Partnership will Bring New Levels of Audience Segmentation and Reach to Rapidly-Growing Industry
 
WESTMINSTER, Colo. & SAN MATEO, Calif.–(EON: Enhanced Online News)–4INFO, a leading mobile advertising company, and Datalogix™, the leader at integrating database marketing and digital media, today announced a relationship to enable real world segmentation-based reach and measurement within 4INFO’s AdHaven Audience Network. As a result of this partnership, 4INFO will be a premier mobile advertising partner of Datalogix, providing AdHaven advertisers with additional audience reach opportunities as they plan campaigns and AdHaven publishers with additional capabilities to sell their inventory using the platform.

4INFO and Datalogix will provide brand marketers with the ability to define and reach mobile audiences based on Datalogix’s $1 trillion database of purchasing behavior. Custom models based on SKU-level purchase data allow brands to drive new customers or explicitly target existing ones on their mobile devices including smartphones, feature phones and tablets.

“The next frontier in mobile is true audience targeting at scale,” said Zaw Thet, CEO, 4INFO. “Datalogix is the leader in bringing offline data to digital and this partnership with Datalogix provides a valuable new dimension of data to our extensive AdHaven Audience Network. DLX has extensive differentiation in the retail, CPG and automotive verticals and brands will benefit from targeted mobile advertising, as demonstrated by measurably higher ROI and campaign results.”

Read More: EON

Newspaper National Network LP Selects the Mocean Platform for Its Mobile Offering

Best of Breed Mobile Ad Serving Platform to Deliver Scalable Mobile Solutions for NNN’s National Blue-Chip Advertisers to Reach Leading Local Sites

NEW YORK, NY–(Marketwire – Jul 7, 2011) – Mocean Mobile (www.moceanmobile.com), the standard in mobile ad serving, today announced a multi-year agreement with the Newspaper National Network LP (NNN) to give national brand advertisers unlimited potential to reach and engage with consumers on the leading national network of local media.

After conducting a lengthy vetting process, the NNN selected Mocean Mobile as its solution to serve local media across all mobile platforms, including smartphones, tablets, in-application or mobile Web. Mocean Mobile provides NNN with the state of the art infrastructure required to execute the rich media campaigns advertisers want at a national scale, capitalizing on mobile’s unique ability to target local audiences.

“We are confident that Mocean Mobile’s robust technology platform and enhanced targeting capabilities, coupled with NNN’s innovative sales solutions, will enable national advertisers to maximize the local benefits of mobile, with scale,” said Doug MacDonald, Vice President, Digital for the NNN.

Working with national blue-chip advertisers who want to fully engage with mobile users, the NNN will utilize the Mocean ad serving platform’s full support of all types of rich media campaigns to offer marketing partners custom ad solutions that are both unique and of high value. To that end, Mocean Mobile boasts deep integration with all of the major rich media providers in mobile advertising.

Read More: marketwire

Unless the regulatory process is somehow speeded up in the case of Google’s latest acquisition of Admeld, the estimated $400 million deal that would add a new publisher-facing service to Google (NSDQ: GOOG) display/exchange business is at least several months away from actually being completed. That said, the announcement earlier today will surely speed up efforts by Google’s competitors, whether its display advertising leaders like Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) and AOL (NYSE: AOL), to expand their supply-side efforts, or Admeld rivals like The Rubicon Project and PubMatic.

In a post on its blog, media investment bank Luma Partners, which represented Admeld in the deal, points out some of the basic implications of Google’s acquisition: “Real time media buying is real and valuable. There has been some debate of late regarding the RTB phenomenon – whether it is a fad or a long-term shift in the market and whether it adds real value. This acquisition should squelch that debate – as we point out in the SCIENCE-ification of Media presentation, there’s no going back.”

I had a recent conversation about ad exchanges with AOL’s Ned Brody, president of AOL’s B2B businesses, which includes managing the company’s display relationships with outside publishers through Advertising.com and its other ad tech units. He mentioned that one publisher, who spoke for many, had identified RTB as “a race to the bottom” not real-time bidding. Many publishers are reluctant to participate in RTB, because they feel it tends to drive down prices of their inventory. Companies like Admeld, Rubicon and PubMatic exist, in part, to help allay those fears by promising to protect publishers’ ad yields.

Read More: paidContent

The Guardian Quickens Its Journey To A Life Beyond Print

Guardian News & Media has announced a “major transformation programme” to de-emphasise print and become “digital-first”, making it one of the first major newspapers to push toward that final, eventual transition.

GNM will, over the next five years, reallocate to digital areas a £25 ($40.24) million investment that was earmarked for print, it is understood. In doing so, it will, by next March, shrink the printed newspaper away from breaking news and in to a smaller, less resource-intensive edition that instead leads on analysis.

