ValueClick Buys Personalized Retargeting Firm Dotomi; Quality And Ad Exchanges; InMobi Buys Sprout

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Make Mine Dotomi

ValueClick has acquired retargeter Dotomi for $295 million (retargeters rejoice!) which will be split between ValueClick cash and stock. In the release it is revealed that Dotomi is on-track to reach $80 million in revenues this year. Read it. With its own personalized retargeting display ad system, Dotomi has moved from a direct response-oriented business to more brand-focused. And as CEO John Giuliani said presciently to AdExchanger.com in 2009, “We feel we’re a great partner for media companies because our sophisticated approach draws in clients that otherwise would not consider running display advertising.” As ValueClick expands its own media strategy – i.e. sites like Investopedia – Dotomi tech and services will be increasingly important as they’re layered on top. It will also be interesting to see if Dotomi is inserted into the Commission Junction business somehow. Lots of bottom-of-the-funnel data there.

Exchange Quality

DIGIDAY’s Mike Shields takes a look a quality issues in the exchange environment in the second of his articles looking at quality and placement in the digital ad business. Google and its DoubleClick Ad Exchange are front-and-center in Shields’ article as he writes, “Some in the industry have even intimated that Google knows it’s got a quality problem and doesn’t want to upset the status quo. Others argue that Google needn’t worry; while big publishers can make all the changes they want, the exchanges will always have plenty of inventory thanks to the Web’s near-infinite supply of Web pages.” Read more. A Google spokesperson responded to the article and told AdExchanger.com, “Across the board, all exchanges and DSPs are seeing enormous growth right now, so clearly they’re driving results for advertisers. Of course, we strongly believe in providing advertisers as much transparency as possible into where their ads appeared and whether they were seen; that is why we’re investing significantly in this area and offering tools like above-the-fold targeting. We also plan to continue innovating in this space and to provide our advertiser and publisher partners the best information possible about how to value inventory.

Tracking Futures

On the MetaMarkets blog, Joseph Reisinger has written a detailed post on the art of prediction and “Futures” models which his company pursues to figure out future CPMs, CTRs and other acronym-ed data points. Reisinger writes, “Despite the effort put into ‘future-proofing’ the forecasting system, there will inevitably be features that force us to rethink our design. Currently we’re working to expose the underlying prediction stack more cleanly, in order to reduce friction for surfacing atemporal analytics.” Read more.

Looking At Rich Media

Product maven Ari Paparo kicks off the new AppNexus company blog with a soup-to-nuts post on Rich Media. You know… creative… things like expandables. He sees Rich Media as a gating factor in the success of display advertising and writes, “At heart, the key issue that holds the rich media sector back is that the technical foundation of these ads remains immature and fragmented causing inefficiencies and complexities throughout the value chain.” Read more.

Search And Social Data

Are search and social signals different? Efficient Frontier’s Dr. Siddarth Shah thinks.. maybe not, “The currently-held notion is (…) Search is a more direct-intent-based signal that reflects a shopper late in the sales cycle, while data from Facebook represents someone earlier in the funnel. However, the (…) data suggests that both signals are very similar. So should we treat Search and brand engagement signals in the same way?” Well, should we? Read more.
http://venturebeat.com/2011/08/01/rich-folks-are-suckers-for-digital-media-and-online-ads/

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InMobi Buys Sprout

Mobile ad network InMobi has acquired rich media tech firm Sprout (AdExchanger.com Q&A). According to ClickZ’s Jack Marshall, “Sprout will continue to operate as a fully independent company, servicing the wider mobile ecosystem including InMobi’s rival ad networks and advertisers buying inventory from vendors other than itself. InMobi’s clients will be offered reduced package rates for utilizing Sprout’s services, however.” Read more.

Anti-Trust In The EU

Google continues to collect lawsuits that may further entangle the company in European anti-trust litigation. According to Reuters, “The European Commission has up to now only confirmed four cases against Google. The addition of fresh complaints could broaden the EU watchdog’s ongoing probe and pile pressure on the company to strike a settlement.” Read why more cases may not be such a bad thing for Google.

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