Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
Cox Folds The Adify Brand
Cox Communications announced that it is bringing vertical ad network tech and media company Adify under the Cox umbrella. Let’s hope it’s not raining. Cox Cross Media and Adify will now become Cox Digital Solutions. According to a press release, “Cox Digital Solutions (…) offers local reach and efficient media placement across 1,300 premium local media sites in 145 key markets.” The release may also suggest the size of the Adify vertical ad network with “7,000+ premium specialty publishers.” Cox bought Adify for $300 million in 2008. Cox Cross Media svp Steve Shaw tells the New York Times’ Stuart Elliott, “‘We can now go into an agency’ and offer at the same time the services that both companies had been offering separately.” Read more.
Ad Network Growing
Custom search engine and ad network Lijit announced some recent milestones including over one billion monthly page views/ From the release: “90 million monthly uniques and active placement on over 15,000 sites. Reaching one billion monthly pageviews represents a 240% increase in pageviews since January 2010.” Read more.
Google Display In China
A mysterious article that looked like a release appeared across a few stock market trading websites in the past few days claiming that Google is making a push with DoubleClick in China. (If you really want to see this release, click here.) A query from AdExchanger.com HQ on Google’s China plans elicited this response from a Google spokesperson: “We are optimistic about our opportunities in China. While search advertising is and continues to be a part of our business in China, we see our biggest opportunities as those in export (meaning ads by Chinese companies targeting users outside China) and display (meaning ads running on third-party websites). Over the last 12 months, China has been one of Google’s largest display markets in terms of revenue and is continuing to grow rapidly.” Put another way (by me, not Google), by effectively aggregating Chinese-targeted demand, Google can monetize the Chinese audience inventory available through AdSense and the DoubleClick Ad Exchange.
Ad network interclick announced that it has added MediaBank CEO/former Yahoo! RMX display advertising enfant terrible Bill Wise to its board of directors. President and CEO-Designee of interclick Michael Katz said in a release, “I’m personally looking forward to working closely with Bill and have a lot of respect for what he has been able to accomplish.” Sounds cozy. Also joining Wise, but on the Advisory Board, is Buddy Media’s David Honig, the former Media6Degrees co-founder. Read the release.
Raising Money: The Primer
Indefatigable ($2 word, at least) blogger and VC Mark Suster delivers what he thinks is the how to for raising start-up money with a post on his personal blog: “Going to Raise VC? Here’s a Primer on Process, People & Powerpoint Deck.” Read more. His advice for the last slide in the deck: “Here’s the deal: ultimately you’re likely to sell your company, not IPO. Don’t talk about wanting to sell any time soon. But you need to talk about who might ‘some day’ be interesting in what you’re building and why.”
AdReady Adds
Demand-side platform, creative technology company AdReady announced in a release that performance marketing agency Digital Axle has chosen AdReady For Agencies, AdReady’s “hosted, privately labeled display advertising solution” which provides “access to all major exchanges and publishers, including AdBrite, Google Content Network, Pandora, Rubicon, and Yahoo! Network.” Read it.
Wishlisting The DMP
In Direct Marketing News Q&A, data management platform momentum is on BlueKai CEO Omar Tawakol’s mind as he says, “What we started to see at the end of 2010, we saw the largest companies adopt the data management platform, a unified view of the customer internal and external data so they can become world class segmenters and then apply them everywhere (…). We think by end of the year, every CMO will have it on their priority list.” Read more.
Display Wars
The Efficient Frontier team knows a good piece of AdExchanger.com linkbait when it sees one. In a post entitled, “The Next Chapter in the Display Wars — Google vs. Yahoo!”, EF’s Chris Jacob says that “In 2010, according to Efficient Frontier client trends in the U.S .(figure 2 below), Google’s AdX has attracted more advertiser dollars as the year has progressed. In Q4 thus far, this has represented about 70% of advertisers’ display media spend outlay. One point that should be noted is that Yahoo, which makes up a large portion of the RMX inventory, put less of their owned and operated properties’ inventory on the Exchange.” See the charts! But, how much inventory is EF buying on behalf of its clients? More linkbait, please!
The Crowd And Data
MediaPost’s Laurie Sullivan talks to Adgregate Markets about a new GroupOn-like deal tool that merchants can implement through the company’s ShopFans technology on Facebook. Sullivan writes, “Along with the group coupon tool, ShopFans V. 2.0 will have functions for loyalty programs, flash sales, enhanced newsfeed commerce functions, access gates and viral promotions. Retailers can highlight specific products on their Wall and offer checkout functions within the post.” Read more. Display and audience buying are getting rich-er, complex-er as data pours from the crowd.
Seeing Through iFrames
DoubleVerify CEO Oren Netzer talks to the iMedia Connection audience and offers “Key Tips For Better Ad Control.” The article includes this highlight: “If verification technology cannot ‘see’ through several layers of iFrames, it can’t adequately understand where ads are running.” Read more.
The Business Of Pivoting
On the Lightspeed Venture Partners blog shares notes about “pivoting” from a recent discussion with CEOs of Slide, SayNow (videoegg), Triggit, “all companies that made at least two major pivots before getting to where they ended up, and we discussed the topic of pivoting at some length.” To begin, according to LSVP, “Pivoting has two components, knowing when to quit plan A, and taking on plan B.” Read more.
Tweet Of The Day
Dapper SVP of Sales Chris Zaharias peeks out from behind the Yahoo! curtain and tweets, “Shoppers living within 2mi of one of the retailer’s stores made up 10.6% of the audience, but drove 56% of the program’s revenue. Y! Data.” And that was it. See the tweet from the new Yahoo!.
Google And The Manufacturer
Aaron Wall of SEObook says that Google’s ecommerce efforts have taken a new turn. He writes, “In a ‘oh what is the brown stuff oozing from my pants’ moment for some e-commerce site owners, Google has quietly entered the space of pulling in manufacturer data directly into Google product search.” Read more.
Under-30 Leadership Love
Jared O’Toole, co-founder of Under30CEO, shared results of his company’s recent survey of who are the most influential under-30 CEOs. RadiumOne’s Gurbaksh Chahal checks in at number 5 with a net worth of $100 million + according to the article. See the list. (source: gchahal)
The Power Of Data
Greylock Partners VCs Reid Hoffman and James Slavet discuss why they invested in GroupOn in a guest post on TechCrunch. The reason is simple enough they say: data. From the post: “We think the technologies visible to consumers will be increasingly commoditized, while the data used to understand consumers better will become increasingly proprietary and valuable.” Read more.
