Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
Malvertising Porno
The WSJ’s Emily Steel reports that nefarious ne’er-do-wells are inflicting malvertising on big brands via innocent (oh please) visitors of certain pornographic websites. According to Steel, “When a user visits one of these porn sites, the Web page launches dozens of pages that are hidden from the computer user. These hidden sites are filled with paid links to legitimate websites.” Read more. Ad Safe Media and Google have evidently contacted the authorities.
Live From Washington
ClickZ’s Kate Kaye covers U.S. senate committee hearings which yesterday featured FTC chairman Jon Leibovitz. According to Kaye, “Leibowitz expressed concern that the Digital Advertising Alliance’s self-regulatory program may be insufficient because it does not – at least in all cases – allow consumers to control the tracking and collection of personal data online.” Read more.
The Ticking DSP Time Bomb
CPX Interactive President & COO Rob Rasko says that demand-side platforms are a “ticking time bomb” for publishers in an opinion piece on MediaBizBloggers. Rasko writes, “The standalone DSP phenomenon is a private equity funded effort that promises scalability and transparency for advertisers and publishers. But ‘transparency’ is such a loaded word in our business. If a publisher is using a third party to sell its remnant inventory, does that publisher want the client to see the exact CPMs they are paying for those outsourced placements?” Read more.
Comp Index Riff
comScore sales maven Jeff Hackett makes a rare appearance on the comScore blog to deliver an explanation for Composition Index a.k.a. “Comp Index”. Hackett explains: “‘Comp Index’ measures the concentration of a particular target group of consumers on a given website or ad network, compared to the concentration of that target in the total Internet population. Read more on why Hackett thinks you should care.
GroupM Australia CEO Not Mincing Words
Down under, GroupM country manager CEO in Australia, John Steedman, is sticking it up the collective “dark side of the moon” of rivals saying that they don’t stand a chance with his organizations superior holding company model. In discussing the competition, he tells Australia’s AdNews, “They’re all singing from the same song sheet now but we’ve been doing it longer. We are better at it. We’ve got a big leap on them and as a network we’re more cohesive. We won’t lose that competitive edge. The end game is we will continue to diversify the business.” Read more.
2-Hour Delivery
Data management platform Aggregate Knowledge announced that it has a ready-to-wear version of its “entry-level DMP solution [which] activates in less than two hours” called “First Steps.” According to the release, “Since no pixel or tag is required with ‘First Steps,’ users can set up the AK Platform in under two hours and immediately start to see all of their campaigns in one place.” Read more.
Ad Networks Work
Terrance McDermott of b2b agency Slack and Co. in Chicago tells B-to-B Online that ad networks are alive and well from his viewpoint: ““It’s fair to say that, for the b2b world, ad networks are bringing an added level of prospect data to understand the industry someone works in, their level in the organization and more.” No mention of the demand-side platform model, but McDermott sees better analytics and targeting as ad network differentiators. Read more.
Feel The Brand Embrace
On ClickZ, Harry Gold thinks search plus retargeting means a great opportunity for brands – calling it “The Brand Embrace”. Gold reasons, “The brand embrace will enable you to get value from the consumers who didn’t convert on the first paid click and stay with those consumers who did convert and are in the purchase consideration phase.” Read more explanation.
Easing Commerce Into Display
According to an article in MediaPost, Adventive says it has signed up a bunch of well-known publishers for Accelerator, “a tool that allows ad designers to easily drag and drop a wide range of consumer or business apps directly into display banners.” All of the commerce components of a transaction take place within the display ad. Read more.
Interactive Profitable, But Cable Wins
A new study called “Spotlight on profitable growth: media & entertainment” by accounting company Ernst & Young says that when it comes to 2010 profitability, “Cable operators showed the highest profitability among all media and entertainment sectors, and interactive media was the fastest growing sector within the industry.” Read the release and the stats.
Ad Verification
On his company’s blog, Upstream Group’s Doug Weaver asks visually, “Riddle me this, Batman…”.. and then expands, “In embracing – or at least acquiescing – to current verification demands, what genie might we be releasing from its bottle? Are we really enabling greater spending or applying a gloss of ‘truthiness’ to a flawed buying process?” Read more truthiness.
Calculating Market Size
Entrepreneur? Need to calculate the addressable market size for your latest and greatest idea? On the Lightspeed Venture blog, LSVP’s Jeremy Liew gives a few pointers. Liew begins, “[Total Addressable Market] TAM is really a pretty simple concept – it is what your revenue would be if you had 100% market share in your business.” And then he provides a recent example on TAM from affiliate linker VigLink. Read more.
But Wait. There’s More!
- Buysight Appoints Veteran Executive Phu Hoang as Chief Strategy Officer – press release
- Why Keep Ads? AdKeeper Keen on Coupons – ClickZ
