Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
New Co-op Agency Model
Ad Age’s Rupal Parekh covers a new agency model being put together by former kbs+p partner, Jon Bond with $100 million of financing. Parekh writes, “The entity is being dubbed a ‘cooperative’ to prospective partners and touted as an alternative structure to the current advertising and marketing holding-company model. Mr. Bond is said to have met with some 80 to 100 marketing services firms and tech outfits […].” Read more.
Quantcast Accredited
Quantcast’s online measurement services has been accredited by Media Rating Council (MRC), a potentially important move in that Quantcast’s larger competitors – namely, Nielsen and ComScore – are not accredited. MRC Executive Director George Ivie says in the release, “We were impressed with many of the innovations introduced by Quantcast in this product, and its accreditation is a notable step in the continuing evolution of the state of online measurement.” Read more.
ContextWeb Shows Revenue Growth
In Crain’s New York Business, ContextWeb CEO Tim Murray presents ContextWeb’s story as well as glimpse of the company’s financials, “Mr. Murray says revenues grew 20% last year and he expects growth of more than 40% for 2010.” Pam Horan, president of the Online Publishers Association, also has a classic quote in the piece: “There’s no significant impact, or any impact, really, of running your message on an ad network.” Huh? Read more.
Jerry Neumann checks in with his thoughts on the Google acquisition of Invite Media and says in the first of a two-part post that he’s optimistic about valuations of other companies in the space. He writes on his blog, “First, I believe that Invite had not yet reached the point where what it had learned was enough to reliably predict how to buy media that would be more effective. When that happens, the game changes.” Read more.
Data Data Data
Seth Levine of Foundry Group writes about the importance of easy access to insights about your data and recalls his time as a board member for Service Magic as an example of how to do it: “Years ago I remember sitting in Service Magic board meetings when Rodney or Mike (the co-founders) would pull out a Blackberry and announce: “in the 45 minutes since this meeting began, we’ve made 62,135 dollars and 37 cents!” Read more.
In The Name Of Attribution
WPP Group and The MIG’s Brian Lesser preaches the attribution gospel on iMedia Connection as he writes, “There is an abundance of data available to brand marketers, yet few use it to their advantage. The truth is that tools exist for marketers to translate brand messages into positive performance statistics. It’s time to start using them.” Read more.
Live From The Hamptons
GRP Partners VC and prolific blogger Mark Suster types a post from the Greycroft CEO Summit taking place at Greycroft CEO Alan Partricof’s estate in The Hamptons on Long Island. During the day, Steve Blank’s presentation was a cut above the rest evidently – Blank is the creator of the “customer development” process and founder of E.piphany according to Suster. Blank councils tech CEOs (courtesy of Suster’s notes), “GET OUT OF YOUR OFFICE! And go see customers. And it can’t be delegated. The CEO needs to do this him/herself. You need to hear directly what their issues are. And you need to close the sales yourself so that your future head of sales can never bullsh** you.” Read more from Suster. And, see Blank’s presentation on Slideshare: “Why Accountants Don’t Run Startups.”
It’s Not ALL About Startups
“I’m going to play the contrarian tonight and say that while startups are fun and educational rollercoasters, there are many mature companies here in New York that have great opportunities. Take a deep breathe and hear me out,” says kbs+p’s Darren Herman. Read more on his personal blog.
Display Ad Event Coverage
GCA Savvian’s Digital Media Summit, the positive buzz from those who attended Tuesday’s event was strong. FAN’s Matt Barash declared, “The Savvian Digital Media Summit is the digital media world’s answer to Davos. An incredible lineup of the best and brightest in the business, all assembled in a single venue and totally unique in stature.” Meanwhile, Meghan Keane of the eConsultancy blog covers Dapper’s Fixing Advertising event and quotes Dapper COO Jon Aizen as saying in regards to web advertising overall, “We’ve barely innovated in 16 years. The web has changed a lot, but display is certainly in its earliest phases.” Read more.
Gauging eCPMs
Vertical ad network provider Adify released its Vertical Gauge (AVG) quarterly report which show improved eCPMs for Q1 in a variety of verticals in comparison to a year ago. From the release, data point tidbit: “The healthy living & lifestyle vertical experienced the second highest growth rate next to Real Estate, increasing 35% since Q4 2009, and a 25% increase over Q1 2009.” Read more.
The Nightclub Effect
Angel investor and Hunch CEO Chris Dixon looks at financing with existing investors versus going to new firms to lead a round. Dixon coins a new phrase in explaining the options, “The insiders who previously didn’t want to do an inside round are suddenly really excited about the company because they see that other VCs are really excited about the company. This is what I call the nightclub effect.” Read more.
Search Adds Caffeine
The search world is abuzz with the latest update to the Google search algo. Code-named “Caffeine,” Vanessa Fox of Search Engine Land says a key change has to do with indexing: “When Google crawls a page, it processes that page through the entire indexing pipeline and pushes it live nearly instantly. This change has already resulted in a 50 percent fresher index than before.” Read more. And,
