Facebook IPO To Flood With Funds; P'G Focusing On Digital; Millennial Retargeting Engagement

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.

Like IPOs?

The monster initial public offering from Facebook is almost here. The Wall Street Journal says the company is expected to file the necessary papers this week which is expected to put a $100 billion, public market valuation on the company in the not-too-distant future. Think of the millionaires floating around Facebook offices! – you know who you are. The WSJ says, “A $10 billion Facebook offering would rank fourth among IPOs for U.S. companies, behind Visa Inc., General Motors Co. and AT&T Wireless.” What are they going to do with all that company cash? Read it. Could Facebook some ad tech? Seems FB often buys companies for the people, not the tech.

P&G Banking On Digital

Another seminal moment in marketing? Consumer-package goods company Procter & Gamble will throw caution to the digital wind. Last Friday, Ad Age’s Jack Neff reports on P&G’s earnings conference call and says that flat results have led to plans for the elimination of 1,600 non-manufacturing jobs as it steers toward a digital marketing future. Chairman CEO Bob McDonald says, “In the digital space, with things like Facebook and Google and others, we find that return on investment of the advertising when properly designed, when the big idea is there, can be much more efficient.” Read more.

Retargeting Mobile Engagement

As mobile ad network Millennial Media edges toward its IPO, it continues to roll-out new products as mobile engagement appears to be a problem it’s looking to solve. According to a press release, the company’s new “App Engagement Program” gives marketers an ability to “anonymously identify consumers who have already downloaded their app, and use mobile display creative to deep-link these users back into the app.” It’s unclear from the release exactly how Millennial is retargeting users, but with privacy concerns circling the mobile cookie, Millennial’s solution could be attractive to marketers. Read more.

Media Flow

iCrossing SVP of strategy and planning Gary Stein takes note of the latest eMarketer stats as online overtakes print spend. He says that media companies can’t position around one channel any longer: “ESPN used to be in the business of running a cable channel. Today it’s in the business of keeping you deep inside sports. The New York Times used to be the newspaper of record. Now it’s the deepest and most trusted source of news and information.” Channels are “overflowing” into each other says Stein. Read more.

Targeting Scanability

GRP Partners’ and VC Mark Suster outlines many of mobile’s attractive attributes, but reminds entrepreneurs – and buyers and sellers of mobile and Web-based online media – not to get drunk on it. On the positive side for mobile, he says users are “more likely to be the ‘bottom end of the sales funnel’ or in other words close to ‘point of purchase.'” On other hand, you can’t scan long reviews of restaurants, for example, on mobile like you can on the PC. The Web has its place – read it. This sounds like a similar argument between scanning the content of the newspaper and a web page. Lean back and think about it. Now, lean forward. The more scannable, the higher in the funnel you can target?

Culture And The Company

What’s your company culture like? Do you even care? You should says an article by Shawn Parr in Fast Company. The benefits of an “alive” culture to a company and its people are vast including better focus, more motivation, cohesion within the team and something Parr identifies as “Spirit” which he says “Shapes employee behavior at work, enabling the organization to be more efficient and alive.” Read more about culture.

Google+ Wins

Signal is pouring off of websites which embed various social share buttons like badges of Web honor. On TechCrunch, Binnu Reddy takes the weekend microphone and says that Google and its Google+ button can still win the social sharing game if it can get us all to share publicly – so not just sharing to our media buddies, but everyone! Reddy writes, “In order to make public sharing universal, user behaviour needs to change dramatically. The good news is that Google touches pretty much every Internet user and is in a great position to make this happen. Here are some ideas on how they can do this: 1. Help people build a meaningful audience…” And, there’s more.

You’re Hired!