Network Margins and Advertiser ROI
Ad networks play a critical role in delivering monumentally effective advertising. Every day, I see smart and successful ad networks like Brand.net, Collective, and Media6Degrees delivering outstanding results with innovative technologies, quality service, and deep analysis that their clients deserve. (Disclosure: These are all clients of my company.) Ad networks were the early adopters of real-time bidding (a game-changer in display ad buying) and have developed cool concepts such as social targeting (e.g., if I buy an iPhone, marketers can rightfully assume my “friends” will too). Significantly, ad networks are the biggest users of the ad exchanges and their revolutionary auction-based marketplaces. Despite these innovative approaches, unfortunately, ad networks still have gotten a bad rap because many in our industry have been focusing on the wrong things. Much of the negative perception about ad networks stems from assumptions that they make high margins. Why is this bad? Think about grocery shopping. Did Whole Foods grow the squash and bananas behind the store in its own little urban farm? Of course not – it buys from rural farmers and charges margins on those products. I don’t have a relationship with the farmer in Honduras and don’t really have time to fly there for my daily banana, so I don’t worry about the margin Whole Foods has earned. It should be a pleasure to help good vendors make the margins they need to reinvest in their business.
Read More: ClickZ
An Amazon-Facebook Alliance to Make Shopping More Social
On Tuesday, Amazon.com took a step toward making the shopping experience on its Web site more social. For many people, shopping is as much about socializing as it is about buying something — a chance to run into neighbors at the farmers’ market or spend time with a friend at the mall. And people who go shopping with a friend inevitably ask advice before buying. But it’s hard to do that when online shopping. Now, Amazon shoppers who connect their Amazon and Facebook accounts transport their Facebook friends to Amazon — and can get recommendations from those friends on what to buy. Amazon was an early leader in offering recommendations based on previous purchases and product searches, and in posting customer reviews on the site. But it has been slow to incorporate social features, while start-ups like Go Try It On, Polyvore and Swipely have been experimenting with ways to make online shopping more interactive. Amazon’s new feature is the company’s small first step toward tapping into the world of social shopping.
Read More: Blogs.NYTimes.com
Disney Buys Playdom For Up To $763.2 Million
Walt Disney (NYSE: DIS) is making a big move into social games, with the purchase of fast-growing social game developer Playdom for up to $763.2 million. The deal includes a “total consideration” of $563.2 million, in addition to a performance-linked earn-out of up to $200 million. In a release, which is included in full after the jump, Disney says that by buying Playdom it “will strengthen its already-robust digital gaming portfolio, acquire a first-rate management team and provide consumers new ways to interact with the company on popular social networks like Facebook and MySpace.” The company hints that it will now be bringing its “characters, stories and brands” to games on social networks. By acquiring Playdom, Disney will also be getting an existing portfolio of popular social games, which includes Mobsters, the top title on MySpace (NSDQ: NWS). Over the last year, Playdom has been rapidly expanding its lineup of titles through the acquisition of eight gaming startups. It now ranks as the top social game developer on MySpace and the fourth largest on Facebook. The company, which is profitable, said late last year that its sales were near an annual run rate of $50 million.
Read More: PaidContent.org
Download the Ad Networks vs. Ad Exchanges Whitepaper
This whitepaper compares ad networks and ad exchanges from the perspective of web publishers looking to maximize their advertising revenue. It outlines the fundamentally different ways in which ad networks and ad exchanges sell publisher inventory, highlights the benefits of ad exchanges over ad networks in terms of driving up publisher revenue, and explains why an ad exchange is an essential component of every publishers’ monetization strategy.
Read More: OpenX.org
