Demand-side platform Turn's CEO Bill Demas writes on ClickZ that publishers need to embrace RTB since it will help provide control by enabling "the means to create custom audience segments through direct sales teams" and more. Furthermore, Demas says, "As available inventory scales, high-end publishers that don't offer their inventory [in a real-time bided environment] could lose out on huge revenue." To make it happen for publishers, Demas advocates for IAB standards around brand safety and inventory verification to overcome a lack of transparency. Read more.
Citing fresh search share data from ComScore, The Business Insider's Henry Blodget says that Google needs to start finding another, significant revenue generating product other than search as the rest (such as AdSense, Apps, YouTube) provide "rounding error" revenues. Is the DoubleClick Ad Exchange the answer to Blodget's demands? The AdExchanger.com Magic 8 Ball says, "Try again later." Read more.
Eyeblaster has been added to the global partners list at GroupM's MEC according to Journalism.co.uk. Eyeblaster's MediaMind platform will be used "to develop new ways to serve and manage global or pan-regional campaigns for major entertainment, gaming and technology brands [at MEC]." Read more.
In June, mags and ad reporter Stephanie Clifford is moving over to the retail beat at The New York Times to take the place of Stephanie Rosenbloom. In a tweet, Clifford delivered the news: "Just announced: as @stephronyt goes back to Styles, I'll be taking over Times' retail beat in early June. Ad/mag reporter replacement TK." All that advertising knowledge getting sucked away by a rack sale at Nordstrom's. That ain't right.
Twitter ad network Ad.ly announced that it has raised $5 million in venture financing led by "GRP Partners with Greycroft Partners and Matt Coffin (the founder of LowerMyBills) participating in the round" according to TechCrunch. Ad.ly also nabbed a new CEO from News Corp's Fox Audience Network - Arnie Gullov-Singh - who was FAN's former EVP of product, technology and operations. Read about it. Side note: Gullov-Singh's MySpace profile reveals that he has no moods.
In Canada, the country's largest English-language daily newspapers that are owned by Canwest Global Communications are being acquired by an investment group led by Paul Godfrey, former head of a rival newspaper group. The purchase price is believed to be about 1.1 billion Canadian dollars according to The New York Times. Read more.
Cross Pixel Media's CEO Alan Pearlstein explains why he thinks a CPM pricing model is is better than a CPA model for display advertising and retargeting. For Pearlstein, it comes down to potential scale for the advertiser. He writes, "CPA buying shifts the risk and the responsibility for the arbitrage from the advertiser to the media seller. The typical reaction of a media seller in this scenario is to limit it’s risk and only pursue media buys that are performing well below the CPA earn out." Hence, he argues, CPM is the answer. Read more.
Tribal Fusion owner, Exponential Interactive, announced the creation of Firefly Video, "a new online video advertising platform designed to complement traditional television and online pre-roll advertising." The company is to be led by former Tribal sales exec, Donovan Andrews. Read more about Tribal's answer to Tremor Media and Adconion's Joost Network on AdWeek.
In funding led by Ignition Partners and participation from existing investors Redpoint Venture Partners, Baseline Ventures, and Harrison Metal Capital, Heroku announced $10 million in second round funding for its a platform provider services "built on top of Amazon’s EC2 compute infrastructure." Read more on GigaOm.
Roger Ehrenberg extends the discussion begun by James Kwak regarding why Harvard graduates end up on Wall Street rather than other avocations. Ehrenberg says that isn't the question. He says it should be: "how do you lure the best and brightest into game-changing areas such as start-ups and social enterprises that can effect hundreds of millions of people or more?" See the answer on his Information Arbitrage blog here.
Preparing for the next stage of their business (Perhaps an IPO? A larger private equity investment? Or they're just getting bigger.), Quantcast announced that they've filled two key roles: Julio Pekarovic, formerly of Google, will become CFO; and Michael Blum of Fenwick & West will become General Counsel. Read the release.
Tim Armstrong protégé Maureen Sullivan has been named to takeover the top marketing role at AOL as Armstrong decided to stay in-house in hiring the key position but is abandoning (or keeping open?) the opportunity to hire someone as "CMO." According to Ad Age's Michael Learmonth, Sullivan "will be named senior VP-marketing and brand partnerships." Read more.
Wait a second. Is mobile (the) sh*t? A post on the Wall Street Journal's Digits blog by Jennifer Valentino-DeVries features former DoubleClick CEO Kevin Ryan who recently spoke at a conference held by investment firm Jefferies. Ryan said that mobile remains a small market and few people buy through the platform with one of the notable exceptions being Gilt Groupe. He adds "Even today … there is almost no mobile advertising".... but... "There’s no inherent reason why advertising has to drive everything." Read the WSJ.
On the company blog, Bizo CEO Russell Glass announced that publishers will now get to see how their site indexes for audience segments in comparison to other B2B sites in the Bizo network of publishers. Bizo is starting to look like a possible ComScore or Adobe Omniture acquisition as it specializes in, among other things, B2B audience measurement. Read more.
From The Retail Email blog, evolving technology and innovation has evidently not outstripped the use of the animated GIF. Chad White at digital agency Smith-Harmon says his company's data is showing a startling data point: "animated GIF usage (in emails) was up 35% in March compared to March 2009. Plus, nearly 40% of retailers have used an animated gif in at least one email during the past 12 months." Read more. Download the report (sign-up required). (source: MediaPost) What's next... Webrings?
Video ad networks Tremor Media and YuMe among others announced support for Adobe's new OSMF (Open Source Media Framework) specification in its Flash development platform. According to Adobe's release, "OSMF enables developers to easily assemble pluggable components to create high-quality, full-featured playback experiences." Read the release.
Showtime announced that it was going to move its television episodes online in a subscriber-only format according to Bloomberg's Andy Fixmer who writes that this is similar to another subscriber-only format that Time Warner is running online with HBO. Read more. No word on ads potential but given the access to first-party data, targeting here could be extra addressable.
Canoe Ventures, the cable industry advertising effort, a "new industry-wide interactive advertising/programming initiative, SelecTV," according to Wayne Friedman of MediaPost. Similar to the way display banners inform viewers about cookie-based targeting, an on-screen icon lets viewers know that if they want to they can click for additional programming or (presumably, very relevant) advertising. Read more.