Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
Healthy Investment
Peacock Equity, the cleverly-named (who doesn’t love the Peacock?) $250 million fund founded by GE Capital and NBC Universal, has released $2.5 million dollars from its coffers into the checking account of health information company, Healthline, as part of its recent $14 million raise. This is the second time the fund has invested in Healthline as the media-backed fund spreads its wings in the online economy. The investment round was led by holding company Investor AB. Healthline has raised $72 million to-date. Read more from PaidContent.
Yahoo! on The Post-Bill Wise Era
In response to questions about recent executive changes (including the departure of GM Bill Wise) and future plans for Right Media Exchange, a Yahoo! spokesperson told AdExchanger.com, “Right Media has a strong team in place to drive results for our customers and innovation for the industry. These are the two major reasons for the continued success of the Right Media Exchange.”
Display And The Hispanic Market
TRAFFIQ announces a new iteration of its ad planning and buying platform for the Hispanic market. In speaking with MediaPost’s Mark Walsh, TRAFFIQ’s head of sales, Chris O’Hara, identifies the target client, “They may be doing Google AdWords, but they haven’t gotten a big display campaign off the ground yet. We’re the first real digital people coming to visit them.” Read more. And, read the release.
Performance marketing company and campaign verifier, PerformLine, announced a partnership with Milabra to include its visual recognition capabilities into PerformLine’s platform. The idea in using Milabra’s technology could be, for example, “Hey, I don’t want any adjacency with my media to porn images when I target a user.” Or, maybe you do. That’s your call. I’m just saying. Read more.
Sex Ads Sell
Craigslist is making an estimated $36 million in revenues for “adult services” revenue much to the chagrin of local law enforcement officials who are trying to enforce laws prohibiting prostitution. Hmm, is this a solution to newspaper woes? Or an information apocalypse? Read more from The NY Times for all the dirt.
Video Professor Takes One In The Gut
You’ve seen the tempting (or not) late night/early morning ads for “The Video Professor.” According to legal geek, Eric Goldman, The Professor wasn’t buying Amazon’s PPC strategy recently and “sued Amazon for bidding on the keyword ‘video professor’ and then displaying competitive options on the linked landing page.” But in the end, The Professor lost as “Amazon successfully defended its keyword purchases as being authorized by its perpetual trademark license [with The Video Professor].” Read in perpetuity.
AppNexus Video
The video from three expert panel discussions at the recent AppNexus Summit is now available online. AOL Advertising.com, interCLICK, Traffic Marketplace, XTEND, AudienceScience, TidalTV and many others give their views on a variety of hot button topics of the moment. Roll the videotape!
Google Buys Another Hors D’Oeuvre
Google is taking a little of this and a little of that as it sprinkles low double-digit millions across the globe in search of pieces to its enormous, multi-faceted business. This time, an Israeli-based company called LabPixies, will feed the Google beast and offer up “development in a variety of casual gaming and entertainment areas.” Read more from CNET.
Measuring Mobile, Raising $$$
Ground Truth, a mobile measurement company, has rung the register with a $7 million Series B round of financing. According to Cody Barbierri of VentureBeat, differentiation is as follows: “Since the data is compiled from an assortment of sources, the company claims more accurate data than traditional survey methods from competitors like Nielsen and ComScore.” Read who invested.
Waiting Days For The Page To Load
TagMan released a new study that shows retail sites aren’t paying attention to their page load times ‘cuz they’re losing customers. And we’re not talking about a few extra seconds of load time, either. Kristina Knight on BizReport highlights one of the TagMan findings: “British consumers waited an average of 2.5 days (per year) for retail websites to load.” Whoa! Read more on BizReport.
Chevy Dumps Campbell-Ewald Like A Rock
General Motors’ Chevy brand will no longer use Campbell-Ewald as its agency of record and has moved its business to Publicis Worldwide. This “marriage” was remarkable in that Chevy had a 90-year relationship with Campbell-Ewald before it decided to end it all. Read more from The Wall Street Journal.
Magazine Meets Bloomberg Terminal
BusinessWeek is transitioning into its new world as a Bloomberg property and The NY Times’ Stefanie Clifford covers the madness and a Gawker-esque Bloomberg environment: “The rigid culture extends to the work environment. News meetings are held at 7:30 a.m. Every writer has a “dashboard” where the metrics determining his compensation — any scoops, hits an article attracts — are tracked.” Read more on “what have you done for me lately.”
A Once-In-A-Lifetime Opportunity
Brett Halliburton on the CogMap blog emphasizes the need to succeed when certain opportunities come along no matter the cost (within reason). He recounts the tale of a well-known designer/creative director and how they had the opportunity to work on a great project, did so, but held back on “knocking it out of the park” due to a lack of budget. Halliburton concludes saying, “Are you identifying areas where you need to go above and beyond the call of duty to make your product (in this case, their portfolio of work) remarkable?” Read more – and see a photo that says it all.
