Belo And Yahoo! On Local Display; DG Creates Internet Division With MediaMind; From Retargeters With Love

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

Squeezing The Local Sales Lemon

Is Yahoo! outsourcing part of its display ad sales team? For local display, it may make sense. TV station owner Belo Corporation announced a new partnership with Yahoo! to sell display ads adds across Yahoo! by leveraging Belo’s local sales capabilities. According to the release, “this new initiative comes in addition to an agreement completed several years ago by which Belo stations supply select video content across Yahoo! sites.” Read more.

DG Adds MediaMind To Internet

In its earnings announcement yesterday, DG announced that newly-acquired ad tech company MediaMind will be added to its Internet division along with Unicast. The other division is “Television” where the company’s core TV ad and direct response biz resides. In addition, DG said, “MediaMind revenue was $25.8 million (DG and MediaMind combined made $93.7 million), an increase of 22% over the same period in 2010. MediaMind’s performance was driven by gains in all of its product areas, including standard banners, rich media, video and tracking pixels, with the Company nearly doubling the volume of advertising impressions compared to the year-ago period.” Though the MediaMind acquisition was financed by debt, the company reports it still has cash and a credit facility well north of $200 million. It would seem DG could add more “feature” companies in the future, or… how about a sell-side platform (SSP) to satiate inventory needs? Or a retargeter/DSP that adds still more clients? Read the release. Or could DG sell the whole ball of wax? There was this rumor in June.

You Will Love Retargeting

TellApart CEO Josh McFarland makes his pitch to eCommerce retailers on the data-driven display future and the sweet nectar of retargeting in CRM Buyer. He writes, “Data-focused technology vendors can handle all of the heavy lifting, from relevant product recommendations that enhance the on-site experience, to display ad retargeting, a tactic that returns attractive abandoning shoppers to a retailer’s site to drive incremental purchases.” Retargeting is H-O-T. Criteo, TellApart and other retargeting vendors all got a boost – not that they needed one – when Dotomi was bought for a smokin’ $295 mil. Not to be forgotten, is that it’s still remarkably early in the audience buying display ad business and an effective retargeting strategy for many eCommerce companies is just beginning to bubble. The audience-driven “marketplaces” are the driver – whether it’s an exchange, a network or even a publisher (private exchange) – as they allow the eCommerce buyer to cherry pick impressions efficiently. In related, retailer news, comScore reported that eCommerce sales grew 14% in Q2 2011 in comparison to the year earlier. Read it.

LinkedIn Buys The WSJ?

WatchMojo.com CEO Ashkan Karbasfrooshan makes an argument for disruption in the premium content space on MediaPost. He writes, “Don’t be too surprised if LinkedIn turns to acquisitions of content owners, including WSJ or the New York Times. (…) Today, with the cloud overhanging Rupert Murdoch’s empire, LinkedIn’s newfound resources and social companies relying on content to differentiate and monetize, crazier things could happen.” Read his reasoning.

Cost-Per-Engagement

There is a lot of talk about moving beyond CPM for brand buyers in display – “engagement” is the favored buzz word. Companies like Say Media have already been blazing the trail in CPE (Cost Per Engagement) in online video. Tremor Media, a video ad network behemoth that will likely go public if public markets settle, says its using CPE as Chief Media Officer Jason Krebs outlines in an interview on Beet.tv. See it. Krebs admits “reach” and “frequency” are part of the video buying metrics triad. With “reach” and “frequency” hooking into the TV buying lexicon (brand dollars right this way!), “engagement” is the digital differentiator compared to traditional channels.

Publishers And DNT

On his company’s blog, BlueKai CEO Omar Tawakol says that in regards to Do-Not-Track (DNT), it’s time to move the DNT conversation with consumers to publishers rather than ad networks. He writes, “…What’s needed is a more balanced approach that acknowledges the benefits of subsidized content and illustrates trade-offs in a non-advertising world. What is not being discussed is how DNT in its current form is a mechanism for shutting down this process that otherwise funds content that provides value to both consumers and publishers.” Read more.

Attribution Games

Sunil Sharma, formerly of Adnetik, sees the industry making attribution miscalculations in a think piece on DIGIDAY. He writes, “The real source of the problem lies with media buyers, who, with some exceptions, often concentrate solely on price. In this cost-per-action mindset, premium inventory like Forbes and Time is usually automatically at a disadvantage in algorithmic buying because creating editorial quality is treated by the system as an added tax.” Read more.

Real-Time Acquisition

“Data viz” or data visualization remains a key area of interest for digital ad data miners as the visual overlay on gobs of data provides (hopefully) actionable insights for buyer and/or seller. Given today’s increasingly real-time marketplaces, if you can wrap in the real-time capability to the “viz,” you may have something. Along those lines, ClickZ reports WebTrends bought a small, real-time website analytics company called Reinvigorate. Read more.

Feature Meet Platform

Pre-roll, video ad technology company Innovid said yesterday that it will now offer its iRoll video ad format through Auditude’s video ad platform for publishers. According to the release, “By partnering with Innovid, Auditude Media Group will provide its top-tier roster of brand advertisers with enhanced technology around premium in-stream video.” Translation: Auditude wants to give brands a better engagement vehicle for video ads. Read the release.

But Wait. There’s More!