Facebook Adds Search Ads; BrightTag Adds Europe

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Sponsoring Search Ads

Facebook is adding search ads to its product mix reports Techcrunch’s Josh Constine. But don’t expect too much from Facebook’s emulation of the Google’s model says Constine, “While these will ‘help’ people discover new apps and content, I don’t see Sponsored Results as a big improvement to the user experience. Then again, they’re confined to search typeahead, so I see them as much more benign and in-line with Facebook’s business philosophy than the new non-social news feed ads for app developers and Page owners. Those could dilute the feed’s quality, which is core to Facebook’s value to users.” Read it.

Big Data, Little Revenue

– that’s the way C-suite executives sees the ad tech space, according to an Oracle survey from earlier this year now being revisited by eMarketer. 43 percent said they were still at a loss to turn consumer data insights into anything actionable. “Retailer executives, too, expect their biggest Big Data challenge to be using the flood of information to improve the multi- and cross-channel experiences of customers,” eMarketer notes. “But they also saw significant challenges in a range of other areas, including supply chain and inventory optimization, and using customer data to tailor product offers and other campaigns.” Suck it up. And, read more

Let’s Get Visible

Video metrics company Visible Measures has released VidWorks, which Adweek’s Emma Bazilian says promises to unearth new video ad inventory in two ways. First, VidWorks ads can be integrated as stand-alone sponsored videos that get baked into publishers’ preexisting video player lists; also VidWorks ads can be posted in nonvideo environments, essentially creating new video ad. “Instead of a black box where the right ad gets placed at the right time but you don’t know why, publishers are able to see all of the data that we see and all of the decisions that we’re making when we deliver the analytics package,” said Paul Botto, GM of Visible Measures’ analytics. Read more.

European Feet

Tag manager BrightTag has acquired Scottish rival SiteTagger as part of a larger plan to expand its global footprint. The deal, the price of which was undisclosed, means that the “team supporting BrightTag overseas is currently 11 with plans to grow,” according to a company spokesperson. Read the release.

Skippable Ads

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Still Playing In The Sandbox; Will The YouTube Gates Reopen?

Skippable video ads have made their way to Google’s mobile YouTube property. Know as TruView ads, enagement is the goal as The Google Mobile Ads blog reports, “Advertisers only pay when someone chooses to watch the ad, so their budgets go toward the people most interested in what they have to say.” Read it.

New Display Findings

On his Screenwerk blog, Greg Sterling takes a look at a new study on local display advertising through PaperG. Sterling observes, “PaperG, JiWire, xAd and others have exposed data showing that ads with local content are more engaging and perceived to be more relevant than other categories of display ads. By contrast this study stands for the proposition that “local context” matters. That’s a new finding.” Read it.

The Gender Gap

The New York Times says that Google is trying to use algos to figure out how to recruit, hire and retain female employees – an industry-wide challenge. The NYT finds more women on the business side at Google, but not as many on the more technology-focused product side that CEO Larry Page is known for. An anonymous Google exec says, “I don’t think there’s a gender bias per se, but I think the C-suite at Google is going to belong to product owners, not business people. People witness it as a demotion of women. I don’t view it as that. I view it as a demotion of business.” Read more.

Another Social Metric

Marketers complain that if only digital media had a single, standard measurement tool — like that Nielsen GRP for TV! — even greater spending would be gladly lavished on interactive advertising. But Adaptly CEO Nikhil Sethi suggests just the opposite — at least for social media, where he believes a new metric needs to be developed for the social space. Writing in AdAge, Sethi says, “As consumers behave differently when using social platforms, it is not a question of whether we need new metrics or not, but assigning metrics to unique consumer behaviors across different social platforms.” Read the rest.

Permission Granted

The search giant has revamped its “OAuth2” authorization system that allows marketers to direct a user to a specially crafted Google URL. Once there, users can grant permissions to a company’s software to make changes to their account. In other words, as long as a user is logged into their Google account, they don’t have to go through the hassle of typing in another login/password or, worse, spell out a CAPTCHA, to access a company’s site. Those barriers, while necessary for online safety, also give time-pressed users a chance to change their mind and go elsewhere. Read Google’s blog post.

Mobile Ads Made Simple?

As mobile advertising zooms close to the $2 billion spending threshold, there’s an opportunity to get things right that went wrong on the PC-based web. Things like creative ads that are targeted more precisely. Zephrin Lasker, CEO of lead gen/mobile ad platform operator Pontiflex, tells AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka his company has the space’s problems all figured out. “”Cost-per-click is fine for the web, but we feel ‘cost-per-signup’” — i.e., lead gen — “is a much better fit for mobile.” Watch the video interview here.

Big Ads!