AdWords For Mobile

Did your smartphone suddenly start blinking and buzzing like crazy? No need to worry– it’s probably just getting excited about AdWords for mobile, our new mobile interface for Android, iPhone, and Palm Pre devices. We’ve heard that your smartphone and AdWords account have been pining for each other. Over the past few months, many of you have let us know how much you’d like to have fast and easy mobile access to AdWords, which is why we’re now testing a streamlined mobile experience. AdWords for mobile gives you easy access to your key alerts and statistics, enabling you to make quick changes even when you’re out and about.

Read More: AdWords.Blogspot.com

What Social Media Ads Are The Most Effective

In the study, Psychster tested examples of seven types of ads on both Facebook and Allrecipes.com, the popular recipe/cooking hub. The ad formats, which included banner ads, newsletters, branded profiles with a reciprocal logo, branded profiles without reciprocal logo, “give widgets,” “get widgets” and sponsored content, were shown to 478 Allrecipes users and 681 Facebook users and their interaction with the ads recorded. The study found that while sponsored content ads were the most engaging, they resulted in the least purchase intent. Meanwhile, corporate profiles on social media websites encouraged greater purchase intent and resulted in increased recommendations, particularly when the user was able to become a fan of the business and attach its logo to their own profile. Widgets that enabled users to create or customize an item to send it to a friend (“give”) or keep for their own use (“get”) were found to be more engaging than standard banner ads and newsletters, but produced no greater purchase intent. The conclusion? Context wins.

Read More: BizReport

Inside Yahoo’s “Innovator’s Dilemma”

A source close to Yahoo’s strategic planning recently complained to us that Yahoo has “a fundamental innovator’s dilemma.”  What he meant is that while Yahoo has flat traffic, flat revenues, and increasingly limited growth opportunities, it can’t innovate it’s way out of the problem with bold new products because it has to fund, protect, and iterate on “a big existing business that is, let’s face it, very profitable” — display advertising on Yahoo.com and the company’s other media sites. So while there is, at Yahoo, “a core group of people who still want [and] believe that Yahoo can change things,” these product directors and line engineers increasingly find themselves working not for a tech company, but for a media company content to serve ad impressions against an already huge Web audience. Right now, this “innovator’s dilemma” is mostly a mild inconvenience that makes Yahoo a less fun place for Silicon Valley engineers and executives to work (which is why so many are quitting). But someday soon, it could kill the company. That’s because Yahoo’s entire big, existing, profitable business is dependent on consumers continuing to use the Internet and the “Web” the way they are right now for the foreseeable future. That may be a bad bet. Just ask Google, which is cranking out $25 billion a year on desktop search, but is scrambling to develop a mobile business anyway. Ask Apple, which used to just make Macs, but now calls itself a mobile devices maker. Or ask our source close to Yahoo who believes “the Web is on a verge of a tectonic shift” and that “the [Web] page as a dominate paradigm is going away.”

Read More: SFGate

Hulu’s a Towering Success — Just Not Financially

Hulu is everyone’s favorite provider of TV on the web, but it’s facing an ideological battle over its future. On one side are its network backers, which would like Hulu to become a paid service. On the other is the advertising community, which would like to keep Hulu free as a test-bed for new targeted-ad formats that can’t be skipped. It’s an important issue, because any debate about Hulu is a debate about the future of purely ad-supported TV, which is increasingly becoming an endangered species. Hulu is the No. 2 video site on sheer volume of video views behind YouTube, yet no one is yet making much money from its model: not its network backers, other content partners and least of all Hulu itself, which has a hard time paying for its bandwidth bills. ”[Hulu] does have to move to a premium model,” said one network exec. “If you look at the business, it’s just not economically feasible to give away programming at low rates.” Hulu won’t comment on its economics, but if you consider that it’s selling video ads and companion banners together in the $40 CPM range, and it appears to be about 50% sold out, when 70% is paid back to networks, Hulu is netting pennies per viewer per hour, about what it costs to deliver video of that quality. One caveat, however, is that a significant amount of Hulu inventory is sold by the networks, which can buy back inventory to sell to advertisers. Hulu gets 30% of that CPM without any of the costs. Also, Hulu has ad deals with many TV networks on different terms.

Read More: AdAge

Target: Upfront Dollars

The Web’s top video ad networks smell an opportunity to go hard after TV dollars during this year’s upfront marketplace. According to several prominent executives, companies like BBE, Tremor Media, YuMe and others are planning a sales push during the next few months as they foresee traditional brands allocating dollars to video in conjunction with their TV outlay for the upcoming season. “No one’s renting out the Ed Sullivan Theater,” quipped Scott Ferber, CEO of TidalTV. “But of course we are pitching these guys. It’s natural for media companies to approach advertisers in the manner they are used to, and that is [during the] upfronts.” Insiders noted that as online video consumption continues to surge, packaged goods and auto brands see the medium as one of the few reliable ways to achieve branding goals on the Web at scale—and are thus poised to up their spend significantly. One bullish ad network exec estimated that dollars in the space, pegged at around $1 billion in 2009, could double this year. Another predicted that some networks could pull in half their 2010 revenue during the upfronts. “This year we’re going to see a major inflection point,” said Matt Wasserlauf, BBE’s CEO. Some buyers countered that those estimates are on the high side. However, they concur that many clients are looking to evaluate their video spending holistically, which bodes well for Web video sellers. “I do agree with the idea that many clients’ strategies are becoming content driven over device driven,” said John Nitti, svp, digital director at Zenith Media. “So you should see some dollars start to flow that way.” “Clearly video is a growing area of interest among our clients, and we are looking to get a little bit formal about the way we plan this in totality,” said Andy Chapman, leader, Exchange at Mindshare.

