SearchIgnite Is Now IgnitionOne; The World Loves Display Ads; Real-Time Bidding For Social, Too

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

SearchIgnite Is Now IgnitionOne

Looking to move beyond its search-focused roots and capture a broader group of buyers, Dentsu’s SearchIgnite has renamed itself as “IgnitionOne” and combined SearchIgnite’s performance marketing tech with Netmining’s “on-site optimization and real-time audience scoring capabilities” according to a release. The new company says it offers a “closed-loop” marketing suite. Read the release. And, they’re hiring 75 more employees! Read more in ClickZ.

Global Display Love

PaidContent’s David Kaplan goes through the data of a ZenithOptimedia report which suggests that display momentum continues. He writes, “Zenith is calling for global display ad spending to grow at an average of 16.4 percent a year to 2013, while paid search rises by 12.8 percent and classified by 10.2 percent. ” Read more.

RTB For Social Ads

Last week, XA.net said that it is offering real-time bidding (RTB) and multi-variate creative capabilities through its platform known as Optim.al. In a press release, CEO Rob Leathern positions Optim.al for the world of social ads and Facebook, in particular, and notes his company’s combination of “social media, retargeting and audience targeting” via RTB. Read more.

Choose Your Own Chinese Ad-venture

VivaKi has announced results of a new study conducted by its research group, The Pool, which found that Chinese, online viewers prefer to choose “from a group of brand” ads before viewing online video content – a format VivaKi calls “aSq”. VivaKi says the results mirror what they found in the U.S. in a previous study. Read more.

Amazon Search Spend

MediaPost’s Joe Mandese looks at new data from WPP’s Kantar Media Group which shows “Amazon.com is the top paid-search advertiser in the U.S., by a margin of two-one over the next-biggest search advertiser, according to fourth-quarter 2010 data.” What happens when go full-throttle on display? What happens if they start offering their display ad platform services to other retailers? Trade marketing dollars alone would be interesting. J-U-G-G-E-R-N-A-U-T. R-E-A-D M-O-R-E

No, CPMs Are Going Up

Brand.net VP of Product Madhu Vudali grabs the login for the Andy Atherton’s company blog and offers a differing view to recent Efficient Frontier CPM data for display as featured on AdExchanger.com last week. Vudali says Brand.net CPM data differs, “The headline is that we are definitely seeing the impression volume growth, but CPMs are trending flat to upward as well – quite a different story than the 33% drop that EF reports” Read more.

More Social Buying

Gathering up all of its Q1 client, buying data – including some of the data Brand.net referenced – and jamming into a single report, Efficient Frontier analysts have produced EF’s “Q1 2011 Digital Marketing Performance Report.” Results include, “Advertiser demand for Facebook’s ad products increased significantly with spend rising sharply on 40% quarter-over-quarter CPC growth.” Read the release. And, download it here (sign-up required).

Agencies Convening On Privacy

The 4As has named John Montgomery, COO of GroupM Interaction, as the chairman of its newly-created committee that will address the consumer privacy debate. According to a Broadcasting & Cable’s Lindsay Rubino, “The Privacy Committee was formed earlier this month by the 4A’s as an offshoot of the established Media Policy Committee, where Montgomery is already a member.” Read more. Mediaweek’s Mike Shields responds to the announcement in a tweet, “Great choice, but seriously, they just started that committee?”

Adhesive Thesis

The venture capital team at Foundry Group, which has money in a number of ad tech companies (AdMeld, Triggit, AdMeld, Lijit, Trada, Medialets, Mandelbrot Project, Triggit and Integrate) has put a name to their thesis for investing in the ad biz. The call it “Adhesive” as Foundry’s Levine explains, “Adhesive isn’t meant to be a rigid description of our investment in a discipline, but rather a guide to our thinking and a set of overarching concepts that drive our investment in a particular area.” Among the concepts , “Inertia.” Get movin’ here.

Re: Your Legacy Agency Model

It’s not a re-mix of a Paul Simon classic, but the next best thing: tips for the agency on how to survive. Goodway Group’s Jay Friedman pens a post on the company blog entitled, “Three Rules To Follow To Enable Long-Term Agency Trading Desks To Thrive.” Among the tips – internal compensation. Agencies need to change it up.

Contextual For Advertisers, Publishers

Proximic has added more color to a press release from PubMatic last week saying that it is not only providing contextual targeting data to publishers through PubMatic’s sell-side platform, but demand-side partners, too. Read more.

New York Tech

New York City received a couple of tech shout outs over the past few days. First, The Wall Street Journal covered New York University’s Hack NY event which brings together interested student programmers to “create code using the platforms of local companies, including Etsy, tumblr and the NYCDataMine.” Read more. Visit HackNY.org. In The New York Daily News, Phyllis Furman writes about the popular incubating program known as TechStars which has come to NYC. She writes, “Out of hundreds of applicants, about 50 entrepreneurs will be chosen to participate in New York’s tech bootcamp bonanza.” Read more. Visit TechStars NYC.

But Wait. There’s More!