Radio And Automated Ads; Benioff Says "Email Is Over"

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.

Listen For The Target

Radio is the “last bastion of context based advertising” eXelate CEO Mark Zagorski tells paidContent’s Jeff John Roberts, but Zagorski adds that this will change shortly. Pandora, the online radio streamer, is already selling “interest-based” ads that reflect users’ online browsing activity. Roberts quotes Triton Digital COO Mike Agovino who says “letting brands sell to listeners based on their web surfing habits will drive a new wave of automated ad buying and increase the value of the radio ad market.” Audience buying saved the radio star.

QOTS

On Marketing Land, Danny Sullivan live blogs Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff’s interview on the big stage at CES. Benioff may have delivered the Quote Of The Show according to Sullivan’s transcription. Benioff: “How are you connected with your customer, your partners, your employees. Email? Those days are over.” Read more. Oof. Marc, now I’m going to take your quote a bit out of context.. but dude, if you don’t recognize that email is your ticket into the addressable future, come read AdExchanger a bit more. If email is “over,” you just lost your unique online/offline connection that can make messaging – ads or not – relevant AND differentiate Salesforce – let alone all of that sweet attribution potential. And another thing – email as communication is still uniquely powerful. Here’s a thought: put Buddy out front with a paid media program that enables all of your customers to address their email records. Paid, owned, earned – horsepucky! “Paid” is the jet fuel to your company’s future. (Let me know if you need anything else, MB.)

Please Pass The Premium

Microsoft Ads Corporate VP Frank Holland chimes in with his 2013 predictions on the Microsoft Advertising blog. He writes, “We believe buying methods will consolidate with programmatic playing a large role, but there will continue to be a strong role for sellers who service ‘custom buyers’ looking for nonstandard, rich, immersive brand experiences.” Preeeeemium. Read more.

‘The Click Is Dead’

Shhh… We’re 10 days into 2013 and there have been no articles on the click being dead. Tip.. toe.. tip.. toe…

The Farticle Lives

On his personal blog, LeadsCon maestro Jay Weintraub takes readers through a scam on Facebook using Southwest Airlines imagery as an apparent ad. He prefaces the dissection as follows: “The early days of bad ads on Facebook coincided with the heyday of mobile subscription services (crush then IQ). Having been sidelined, the next phase was the flog and farticle who spent on Facebook ads. They still linger amazingly, e.g…..” Black hat performance marketing porn – see it now.

What The Heck?

Rare Crowds CEO Eric Picard asks the iMedia Connection audience, “What the heck is programmatic?” And he answers, “Programmatic is a superset of exchange, RTB, auction, and other types of automated media buying and selling that have mainly been proven out for remnant ad inventory clearing mechanisms up until today.” And, there’s much more. Good riff.

Dynamic Gift Giving

Facebook Gifts, the social network’s e-commerce feature that was widely rolled out before the holidays, represents the gift that keeps on giving when it comes to clickthroughs, according to retargeting specialist Triggit. In a sideshow, the company tells of an otherwise unidentified “major retailer” that ran two Facebook Exchange campaigns from November to December. The first contained just static ads, while the other featured dynamic, rich media executions. Naturally enough, the dynamic ads “crushed static ads performance yielding 43 percent higher CTRs” with 93 percent of of retargeted ads activated within the first 50 impressions — compared to just 66 percent of static ads, showing that creativity does go a long way to inspiring gift giving in more ways than one. Download the slideshow here. (Pay with some PII.)

Cookie Stuffing Meets Johnny Law (J-Law?)

For perhaps the first time, a legal precedent has been created around the practice of cookie stuffing, or forcing browsers to click on affiliate links unbeknownst to users. Writing on AffiliateFairPlay.com this week, Kellie Stevens describes a gulity plea by alleged cookie stuffer Shawn Hogan to a charge of wire fraud. She concludes online ad fraudsters beware. “If traffic to a merchant’s site is tagged through an affiliate link, then the consumer better have actually had the merchant’s web site displayed to them. If they haven’t seen the merchant’s site, then you are committing fraud with all the possible legal consequences.” More.

French Ad Blockade Was Net Neutrality Stunt

With its move to strip ads from Google sites and other properties last week, French ISP Free was making a statement about infrastructure cost. As Emma Hall reports for AdAge, “The gesture made headlines, spawning a Twitter trend with the hashtag #AdGate, and making a strong case for the ISPs at a time when the French government is negotiating with Google and Amazon over how much they should contribute to the architecture and infrastructure of the internet in France.” Read it.

Local Ads Boost

Local ad researcher Borrell Associates says that revenue in the local ad space will rise 31% in 2013 to $24.5 billion as more small and medium-sized businesses shift ad spending to digital from traditional media, Mediapost’s Mark Walsh reports. Although the report doesn’t have specific numbers for social media-based local ad spending, it’s clear that Facebook is driving a great deal of local marketers’ digital budgets, as 28% say they plan to buy ads across the site this year. “Facebook ads show little growth in share, running 25% in our Q4 2012 data and the same in our 2011 surveys,” noted the study. Read more.

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