Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
DSP Revenues Power Higher
It’s happened again! Another private ad tech company is reporting its financial progress – this time it’s demand-side platform [x+1]. The company said in a release, “Fourth quarter revenue increased 62 percent over the same period in 2008, while revenue for the year was up 63 percent over 2008.” Healthy percentages, once again, for an ad tech company given the economy. Read more.
Kantar Retail Consolidates Insights
WPP Group has squished together 4 of its in-house, retail research and insights companies to create Kantar Retail. The combined entity will include 400 employees in 15 “global countries” with the hope of becoming “the pre-eminent provider of transformational insights, strategic consulting and capabilities-building for the global retail marketplace.” At least they set the bar low. Read more.
White Lies Growing Like Weeds
Rob Leathern of CPM Advisors provides examples of how little white lies can propagate in this age of connectedness via the Internet and technology. He identifies three main reasons “white lies” get out of control – the first being “Close cooperation among quasi-competitors….Companies don’t want to damage existing or potential partnerships with their coopetitors (!) by calling them on their lies publicly (though they sometimes may do so privately).” Read the analysis.
In a February 23 event in London, the Association of Online Publishers (AOP) is bringing “together industry experts to examine the current state of online trading.” Among the panelists are David Katz, MPG; the ubiquitous Mark Mannino, MediaMath; Nick Burcher, Vivaki; Tom Bowman, BBC Worldwide; and Ciaran O’Kane of ExchangeWire.com. Register here.
The Year In Display Impressions
ComScore has unleashed its 2009 U.S. Digital Year In Review. It’s filled with facts in figures including a comprehensive list of the biggest players in display advertising. TechCrunch has conveniently copy and pasted the list for all to see here. Yahoo! is the big winner with over 521 billion impressions. That’s some impressive counting! You can download the entire white paper here.
Spider Our News
At the Borrell Associates Local Online Advertising Conference this week in NYC, CEO Gary Pruitt of news conglomerate McClatchy affirmed that he is not a believer in shutting out companies that are aggregating news content in their search results. Prutt said, “Strategic arrangements with Yahoo and Google drive 20% of traffic to McClatchy Web sites. To disengage is to risk marginalization.” Read more.
$6 Million For Influencer Finders
Want to find another way to target. How about social influencers? Pursway just collected $6 million in venture financing led by Battery Ventures as the Israeli-based company (formerly known as Datanetis according to TechCrunch) looks to identify influencers and report the intelligence to marketers. Read more.
First Round NYC Office
The new NYC office for First Round Capital is under construction but coming into shape. For now, visitors will lean on a ladder. See more.
Havas Reports Q4 and Full Year
Ad holding company, Havas, reported its fourth quarter 2009 results yesterday and Ad Age’s Emma Hall notes the 8.1% year-over-year decline in revenues – but just 4.4% in Q4. Hall also notes that digital at the holding company has risen from 9% in 2006 to 16% of overall revenue in 2009 with projections of 20% for 2010. Read more from Ad Age. And, see the earnings release.
http://adage.com/agencynews/article?article_id=142012
Super Bowl Data
Here’s a nice list of data – not digital but consider the potential if this audience was addressable. The list would then be about engagement rather than viewers. Anyway, Nielsen breaks down the most viewed ads during the Super Bowl. The winner (cmon.. you know which one it was) garnered 116,231,920 viewers at around 9:30 ET on Sunday night. See the peaks and valleys of TV viewing here.
Vanity Metrics
Harvard Business Review welcomes Mr. Lean Startup, Eric Ries, and he’s chiding entrepreneurs who believe in what he calls “vanity metrics” such as “numbers which look good on paper but aren’t action oriented: website hits, message volume, or ‘billions and billions served.'” You mean marketing, Eric! Read what entrepreneurs should do, too.
Don’t Forget Your Creative Mojo
Swedish lecturer and author Frederik Härén thinks that creativity is becoming more important than ever due to the Internet.”With the increase in population and education, as well as accessibility to the internet, the number of people with knowledge has expanded. But the rate of what Härén terms as an “idea perception” may not be increasing correspondingly.” Read what he means. (source: Razorfish)
