Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
Search Retargeting Just Got Bigger
Details on the forever imminent “Microsoft/Yahoo search deal” should happen today and AdAge claims that Yahoo! will run search ad sales for both companies. Also of note, according to AdAge’s Michael Learmonth, Yahoo!’s search retargeting product will now incorporate Microsoft data as well and gives the partnership a significant leg up over Google as Yahoo/MSFT can use search profiles to unlock value in display.
Read the Microsoft release on the new deal.
Trip Chowdhry, an analyst with Global Equities Research, tells Pete Carey of San Jose Mercury News that he thinks the new deal is no big thing. Carey writes:
“The deal ultimately will not be significant for either Yahoo or Microsoft, nor would it change the search industry’s structure, which he described as being divided into two categories: ‘Google and others.'”
Greg Linden (formerly of Amazon and Microsoft) on his Geeking With Greg blog thinks Google can “fix” advertising:
Fixing advertising not only would be lucrative, but also it directly fits into Google’s mission to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” At their best, ads provide useful information about interesting products and services. Right now, most contextual and display advertisements are more annoying than useful. It doesn’t have to be that way.
Will the Google ad exchange strategy be an important step in this direction? It should.
Interpublic Group Says “I Profited Grossly”
Ad agency holding companies continue to report poor performance in the face of the struggling global economy. The Wall Street Journal’s Suzanne Vranica reports on IPG’s second quarter earnings which came in “deeper-than-expected declines in second-quarter profit and revenue.” But, there was profit!
From the earnings call covered by Seeking Alpha, IPG CFO Frank Mergenthaler talks “digital” which includes creative and media:
“On the digital side, there is no question that our clients are spending more of their dollars on digital. So we have to be able to recoup them. We had a couple of good business wins on the digital side and frankly we had one client assign some of the digital work so. And that hurt us a bit. But we continued to think our digital offering is very strong, and we’ve been up against all our strong competitors and we’ve been able to succeed in head to head pitches with them. It’s certainly an area we’re going to continue to invest in and grow in the future.”
ConsoliDationN
In an industry dominated by Akamai and Limelight, the Business Insider’s Dan Frommer reports on consolidation in the content delivery network business as “Velocix, formerly CacheLogic, is being acquired by Alcatel-Lucent (ALU), a telecom equipment maker.” Dan Rayburn on the StreamingMedia blog says that all-in-all, Velocix investors didn’t do so well as $25 million of funding yielded less than $10 million in annual sales and an acquisition price that he guesses was around $25 million. More from PaidContent.org.
Saving Face
From the Facebook developers’ blog, Facebook’s Nick Gionos says that new policies are being put into place in regards to Facebook advertising which will ban the use of user data, such as photos, in Facebook ad network ads:
“Regardless of whether data is being sent to ad networks or not, ads that display user data are not allowed in Platform applications unless specifically approved by Facebook. This applies whether the user data is obtained directly from Facebook or otherwise, and whether the ad or data is rendered by an ad network or developer. We are exploring how we could enable such ads while meeting high standards of user experience, but for now no such ads are authorized.”
Advertising In Airplanes
Not a huge deal (right now) – but interesting. China’s AirMedia which operates a digital out-of-home “media network in China dedicated to air travel advertising” and targets “mid-to-high-end consumers” announced a deal with Intel which will provide monitors with “Intel inside.” According to the release, AirMedia “operates digital TV screens in 41 major airports, including all of the 30 largest airports in China. AirMedia also operates digital frames in 25 major airports. In addition, AirMedia sell advertisements on the routes operated by 12 airlines, including the three largest airlines in China.” Imagine buying audience across digital channels online and off – including in the airplane – through a single buying platform. It will happen sooner than people think.
OMMA Ad Nets Conference
Lots of coverage of the OMMA Ad Nets conference in L.A. yesterday on the “MediaPost Raw” blog – start here as Joe Mandese discusses Rubicon Project’s CEO Frank Addante.
Analyst Jordan Rohan stirred the pot saying that ad networks were making gross margins north of 45%.
Varoujan Beridirian (@vbediri), Director, Monetization Products, Fox Interactive Media, notes on Twitter that “RE: Ad Network 45% profit margin. That’s Gross, right? How much is Net? Q is: After all costs/risks, do we build or outsource?”
In general, it appeared to be quite a feeding frenzy on ad networks if Twitter was to be believed as proxy for the conference’s tone.
- @MediaPostLive – they’re coming for the ad networks http://bit.ly/3bTwht #ommanets
- @MediaPostLive – why should premium publishers join a “race to zero”? http://bit.ly/Qgp7t #ommanets
- @MediaPostLive – If you were doing business with someone 60% spread, wouldn’t you offer them a little bit less? http://bit.ly/EgnS4 #ommanets
CPX Interactive’s COO, Rob Rasko, comes to the defense of ad networks on MediaPost and is fricaseed in the comments.
Attribution – In Video
ClearSaleing is running a series of videos with Adam Goldberg (AdExchanger Q&A) about attribution management. Among the observations from yesterday’s video, “real life data shows that close to 50% of the time people end up buying a different product than the ad they clicked on.”
Hands Up! MediaEquals Wants All Your Media
Emma Hall writes on AdAge that UK on- and offline media marketplace “MediaEquals, a new U.K.-based player [has] ambitions to secure the whole world’s media inventory on its system.” Whoa.
Hall adds, “MediaEquals allows for regular trading, but the negotiations take place online, providing a useful record of all conversations in the process.” Interesting. No word on about the ability to understand audience or attribution capabilities. We’ll try to find out more. Or do you know more? Tell us in the comments.
Multi-Variate In Display Adds Contender
Dotomi announced that it will be offering multi-variate testing which would appear to compete with services from Teracent (AdExchanger.com Q&A) and Tumri among others. Elizabeth Gardner covers the story for ClickZ noting that “clients saw anywhere from 5 to 15 percent improvement in customer conversions, on average according to Dotomi COO Ken Treske.”
Growing Sustainability
The UK’s Guardian has an ad network dedicated to sustainability and has shared its goals for the network hoping to increase “the Green Ad Network from 4.6m monthly ad impressions this year to 6.9m in 2010.”
ContextualGeo In Your Weather
Lat49, a “geo-contextual ad network,” announced a deal to integrated Lat49s ad serving services into AccuWeather.com, a popular weather info site.
