Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
Rapleaf Cont.
It’s been an interesting week (understatement?) for Rapleaf as coverage continues in The Wall Street Journal with controversy about the company’s technology reaching a U.S. Senate campaign. According to The WSJ’s Emily Steel, “New Hampshire Republican Senate hopeful Jim Bender apologized to a voter for targeting her online in his election campaign using controversial technologies from Internet data firm RapLeaf Inc.” Read more. DM News carries a round-up of Rapleaf’s most recent challenges here.
Agency Machinations
Sean Finnegan, who is president and Chief Digital Officer at Starcom MediaVest Group, is leaving the agency after two years according to MediaPost which reports, “A rift between Finnegan and Starcom is reportedly at the root of the departure, although it’s being called a ‘mutual decision.'” Read more. Where will Finnegan pop-up next?
Advertise Early
In another study from rich media provider PointRoll, the company looks at how marketers should be spending even earlier if they want to have a leg up on their competitors. From the press release, for “the retail ads evaluated (in 2009) showed average interaction rates range from 4 percent to 6 percent during Q4, beginning in November at 6 percent, and hitting their low points in early December. (…) This decrease is most likely due in part to heavy levels of advertisements. Interaction rates then increase 25 percent up to 5 percent during the final weeks of December.” Read more.
Mark Cuban writes about demographic trends and media consumption on his personal blog, Blog Maverick. He writes, “The new mantra is ‘Never trust the media consumption habits of anyone over 30.’ Well no sh*t Sherlock. Has any generation’s kids consumed media the same way as their parents ? I’m going to let you in on a secret. The only 20 somethings that are going to consume media in 10 years the way they do today are the ones without a job, still living with their parents.” Read more.
TV Content Ad Network
Video ad platform announced the launch of its ad network, CrossPoint Media, which is positioining itself as offering advertising around television content online according to the release. Read more. The company says CrossPoint was #6 in ComScore’s video ad network rankings in August.
Omnicom Getting Into The Data
Omnicom Media Group, the media services part of ad holding company Omnicom, announced the formation of Annalect a new company focused on digital data analytics. From the release: “Annalect Group brings together more than 300 digital and analytic experts from across several OMG specialty divisions — including Media Analytics, Business Intelligence, Tools and Dashboard Systems, Econometric Modeling (Brand Science), Search (Resolution Media) and its DSP trading platform – to create a new, strategically focused, data-informed marketing platform.” Read more. Weird name -but, an interesting idea seemingly aimed to compete with parts of WPP’s ZAP platform.
Ad Effectiveness Competition
The popular creative conference and awards show Cannes Lions is getting into the data-driven game with a new category for ad effectiveness. Ad Age’s Laurel Wentz quotes festival organizers who said that “the criteria for the new award will be results, accounting for 50% of an entry’s score, along with strategy (25%) and idea (25%). The festival cautioned that the data in all entries will be checked by the external auditors at PricewaterhouseCoopers.” Read more. PwC is now in the ad effectiveness measurement game!
Have You Seen MySpace Lately?
MySpace announced its redesign and it’s not your mother’s MySpace anymore – or at least that’s the idea as the site aims for a younger demo and makes entertainment the user’s friend. First thoughts from here: there’s a 728×90, a 300×350 and a search box all above the fold. Read more from Aol Daily Finance’s Doug McIntyre. And, MySpace’s note. Finally, see the site.
Verifying Video Ads
Kantar Video, part of WPP’s research group, has released its Videolytics platform which “promises to allow advertisers and agencies to track their online video ad campaigns in real time, using a proprietary video fingerprinting technology. Essentially, brands should be able to verify when and where their online video ads are running at a given point in time, while publishers can do the same for syndicated video content,” according to Mediaweek’s Mike Shields. Read a bit more.
The Consumer Profile
Commenting on BlueKai and Efficient Frontier’s announcement regarding a new keyword targeting product highlighted in this AdExchanger.com Q&A, Privacy Choice’s Jim Brock provides his view on consumer privacy and advertising, “If the advertiser can buy against a characteristic of the profile, then the consumer should be able to see it and delete it. It’s hard to think of a principled reason why you wouldn’t provide this visibility, which makes it surprising that even some of the largest players still fail to do so and the NAI doesn’t require it.” Read more.
Local Ads
It seems like only yesterday that ReachLocal launched. And now its public and impressing Wall Street with its latest results. Read the earnings release. President and CEO Zorik Gordon of ReachLocal said, “Despite a challenging economic climate, we continued our momentum and achieved 47% year-over-year revenue growth and positive Adjusted EBITDA performance.” Citibank analyst Mark Mahaney notes that ReachLocal’s “international market rollout – now at a record high 17% of revenue and likely to grow at 2X rate of North America. Our $20 PT is based on a 12X our 2012 EBITDA of $45MM, adjusting for expected net cash of approx $85MM.”
Attracting Top Engineers
IA Ventures Roger Ehrenberg writes on his blog about how to attract and target the right engineers for a company which might especially be involved in big data pursuits such as hedge funds or data-driven advertising. In regards to compensation for engineering types, he writes, “There needs to be a clear stratification of importance of specific positions within the firm. I know certain companies, post seed round, that have given incredible engineers with top creds and experience between 4%-10% of the company. Clearly these are for CTO/Chief Scientist-type positions, but these are packages I haven’t seen before.” Read more.
3 Steps To Leads
On the Reply.com blog, Rudd Lippincott provides his thoughts on the top three considerations for acquiring successful leads. They include “Lightning-fast response times, customer service approach, Know your (KPI) numbers; and Customer’s Needs Come Before Yours.” Read what he means.
Google Buying Manhattan
Actually, Google is buying one city block of Manhattan for $2 billion. It’s the same block where its NYC offices are located and for which it currently pays $695 a square foot for leasing only one-fifth of the building. Read more.
Playback
Yieldex has made available video from its recent Yieldex Executive Summit and includes scenes from a panel near and dear to many web publishers’ hearts, building a yield management team. Participants included the following yield mavens: Aol’s Jose Garcia-Franco, Tim Messier of TWC Media Solutions; Dan Reiners of The Wall Street Journal, Cars.com’s Jay Wright and panel moderator Fergus Mellon of Meebo. See it.
