$400 Billion For Online; Marin Software Files For IPO

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

$400 Billion+ Digital

Google SVP Nikesh Arora tosses a juicy number out for the advertising world at All Things D’s conference. Arora stated, “There’s currently about $800 billion in the global advertising market today. That’s a very large number, but online advertising accounts for less than $100 billion of that number. There is a reasonable probability that over 50 percent of advertising goes online in the next five years.” He’s waiting for connected TV. Read more. Have things accelerated for the GOOG? This prediction dovetails with former Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s 2011 prediction that “online display” would reach $200 billion in 10 years.

Marin Files For IPO

The worst kept secret in the conjoined worlds of Wall Street and ad technology finally became a reality yesterday as buying platform Marin Software filed documents for an initial public offering (IPO) that will bring the company $75 million in proceeds. The company does not say how many shares it will sell so it’s hard to tell what the company thinks it’s worth. Marin got its start with search engine marketing – which remains its mainstay product – and, the company had $4-5 billion in ad spend reportedly pulsing through its 2012 platform pipes. In recent years, the company has added social (i.e. Facebook ads, etc.), mobile and display to its repertoire. See the S-1. Looking at revenue, for the nine months ending September 30, 2012, the company reported $42.5 million in revenue resulting in an $19 million loss.

Money For Location

Verve Mobile has taken a $14 million C round led by Qualcomm and others to drive growth of its location-based ad network. Press release. Back in August, CEO Tom MacIsaac told AdExchanger, “We have gone from 20 to 65 employees in the last 18 months. Our 2012 revenue will be approximately 3x our 2011 revenue (which was about 3x our 2010 revenue) and we should reach profitability later this year.” On the currently hot question of whether tablets should count as “mobile,” MacIsaac offers a strong argument that they do. Hey, the couch is a location too.

App Ad

Microsoft is shooting the moon with new “Ads in Apps” for Windows 8 environments. Blog post. AdWeek praises it: “Delta’s ad placement invites users to swipe up, rather than left and right—a simple twist, but one that looks to capture a central theme of the Delta’s current campaign.” Read it. The challenge, as always with Microsoft, is achieving scale.

Linking In Mobile

JP Morgan analyst Doug Anmuth reviews his meeting with LinkedIn CFO Steve Sordello in a research note. On LinkedIn’s mobile opportunity, he says, “We believe Sponsored Content could be the primary way that LinkedIn monetizes the mobile news feed, for smartphones in particular. As LinkedIn becomes more of a professional publishing platform with both organic and shared content, we believe it becomes easier for the company to add relevant ads with context into the news feed. Early testing of Sponsored Content has mostly been around white papers, but we look for this advertising, based content to expand.”

Pondering Time Inc. Sale

Time Inc. just went through a series of large, across the board layoffs. But apparently, lowering headcount isn’t enough to balance out shrinking print revenues, as parent Time Warner is talking to potential acquirers of part of the publishing unit, Fortune reported. Women’s magazine publisher Meredith Corp. appears like the most likely candidate to take on entertainment/lifestyle titles People, InStyle, and Real Simple. “It is not clear why Bewkes might want to keep Time magazine, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated,” Fortune says. noting the first two aren’t that profitable. “And Sports Illustrated has clear value for Time Warner’s Turner Broadcasting System, although in the past the two have disagreed on digital strategy.” Read more.

It’s ALIVE

The Yahoo-Aol-Microsoft display ad alliance is still ALIVE. A post on the Yahoo ad blog says that Microsoft is joining Aol and Yahoo in a similar deal for Canadian inventory. This is the first peep out of the alliance in months. More to come? Read the brief post.

Tracking Leads

Hey, this sounds like something a Salesforce product does… now LinkedIn is in the email tracking game. (The plot thickens!) MediaPost’s Laurie Sullivan explains how presentations can now be shared and tracked in real-time through LinkedIn’s Slideshare site: “Marketers upload content into SlideShare to share publicly or privately and attach it to an email. Send Tracker follows how they interact with it. Users receive a real-time notification via email when recipients look at the content. It records how much time the person spent on each page and whether they clicked or copied the content.” Read more. And, read the SlideShare blog post on “Send Tracker.”

AOL Goes Gdgt

It’s been awhile since AOL bought a content site, but the company has decided to expand its publishing side offerings in the tech arena by acquiring technology reviews site gdgt, reports Techcrunch’s Alexia Tsotsis and Ingrid Lunden. Read it. In addition to owning Techcrunch, AOL also has Engadget in its stable of sites. It also marks the return of Ryan Block and Pete Rojas, gdgt’s co-founders and former Engadget editors, to the AOL fold. “We didn’t leave Engadget (or AOL) because we were unhappy, we left to do gdgt because at the time it was tough to build something that was clearly not editorial,” Block told Techcrunch. “That’s obviously changed, and we’re excited to be able to continue to invest in and grow gdgt, while also bringing a lot of the stuff we’ve built to the rest of AOL Tech.”

But Wait. There’s More!