OpenX And Metamarkets Raise Data-Driven Millions; The Creative Technologist

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OpenX Raises $20 Mil

Ad server and exchange company OpenX announced that it has raised $20 million in a series D round led by SAP Ventures. This brings OpenX total capital raised to $50 million. OpenX CEO Tim Cadogan tells Reuters that the company has been aggressive with its international expansion and will be in China and South Korea shortly. SAP Ventures’ Nino Marakovic adds that he sees OpenX as a challenger to DoubleClick. Read more. Also, read PaidContent’s interview with CEO Tim Cadogan. Finally, see the regulatory filing with the SEC.

More For Metamarkets, Too

Peter Kafka of AllThingsD reports that Metamarkets has taken a $6 million round of “inside” financing as Roger Ehrenberg’s IA Ventures, Village Ventures, True Ventures, angel investor Jerry Neumann and Foursquare’s Dennis Crowley participated. After a conversation with Metamarkets CEO David Soloff, Kafka reports that Metamarkets has “3 paying clients, is recording between 3 and 5 billion “events” — ad impressions bought and sold – [and storing] up to 500 terabytes” of data to help publishers figure out how much their inventory is worth in real-time. Read more.

Ads In Mobile Games

Hollis Thomases brings together the various ad formats available in ad-supported mobile games in an article piece on ClickZ. Pricing can be a mystery though as Thomases writes, “Advertisers can expect different types of pricing models and buy-ins, depending upon how they want to advertise and who they’re buying from. Custom-developed games come with custom price tags. IAds releases no information on its site; most of its direct buys at the moment are exclusively big brands.” Read more.

Upping The Ad Load

Ad Age has more on Fox’s plans to add video ad inventory on video portal Hulu in order to mimic inventory (a.k.a. “ad loads” says Ad Age’s Brian Steinberg) on TV. Fox wants to align “online” as additonal reach for TV buyers. Steinberg writes that Fox’s initiative has precedent as “The streaming-video site for the CW network, owned jointly by Time Warner and CBS Corp., last year upped its ad load close to matching the number of ads shown on TV. Despite the increase in ads, unique viewers of full episodes on CWTV.com increased 55% season to date as of May 19.” Read more.

The Creative Technologist

Dan Weingrod shares his thoughts on the 4As recent CreateTech conference. In addition to reviewing how the “Creative Technologist” role (acronym lovers -this is known as a “CT”) was being defined, he looks at some of the issues involved in what he sees as a crucial agency role. He offers this “takeaway” among others: “I’m still not sure that there’s a working definition of what a Creative Technologist is, (and I’m not sure it really matters any more). Much of the definition will likely depend on agency culture, but it does seem clear that a CT needs to at least know how to code, if not be coding regularly.” Read more.

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The EU Cookie FAQ

On the WebTrends blog, Xavier Le Hericy offers his own frequently-asked-question list surrounding consumer privacy directives in the European Union. Known as “The Cookie Laws,” Le Hericy says that “each EU country must pass laws that implement the [Cookie Laws] directive.” But if you’re looking for standardization of regulation across countries, hold on. According to Le Hericy, “While all laws must follow the common directive, various countries may take different approaches; the difficulty will be in finding a solution that satisfies all the countries where you do business.” Read all the Qs.

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