Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
NY Times To Stop Printing, Date TBD
Speaking at an International Newsroom Summit in London, Chairman and publisher of the New York Times, Arthur Sulzberger says that a print version of the paper will inevitably be stopped. According to Editorsweblog.com which covered the event, “Asked about his response to the suggestion that the NYT might print its last edition in 2015, Sulzberger said he saw no point in making such predictions and said all he could say was that “we will stop printing the New York Times sometime in the future, date TBD.” Read more.
MediaMind Options
MediaMind announced that underwriters of the company’s initial public offering had agreed to exercise stock options which brings the total raise for MediaMind’s IPO to $56.3 million down slightly from original estimates for the IPO of $57.5 million as reported by Reuters on August 10. Read about the options redemption. As of this writing, MediaMind’s stock trades at $12.10 slightly above its IPO price of $11.50.
Privacy Payday
MediaPost’s Wendy Davis looks at the recent settlement of a class action lawsuit regarding Google Buzz (Google’s answer to Twitter). Davis says, “The tentative settlement calls for Google to pay around $6 million to various privacy organizations, and $2,500 to each of seven individual Web users who sued. The class-action attorneys who brought the lawsuit will split up to $2.5 million.” So to summarize… that’s $6 million for privacy orgs. Laywers get $2.5 million. And, $17,500 for consumers. I want to be a privacy org! Read more.
The Data Congress
Nielsen and PriceWaterhouseCoopers are producing an event titled “Advertising Week Data Congress” as ad tech luminaries, agency types gather to discuss the complex world of targeting with data and its impact on the consumer. Participants include Chris Boothe, President/COO, Starcom USA, Quentin George, Chief Digital Officer, Nancy Hill, President & CEO, 4A’s and Bill Livek, CEO, Rentrak Corporation. Read more.
LendingTree Patent Lawsuit
LendingTree announced that it was suing Zillow, NexTag, Adchemy and QuinStreet for patent infringement. According to the Christina Rexrode of The Charlotte Observer, “the patent claims a method of coordinating electronic credit qualification forms between a computer user and various lending institutions over the Internet.” Previously, Zillow and NexTag did not respond to LendingTree’s efforts to license the patent. Read more.
More Ad Networks, Not Less
The world of group buying (think GroupOn and its knockoffs) just gave birth to an ad network as ChompOn announced its new product for publishers. According to ChompOn CEO Samuel Yam (formerly of AdWhirl) in a TechCrunch interview, the crux of ChompOn platform is entirely ad networks driven, i.e. the deals aren’t stuck on your site. By adding in three lines of code, you can distribute ChompOn widgets throughout your publisher network, and ChompOn’s central analytics system will track all your data, across sites.” Read more.
MDC Buying New PR
MDC Partners continues to acquire stakes in PR agencies according to an article by the NY Times Stuart Elliott. The latest acquisition (Kwittken & Company) will cost MDC between $10 and $15 million. Elliott writes, “None of the six [PR] agencies in which MDC has bought majority stakes specialize in traditional ad tasks like creating television commercials. Rather, their specialties, in addition to public relations, include social media, database marketing, experiential marketing and analytics.” Read more.
You’re Hired! – or Promoted!
Collective announced that it has hired executives with backgrounds at Yahoo!, Comcast, Turn, and Adap.tv for various sales and product roles. See the release. And at data manager Demdex, the company has hired new execs from Yahoo!, CBS Interactive and comScore. Read the release. Finally, MediaMath announced that it has named former Adroit Interactive (which MediaMath acquired in April) GM Greg Smith as its senior vice president of sales. Read more.
Women Are Clickers, Men Are Actors
Bizo released new data from its B2B targeting platform and ad network that shows “Women deliver a 23 percent higher click-through rate than men, but after clicking, men following through with an action (e.g., download a whitepaper, start a free trial, make a purchase) 53 percent more than women.” Read the release. And, download the PDF on “Gendernomics.”
PubMatic Adds Mobile
In a press release yesterday, PubMatic announced that it was getting into the mobile game with its publisher-side yield optimization platform as it partnered with mobile ad network optimizer Smaato. PubMatic said, “The partnership, which has been in beta for several months, is now open to publishers that currently leverage PubMatic’s Premier platform.” Read more.
On Audience Buying
DataXu says costs spike and scale is inhibited by audience buying. From its research: “The cost of media for Audience Targeting is 3X more expensive than Run Of Exchange (but effectiveness as measured by CPA was 2.7x better for Optimized ROE than for Audience Targeting).” Read more.
