Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
New Online Shopping Legislation
U.S. Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller has introduced legislation aimed at prohibiting “companies from enrolling consumers in paid-subscription programs unless the consumers entered their credit card numbers and agreed to the program,” according to MediaPost’s Wendy Davis. And there’s more – no more “negative option.” Read what that means.
Samsung Buying An Ad Network?
Forbes’ Laurie Burkitt covers Samsung’s ad strategy as the company looks to create its own apps for IP TV. Burkitt writes, “To dish out ads at scale in the TV app market Samsung may have to purchase or start an ad network that will stand between advertisers and the devices that carry ads.” Read more.
Blimey! UK Web Use Skyrocketing
“Web users in the U.K. spent 65% more time online in April 2010 (884 million hours) than they did in April 2007 (536 million hours),” according to the Nielsen blog. What’s more, says Nielsen, social networking by UK internet users has more than doubled in that time. Read more. Part of the increase may also be due to UK viewership here on AdExchanger.com!
Millenial Media has released the second monthly edition of its “Mobile Mix” summary which shows trends in the mobile device world. It’s a blizzad of facts and figures that you can download here with a signup. The report touts Android ad growth but given its small OS market share (10%), it’s early to say its competitive with Apple: “Android ad requests grew 77% month over month. Since January, Android has grown 282%.”
Open Is For Losers
Dave McClure, who manages the seed investing program at Founders Fund, was quite clear on what he expressed his thoughts on “open vs. closed technology’ at a panel at this week’s Google’s I/O conference in San Francisco. In his words, “Open is for losers.” Others, such as Hunch cofounder Chris Dixon, who is a member of the Founders Collective investment group, “said that having a certain degree of openness ultimately leads to ‘more private net wealth creation,'” according to VentureBeat. Read more.
Guardian Launches Publisher Platform
From his personal blog, Nick Burcher, an exec with VivaKi Nerve Center EMEA, covers the launch of a new publishing platform from UK-based media company The Guardian called the Guardian Open Platform. Burcher writes, “Rather than move to the pay-wall model that various newspaper sites are starting to adopt, the Guardian are doing the complete opposite – opening up their content for anyone to use.” Read more about APIs, openness and more. And, see the slides from The Guardian’s presentation.
Raising Money In Reverse
On Wednesday, Digital-out-of-home ad exchange provider, rVue, announced that it raised funding through a reverse merger. The “company has secured over $1 million in a round of financing funded by institutional investors and acquired rVue, Inc. Simultaneously, rVue Holdings was quoted on the OTCBB exchange trading under the symbol ‘RVUE,'” according to the release. Read it.
Dave Morgan On Google, Facebook
From his Online Spin blog on MediaPost, Dave Morgan warns Google and Facebook that they better get privacy right. In fact, Morgan says they need to re-think their future job applicant demo and look for those more comfortable with nuance and empathy. He writes, “Hire more liberal arts grads with B and C averages […]” but, “they need to infuse their organizations with people who can help them navigate those grey areas.” Read it all.
Incentiving And The Exchange
Darren Herman says on his personal blog that the exchange model is not going to flourish unless direct sales team incentives and the exchanges at media companies are decoupled – but how? Herman writes, “Because many of the exchanges are part of media companies that are also representing inventory and have direct sales team, there is inherent sales conflict. This sales conflict makes the long-term vision of the industry harder to attain because people go for short-term gains.” Read more.
[x+1] Announces Platform Enhancements
[x+1] announced in a release that it is offering optimization across “across exchange and non-exchange based” buying sources in order to provide “a single, simplified and consolidated view of all digital media campaign activity guaranteed and non-guaranteed inventory.” Read the release.
The President Of Data
Michael Benedek has been elevated from his BD role and named President of AlmondNet’s online data division according to a press release which adds that “AlmondNet’s data division aggregates and categorizes keyword and segment-based data from data-providing sites to enable scalable delivery of targeted online advertisements…” Read more.
