Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
Search Spend Trend
The Wall Street Journal’s Emily Steel covers trends in search ad spending and how marketers are trying new strategies (display!) to get the most bang for their buck. She cites recent GroupM Search and ComScore research as marketers are using social media advertising – presumably display advertising – to drive to paid search and the bottom of the purchase funnel. Read more.
New York Times Upbeat On Digital
The New York Times’ reported its Q3 earnings and though there are plenty of challenges on the print side, the digital side appears to be showing strength already in Q4. During the conference call, Janet Robinson, President and CEO of The New York Times Company said, “Early in the fourth quarter, print advertising trends in comparison to the third quarter have improved modestly, while digital advertising trends are improving more significantly.” She also notes, “an improving trend regard to display advertising.” Read the call transcript on Seeking Alpha. Download the earnings release here (PDF). Still no word on a digital subscription model at the Times. But, competitor Newsday is going for it.
According to PaidContent.org’s David Kaplan, in addition a re-org of the digital sales team which will still be headed by existing CRO Drew Schutte, Condé Nast Digital’s 26 online brands will be assigned to one of five different content categories: fashion and beauty; food, well-being and travel; bridal; technology; and culture and thought leader. Still seems like there’s room here for more audience selling across brands and content categories, but the direct sales are presumably more about custom, integrated sponsorships per brand. Read more.
Struggling To Count
A consortium of big media company and agencies are finding it slow going when it comes to getting results from the funding of an organization called the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM). CIMM’s focus is to figure out the people counting conundrum across digital channels and leverage set-top box data. Read more from MediaPost’s David Goetzl.
Creative For Finance Display Ads
A new study from Dynamic Logic looks at display advertising and what creative works best. For instance, for financial service companies, the study finds that financial display ads are too text heavy, in general, and that photos of people work. Read the release which includes sign up info on an October 27 webinar with the 4As presenting the study. Read more from ClickZ. And, read the Ad Age coverage, too, with extensive comments on the study.
OwnerIQ Enters DSP Space
Another entrant in the demand-side platform (DSP) space has emerged as Owner IQ announced the availability of MOST a “real-time media buying platform.” The company says that through MOST’s targeting capabilities, it can “acquire inventory through real-time-bidding on each impression opportunity” across multiple ad exchanges. Download the release.
Forrester on Digital Attribution
In her latest research piece, Emily Riley of Forrester takes a look at digital campaign attribution models being developed by Atlas, ClearSaleing, Coremetrics, Theorem, Trueffect, Visual IQ and x+1. Riley and her team looked at ease of use, depth of insight, integration and strategy as data points for the vendor review. In regards to what the marketplace wants, Riley says, “To lead the market in the near term, we recommend that vendors focus their road maps on modeling capabilities, reporting flexibility, and actionability.” The next step to a report like this is cross-channel attribution (a Holy Grail!). Read more.
Tumri Addresses Q4 For Advertisers
Multi-variate, creative technology company, Tumri, announced its “Retail Toolkit.” According to Tumri, the company has collected tools around its AdPod product to help marketers who are preparing to target holiday shoppers in Q4. Read the release.
Facebook Connect Ad Network?
With the amount of data that Facebook collects from its Facebook Connect application, it would appear to be a great opportunity for the company to start its own ad network – outside of what it does on Facebook.com. The company still has no plans for the external ad network, though, according to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg who spoke at the Web 2.0 Summit. Read more.
AdWords API Update
A new AdWords API update was released according to the Google AdWords API blog. (Did you know there was an AdWords API blog?). New features including the ability to multiple, large data-sets at the same time – known as asynchronous calls. Read more.
Giving The CEO Feedback
Ben Casanoch has an anecdote on his blog that many can likely relate to. A well-known exec in the industry who thinks himself as hot stuff (and is), talks too much at the dinner table – how do you give this guy feedback to shut up without ticking him off and being excluded from his next deal? Well, you don’t. But, at some point this exec is going to need feedback and Casanoch has suggestions on how power brokers, execs, CEO should get theirs. Read more.
Google Advice On Distributed Systems
Greg Linden points to a recent presentation by Google Fellow Jeff Dean on “Designs, Lessons and Advice from Building Large Distributed Systems.” According to Linden, Dean says “Google’s datacenter experience is that, in just one year, 1-5% of disks fail, 2-4% of servers fail, and each machine can be expected to crash at least twice.” Read more about how Google tries to overcome. And, download Dean’s slides here (PDF).
For Automation
On MediaPost, PR maven George Simpson says that he sees no reason why automation shouldn’t be a part of ad buying across all channels as they become digitally-infused. He also encourages the creative side of the world to get with the program and embrace multi-variate technology to improve messaging to consumers, for example. Read more.
US Users On UK Sites
Jack Marshall says on ClickZ that US users on UK sites are a potential revenue stream if UK publishers start pro-actively managing their international channels. Marshall looks at recent Hitwise data that shows the opportunity and speaks to an NY Times International exec who suggests that direct selling in local markets is important. Read more.
