Tracking Pinterest Spend; Google On The Multi-Screen World

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

Recommended By Pinterest

Amazon’s Zappos has unveiled a feature in its online store that recommends purchases based on what users post on Pinterest. For Amazon and Zappos, this could pave the way for greater combinations of e-commerce and social media. “Social shopping is a total buzzword that people throw around, but I don’t think any big brands have cracked it,” Will Young, director of Zappos Labs, tells Bloomberg’s Danielle Kucera. “When we talk to people and ask what they think is the best social-shopping experience, they say Pinterest, and it’s not even a retailer.” Read more.

Times Takes On Troll

The New York Times Co. is leading the fight against a company that seeks to charge entities sending text messages with web links to mobile phones, something that publishers had always regarded as free. The Associated Press has the story. “In some ways, it’s a tax for being on the Internet,” NYTCo counsel Kenneth Richieri said. “Millions and millions of dollars collectively is going out of the pockets of people who earned it to people who, in my opinion, didn’t do anything.”

The Multi-Screen World

A study from Google’s mobile ads unit shows how a user interacts differently according to the device. If you’re a marketer, be ready. Google’s Dai Pham goes even deeper, “It’s important to understand both the sequential and simultaneous multi-screening patterns. Sequential screeners will start interacting with you on one device and then pick up where they left off on another, so making experiences seamless between devices is key. Additionally, cross-media campaigns can help you make the most of consumers’ simultaneous usage across screens.” Read more. And, get the study (PDF). Good data “nuggets” in the report.

Where Are You?

Placed (AdExchanger Q&A) announced new mobile website location analytics yesterday. A press release claims, “Mobile website owners can now join application owners in utilizing Placed Analytics to understand the places people were nearby when interacting with their content. With this announcement, Placed Analytics expands the platforms it supports beyond Android and iOS to include the mobile web.” Read more. Razorfish-er Jeff Lanctot joined the Placed advisory board, too.

CPM Spiral

CPMs keep falling for some traditional sites. SQAD’s WebCosts Composite Index reports a 12% decline for “search engine / portals & communities” during the first half of 2012, compared to the 2011 average. WebCost director Thomas Adams tells us, “I also took a subset of the Search Engine / Portals & Communities (AOL Media Network, MSN Live/Bing and Yahoo!) to see how they, as a group, have performed and they are off 5% from the 2011 Average CPM.” Press release.

Audience Hedge

Good news, Audience Sellers! Hedge fund managers are about to become ad men. The Wall Street Journal reports, “Few ad executives expect hedge funds to approach that level of spending given the small audience firms will be targeting. Still, in an industry with big personalities and thousands of firms, some are likely to dive in.” Read it (subscription).

Automating Marketing

Current HubSpot Chief Product Officer and former Performable CEO, David Cancel, is featured in Mass High Tech as he talks about Hubspot’s new personalized marketing software. Cancel tells MHT that “10 engineers from Performable have been heading up the development of the new version of HubSpot [which] includes a rebuilt contacts database, as well as landing pages and analytics tools, and add new features in workflows, social contacts, forms and mobile.” Read more.

Programmatic Premium

For most online advertising, the choice is one of commoditized, cheap inventory or premium expensive placements. But why can’t marketers have both? Joe Krokus of SymphonyIRI, writes in iMediaConnection that perhaps they can. The idea is “programmatic premium,” which Krokus describes as “With programmatic premium, consumers receive advertisements based on their location and behavioral data. Rather than arbitrary, irrelevant ads, they’re served personalized ad content… Together, all of these factors equal improved response and engagement rates, not to mention the ultimate benefit — increased ROI.” Read more.

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