Thursday’s announcement to staff by editor Alan Rusbridger and GMG CEO Andrew Miller (see our interview with Miller) may seem familiar to those who have followed Rusbridger’s observations and forecasts in recent years. But it is much more significant – a crystallised, formalised strategy to reprioritise print, which they say is suffering “inexorable changes” of declining circulation and advertising income.

Read More: paidContent

While advertisers spent $353 million through real-time bidding platforms in the United States during 2010, estimates suggest that number will reach $823 million in 2011, per a new study. The findings, presented by Forrester Analysts Michael Greene and Joanna O’Connell, were commissioned by Admeld and presented at the company’s Annual Partner Forum.

The study highlights the change in media buys, and that in 2010 “RTB became real.” Aside from the epiphany, findings from the report reveal that technology complexity, regulatory ambiguity and fears of poor inventory quality remain challenges. They also suggest that publishers standing on the sidelines will forfeit an opportunity to participate in the market, as RTB grows and expands worldwide,

RTB grew up in 2010, as technology created the perfect infrastructure and agency trading desks, such as Publicis’ Vivaki AOD and Omnicom’s Accuen, bought money to the table. For years, publishers had to rely on many ad networks — sometimes more than 30 — to fill remnant inventory spots. But with all the advancements made in 2010, significant challenges remain.

Read More: MediaPost

Data Deals : AudienceScience CEO Jeff Hirsch on Real-Time Bidding

It would be hard not to notice all the press that real time bidding (RTB) is getting these days. Clearly there is demand for more automated and efficient buying processes in the graphical online media business.  No argument there.  For advertisers, RTB is showing tremendous promise as it separates the impression from the specific publisher in terms of valuation.  In other words, you bid based on what you know about a consumer, and you don’t put a value on where the ad runs (other than white list and/or verified site lists.) Advertisers are able to take advantage of data in unique and dynamic ways which helps them increase both efficiency and efficacy. When you combine the efficiency of only picking the most valuable impressions AND an auction that guarantees you the lowest possible price, you’re definitely getting a good deal. 
That, however, does not necessarily translate to the other side of the equation.  The value proposition to the advertisers is a good indication of this fact.  We keep hearing about how RTB will raise the price of inventory for a publisher but the numbers don’t support that.  That is, unless there is full transparency. What this means is that IF a publisher lets it be known that their inventory is up for bid via RTB, then that publisher will get a higher rate as they will be perceived as being in a better class of inventory.  

Read More: DigiDay

The Interactive Advertising Bureau is expected to roll out the next phase of its self-regulatory privacy initiative on Monday, when it will launch a program to certify that online companies are in compliance with self-regulatory guidelines, Online Media Daily has learned.

The IAB, along with the other trade groups participating in the self-regulatory initiative, also is expected to announce that the National Advertising Review Council has tapped the start-up Better Advertising to help monitor compliance with privacy principles. Those principles — which grew out of a task force of the American Association of Advertising Agencies, the Association of National Advertisers, the Direct Marketing Association, the Interactive Advertising Bureau and the Council of Better Business Bureaus — generally require companies to notify consumers about targeting, and in many cases, allow them to opt out; in some situations, the principles call for opt-in consent.

In addition, the “power i” icon, consisting of a lowercase ‘i’ inside an open circle — which was supposed to indicate when online ads were being served based on users’ Web activity — appears likely to get a makeover. Industry insiders say that some ad organizations were concerned that the symbol was too similar to other logos to be licensed. The slightly renovated version is likely to consist of an ‘i’ inside a triangle pointing toward the right, like a ‘play’ button.

Read More: MediaPost

Is Mobile Advertising Ready for an Exchage?

Microsoft, after a long hiatus in advertising-related announcements, unveiled two new salvos in its bid for a major role in mobile advertising: a Mobile Advertising SDK for Windows Phone 7 and a Microsoft Advertising Exchange, claimed to be the first such platform to support real-time bidding (RTB). (See details on this Microsoft blog.)

On the principle that three data points close together define a trend, here are two more:

• DataXu, a leading demand-side platform (DSP) for RTB announced last week the “industry’s first” DSP advertising solution for mobile, GroupM’s B3 (using DataXu’s decisioning technology);
• Ericsson announced that, on September 22, it will announce AdMarket, a “an open marketplace for targeted mobile advertising through which Ericsson acts as a neutral broker” (in other words, an ad exchange) – see video here.

This is all good news for the mobile advertising market, which still trails online by about $60 billion worldwide. It shows that many of the technologies and concepts innovated for the Internet can help accelerate the mobile market and potentially avoid some of the pitfalls of fragmentation and inefficiency that have at times impeded the development of web advertising (at least on the display side).

The problem, of course, is that for an exchange to work – that is, to attract a critical mass of buyers and sellers and generate enough fees to cover infrastructure and operations – there needs to be sufficient liquidity to start with. This also goes for the highly-touted targeting capabilities of mobile: they’re only valuable if the resulting segments are large enough to interest advertisers, and we still appear to be short of audience.

