Marin Says Europe Grows; Millennial Media Gets Programmatic

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

Marin Reports

Marin Software reported its first, public-company quarterly financials yesterday. On the earnings call, Marin said it is seeing “acceleration” in biz in Europe. Spend under management is also showing “double-digit growth,” meaning at the very least that digital continues to grow. Read the transcript. From the release, the profit and loss showed “net revenues of $17.2 million, up 32% year-over-year” in Q1 of 2013 for the SEM platform company; the company had a net loss of $10.5 million in the quarter, too. Read more. Also: “During the first quarter, 542 active advertisers utilized the Marin platform, compared to 436 during the first quarter of 2012. The Company defines active advertisers as an advertiser from whom the Company recognized revenues in excess of $2,000 in at least one month during the quarter.” Marin’s market cap is $438 million as of yesterday.

Millennial To Launch Exchange

Mobile ad bellwether Millennial Media said on its Q1 earnings call yesterday that it’s ready to move more deeply into programmatic. It also said it was opening up its “internal” exchange to others through APIs. In a release, CEO Paul Palmieri commented on the quarter, “We delivered a major new release of our SDKs, we closed on our acquisition in the programmatic mobile space (MetaResolver), and we delivered financial performance…” MiIlennial made $49.4 million in Q1 of 2013, an increase of about $17 million from the same period in 2012. For the full year, the mobile ad network expects $270-280 million in revenue and $17 million or so in profit. Read more. And, read the transcript of the call.

Data’s Second Party

Lotame’s data management platform offering has expanded to allow publishers to “syndicate” their data and create revenue-generating, second-party data relationships. The release talks a bit about how it works: “It gives the data owner full control over all aspects of the exchange process from what can or cannot be shared to the duration of time data can be accessed.” Read more.

DSPs In The Middle East

As a sign that digital advertising is making inroads into the Middle East, Adzouk, a Dubai-based ad network, has launched a demand-side platform with Google, reports GulfNews.com’s Manoj Nair. The Adzouk DSP will provide advertisers with the ability to capture data, Jamie Atherton, commercial director at AdZouk, tells Nair: “There’s a huge amount of data that can be pulled from RTB buys, but without the technology behind it the buyer is losing out. Our tie-up with Google gives us this technology.” Read more.

News Feed Engagement

New test results from Nanigans confirm what advertisers have already suspected: Ads shown on Facebook’s News Feed get more play than their right-rail counterparts. “Compared to FBX ads run in Facebook’s easily overlooked right-hand side, FBX ads run in the desktop News Feed saw 48.4% lower cost-per-click, 197.3% higher return on investment and 17 times higher clickthrough rates,” reports Adweek’s Tim Peterson. Read more.

Research And Its Discontents

So many white papers are vendor promotions masquerading as research. Yieldbot CEO Jonathan Mendez tells Digiday’s Jack Marshall that he holds comScore’s five-year-old Whither the Click study as particularly egregious. “It got so much press through the years and was supposed to foretell a move of brand dollars to the Web,” says Mendez, a longtime defender of the click. “And brands have moved into social, which is pay-per-click. Oops.” Read the rest.

New LUMA

Logo lovers, you have a new LUMAscape to pour over. On the LUMA Partners blog, investment banker Brian Andersen announces the “Marketing Technology” LUMAscape. He says, “…marketing isn’t just about advertising – that is just one element of the marketing equation. The CMO is tasked with many more responsibilities, including sales enablement, corporate and product branding, marketing mix allocation, website performance and management, not to mention the earned media and social media channels.” And, now they’re in one 8.5×11 sheet of paper – or PDF. Get it.

Feel The Pain

On his company’s blog, The Upstream Group’s Doug Weaver takes on the solipsistic attitudes of ad industry vendors with a deep thought on the value of empathy: “How many of us when we go into a sales situation can honestly say we’re really out to improve the customer’s business? That we’re out to do right by them? How often do we set out to truly make a difference? By my count, only the really great ones do this.” Read more.

TapAd’s New Ad Men

TapAd’s momentum continues with the appointment of ex-Yahoo CRO Michael Barrett to its board, Business Insider reported. Read it. This comes right on the heels of Barrett joining the HookLogic board (Read AdExchanger’s Q&A with Barrett). The cross-channel targeter also hired former Yahoo exec John Cattarulla and Brent Richey, formerly of AT&T’s Adworks division, to lead sales in Atlanta and Dallas, respectively.

Earnings