Rubicon Adds Two Key Hires, Takes Aim At Rivals
Ad technology firm The Rubicon Project on Monday announced two key hires in Ben Trenda as vice president of U.S. Demand, and Eric Matza as director of product marketing. Formerly VP of global partnerships at AOL, Trenda is tasked with growing relationships with ad networks, and other third-party sales channel partners. Meanwhile, Matza — former vice president of product management at email services provider Experian — will be responsible for bringing ad technology and data products to market. Taking direct aim at Google’s DoubleClick ad platform, The Rubicon Project recently hired Allen & Company to help finance expansion and possible acquisitions. The company also issued a “manifesto,” in which it criticized the current leaders in the ad-server technology market [read: DoubleClick] for failing to measure up to its own “publisher-centric” standards. Falling in line, Trenda took the opportunity on Monday to hammer home the idea. “The company does not sell directly to advertisers, so unlike other players in the digital advertising marketplace it doesn’t compete with its publisher clients or channel partners, and it doesn’t black box deals — all parties can safely and profitably get the transparency they want and need,” he said. As vice president of global partnerships at AOL, Trenda worked on agency partnerships, global programs and Latin America. Prior to AOL, Trenda led a West Coast sales team at Advertising.com. He has also held roles in the Strategic Alliances group at Yahoo and before that, in sales at Overture and GoTo.
Read More: MediaPost
5 Reasons Digital Agencies Will Fail
I’m not your typical agency exec. In fact, I never stepped foot into an agency until I started my own. I earned my BA/MA in anthropology and sociology, worked for the original social networks (associations) in the late 80s, and then jumped into the interactive publishing business in 1993. So, perhaps my view on what will make or break today’s digital agency is a bit skewed. Or perhaps it is simply unclouded. In a nutshell, there is far too much focus today on the technology (the “digital”) and not enough focus on providing a communications service (the “agency”). And that’s a dangerous land for any agency to live in, whether it is pure-play search, social, or a true full-service digital shop. Let’s face it: We are not the technologists — we have Microsoft, Apple, and MIT Media Lab for that. But we are the communicators and should be focused on what we do best — the creation and delivery of communication that connects with an audience on a rational and emotional level, ultimately driving revenue for a client. With that in mind, here are the top five reasons certain digital agencies will fail within the next five years.
Read More: iMediaConnection
AdMob’s iPad SDK Coming In A Few Weeks
Mobile ad network AdMob — which is in the process of being purchased by Google — tells us that its first advertising product for Apple’s new iPad should be available to developers in the next two weeks. AdMob marketing boss Jason Spero tells us that his company is currently working on figuring out how iPad ads will look like and how they’ll work. Spero thinks the ads’ appearance may more closely resemble online ads than the small mobile ads that AdMob offers for the iPhone and other mobile phones. But he thinks the back-end of iPad ads may more closely resemble mobile ads than online ads. (He should hope so — he’d much rather have AdMob running iPad ads than Web-focused ad networks like Yahoo or AOL.) Why would publishers give their iPad inventory to a mobile ad network when they could probably get more money from an online ad network? One reason for this is that the iPad does not support Adobe’s Flash plugin, which most Web ad networks use for multimedia ads. So publishers can’t just copy and paste their Web ad code into their iPad apps. Another is that the “after-the-click” activity on the iPad may be different than it is for Web sites, and mobile ad networks seem to understand this better. On the Web, after users click most ads, it just takes them to another Web site. On an iPhone, it could take them to a map, the App Store, a mini-site, somewhere in iTunes, etc. It seems mobile ad networks may be able to offer a better experience here.
Read More: SFGate
