Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
Online Ads And News
In The WSJ’s Heard On The Street column, Martin Peers looks how online ad revenue is affecting newspapers and questions whether online ads are helping or that print has fallen through the floor. He notes, “At the Times Co., print-ad revenue for the news group fell $15 million, to $232 million, while its digital-ad revenue rose $8.3 million. Growth at the About.com portal also boosted digital.” Read more.
The Game Data Grab
Ad Age’s Kunur Patel notes the “charge” into games as Viacom, Google and Disney are all announcing initiatives and/or investing. Considering the time spent by gamers as well as the huge data trove available through game play, it makes sense. Patel indicates that some publishers may only see the content coating at this point, “With the draw of their established storylines and characters in social games — not to mention well-oiled marketing machines — established media companies hope they can use casual gaming to grow and interact with their already massive audiences.” Read more.
KENSHOO Gets More Funding
According to a press release, Sequoia Capital has participated in a “late stage” financining in search engine management firm KENSHOO which calls itself an “online demand generation SaaS platform.” (ODGSaaSP) From the release: “Over the past 24 months, KENSHOO has experienced exponential growth and achieved profitability, as well as more than doubling in valuation since 2009.” Read it all.
LucidMedia Ad Verification
Demand-side platform LucidMedia is getting more vocal about its brand safety technology and announced in a release that it can look at ad’s placement before its placed using the company’s ClickSense contextual technology to determine brand safety. Read the release.
IAC Reports, Not Acquiring
Things are looking good at IAC as the company beat analysts’ estimates as revenue jumped 18% with strength coming from its Match.com and Ask businesses. BusinessWeek reports that “on a conference call with investors, [CEO Barry] Diller said he still does not anticipate pursuing anything other than small ‘tuck-in’ acquisitions” by cash-rich IAC. Read more. Citibank analyst Mark Mahaney dug into the details in his note to investors: “Relatively good Search Segment results – $197MM rev came in 3% above our est; 18% Y/Y rev growth was good, tho it came on a neg 9% comp; (…) Media Segment outperformed — $97MM rev came in 7% above our est.”
The Women Segment
Yahoo! had its research group do a “Yahoo! Connectonomics” study which “examines how and why women are using different kinds of online sites.” Among the findings, “Women are most receptive to marketing messages on lifestyle, specialty and review sites. These channels deliver 3 times the impact on purchase decisions in comparison to the other online sites we looked at in the study.” Read the summary. And, download the study (PDF).
Tracking Attribution
For viewthrough lovers… DataXu released its monthly MarketPulse which “focuses on a highly contentious issue in the online advertising space – Last Click Attribution.” Looking across verticals, DataXu found timelines for attribution vary: “The recommended attribution period for short consideration products, such as CPG, is two weeks. In the campaign shown above, this window includes 90% of impressions that converted.” Read more. And, download the PDF.
Online Ads Boost UK News
In the UK, Daily Mail & General Trust’s newspaper division showed strong 13% growth year-over-year helped by a 46% increase in digital ad revenues. Nevertheless, CEO Martin Morgan said, “Trading (B2B media) in the third quarter has continued to reflect the generally positive trends in our international business-to-business and UK consumer media businesses, although we remain wary about the medium term outlook, particularly in the UK.”Read more.
J&J Media Up For Grabs
Johnson & Johnson has put its media account under review worldwide – that’s over $3 billion worth of media. Brand Republic reports, “The review involves its three roster networks: Carat, which holds the business in Europe; Interpublic’s Mediabrands, which handles the US account; and OMD, which has the J&J business in parts of Asia.” Read more.
Omnicom Using DOOH DSP
rVue announced a deal with Omnicom Group agency TracyLocke which will make rVue an important source for the Omnicom agency’s digital-out-of-home business (DOOH). Jennifer Bolt, Executive Director/Media Services & Innovation of TracyLocke said in a release “rVue’s Demand-Side Platform delivers the ability to create the most effective mix of DOOH through demographic and hyper-geographic targeting.” Read more.
Are You A Good Partner?
Catalyst SF’s Cory Trefiletti asks in his MediaPost column, “What Does It Mean To Be A True ‘Partner’?” He writes, “Today, there are too many “yes-people” in this business. It feels like people fear conflict and change, which is funny because this business is built on these two cornerstones. Conflict and change breed innovation. (…)” Read more.
Consumer In The Flow
Jonathan Mendez writes that when the consumer is in a “tunnel vision” flow, if you will, (you know.. the flow!) that this is a great opportunity for marketers. He stresses, “Tunnel vision in the flow is the reason online marketing can be so powerful when you design ads, pages and campaigns with the customer goals in mind, not your business goal.” Read more.
Back-To-School Stats
PointRoll is gearing up for back-to-school season with some BTS stats. A company exec says, “We learned that, contrary to popular belief, August isn’t the only optimal month to advertise products related to the back-to-school retail shopping wave.” Sell it, baby! Lots of fun stats and graphs. Read more. And, download the report (PDF).
Rethinking The Paywall
PubMatic CEO Rajeev Goel offers his thoughts on what Conde Nast should know before going with a paywall strategy. Goel offers a couple of assumptions that he thinks Conde Nast execs may want to rethink including: “Consumers are loyal enough to your brand to overcome their desire to consume free, or highly subsidized, content.” Read more.
