The Login And Personalization; MediaMath Educating The Masses; Recruiting Israel

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The Login Cometh

Michael Miller reports on Google execs Susan Wojcicki and Sundar Pichai’s appearance at last week’s D:10 conference. In response to a question about the poor targeting of advertising today, Miller paraphrases Pichai who says, “The personalization of advertising is still in its early days, with most ads placed based just on IP addresses and the sites they appear on. As more people are logged in and more people use mobile phones, advertising will get better, he said.” Read more. The login is the key – it’s the first party “cookie” with user’s opt-in approval. Read the partial transcript on piracy, too, from the WSJ. And, read this one one on a new Google local ads initiative here (subscription). In effect, it depends on the Google+ login.

Educating The Masses

Demand-side platform MediaMath sees an opportunity to educate potential clients and its fellow Direct Marketing Association members with its “New Marketing Institute” initiative. MediaPost’s Joe Mandese explains, “The ad technology education initiative is (intended) to fill the educational void needed to keep digital media buyers up to snuff within an industry that is being transformed by rapid advancements in technology, especially computerized systems for targeting the best consumers, and so-called ‘programmatic’ methods for buying them.” Read more.

Recruiting In Israel

In a video interview with Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, Akamai co-Founder and Chief Scientist Tom Leighton discusses his company and its content distribution network business. What’s clear in the interview is that Akamai is moving at least some of its recruiting efforts to Israel as competition for qualified engineers heats up. In reference to Akamai’s recent purchase of Israel-based Contendo, Leighton says (at around 15:00), “This probably won’t be the last acquisition we do in Israel.” See it. In a presentation at the university, Leighton says his company’s focus going forward is mobile and security. See that one.

TV Is My Friend

He’s practically a television ‘regular’. George Will, Gloria Borger, AppNexus CEO Brian O’Kelley… OK, maybe a bit of an overstatement, but O’Kelley hit the Bloomberg airwaves for the second time (here’s the first) in a month or so, last Friday. In a 6-minute interview, he discusses his company and tells Bloomberg that it will quadruple the size of the company to 1,000 people in 2 years. See it now.

The Tablet Doesn’t Matter

On The Economist Group’s Lean Back 2.0 blog (I didn’t know Lean Back needed versioning), Forrester analyst James McQuivery says that tablets are no big deal. He admits, “Tablets are just the beginning rather than the end of the evolution of computing form factors. I will confess that my own employer, Forrester Research, has been a bit dishonest on this topic, with my assistance.” And then after a few stats, he adds, “Unlike other computing form factors — the desktop, the laptop — the tablet will have no permanence whatsoever.” So what will? Read more.

GOOG Power

On Friday, kbs+p ventures’ Darren Herman offered a few thoughts on the ad tech industry including what he says are publisher worries about Google. Herman writes, “I’ve spoken to two major publishers in the past 7 days as I’ve been doing some diligence for startups we’re looking at and they are increasingly becoming wary of Google’s power in the marketplace. ‘Monopolistic’ is a term that I keep hearing about Google and it’s one that I think holds some ground. One of the main reasons why pubs are increasingly becoming worried about Google is the amount of both demand/supply side data that Google has…” Read more.
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