Predictions For Agencies; Yahoo Acquires PeerCDN

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Adaptive Agencies

It’s time for 2014 predictions and Digiday is serving one up about agencies. As marketers and brands try to figure out digital marketing, agencies should benefit, according to the article. They have the opportunity to tie their work into hard business metrics and can help manage the confusing array of marketing and advertising technology. “The spectrum of services that agencies can offer is growing,” said Rishad Tobaccowala, chief strategy and innovation officer at VivaKi. “The fact that Accenture, IBM consulting and other companies are all aiming at marketing says it’s a growth area versus a shrinking industry.” Read more.

Yahoo Grabs Content Tech

Yahoo has acquired content infrastructure play PeerCDN, TechCrunch reports. The company’s technology “makes it possible for visitors to sites to do things like chat via text or video while browsing without any additional software.” Some see “white space” around publisher tools to support things like holistic yield management and commerce. Could Yahoo make a credible run at it this elusive opportunity? Simpler explanation: This tech will support video on the Yahoo domain with new talent like Katie Couric and David Pogue. More.

Targeting Travelers

Sojern has raised a $10 million Series C to support its vision of delivering targeted ads to travelers, bringing its funding total to $42.5 million. The company will use the money to “aggressively recruit commercial, engineering and data science talent to develop even more granular, self-optimized and intelligent targeting solutions.” Understanding customer intent is particularly critical in the travel industry, added CEO Mark Rabe. “With other verticals, lookalike audience modeling is important, but in travel, intent is a much bigger story,” Rabe told AdExchanger. “And so we’re working on getting even better at predictive analytics.” Read more.

Amazonian Transaction

Rumor has it Amazon has quietly acquired mobile payments startup GoPago in a bid that pits the commerce giant squarely against Square and, for that matter, eBay and PayPal. As TechCrunch reports, Amazon’s mobile payments push has been pretty limited so far – think in-app payments via the Amazon App Store or through third-party APIs selling Amazon products. With the recent launch of Login And Pay With Amazon, digital wallets don’t appear to be the only thing Amazon’s eyeing. Read more.

Data Team

JiWire and Datalogix are partnering to bring offline data to mobile advertising. “This partnership … will increase the effectiveness of mobile ad campaigns by marrying offline spending data with JiWire’s robust mobile location data and measurement,” said Michael Cohen, SVP for strategy and analysis at DigitasLBi. Read the release.

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End-Of-Year Reflections

As the year draws to a close, Google reflects on changes that have occurred in the advertising industry on its Think Insights blog. According to the infographic, RTB buys experienced 74% growth, and 70% of advertisers and publishers now deploy programmatic. See more (pdf). And read the post on the DoubleClick Publisher blog.

Data Hires

EXelate announced two hires to expand its operations. Deb Josephs will serve as SVP of global human resources and Matt Bennathan as VP and managing director, UK. “As the demand from marketers and agencies for eXelate’s products increases, we sought and found innovative thinkers and industry leaders to join us at the helm during this time of significant company growth,” said Mark S. Zagorski, CEO of eXelate. Read the release.

Streaming Sports Data

The social TV wars wage on with Facebook’s latest acquisition of SportStream, a startup that develops a platform called “SportsBase,” which feeds real-time trending sports data to media companies through its APIs. In a recent interview with AdExchanger, SportStream cofounder and CEO Bob Morgan said that although the real-time information about players, games and teams is not currently tailored for targeted ad placements, he “absolutely” sees the potential for engaging audiences with “more sophistication” over time as more advertisers look for ways to target content against real-time and trending televised events. Read more from Facebook here.

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