JEGI On The Display Delivery Chain; Looking At The AdSense Rev Share; Picard On Product Lifecycle For The Marketer

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

Friction In The System

Looking at what it calls the “Massive Proliferation in Display Delivery Chain,” investment bank Jordan-Edmiston Group (JEGI) has produced a new flow chart for its clients showing which it says shows the friction being introduced in today’s display and in comparison to past models “can be technically inferior, given that each layer brings an additional ad call and slows page delivery, by some estimates up to 100-300 milliseconds for each additional redirect, cumulatively degrading the consumer experience.” A move to top-of-funnel innovation and efficient storytelling is ahead says JEGI in addition to a “consolidated data processing stack managed by a few very large providers.” Here comes the M&A. Get the download (PDF). A good overview.

Google And The Publisher

Silicon Valley Watcher’s Tom Foremski provides some analysis of the last week’s Q2 2011 Google earnings announcement and momentmum in Google owned-and-operated ad revenue versus AdSense publishers ad revs. Perhaps, it’s the magic of the AdSense rev share black box! He thinks pubs should be concerned, “The payments to Google partner sites are not audited by any independent third parties. Google says it pays out about 80% of AdSense revenues it receives to its partners but not evenly. Some receive a higher percentage while others get much less than 80% because of special deals with large publishers.” When you’re the biggest player of all and still pay publishers the best to a large degree, this sort of arbitrage is the reward. Google can continue to play the game and, as market disruptors force more transparency, it can loosen the reigns on their rev share and feed the AdSense beast (as in, keep publishers tied to Google.) To date, their AdSense powder remains relatively dry. Read more. Considering the display market’s size relative to TV and media in general, it seems hard to make an anti-trust case at this point. But, AdSense for TV is coming – look out media companies! If you’re a big publisher, you’re going to need compelling audience at-scale and content to either drive a better deal with Google or, perhaps, enable a competing marketplace that can drive similar yield and, importantly, keep the business from being beholden to a single entity – Google. Can anyone create a competitive marketplace? We’ll see.

Buying Facebook Ads

Blinq Media has announced a coveted (but non-exclusive), holding company deal with Omnicom Media Group. Ad Age’s Edmund Lee says that it’s all about buying Facebook ads. Read more. This deal says a few things: holding companies and their member agencies can’t buy effective Facebook media fast enough; Blinq Media has produced a compelling product whether the deal is exclusive or not; and, finally, Facebook’s own platform isn’t good enough for the holding companies. It’s amazing the opportunity that remains with Facebook ads through the ads API that they provide vendors such as Blinq.

Marketers And The Product Life Cycle

TRAFFIQ’s Chief Product Officer Eric Picard offers his views on the product life cycle and what marketers need to know. He begins, “The best companies use a combination of personas and scenarios to ensure that they are nailing the product requirements early in the design phase. These scenarios (sometimes also called use cases) are pushed into the hands of eagerly waiting marketers, who in turn get the product put into a strong series of marketing messages (and even the actual creative) that tie to specific target customers (the personas).” Picard can’t believe how many times these basics and more get overlooked. Read more on the basics. One for the AdExchanger.com “Resources” section.

About That $200 Million

Criteo is publicizing its recent success in the retargeting business as MediaPost’s Laurie Sullivan talks Criteo’s “[Greg] Coleman, a former Yahoo executive, and Huffington Post president, [who] took the helm at Criteo in April. Although not all attributable to his direction, the company grew revenue by 185% to $200 million in the first six months of 2011. Now the revenue goal is reaching $400 million by the end of 2012.” Bonjour retargeting! Read more.

Opacity In Data

Concerned about online privacy and today’s online data business, TagMan CEO Paul Cook writes on the company blog, “We now have serious concerns as to the legality and wisdom of server-to-server tags in the United States and Europe.” Cook outline his three points of contention: transparency, protocols and data loss. Read the details.

No More Pork Bellies (Kinda), Wenda!

On the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, after 50 years of trading, has suspended the trading of frozen pork bellies. UPI quotes The Financial Times last Friday: “‘Because of a prolonged lack of trading volume and after significant discussion with industry participants, CME will be delisting frozen pork bellies futures and options’ effective Monday, CME said in a statement to traders.” But, don’t worry – there will still be fresh pork bellies to trade! Read more. (source: @jednahum) Wenda’s “line” remains in tact.

Google Employee #59

Google employee #59, Douglas Edwards has written a new book about the early days of the company. The Wall Street Journal printed an excerpt. Here’s an excerpt of the excerpt regarding the company’s first marketing plans: “Why not make a big donation to a humanitarian cause and build awareness by doing good? It had all the classic elements of a Sergey solution: a wildly unconventional approach to a common problem, technology harnessed to improve the human condition, an international scope.” Read more (subscription).

Researching Performance