Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
First Half Online Ad Spend Down
Ad Age’s Nat Ives looks at the wreck that has been in world of media in the first half of 2009 in comparison to 2008 according to a study by Nielsen. The online good news was cable spend which was allegedly up. Online showed the smallest decline. Read more.
Garlinghouse To AOL
Brad Garlinghouse, formerly of Yahoo!, and creator of the “peanut butter manifesto,” is being hired by Tim Armstrong to “lead the effort to expand the reach of AOL’s popular e-mail and instant-messaging services,” according to Miguel Helft of The New York Times. Garlinghouse led similar efforts at Yahoo! before his departure. Read the article.
Real-Time Web Upgrade
WordPress announced RSS Cloud which according to Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb means, “Supporting feed readers will now be able to request updates from WordPress blog feeds as soon as they become available (in real-time), instead of polling a server periodically to check for updates” and providing feed content 15-60 minutes later than it’s actually available. Prediction: 2010 will become the year of “real-time” as all this real-time stuff gets rolled out including real-time bidding. Read more.
Interesting article in Ad Age as the trade’s Michael Learmonth examines a big media buy this spring by Reckitt Benckiser, owners of big brands Lysol, Jet Dry and Clearasil among many. Not online did Reckitt Benckiser drive CPMs into the ground (1-2 dollars), they required that ads “completely load” as opposed to just an ad server request before they would pay for it. Some sites and ad networks did not agree to the terms. Read more.
Privacy Pressure
AdWeek’s Brian Morrisey takes a look at the privacy battles and certain groups’ “blanket requirement for consumers to opt-in to cookie tracking and a ban on third-party cookies. Meanwhile the IAB, AAAAs, ANA, DMA and BBB are creating a self-regulatory framework expected next year that will allow for cookie tracking opt-out by consumers. Read the article.
Moore’s Playbook
Also in AdWeek, David Moore head of 24/7 Real Media and Chair of the IAB offers his playbook to get more ad dollars allocated to online and suggests it comes down to a shift in two mindsets: brand value online must be clear and Moore seems to argue that agencies and publishers need to look beyond standard IAB inventory and find other more integrated, high value ways to work together (I think). Read more.
Ranking Video Ad Networks
Video ad network rankings for July were released by Comscore and in-stream video ad network, ScanScout, announced it was on top with a reach of 50% of U.S. uniques in regards to total video-viewing audience – in other words, reach of 40 million U.S. uniques out of a total 80 million in the U.S. ScanScout also said it has “the third highest average video duration of all video properties, clocking in at 3.2 minutes per video.” Read the release. Read the Comscore release.
Sequential Rev Increases At Publicis
Publicis CEO Maurice Levy told Dow Jones Newswires that he expects August revenue to be up compared to July, and September revenue to beat August. Digital continues to be a strong focus, too. Read more.
Technorati Takes On Bloggers
Technorati continues to struggles with its business model and its latest move appears to be in competition with the source of revenue, interest and traffic that started the aggregator. Mashable reports Technorati will now start adding original content to its site in October. Read the blurb.
Dyson Happy About Linkstorm
Esther Dyson was so happy to see a Linkstorm (AdExchanger.com Q&A) ad on the New York Times that she posted a screenshot to her Flickr account. Dyson is an investor in Linkstorm according to the description on the photo.
Twitter Ad Network in Asia
According to ZDnet in Asia, “Asia/Pacific’s First Blog Advertising Community” or ad network, Nuffnang, has created a Twitter ad network called ChurpChurp. Basically, buyers can have sponsored tweets sent on their behalf by member Twitter accounts. Purchase are made on Cost Per Thousand Twitterers basis. Read more (the story is about half way down).
Razorfish Convergence
In Mediapost, Diane Mermigas interviews Razorfish President David Friedman fresh from his appearance at ad:tech Chicago. Friedman talks about media convergence in the form of interactive devices with help from social media which will radically change the old way of doing business. Interesting to note that at ad:tech, Friedman said that Razorfish was independent of Publicis until the deal closed at the end of the year. Hence, to a degree, his responses at the show were as if the acquisition had never occurred. Read more.
Anchor Intelligence On Yahoo! Traffic Quality
Anchor Intelligence announced last week that it’s offering a solution to help publishers and ad networks by scoring the traffic they send to Yahoo! advertisers and filtering anything that may be affecting their Yahoo! TQ (Traffic Quality) score. Ken Miller, CEO of Anchor Intelligence (AdExchanger.com Q&A), says in the release, “Publishers and networks that provide traffic to Yahoo! advertisers are looking for actionable insights into their TQ and other quality scores. In preparation for Yahoo’s recent announcement regarding pending updates to its TQ scoring system and associated pricing scheme, Anchor customers can leverage ClearMark’s domain-level scores to respond to the new policies and improve the quality of each traffic source they send to Yahoo going forward.” Read the release.
Meetup Is Profitable
Ever been to a meetup? Most of us have such as New York Tech Meetup in NYC. Meetup founder Scott Heifernan announced in an article in The New York Times on Sunday that Meetup, offline groups and meetings organized online, had its first profitable month in July. Scott also announced he’s moving to Africa in a few years. Read more.
UK Agency Out-Of-Home Boondoggle
Not a digital story, but it’s still relevant to the way digital out-of-home can play out when opaque trading systems are present. Mediaweek UK’s Kunal Dutta reported last week that the commission-based outdoor advertising industry in the UK contains commission costs that many clients are unaware of and might not be happy with if they knew about them. Dutta quotes one UK agency exec who blames clients: “As long as clients keep driving agencies’ fees down and making them work for less, they’ll ultimately have to find other ways of making that revenue back. This issue is ultimately the fine line between whether making money through hidden commission is considered sneaky or a sharp business practice.” Surprising he/she was anonymous. Read more.
SF News From New York?
According to The New York Times’ Richard Perez-Pena, The New York Times and Wall Street Journal are heading to the left coast and starting their respective SF, local editions with the WSJ’s mostly business-focused and the Times’ version including news, business, arts & more. Obviously, these moves will open up online ad markets for those geographies. Read the article.
