Subsidizing Piracy; Lights Out At Seevast

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Subsidizing Piracy

Piracy sites capture $6.8 million in wasted ad spend each month, DoubleVerify estimates in a new report. The verification vendor tracked 1,000 campaigns across 1,200 websites and found 3% of all “Network/RTB-purchased” impressions fell to the Jolly Roger. Download (pay with some PII). Copyright-infringing sites make up about a fifth of high-risk inventory, according to Integral Ad Science. More on this issue in our February report.

Lights Out At Seevast

Internet marketing firm Seevast, the parent company of ad network Pulse 360, appeared to be shutting down (AdExchanger story). Buffalo Business First’s David Bertola has more details, including the closing of Seevast’s Getzville headquarters. Following customer complaints of late payments, Bertola noted, “On Monday, April 29 at around 2:30 p.m., the front doors were locked. Inside, a couple construction workers chatted at the receptionist’s desk in inky shadows.” Read more.

Targeted Small Talk

Doug Weaver has some quick advice for sellers: keep your explanations and pitches to advertisers shorter than a tweet. “You could dismiss this as a gimmick if you like,” Weaver writes on his blog, The Upstream. “But I’d suggest you table your disbelief for a minute and look at the underlying logic. Six word stories and 140 character ‘pitches’ force the seller to distill ideas down to their most powerful essence…We give our emails and our meetings a sharp, piercing quality; an agenda that says ‘This will be worth my time.’ Read more.

Sex (Data) Sells

On Digiday, Jack Marshall covers how adult content publishers are employing SEO tricks in order to drive traffic to and revenue for their site – even if they don’t have any content directly related to the search terms. “We’re not trying to be censors when it comes to the type of traffic that comes to the site or how it gets to the site,” said Mitch Galbraith, COO and general manager of publisher Funny or Die. “We just want our chance to entertain people.” Data companies may also benefit from the popularity of online adult content by putting trackers on certain websites for ad targeting purposes. Read more.

Programmatic Germany

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But Are They Really Integral?; Don’t Pontificate, Verificate

Germany’s penchant for premium advertising and high CPMs could be holding the country back from fully embracing programmatic buying. According to ExchangeWire, Philip Missler of InteractiveMedia “stressed a one-size-fits-all strategy will not work in Germany – and instead a more customised approach will be required in the current market environment.” Read more.

ValueClick Founder’s Local Look

Local digital advertising is steadily becoming less untapped, and ValueClick founder Brian Coryat wants a piece of the market through Local Market Launch, a business listings management company he started a couple of years ago. The company has just raised a $1.5 million first round of funding from Rincon Venture Partners. Yext competitor, copycat or neither? Read the release (via PEHub).

The Long Goodbye

If you haven’t had enough cookie doomsaying, Business Insider has created a slideshow on the topic: “We decided to describe the potential scenarios that might, ultimately, lead to the death of the cookie – and the return of anonymity on the web.” It’s all here – children’s privacy rules, Do Not Track, browser “stinginess.” More.

Yield Through Content Licensing

The FT looks at recent US media company earnings reports and notes a trend indicating content licensing will be an important part of revenues going forward. Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman said on the Viacom earnings call yesterday, “We continue to see the digital distribution arena as a growing opportunity and one that will be complementary to what we do. It’s just growing the pie over time.” Read more (subscription).

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