Read More: MediaWeek

One Minute Match Up Recap: Did they break through at Breakthrough?

Miss the iMedia Breakthrough Summit in sunny Florida this week? Are you an iMedia vet who has slogged your way through the infamous One Minute Match Ups and feeling a pang of nostalgia for that frenetic hour of power? Are you just interested in an overview of the companies shaping the digital media landscape?  Lucky for you the One Minute Match Up recap is here. Here’s a list of the companies I met this week—and a gauge of how well their sales team is doing as describing their wares. Did I get it right? Let me know in comments.

DBG – Digital Broadcasting Group is one of a handful of video ad networks that seem to be more interested in becoming a video producer than a network. They produce branded content on the cheap and bury the production costs in the media buy. I don’t know what this says about their network, but brands are hungry for content. I’m interested in understanding better how they work with creative agencies.

Adconion/Joost/Red Lever – Adconion’s family of properties is another one in the space providing a comprehensive video solution. Now, I’m a student of brand positioning, so I keep busting their balls about creating confusion in the market with all these different companies. However, they are producing some good branded content with Red Lever and distributing that content over their Adconion video ad network. They also just bought Joost, which gives them a potential Hulu competitor. And they don’t rhyme with onion. Oh, and they ROCK because they gave out iPads! Can’t wait, guys. Thanks!

Read More: iMediaConnection

Apple Poised To Unveil ‘iAd,’ New Mobile Ad Platform Is Jobs’ ‘Next Big Thing’

Even as the buzz builds toward the April 3rd ship date of the iPad, Apple is preparing to announce its “next big thing” — a new personalized, mobile advertising system that could well be called the “iAd” — Online Media Daily has learned. The new ad platform, which will be officially unveiled to Madison Avenue on April 7th, has been described as “revolutionary” and “our next big thing” by Apple chief Steve Jobs, according to executives familiar with the plan. Precise details of the system and its features could not be discerned at presstime (and calls to Apple had not been returned), but it is believed to have been built on top of Quattro, the mobile advertising developer Apple acquired in January for nearly $300 million, and it is expected to be the first real battle of a Silicon Valley Holy War between Apple and arch frenemy Google that is shifting its front line to Madison Avenue. The war has been mounting ever since Google introduced its Android mobile operating system to compete with Apple’s iPhone, and agreed to acquire mobile ad firm AdMob for $750 million, but it is expected to reach ballistic proportions following Apple’s April 7th announcement, which insiders say will be every bit as important as other recent marketplace introductions, including the iPod, iTunes, iPhone and iPad launches.

Read More: MediaPost

The Business Upside of RTB: “Trust Us, There Is One…”

As I sat at my desk the other day, I remarked to our lead analyst that after reading what feels like hundreds of articles on RTB, I still didn’t know from a business point of view what it really did, or how it would help us make more money. Chew (our lead analyst) whose opinion I greatly respect, and who was recently invited to (and gave) a talk to TED on chaos theory, went on to give me a long and detailed explanation of how RTB causes a market to function more efficiently. “Yes, I can see how that is true”, I answered. “But, ultimately what I see is a technology being pushed at us, which does not bring either more supply, or more demand. In fact, all it does is cause prices to become more efficient, which creates a more effectively priced market place… but unless the benefits of that outweigh the costs of applying the new technology, then from a P&L viewpoint of our business and our clients, I do not see why we would be interested in it. After all, it’s not increasing the amount of money in exchanges, or our ability to get more of the existing money.” When I challenged him to show me how RTB would increase the total amount of money in the exchange market as it currently is, or demonstrate how it could bring our business more of the current money in the market – he couldn’t. In fact, what we both eventually agreed on was that the only way RTB could bring more money into advertising exchange environments is as a marketing device to lure more participants into trading in the exchanges, and therefore increase liquidity. But is pricing efficiency what the major agencies and publishers who do not trade in exchanges are really worried about? Because I’ve never heard them say anything like that; in fact, I don’t think they would even be able to begin to fathom what all that means in the first place.

Read More: AdExchanger

Mediabrands’ Cadreon Shifts Focus To Verification, Studies Whether Targeted Ads Are Hitting Mark

Mediabrands’ Cadreon unit, which focuses on buying targeted audiences rather than inventory, has launched a new program, “Audience Movement,” which aims to verify that targeted ads are reaching Web users who are interested in purchasing the products advertised. In February, the company quietly shifted the focus of its platform technology group to verifying audiences. Previously, that four-person unit focused on implementing the rollout of its offering. Now, two of the unit’s members — out of 34 Cadreon employees total — are focused on verifying the audience. The program aims to answer a simple question, says Michael Brunick, vice president, media technology for Cadreon: “Are we messaging to the right people?” A recent case study conducted by the agency shows that current methods of evaluating whether users want to purchase particular goods or services sometimes fall short. For the study, Cadreon questioned approximately 1,000 Web users who had been identified as potential buyers of a particular computer brand. Cadreon served those users with banner ads that contained a survey asking users if they had been shopping for that type of computer.

Read More: MediaPost