s been an entire lack of innovation on that in the industry. The famous Luma slide is for non-reserve inventory. (…) There’s no corollary map for the reserve space and for brand advertising.” Read more.

Search And Display Marketers

CRO Dax Hamman of search retargeting platform company Chango looks at the reality of the search-display merger on Search Engine Land. Hamman writes, “If the distance between the search marketer and the display planner was a canyon, then Facebook was the first master bridge builder – but they did it entirely by accident. They first started targeting display advertisers with a CPM offering, looking to soak up both brand and direct response budgets, getting on media plans with new formats and targeting techniques.” He sees search marketers taking charge in display planning. Read more.

Engage, Mr. Sulu

In New Media Age, Carat agency executive James Weinberg says that Tremor Video’s new “InRoll format, which comprises a video slot, image galleries, product demos, online games and social media functions in the one unit,” is an engagement machine. Weinberg adds, “The total engagement rates were about 4.3%, triple what we usually get. We have pretty strong video performance, which ranges from 0.2% to 0.8%, but this was impressive.” Read more.

Taking It To The Online GRP

Responding to Nielsen’s online GRP efforts, comScore appears to be going on the offensive against the online GRP as comScore’s Cameron Meierhoefer writes on the company blog, “Our customers, who have collectively measured thousands of online ad campaigns, tell us that GRPs, while useful in TV, are much less useful unto themselves for online measurement. The very nature of online advertising, where cookies are used by ad servers as the determinant of exposure frequency but which are deleted by about 30% of Internet users in a month, can result in severe delivery skews and exposure overkill…” Read more.

Get Deep Into Media

On his Upstream Group blog, The Drift, Doug Weaver shares a media agencies managing director’s recent phrasing: “Media with Benefits.” Weaver wonders what it means and then explains the multiple meanings. First he offers, “How It Was Originally Intended: From a media director’s point of view, it means ‘Yes, we’ll buy banners and pre-roll videos and push-downs and sponsorships from you, but we need you to add value.'” And then Weaver sees another, deeper side. Get deep.

Ad Networks Russian-Style

The Washington Post reports that newly-public Russian search engine leader, “Yandex is now partnering with Russian online media giant Rambler over search and advertising services. Starting today, Rambler’s search services will be powered by Yandex’s search engine and Rambler will join Yandex’s Ad Network, Yandex.Direct.” TechCrunch’s Mike Butcher explains more.

Twitter’s New Display Ads

The latest movement in rolling out a more robust display ad opportunity on Twitter will revolve around the long awaited Twitter in-stream – ads and more. The Next New Web’s Matthew Panzarino writes, “In addition to placing ads right into the stream, other options that are being considered include a local deals option that would rival Groupon.” Read more.

Online Privacy