Xaxis On Euro Programmatic Direct; Google On Bad Ads

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Programmatic Direct

On eMarketer, Xaxis COO Dr. Mark Grether answers a question about percentage of ad spending going to programmatic direct vs. RTB. Grether tells eMarketer: “It really depends. I don’t have a number for the US, but I do have a number for Europe, which is about 70% or so [of total programmatic ad spending] that’s actually programmatic-direct. The number is likely smaller in the US, but basically, I think that’s about where it will end up.” Read more.

Bad Ads Up And Down

Google says that more ads were pulled in 2013 but that there were fewer bad advertisers. Good news? Google ads engineer Mike Hochberg offers a perspective on the Inside AdWords blog: “We removed more than 350 million bad ads from our systems in 2013. To put that in perspective, if someone looked at each of these for one second, it would take them more than 10 years to see them all. This was a significant increase from approximately 220 million ads removed in 2012. This trend has been consistent in the last several years and we attribute it to several factors, including: the growth of online advertising overall and constant improvement of our detection systems.” Read more. And, infographic here (PDF).

Social TV Struggles

Twitter has been pushing its Amplify program to video advertisers, but the adoption is low because of Twitter’s limited reach, according to Rory Maher, who was cited in a Barrons article. Most TV advertisers prefer a threshold of 100 million viewers, whereas Twitter has about 53 million monthly active users. Facebook, which has the users, is also struggling to attract video ad dollars due to its weak relationship with real-time TV viewing conversations. Read more.

UK Momentum

In Digiday, Jack Marshall reports on UK programmatic momentum with the help of Rubicon Project’s Jay Stevens. Marshall reports, “The U.K. market’s smaller size might make it better placed to capitalize on the efficiencies provided by programmatic ad buying, but the fact remains that average insertion orders are much smaller than in the U.S. Everything’s relative, of course, but there’s simply less ad revenue to be tapped in the U.K., and it’s harder to extract from the market.” Read it.

Counting Connections

Appliances are becoming smarter and in turn are amassing data about user preferences that can be capitalized on by marketers. But, warns Christopher Hansen, president at Netmining, “Let’s stop looking for ways to shove advertising in consumers’ faces simply because there is a rise in connected devices. … There may be ad opportunities, but it won’t come in the form of banners or text ads, and it will likely be a different execution for every vertical.” Read more on Ad Age.

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Getting Personalized

One-to-one marketing is a huge goal in the data-driven advertising world, and Evocalize is helping businesses connect with customers personally. The SaaS company just raised $3 million in Series A funding, according to a press release, which was led by Madrona Venture Group. “Evocalize gives us a way to open a dialogue with our core customers in a conversational way that’s less intrusive than a standard survey and that’s easily managed on our end. It’s like a focus group on a massive scale,” said Buffalo Wings & Rings Marketing Manager Charlie Francus. Read the release.

Yahoo Microscope