Scaling Native Advertising; Amazon Ad Ambitions

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

Scaling Native

Adweek’s Charlie Warzel talks to a selection of digital-ad-erati in a piece about the evolution of ad units and – buzz phrase of the moment – native advertising. The IAB’s Peter Minnium chimes in, “These niche companies [like Appssavvy] hit a core agency and marketer need to get ad experiences in a viewer’s activity stream; however, it’s still a niche product, only 7-10 percent of the whole market.” Read more.

Amazon Ad Ambitions

Ad Age’s Michael Learmonth reports on Amazon’s very public display of digital ad ambitions at this week’s Advertising Week in New York City. Learmonth offers details on a presentation by Amazon’s Lisa Utzschneider who “said Amazon has actually been in the ad business for six years when it started out with five untargeted ad units. Today the offering includes the log-in page of some Kindle devices, sites like IMDB, Zappos, Soap.com and Diapers.com and deep targeting data based on past purchases. She also showed ads for Sony with a buy button and an ad for CBS Films with a trailer for ‘Words.’” Read more. Is this a permanent move to engage publicly about ads?

Facebook’s Vertical Leap

Facebook has been restructuring its direct sales efforts around verticals. At an IAB MIXX press conference in New York today, VP global marketing Carolyn Everson articulated this through the example of telcos, which she says care mainly about three things: branding, new customer numbers, and churn. “I need all my people working on those accounts to know that, cold,” she said. Everson was joined by insights guru Brad Smallwood, COO Sheryl Sandberg, and Marc Andreeson. Also discussed were FBX, online GRPs, and the IPO climate. More coverage: PandoDaily, AllThingsD, TechCrunch.

Google’s Cost-Per-Expansion

Google has debuted a new ad format called Lightbox, which looks like a standard banner that expands into a larger canvas takeover ad. Nothing special about that except for the what marketers are charged: marketers only pay for ads that get a user to hover their cursor over the spot. Techcrunch’s Sarah Perez has the story. Read it. In an official blog post, Jim Lecinski, VP for Google’s Brand Solutions, answers the inevitable question about “mistaken” rollovers: “In internal tests, we’ve seen that this smart hover feature eliminates nearly 100% of accidental expansions and increases engagement by 6-8X over standard click-to-expand ads.”

Mobile Flite

Digital ad plaform Flite is “mobilizing” its platform for publishers. On GigaOm, Flite CEO Will Price stresses the benefits of its creative capabilities – Touch Ad Studio – with reporter Ryan Kim, “Having an audience isn’t sufficient, you have to come up with an ad format that is not available for ad networks or retargeting media buyers. Right now, publishers are recognizing that without some differentiation at the editorial level and what they offer brands, they’re not going to be able to be successful over time.” The gap between so-called premium and so-called remnant continues to close as creative capabilities are both improved and simplified. Read more. And, read the release.

Driving eCommerce Data

Triad Retail Media (AdExchanger May 2011), which sells media on ecommerce sites for companies like Walmart and eBay, announced that it has partnered with Krux Digital to get more data-driven. From the press release, Triad likes audience targeting: “The Triad Retail Media targeting strategy, powered by Krux, will result in more effective consumer targeting on retailer websites and more efficient cross-web marketing.” Read more.

Enterprise Ads

x+1 is busy making partnerships with enterprise platform providers of different shapes and sizes. In July, it was Adobe. This time it’s Oracle as a release announces the integration of its DMP with Oracle’s RightNow CX Cloud Service. According to the release, “This integration will allow RightNow CX users to take full advantage of [x+1]’s Origin Digital Marketing Hub. [x+1] is also now a Gold level member in Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN).” Digital ads continues to go enterprise. Read more.

Truth to Data

It’s unusual to find big creatives talking big data, but Ogilvy CCO Steve Simpson did just that this week. Speaking at the BBB’s National Advertising Division conference, and afterward with AdWeek’s Katy Bachman, Simpson said the complicated issue can be reduced to “respect.” He said, “There’s a higher burden on marketers and advertisers to provide openness and choice” and, more succinctly, “Advertisers need to stop doing stupid stuff” like failing to allow tracking opt outs or disclose data policies. Read more.

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