2010: The Year of Data

This year saw data and audience targeting enter the mainstream conversation. This growing trend gave rise to increasingly noisy conversations about how that data is being used, whether it’s effective in improving the online experience, how to measure its effectiveness and whether its use violates online privacy or otherwise offends the online user. Those in the industry have been active in resolving these issues and we expect them to be resolved in 2010. This shift will remove some of the endemic issues preventing a more rapid growth of targeted advertising, and if 2009 was spent talking about data, 2010 will be about using data.

Read More: Adotas

An Item on Google’s Shopping List: “Demand-Side Platforms”

Google has bought six companies since August and has many more in its sights. Here’s one category the company is looking at, according to people familiar with the company’s thinking: “Demand-side platforms.”  Dull name aside, this is an interesting business for Google to be thinking about. So-called DSPs are supposed to help ad buyers (that’s the “demand-side” part) manage the speed, volume and complexity of the new ad exchanges cropping up, like Google’s own AdX product.

Read More: AllThingsDigital

DoubleVerify Is Checking Ad Context Twice

In an effort to bolster confidence among protective brand marketers, digital media-verification company DoubleVerify has launched a new product to prevent and block ads from appearing next to inappropriate content. The new BrandShield product, which has already been tested by select agency and ad network partners, draws on DoubleVerify’s existing platform and technology which currently verifies over 20 billion monthly impressions on behalf of marketers in a range of verticals, including telecom, pharma, retail, finance, CPG, and entertainment.

Read More: MediaPost

AOL’s Board Approves Restructuring; $150 Million in Severance Charges

AOL’s board has officially approved the restructuring started by CEO Tim Armstrong last month, as part of its first official board meeting as an independent and public company last week, according to an SEC filing. The company has said before it will be slashing a third of its staff of about 7,000. through voluntary buyouts and layoffs. In the filing, it said that the $200 million or so in charges related to this reorg, about $150 million would be in severance and benefit costs, and up to $50 million of charges related to facility closures and other costs.

Read More: PaidContent.org

Are spam, hackers, privacy concerns and commercialization killing social media?

Social media comes in many forms and flavors with new types coming in and some older ones slowly dying out. It has become so ubiquitous that we rarely think about it when we use it. I primarily use Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and LinkedIn, in addition to my blogging, but I have become less and less enamored with social media over time. Although I was never a rabid user of Twitter, I did initially use it on a regular basis but now will frequently go days between tweets or without even looking at it.

Read More: Forbes

The Coming of Age of Local Online Advertising

The future of local online advertising is bright. As we stand on the brink of 2010, there are many reasons to be hopeful. We are seeing new innovations on search engines, the proliferation of hyper-local content developed and managed by micro bloggers and business owners directly, and a resurgence in online coupons with sites like Groupon. All of these trends are driving an increasing number of consumers to go online more often to find local products and services. More than 80 percent of consumers are searching online for local products every day. They are searching from their homes, but increasingly they are searching on mobile devices — and the new Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) Nexus phone will likely offer souped-up search capabilities.

Read More: E-Commerce News

Martha, Forbes, ESPN Among Top Online CPMs

The supposed decline and fall of display advertising notwithstanding, brand (and a bit of reach) still matters to premium advertisers. According to a revealing look at some of the most valuable real estate online from AdAge’s Michael Learmonth, familiar offline brands still can rival the big Internet portals.  That Wall Street Journal “News Hub” of short video updates that was launched several months ago is part of a winning strategy at the Dow Jones site, garnering CPM rates of $75 to $100. Learmonth polled agencies and media buyers about where their money is going, and apparently WSJ hasn’t made a video that advertisers don’t like.

Read More: Minonline

Social Network Spending Shifts

2009 will end with major shifts in social network advertising spending. Facebook, at 350 million users worldwide, is the premier destination for marketers in the US and many worldwide markets. It will surpass its former rival, MySpace, in ad revenues in 2010, when marketers worldwide will spend $605 million on Facebook versus $385 million on MySpace.

Read More: eMarketer

comScore Announces New Measurement Tool for CPG Brands

comScore (Nasdaq: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today announced a new solution, in conjunction with Information Resources, Inc. (IRI), that measures the effectiveness of online advertising campaigns in building sales of CPG brands in supermarkets, drug stores, mass merchants, convenience stores and other retail channels that are important to the CPG industry. The solution uses IRI’s Consumer Network(TM) household purchase panel to measure retail sales in all channels along with comScore’s ability to understand which panelists were exposed to online advertising. The solution will be integrated into comScore’s AdEffx(TM) suite of products that provides media planners with all the tools they need to maximize the ROI from their online ad campaigns, ranging from data for improved planning through to tools for smarter buying and finally the channel-wide measurement of campaign ROI that are the focus of this new service.

Read More: PR Newswire