Efficient Frontier Launches Platform Supporting Display, Search Ad Buys

Efficient Frontier plans to announce its entry into the display advertising space Tuesday with an integrated display and search marketing optimization platform. The goal is to make marketers understand that the two advertising media should not live in silos, but work as an integrated campaign.  The features in that platform combine search and display advertising, supporting real-time bidding and the ability to leverage predictive modeling to forecast performance based on overall goals.  The platform integrates with advertising exchanges, such as Yahoo’s Right Media and Google’s AdEx. It also taps into Google’s real-time bidding technology and application programming interface to improve results for clients. Advertisers can also expect integration with Microsoft’s adECN.  The real-time bidding technology lets Google send an individual impression through an API. The technology identifies the impression and attributes, including the audience segment the profile might fit into. Based on those attributes, the platform determines the bid price for the Efficient Frontier advertiser and delivers it to Google.

Read More: MediaPost

Unleashing The AOL Display Ad Beast

Last week, AOL, owners of the Advertising.com ad network, announced Ad Desk, the company’s new, self-service platform for ad buying across the Advertising.com network and AOL properties. Read the release.

AdExchanger.com interviewed AOL execs Dave Jacobs (SVP, Publisher Services), Don Kennedy (SVP, Network Sales) and Jamie Fellows (VP, Product Management, AOL Advertising) in regards to the Ad Desk launch and AOL’s display ad strategy.

AdExchanger.com: Should we think of the new Ad Desk as a demand‑side platform?

Dave Jacobs:  The way I would think about it is, this is really the on‑ramp to AOL Advertising and accessing that inventory in a new way.  We talk a lot about the demand‑side platform, as others do, but what we don’t want to do is sort of characterize it or limit it in any way, around a particular business model.  We’re viewing this as the way for advertisers, mid‑size advertisers and agencies, to have the access and control if we’re buying on AOL, and the Advertising.com Network, that they never had before – leverage targeting, retargeting,  behaviors, and do things that we’ve not provided, from an access standpoint, across the Advertising.com and the AOL businesses, previously.  We think this is a great starting point to do a lot more in the platform space. We’re really looking closely at everything that’s happening out there right now. Mostly we’re listening to our advertising and agency partners, to help drive the requirements.

Don Kennedy:   All three of us have been on the ad.com business for around 10 years now. If you look at it over the years, one of the knocks on the networks was always the black box or blind network, if you will –“we’re not getting a lot of insight from you guys.” It was a one‑way communication in many cases.  Where we really want to go is to be able to put a little bit more control into a subset of advertisers’ hands to manage their business, to grow their business, to have access to a lot of the same, down the road, a lot of the same reporting and insights that we use on a day‑to‑day basis to drive our business. We really want to start to externalize that quite a bit. And Ad Desk is a step in that direction, a pretty big step at that.

Read More: AdExchanger

Facebook Expansion: ‘Like’ Data Shared with Site Partners, Marketers

Under Facebook’s expansion strategy, Web site partners that integrate the site’s functionality have access to certain profile data its users have not made private. They can use that data – including information derived from the universal “Like” button – to personalize content, target ads, or customize retail offers.  The user preference data is available to any Web sites that use the “Log in with Facebook” application, according to Bret Taylor, director of platform products for the Palo Alto, CA-based company. Via an “authorization dialogue,” sites deploying the “Log in through Facebook” capability can request parts of the user’s profile – for example, favorite movies – and then use that data to target and sell ads, among other actions.  “The best thing for [a Web site] to do would be to put in a ‘Log in with Facebook’ button on their site,” Taylor said. “And then when a user logs in with the Log in with Facebook button, the product that we’ve to date been calling Facebook Connect…then that site will get access to the user ID and the public parts of the user’s profile.”  Indeed, as Facebook suggested last week when it unveiled new social plug-ins, its advertising policies remain unchanged. But the implications of those policies have changed, now that the Like button is proliferating around the Internet.

Read More: ClickZ

Facebook:  Into the Open Graph

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t shy away from grand promises. At the release of Facebook’s ill-fated Beacon content-sharing platform in November 2007, he called it a once-in-a-century shift in media. Last week, he made another grand pronouncement, this time when introducing Open Graph, Facebook’s audacious plan to serve as the de facto social operating system for the Internet. The new system, he said, is “the most transformative thing we’ve ever done for the Web.”  While many pooh-poohed Beacon, this time few in the industry cast aspersions. The new initiative, like the previous one, aims to make Facebook the Web’s social connective tissue. The difference this time around? Facebook just might succeed. One reason why: Facebook’s growth rate. When Beacon launched, Facebook had 50 million users; at the Open Graph introduction, it announced it crossed 450 million users worldwide. Facebook’s plan betrays an ambitious agenda for the company to take its deep trove of social data and spread it around the Web through a set of social plug-ins, which among other things will make its “Like” buttons ubiquitous and let sites customize user experiences. That information then gets fed back to Facebook and broadcast to the user’s networks. By compiling a list of what interests and motivates people, Facebook could out-Google Google by building the most powerful “database of intentions,” as author John Battelle termed it in 2005.

