Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
Microsoft And OpenX Get Cozy
OpenX CEO Tim Cadogan has made a multi-year deal with Microsoft that will make OpenX technology more widely available and allow his company to leverage (what looks to be) Microsoft’s PubCenter contextual targeting for OpenX customers. Microsoft gets access to tons of publishers in its competition with Google AdSense. In a Reuters article, Alexei Oreskovic writes that OpenX gets access to more large customers (Or, perhaps it’s a potential acquirer down the road?). Read more.
So, where is Atlas and AdECN in all this? After all, ad serving and exchange capabilities are built into OpenX. AdExchanger.com inquired and according to a Microsoft spokesperson, “Microsoft continues to support the Atlas AdManager and AdECN products and their customers. This agreement does not impact our plans in those areas. On the contrary, we see this as a way to accelerate the delivery of ad serving solutions to a broad range of customers.”
What Display Needs
Russ Glass, CEO of Bizo, says that if you can’t beat it, join it (pretty much) in his piece on online display advertising in AdWeek. Glass offers three steps for the online ad industry to help improve display including “Getting Transparent.” Read more from Glass – including the other two steps.
DataLogix Now Serving Nielsen
This news should speak to some of the brand marketers out there that are in love with their offline data. Nielsen announced that it is making available its PRIZM custom audience segments through DataLogix which will allow advertisers to anonymously target consumers online based on offline data. Mike Shields has more in Mediaweek.
Gene De Libero from the BBC looks at the semantic web on the AdMonsters blog and how semantic tagging could positively impact the relevance of marketing messages for the consumer. Read more.
EyeWonder Addresses Visibility
As part of its rich media toolkit, EyeWonder announced the “Ad Visibility Suite” which – according to the company – will help advertisers understand “the actual real time an online ad is physically within the viewable area of a browser.” The new feature became available to EyeWonder clients as of November 1. Read the release.
IAB Lobbying And The FTC
With regulation looming, the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) is lobbying Congress to make sure that the chief-ad-watchdog-in-charge, The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), isn’t given the keys to the kingdom with a proposed new bill. Wendy Davis of MediaPost says, “the bill would effectively make FTC Chair Jon Leibowitz an ‘Internet czar.'” Read more.
IPG Machinations
With fourth quarter layoffs in-store for IPG, a steady shift of power is taking place within the holding company as DraftFCB is on its way up the charts in comparison to perennial powerhouse McCann Worldwide, which is struggling, according to Rupal Parekh of Advertising Age. With IPGs commitment to Mediabrands’ Cadreon, it will be interesting to see how Cadreon is rolled out within the wider holding company given some of the turmoil. Read more.
Field Tripping With Your VC
VC firm First Round Capital (investors in AppNexus, Invite Media, Demdex, Aggregate Knowledge among others) organized a summit between its portfolio companies and “over 100 Hollywood technology and media executives” in the L.A. area last week reports First Round’s Chris Fralic on the firm’s blog. Read about it.
Ad Network And Exchange Bill Of Rights
On Imedia Connection, Jay Friedman of Goodway Group who owns the Beep! automotive network reveals his “Agencies/Advertisers Verification Bill of Rights” as it relates to the use of ad networks. Friedman says he plans . IASH in the UK is already running with a verification-themed system. Friedman says he wants to present it to the Ad Network & Exchange committee of the IAB for adoption by its members. Read more.
Against The GRP
Razorfish’s Jeremy Lockhorn writes on ClickZ that even though it would make things much simpler to use a GRP metric so that buyers could better understand what they’re getting from online (video, in this case), he thinks there’s got to be something better. Lockhorn thinks the days of panel-based metrics are over as the core of media buying. Read more.
Serving Ads With Flies
From “Blogilvy,” a blog by peeps at Ogilvy, comes a link to a novel approach for online display advertising. Though non-digital in its implementation, it’s worthy of attention in that it’s the first time flies have been used to deliver ads. Really. See the video. (source: @OGILVY)