Read More:  Blogs.Gartner.com

Privacy on the Web is a constant issue for public discussion—and Congress is always considering more regulations on the use of information about people’s habits, interests or preferences on the Internet. Unfortunately, these discussions lead to many misconceptions. Here are 10 of the most important:

1) Privacy is free. Many privacy advocates believe it is a free lunch—that is, consumers can obtain more privacy without giving up anything. Not so. There is a strong trade-off between privacy and information: The more privacy consumers have, the less information is available for use in the economy. Since information helps markets work better, the cost of privacy is less efficient markets.

2) If there are costs of privacy, they are borne by companies. Many who do admit that privacy regulations restricting the use of information about consumers have costs believe they are born entirely by firms. Yet consumers get tremendous benefits from the use of information.

Think of all the free stuff on the Web: newspapers, search engines, stock prices, sports scores, maps and much more. Google alone lists more than 50 free services—all ultimately funded by targeted advertising based on the use of information. If revenues from advertising are reduced or if costs increase, then fewer such services will be provided.

3) If consumers have less control over information, then firms must gain and consumers must lose. When firms have better information, they can target advertising better to consumers—who thereby get better and more useful information more quickly. Likewise, when information is used for other purposes—for example, in credit rating—then the cost of credit for all consumers will decrease.

4) Information use is “all or nothing.” Many say that firms such as Google will continue to provide services even if their use of information is curtailed. This is sometimes true, but the services will be lower-quality and less valuable to consumers as information use is more restricted.

For example, search engines can better target searches if they know what searchers are looking for. (Google’s “Did you mean . . .” to correct typos is a familiar example.) Keeping a past history of searches provides exactly this information. Shorter retained search histories mean less effective targeting.

5) If consumers have less privacy, then someone will know things about them that they may want to keep secret. Most information is used anonymously. To the extent that things are “known” about consumers, they are known by computers. This notion is counterintuitive; we are not used to the concept that something can be known and at the same time no person knows it. But this is true of much online information.

6) Information can be used for price discrimination (differential pricing), which will harm consumers. For example, it might be possible to use a history of past purchases to tell which consumers might place a higher value on a particular good. The welfare implications of discriminatory pricing in general are ambiguous. But if price discrimination makes it possible for firms to provide goods and services that would otherwise not be available (which is common for virtual goods and services such as software, including cell phone apps) then consumers unambiguously benefit.

7) If consumers knew how information about them was being used, they would be irate. When something (such as tainted food) actually harms consumers, they learn about the sources of the harm. But in spite of warnings by privacy advocates, consumers don’t bother to learn about information use on the Web precisely because there is no harm from the way it is used.

8 ) Increasing privacy leads to greater safety and less risk. The opposite is true. Firms can use information to verify identity and reduce Internet crime and identity theft. Think of being called by a credit-card provider and asked a series of questions when using your card in an unfamiliar location, such as on a vacation. If this information is not available, then less verification can occur and risk may actually increase.

9) Restricting the use of information (such as by mandating consumer “opt-in”) will benefit consumers. In fact, since the use of information is generally benign and valuable, policies that lead to less information being used are generally harmful.

10) Targeted advertising leads people to buy stuff they don’t want or need. This belief is inconsistent with the basis of a market economy. A market economy exists because buyers and sellers both benefit from voluntary transactions. If this were not true, then a planned economy would be more efficient—and we have all seen how that works.

Read More: WSJ.com (Entire Article Here)

Facebook Ad Network – Is It Coming?

On August 27, Mashable reported Facebook has a $33.7 billion valuation – wow. Too high? Maybe to some, and maybe not to others. Instead of debating that point, let’s look at some things that Facebook might do in the future to a) serve advertisements and b) make more money.

Facebook has some pretty amazing things going for it. It’s becoming ubiquitous in terms of its appeal, so all walks of life are flocking to it. Second, people spend tons of time on Facebook and visit it on their computers and phones every day – if not more. Third, with its massive loyal user base, no matter what your niche audience looks like chances are you can effectively target them and reach them in large numbers on Facebook. Finally, user growth is still expanding and has a long way to go before peaking.

What does this mean for online marketers and media buyers? Well, consider these two factors: unprecedented targeting to a massive audience and the possibility of a new ad network layered over the social graph already installed on millions of sites. (You know all those Like and Share buttons, Facebook Connect, and fan widgets?) In many ways, these sites are already connected to Facebook on code/technical levels.

Let’s explore these two things with the disclaimer that a lot of what I outline here is based on predictions on what Facebook could do – not necessarily on what it will do.

