Reviewing NYT's CEO Departure; Math And Magic; The Efficient Frontier Price Tag

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

Reviewing The Exit

In the Wall Street Journal, reporters look at whether New York Times CEO Janet Robinson’s decision to leave the company was a result of missteps with digital strategy. The WSJ’s Russell Adams and Christopher Stewart write, “Executives under Ms. Robinson used the phrase ‘protect and grow’ to describe their approach, often to the irritation of digital-side employees who have said the emphasis on protecting the Times too often stunted growth elsewhere.” Read more (subscription).

Math Magic

In a think piece on Ad Age, Hill-Holliday’s Adam Cahill thinks media departments need to start organizing around math and “magic” rather than media channels. By math, Cahill offers as an example, “When people think about exchange-traded media and DSPs, the reflexive response is that these technologies are useful, but only as it relates to direct-response efforts. It’s a classic case of missing the forest for the trees.” Read more.

The IPO Report

Casual game company Zynga finally hit the public markets and Forbes’ Rob Hof suggests the the lack of a first day “pop” is not necessarily a sign of a problem as he writes, “Let’s not forget that Zynga’s IPO is the biggest since Google‘s in 2004, and that it raised $1 billion for the company. That’s a huge cushion and moat against the competition.” Read more. The Zynga IPO from an ad tech POV would seem to be a good sign. 1 bil is a lot of cash. Seems like Wall Street priced an IPO correctly for a change, too, and left no money on the table.

Efficient Frontier Price Tag

In case you missed it, the price for Adobe’s acquisition of search and media buying platform Efficient Frontier was revealed by Adobe CFO Mark Garrett on last Thursday’s earnings call: “Assuming we close the transaction as planned later this quarter, we would expect the acquisition to add between $60 million and $80 million to our annual revenue in fiscal 2012. It would also result in the use of approximately $400 million of our domestic cash and add approximately 350 employees to our headcount.” A 5x to 6x multiple for Efficient Frontier seems pretty healthy from here. Read the earnings call transcript.

Yield And The Login

Ever wondered how a publisher with paid content can track down whether someone is sharing a login for its subscriber-only website? Scout Analytics’ Matt Shanahan has some ideas. Read about “Prospecting Up-sells with Behavioral Analytics” here.

Analyzing Aol

Henry Blodgett offers some analysis of Aol’s financial statement in a piece on The Business Insider. He paints a bleak picture, “The enormous amount of money AOL’s media business is losing suggests there is something fundamentally wrong with the business. Either the costs are much too high, or the revenue is much too low, or both.” And, there’s more.

But Wait. There’s More!