Startup Lets Web Advertisers Bid For Your Attention
The real dream of any advertiser is to grab the attention of the right person at the right time. A new approach to online advertising, known as real-time bidding, could help make that vision easier to achieve. Real-time bidding involves auctioning off the opportunity to show an online display advertisement to a specific type of user at a precise moment. A San Francisco-based startup called Triggit recently scored $4.2 million in funding from two venture capital firms, Foundry Group and Spark Capital, based on the promise of its real-time bidding platform. “Every person has a different value to different advertisers,” says Zach Coelius, Triggit’s CEO. He points to the advertising auction system used by Google for search keyword. People searching for particular keywords are bracketed together as likely having similar intentions. With display advertising, he says, the interests of the person visiting a page is less clear, and it’s more difficult to match an ad to the ideal user. It is increasingly possible to gather information about a user by looking at her browser’s cookies–tiny files that show which sites she has visited. But matching this information to advertising is a still relatively crude process.
Read More: TechnologyReview.com
Google Working On Secret New Ad Format: “Interactive Video Ads”
Google is still casting around trying to find another revenue stream that will carry the company now that search is maturing. The latest idea? Interactive video ads.” Eric Schmidt pitched the idea at Allen & Co.’s Sun Valley conference, Jessica Vascellaro reports: Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt championed “interactive video ads,” which he said are on the way. Such ads, which could appear anywhere on a Web page, not just inside a video, would be like mini-Web pages. That means they could allow Web users to watch a video, leave a comment and see real-time updates within the ads that are more customized to their interests. Mr. Schmidt said in an interview Thursday that he has pushed Google’s ad teams to think about the potential for such ads, which he suggested would eventually become prevalent. But he didn’t comment on any specific plans for them. Sounds like a stretch.
Read More: BusinessInsider.com
Tech Companies Work To Come Up With Ad Ideas That Click
As media companies voice doubts about whether they can build their digital businesses on advertising alone, technology companies gathered in Sun Valley this week are trying hard to convince them to think more creatively. In a range of interviews on the sidelines of the conference, Internet companies from ad juggernaut Google Inc. to small upstarts have pumped the promise of new formats that are more effective than banner and search ads, the staples of the digital ad industry to date. Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said in an interview late Thursday that a new killer ad format—which he dubbed “interactive video ads”—is coming. Such ads, which could appear anywhere on a Web page not just inside a video, would allow users to interact with the ads in new and more engaging ways, such as asking users to click on a video to learn more about a product. He said he has encouraged Google’s ad teams to think along those lines, but didn’t comment on any specific plans. Andrew Mason, chief executive and founder of Groupon Inc., said in an interview that his company—a fast-growing startup that distributes daily deal newsletters—is here talking to media companies about reinventing local advertising.
Read More: WSJ.com
