No Speed Bump For RTB; Internet Ads Pumping U.S. GDP

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The Speed of RTB

RTB is still going supernova. In Q3 Accordant Media saw 88 percent growth in real-time bidded inventory year-over-year. CPMs are up 2%, and U.S. remains on top with 47% of global RTB. That said, France, Brazil, Italy, and Mexico are all growing like gangbusters. Press release. Mediapost’s Joe Mandese calls out that viewability declined as a portion of total spend, down from 32% to 29%. “Publishers seem to be…making the process more opaque and less transparent.” Or maybe viewability just isn’t growing as fast as the overall market? Read more.

Retargeting Foot Traffic

With its new(ish) ad formats, Foursquare is rolling out what amounts to a retargeting platform for the real world. “The initial idea…was that Foursquare could help retailers under who their best customers are through check-in data,” CEO Dennis Crowley told an audience at the MIXX conference yesterday, per TechCrunch’s Anthony Ha. “Then it expanded by allowing those merchants to track spending, thanks to its partnership with American Express, to offer promotions. Now national retailers (and eventually, local merchants) can pay to get those promotions in front of consumers.” Read more.

Data Deals Gain

Analytics has been a hot area for M&A activity for years. And there’s no sign of things slowing down, according to the latest deals report from media-focused banker Jordan Edmiston Group, Inc. reports. The database/information services category saw the number of acquisitions/fundings up 39 percent, with the value of specific dollar amounts value rising 71 percent in the first three quarters of 2012 vs. the same period of 2011. Additionally, Mobile media and tech continues to be an active market, with deal volume up 89 percent to just over $3 billion. Read the report (PDF).

The Addressable Gas Pump

Verifone Media Network is offering digital couponing and addressability at the gas pump as a press release claims a sizeable increase in performance over traditional, free standing insert methods of bygone newspaper eras. Jennifer Miles, an exec at VeriFone says in the release, “[Advertisers] are able to leverage an incredible array of targeted solutions, from dayparting and geotargeting at the pump, all the way down to the consumer loyalty ID or the individual SKU of the product they are purchasing – all in real-time.” Read more. Is the pump going programmatic?

IAB On GDP, Big Ads

Riding the wave of Advertising Week in New York City, the IAB issued two new press release. First, the industry org announced that its latest study by smarties at Harvard Business School revealed the ad-supported Internet was responsible for “$530 billion of the U.S. economy last year, close to double 2007 figures, and accounted for 3.7 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP)…” Read more. And, the full study is here. The IAB also announced the results of a new brand lift study at that says the new Rising Stars (big ads!) show “big lift across core interactive metrics.” See the metrics using Moat technology.

The Right Data, The Right Person

Data, data everywhere and not a drop to think. Or something like that. Everyone in the digital marketing business marvels/complains about the enormous amount of data available these days. But so few know what to do with it or how to manage the relationships with third party providers. Stephanie Miller, VP, Email & Digital Services at Aprimo, writes in Clickz that “marketing organizations need an operations director in addition to data scientists…. Managing those vendor relationships is one aspect of it, but more important, it’s adapting the technology for the specific uses of the marketing department.” Read the rest.

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