Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
AdECN Getting RTB Inventory
Microsoft Advertising’s Eric Dahlberg makes two public announcements on the Microsoft Advertsing blog which have implications for Microsoft’s AdECN exchange. First, “In recent weeks we have on-boarded US Windows Live inventory – including Hotmail and Messenger – into our exchange, providing a highly liquid pool of high quality inventory to demand partners on an RTB basis. We have integrated with each of the major DSP’s to ensure that our customers can work with the partner of their choice in accessing inventory. (…) [Also] over the next six months we will be integrating DSP’s into the Atlas Technology Partner Alliance. This will enable Atlas advertisers to seamlessly partner with the DSP of their choice to extend their buys onto RTB exchanges while enjoying all the benefits of campaign tracking and optimization that Atlas already provides.” Read more.
Cadreon Buying Digital TV Audience
IPG’s media trading desk Cadreon has inked another agreement and this time in the audience buying world of digital TV with Visible World. AdWeek’s Steve McClellan quotes Visible World CEO Seth Haberman saying, “I always thought the first massive one of these agreements would come from one of the traditional TV networks. (…) These guys [at Cadreon] sprung like Athena out of Zeus fully formed and said we need a new set of wheels to work in TV.” Read more.
More Yahoo! Earnings
A highlight from Yahoo!’s earnings call with Wall Street analysts on Tuesday:
On the call, Carol Bartz, CEO: “Actually, our guaranteed – to put it simply, our guaranteed pricing was up and – a lot and we are getting a lot of quality through that guaranteed. And if you look at the mix between guaranteed and non-guaranteed, Class 1 are guaranteed up a lot; non-guaranteed not up so much because people are valuing that inventory, because we are starting to train them to think about buying an audience, not just buying a site, and we are just doing a lot better targeting.”
Read the Yahoo! earnings call transcript from Seeking Alpha here. Also, Mark Mahaney, Citibank analyst, downgraded Yahoo! yesterday saying in his morning note: “We are concerned that YHOO’s Display Revenue came in a bit light the same quarter that Google arguably demonstrated its first material contribution from Display Ads…and Facebook continues to ramp”
PaidContent’s David Kaplan says social shopping site ThisNext added some new funds to its third round of investment including some prominent investors such as Gary Winnick, chairman of Pacific Capital Group and Bob Pittman, founding member of Pilot Group, former COO of AOL. ThisNext also said it will begin working with ad network Federated Media to monetize available inventory. Read more from PaidContent. And, read the release.
Compass Labs Gets $5 Million
Social conversation targeting data company, Compass Labs (AdExchanger.com Q&A) announced that it has secured $5 million in financing “from firms NEA and Triple Point Capital as well as individual investors, such as Jim Clark, among others.” Funds will be used for “continued product and sales infrastructure development.” Read the release.
Effective Board Meetings
Phin Barnes of First Round Capital offers his thoughts on how to have effective board meetings on his personal blog. One tip: “Deep dive on one topic per board meeting is far more productive than trying to go deep on everything. (It is critical to prioritize the topics and push for guidance on areas most critical to the success of the business).” Read more.
Adap.TV On Video Ad Marketplace
Adap.tv reports that large publishers continue to adopt its video technology and its video ad marketplace is showing strong results. From the release: “Since its initial launch only six months ago, the adap.tv marketplace has experienced a 90 percent repeat buy rate, an increase in average campaign budgets by 15 times and more than 100 daily campaigns bidding on 900 market placements.” Read the release.
Omnicom Beats Estimates, Talks Google
According to the Wall Street Journal, Omnicom Group beat Wall Street earnings and revenue estimates for Q2 2010 with a profit of $243.3 million and revenue of $3.04 billion -with U.S revenue increasing 7+% in the U.S. over Q2 last year.Read more.
On the Q2 earnings call with Wall Street analysts, Omnicom Group CEO John Wren addressed the Google deal regarding building Omnicom a trading desk: “The Google arrangement is a very positive one. It should benefit our clients as we move forward in terms of pricing and access to content. And I believe it’s not more favorable than nor is it less favorable than what our competitors have, but overall I view it as a very solid positive move. I also expect that what you’ll be hearing in the coming months is with some other technology companies and other providers in this space, other arrangements, which are currently being discussed but haven’t been finalized. This is all very consistent with the increased importance of social media, the increased importance of different types of digital advertising and marketing, and so this is part of just a journey that we’re on. So, yes, it’s all very positive and our clients will be the beneficiary and our companies will be the beneficiary.” Read the call transcript on Seeking Alpha.
Facebook Hits 500 Million Users
Now that’s audience! Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on the Facebook blog that his company has reached a new milestone 500 million global unique users. He also talks about Facebook Stories which allows users to talk about how they use Facebook. He writes, “Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who, during his time in office, would go jogging with 100 of his fans from Facebook.” No truth to the rumor about an AdExchanger.com marathon for all AdExchanger.com Facebook fans (see them). Read the post.
New NY Times Ad Reporter
The former NY Times advertising and marketing reporter, Stephanie Clifford (now doing retail), announced in a tweet earlier this week that her media beat replacement has been found: “Advertising & media folks, my replacement at NYT covering ad/marketing is Tanzina Vega, & she’s tweeting at @tanzinavega. Follow her!”
More RTB
On Minonline, Alex Baxter, VP and GM of Parade Digital writes about the RTB and DSP buzz. Baxter adds, “Online advertising in a real-time bidding enabled world will drastically change the contextually adjacent sponsorship model that we’ve lived in for decades.” Read more.
Ad-Juster Reports On Reporting
In addition to announcing its recent inclusion into the IAB pantheon of members, ad reporting reconciliation company, Ad-Juster, says that it “has added significant new Agency and Publisher clients to its client lineup.” Read the release.
Epic Media On DSPs
GM Charlie Black of Epic Media Group is thinking DSPs (and a few other buzzwords) aren’t all that on the company blog and writes, “The interactive ad industry is widespread with buzzwords, catchphrases and acronyms. Which new, abbreviated, “next gen” solution will unleash its “game changing” power on the digital marketing landscape? Will Demand Side Platforms (DSP) rule this brave new world? At Epic Media Group, we don’t believe so.” Read more on what Epic and Black do believe.
Mobile Rich Media
Medialets announced that it is now a rich media partner for Aol’s ADTECH. From the release, “ADTECH will integrate Medialets’ Universal SDK for iPhone, iPad and Android into their mobile platform, giving ADTECH’s clients access to Medialets’ high-impact, cross-platform mobile rich media ad formats.” Read it.
