Lang Takes Over At Time Inc.; Foursquare Adds A Button; Profiling Yahoo!'s Heckman

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It’s Lang Time

Looking to go digital, Time Inc. announced that it has finally filled its CEO role previously held by Jack Griffin with Publicis’ Digitas CEO Laura Lang. Was the hand of former Digitas CEO and Yahoo! board member David Kenny in here somewhere? In fact, here he is quoted in yesterday’s WSJ article talking about Lang, “Unlike many advertising executives on Madison Avenue, Ms. Lang ‘doesn’t suck the air out of the room,’ She is all about the ‘team’ and ‘doesn’t have a big ego.'” Read more (subscription). Will Kenny ask Lang to join the Yahoo!, Aol and Microsoft display “scrum”? A little early. Maybe next week. Adweek’s Lucia Moses notes skepticism about the hire, “As a woman, Lang will also restore some diversity to the top ranks at Time Warner. Ann Moore, Time Inc.’s first female CEO, retired in 2010. But given her lack of publishing chops, there would be questions raised about Lang’s attitude toward the editorial side of the business.” It appears Time Inc.’s going for digital and diplomacy – FTW. Read it.

Foursquare Launches Huge Local Ad Network!

No, wait. It was just another audience data-sucking button. An ad network could be around the corner for Foursquare given yesterday’s announced plans to provide publishers its version of a Tweet, Like, Share and/or +1 button. Ad Age’s Cotton Delo writes, “Publishers will be able to install a ‘Follow on Foursquare’ button on the landing page of their site to let users view their tips, check-ins and lists when they access the service.” And as those recommendations flow, presumably, so to does the targeting capabilties through Foursquare’s cookie-setting button. Read more.

Trusting The Guy

Continuing the Yahoo! DSP thread, Digiday’s Mike Shields looks at its origins and interviews former 5:1, and current Yahoo! sales guy, Jim Heckman, who also sat in on a recent AppNexus panel about the Big 3 (Microsoft-Aol-Yahoo!.). Shields collects industry feedbak on Heckman such as “Assessments of Heckman range from ‘if anyone can make this deal work it’s Heckman’ to ‘I don’t trust that guy at all.'” Read more.

Millions For Targeting Audience

Personalized marketing and advertising solutions provider ChoiceStream (AdExchanger.com Q&A) has received $8.7 million in its latest round of funding, according to a release. The company adds, “The latest round will fuel future corporate growth and support sales of its newest product CRUNCH, the industry’s first audience targeting platform.” Read more.

The Yahoo! Sweepstakes

China-based Alibaba is now in the running to acquire Yahoo according to Bloomberg, which writes, “Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Softbank Corp. (9984) are in advanced talks with Blackstone Group LP (BX) and Bain Capital LLC about making a bid for all of Yahoo! Inc.” Alibaba could end up making an offer north of $20 per share says Bloomberg. That could put the market cap for Yahoo! around $25 billion. Read more.

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When Performance Brands Invade TV; Subscription Conniptions

Synthetic Signals

Omnicom Group’s Annalect CTO Dean McRobie and CEO Omar Tawakol of BlueKai alight on the BlueKai blog to talk data management platforms (DMPs), targeting beyond cookies and something called “synthetic signals.” McRobie begins his explanation, “Let’s imagine we have an audience segment that we’ve built for an advertiser called urban hipsters and we happen to know that that audience includes a “like” in fashion, technology, certain type of music, brands they align with, and that they live in a certain geo location. Let’s say that we know that this segment for the advertiser Pepsi means that they have higher propensities to drink PepsiMax than anything else. What if we can match that definition of folks to people in our digital audience?” Read more.

Audience-Targeted Music

Target Spot says it has expanded its audience-based ad network of online radio ad inventory with the additions of Musicovery, Digitally Imported and AUPEO!. The release claims, “Advertisers can target Internet Radio listeners based upon a variety of factors, including geography down to the zip code level, time of day and personal listening preferences.” Need Buckethead(s)? Target the noise.

Infographic Thursday

In graphical format, Monetate ruminates aloud on who is a Chief Conversion Officer and what do they do? See it now.

But Wait. There’s More!