Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news roundup… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
Conflict Of Interest?
It’s not an agency trading desk story, but agency-vendor conflict of interest is the theme of a Digiday article. Tremor’s S-1 outlines that Publicis Starcom Mediavest Group (SMG) exec Laura Desmond received $300k in 2012 share options as a member of Tremor’s board while SMG was one of Tremor’s largest 2012 clients, pushing $18 million in spend through the company. “The conflict” could be that agencies and their executives potentially give preference to certain vendors that supersede client interests. Marshall claims a similar conflict of interest may exist between Videology and WPP’s GroupM. Read more. If you look at the S-1, former AKQA COO Jim Rossman is also part of Tremor’s board, but AKQA spent little with Tremor in comparison. The Desmond involvement was originally spotted by Stuart Smith, who suggests that Desmond could make upwards of $3 million if Tremor IPO’s as expected.
Publisher RTB Adoption
In a Nieman Journalism Lab post, Ken Doctor explores ways publishers can survive, if not thrive, in the face of the apparent digital domination by companies like Facebook and Google. He sees private exchanges providing a glimmer of hope: “Such private exchange testing follows the adoption of RTB (real-time-bidding), which publishers are honing to get better rates for the ad inventory they can’t sell locally. ‘We moved away from a remnant inventory model a few years ago with the adoption of RTB and actively manage all of the programmatic demand that we see through the ad exchanges,’ says Jeff Griffing, the Star Tribune’s CRO.” Read more.
Mobile Momentum Release
MoPub provided the momentum release du jour on Friday, saying that its marketplace has achieved a “$100 million annual revenue run rate this month.” That’s probably media spend running through their system, as opposed to net revenue to the company. Read the release. A TechCrunch commenter notes in another article on the MoPub news, saying that eBay enables over $100 billion in gross sales but $3 billion in net revenue. Regardless, the article suggests that display ad revenue is starting to see scale in the mobile space – and not just Google and Facebook. MoPub CEO Jim Payne says as much on TechCrunch.
Buying Mobile Bulk
Mondelez struck a “mobile-only media deal” with Google, brokered by Publicis’ SMG, to help brands maximize their mobile advertising possibilities, according to Ad Age. “We’ve been urging mobile readiness at Google for three-plus years, and this year has been the year where it seems like the light has gone off over most marketers’ heads,” said Eileen Naughton, sales VP at Google. Mondelez aims to spend 10% of its marketing budget on mobile. Read more.
TV-Online Goal Posts
Rob Hof covers last week’s RampUp conference in Forbes and reports that Google display chief Neal Mohan has a goal in mind for how to make TV ad dollars move online: “If we can prove digital costs half as much or has twice the effectiveness, that’s what brand people need to justify changing what they’re doing.” Read more.
Ad Network Heading South
According to Reuters, Millennial Media CEO Paul Palmieri said the company is looking to expand in South America, where the mobile market is apparently growing rapidly. “Mexico and Brazil each have such a substantial number of smartphones that it’s absolutely exploding down there. And the percentage of smartphone penetration in Argentina is hot,” Palmieri said. Read more.
Big Data Myths
Kate Crawford of Microsoft discussed six myths of big data at a conference, which were then outlined in a NY Times Bits blog post. Some of her points include the need for data to have context and for people to have a choice about their data being collected. “We need to think about how we will navigate these systems. Not just individually, but as a society,” said Crawford. Read more.
Moneyball VC
Marketers are not the only ones trying to get their arms around “big data.” VCs have started data mining to find the best entrepreneurs in the business instead of waiting for companies to come to them. “It’s really about matching data with insight. You start and end with a qualitative thesis and decision but data can support or invalidate this thesis,” said John Lilly, CEO of Mozilla. Read more.
You’re Hired!
But Wait, There’s More!
- BT Dumps Yahoo! Email After Hacking Claims – Telegraph
- Some Thoughts On Mobile – Chris Dixon
- Dow Jones Turns To Tech For Future Face-off With Bloomberg – paidContent
- Monetate CEO Brussin Says ‘Patent Trolls’ Were Hot Topic At Washington Leadership Conference – Shop.org