Read More: AdWeek

Do You Know the ABC’s of DSP’s?

At the 4A’s annual meeting in March, someone threw out a stumper of a question. The conversation had turned to one of the more confusing topics in display advertising: “demand-side platforms” that allow marketers to buy audiences in near real-time.  Moderator Geoff Ramsey, CEO of eMarketer, interrupted the chatter, noticing the glazed eyes of the agency-exec-filled audience: “Does everyone know what we’re talking about?”  The predominant answer? Um, no.  “There was just a sense that the audience didn’t know what they were talking about,” said Debra Meyer, Yahoo’s VP-agency revenue and development. Increasingly, that’s where she comes in.  But Yahoo’s agency-outreach team — and its counterparts at Google, Microsoft and AOL — aren’t merely explaining the ins and outs of digital media but actually working with agencies to build the infrastructure that handles digital buys.

Read More: AdAge

Rise of the Generators

Content Mill. Content farm. Scam. Try Googling “Demand Media,” “Associated Content” or Seed.com, and those are some of the terms you’re likely to encounter. Yet if you read any content produced by these companies, you’re also likely to encounter ads from established brands like Chevrolet, Tide, AT&T, CoverGirl and Progressive Insurance.  Even as industry observers obsess over whether these next-gen content companies—which churn out thousands of search friendly articles usually produced by inexpensive freelancers—are destroying journalism, advertisers don’t seem to care. According to digital buyers, while not every brand is right for this category, most aren’t scared off by this budget content model, despite lingering questions about quality and even SEO gamesmanship. “It’s cheap, but it’s smart,” said Edward Montes, evp, managing director Havas Digital. “The quality of the placement and production are well done.”  Buyers like Demand and Associated can produce custom, highly targeted content for brands. And with the rise of blogs, many clients have grown more comfortable with the idea that long-tail, nonprofessional content “can be very valuable,” said Rich Kim, associate media director at RPA. “Niche content can represent an environment where people are most receptive.”

Read More: MediaWeek

Ad Networks or Content Sites? Content or Data? Confused? Listen to the Crowds

If you weren’t paying attention you might be confused. Or, maybe you are paying attention and you’re still confused. Or, maybe in your confusion you’ve decided to quit paying attention and watch for signs of warmer weather.  Just in case, there is an interesting juxtaposition today in Ad Age between research from Advertiser Perceptions that reports marketers are accelerating the shift back to content sites for media buys (“Marketers Shifting Online Budgets to Content Sites”), and a column from investment banker Tolman Geffs arguing instead that the momentum is with the audience networks (“Get Ready for the Coming Land War in Online Display Ads”).  Says researcher Advertiser Perceptions: A survey of agencies and marketers revealed that 52 percent of them plan to spend more on content sites this year, whereas only 35 percent said they were likely to increase budgets for ad networks.

Read More: HuffingtonPost

Hulu to Launch a Subscription Service in May?

In May, Hulu plans to start testing a subscription service for a monthly fee of $9.95, claims the L.A. Times, citing people familiar with the plans. Currently, Hulu viewers can see the five most recent episodes of popular shows such as Glee and Lost. The subscription service, called Hulu Plus, would enable users to see older episodes of these shows.  Although unconfirmed, this news is on track with a previous report that said that Hulu was planning to launch a subscription service in a matter of months. Back then, it was speculated that the monthly fee would be $4.99, but the price of access to unlimited TV shows seems to have risen in the last couple of months.  If it’s real, Hulu Plus is perfectly aligned with the launch of iPad 3G; the two could be a fantastic combination for accessing your favorite TV shows from any location. The monthly fee, however, is not negligible.  When we first wrote about Hulu’s possible subscription service, we asked you if you’d pay $4.99 for it, and many of you answered yes.

Read More: Mashable

The Marketplace Appreciates Obfuscation in Pricing

Pricing is defined as the property of having material worth. Pricing though does not dictate individual value, but rather the value of a good for the average.  Let me illustrate by an example:

Sherri walks into CVS to purchase some shampoo for the Herman household.  She sees Pantene for $6.45/bottle or Sunsilk for $9.99/bottle (totally made up numbers).  Sherri has a specific price in mind she wants to pay for Shampoo based on her proprietary valuation system (special needs, bottle shape, accessibility, etc) and based on this specific value, she is able to decide between Pantene and Sunsilk.  Pantene and Sunsilk are offering (pricing) their products at these price levels because they have done a comprehensive supply/demand curve and have optimized where they should price their product for the optimal (not always most) amount of buyers.  This is done through market and competitive research as well, as, historical sales scenario planning data.  In this scenario, the marketplace appreciates pricing obfuscation:  it’s simple for the consumer and it’s simple for the business.  The consumer never sees the profit margins (unless they are purchasing from a public company and even then, how many consumers read financial reports) and the business never knows how much the consumer was really willing to pay (potentially more).  There is not really a tension here – if a product’s price is not adequate for a consumer, they will move onto the next product on their list.

Read More: DarrenHerman.com