Read More: ClickZ

Marketers that are eager to reach the perfect consumer track campaign budgets carefully, but ultimately want to have the ability to connect online and offline activity. Rocket Fuel is working on technology that will allow marketers to attribute online clicks to offline sales, Richard Frankel, Rocket Fuel president, tells MediaPost.  Advertisers offer a variety of ways to approach the problem of attributing clicks, research or ad views to the sale of an item. Some have tied codes on printable or mobile coupons to the in-store sale.  Frankel points to another approach: find a source that has sales data and build a bridge from that data to clicks on display ads the company supports.  “It mostly deals with cookies and IP data,” Frankel says. “There are a few companies that have this type of data, but they haven’t figured out how to work with companies like ours to make it actionable.”  That’s one problem that Rocket Fuel needs to tackle to make it work. Another is making it easy for advertisers to use the tools. And that’s not a simple task, Frankel says, because many companies that own the data don’t know how to support data projects on the Web.  The road map should put the tools in the hands of advertisers and marketers some time by June. Theoretically, the tools also could help advertisers understand that different types of media campaigns have real sales impact.

Read More: MediaPost

Watch Video From the AppNexus Summit

The AppNexus Summit focused on the evolution of ad networks and aggregators in the new world of real-time advertising. We moved beyond the hype and brought together a diverse group of speakers to share ideas and perspectives on what’s really working in online advertising. It was a fantastic day, and here are some highlights:

•   A keynote fireside chat with Aaron Easterly, General Manager of Network Strategy & Monetization at Microsoft, Johnathan Hsu, CEO of 24/7 Real Media, and Brian O’Kelley, CEO of AppNexus.
• A panel discussion on the business challenges facing ad networks with executives from AOL Advertising.com, interCLICK, Traffic Marketplace, XTEND, AudienceScience, TidalTV. Watch the video: What Works for Ad Networks: Business Challenges 
• We examined the technology issues and innovations in our industry with leaders from Chitika, Dapper, Rocket Fuel, Peer39 and eXelate. Watch the video: What Works for Ad Networks: Technology Challenges 
• John Ebbert from AdExchanger.com led a conversation on ad exhanges and inventory aggregators with perspectives from Pubmatic, AdMeld, The Rubicon Project, OpenX and Time Inc. Digital. Watch the video: The Role of Ad Exchanges, Publishers & Inventory Aggregators.

Read More: AppNexus.com

Management Secrets of the Grateful Dead

The Grateful Dead Archive, scheduled to open soon at the University of California at Santa Cruz, will be a mecca for academics of all stripes: from ethno­musicologists to philosophers, sociologists to historians. But the biggest beneficiaries may prove to be business scholars and management theorists, who are discovering that the Dead were visionary geniuses in the way they created “customer value,” promoted social networking, and did strategic business planning.

Read More: TheAtlantic.com

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

AOL disclosed in a 10-K filing today with the SEC that display advertising revenue in the first quarter will be down from a year ago. Contributing to the drop, the company said, is an ad sales reorg that reassigned most of its accounts, among other factors. AOL also said ad revenue in 2010 from both AOL-owned properties and on third-party sites will be down “significantly in 2010″ from 2009. Ad revenue on AOL’s own sites for the year will be hurt by a decline in AOL access subscribers, as well as the planned shutdown of operations in some countries, according to the filing.

Read More: Barrons

Web Publishers Left With Little After Middlemen Split Ad Spoils

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Publishers fighting hard to squeeze every last dollar out of their online-ad inventories have turned to a variety of players to help them make the most of that space. But in doing so, they’ve let a lot of hands into the cookie jar and may find that the increasing complexity — and the crumbs they’re left with — aren’t worth the effort. It’s not just publishers turning to middlemen but advertisers, too, hoping to boost targeting and effectiveness of their buys. The space between advertiser and publisher has become jam-packed over the last decade, with literally hundreds of ad networks, data companies, yield managers, ad servers and exchanges all purporting to serve advertisers or publishers in some unique way; but all have their own business models that may or may not be adding value to either. And they’re all dipping into the display-ad revenue stream.

Read More: AdAge

Unless you’ve been living in a cave these past eight weeks, it should be no surprise that it’s been the worst shopping season on record for decades. Brick-and-mortar suffered — the International Council of Shopping Centers reports retail sales in the United States fell 2.2 percent overall in November and December (though large retailer chains and department stores claim declines ranging from 7 to 25 percent). Online retailers didn’t fare much better, with comScore reporting overall holiday shopping sales down by 3 percent.

Read More: ClickZ

Google, Apple Battle for Mobile Dominance

Apple recently acquired Quattro Wireless, a mobile Web advertising firm — a space in which Google is the dominant player. Google, meanwhile, is selling its new smartphone, the Nexus One, on its Web site. This competes with Apple’s e-commerce dominance. Its online store ranked fifth in sales volume according to Internet Retailer’s 2009 Top 500 Guide.

Read More: DMNews