In today’s digital advertising landscape where complicated acronyms are ubiquitous, it is often hard to tell who is in control.  In my experience, there are three main players: 1) Buyers, who are looking for ways to access media as cheaply and efficiently as possible; 2) Publishers, who it could be argued, have their heads in the sand blindly providing inventory to open exchanges in hopes of increasing the value of their inventory; and 3) Vendors, who are quietly taking advantage of the spread, buying inventory from exchanges and repackaging it as seemingly quality inventory.  In addition, other vendors, seeking to arm the main players with ancillary capabilities, have created a fourth group of players and added another layer of inefficiency and complexity to the process.  In the current scenarios, none of the players are truly in control, and certainly nobody wins.

Forecasts for 2012 anticipate upwards of $83 billion will be spent on digital advertising and approximately $2 billion of that will be directed toward automated systems (Real-Time Bidding (RTB), Exchanges and Private Marketplaces). These new automated methods of purchasing media create a host of opportunities and challenges for the market at large.  Automation puts more control in the hands of the buyer, delivering undisputed efficiency in the buying process – the ability to target exactly the right audience, without waste – as well as the elimination of paperwork for placing and optimizing media buys.  

Read More: Business Insider

 4 reasons why 2012 will be the year of “Social Enlightenment”

Big data and Facebook: two behemoths that became a much bigger part of the marketer’s lexicon in 2011. Large brands, particularly, invested more time into better understanding the enormous quantities of rich social data about their consumers. And, it’s no secret that advertisers will continue to pour greater resources into social networks, both in an effort to reach existing customers as well as the vast universe of potential customers with whom they’re associated.

Case in point: eMarketer reports that global ad revenues for Facebook alone will have increased 104% to $3.8 billion and Twitter is predicted to have tripled its earnings by the year’s end.

Yet it’s apparent that brands have barely scratched the surface in terms of how they harness big data and effectively reach consumers over social media. In 2012, marketers will tap massive data sets to gain deep consumer insights that would have seemed inconceivable as recently as a year ago. Insights, that, not surprisingly, will make a tremendous and lasting impact on marketing budget allocation throughout the year and into 2013.

With all of this in mind, here are four predictions regarding the 2012 social data evolution.

Read More: SocialBeat

Google received approval from the U.S. Department of Justice Friday to close the $400 million acquisition for AdMeld, which helps publishers sell display ad inventory at the best price. The deal also strengthens Google’s position to move beyond search and focus on display advertising through strong publisher relationships and what is now known as private ad exchanges.

AdMeld will support Google’s display ad network and the DoubleClick ad exchange, but also will work with other ad exchanges operated by Microsoft and Yahoo.

Google bought publisher relationships and expertise in supporting them, according to Jerry Neumann, an early-stage investor in technology companies at Neu Venture Capital. He said Google’s publisher side team typically focuses on volume business, but AdMeld spends more time working closely with publishers.

That closeness could quiet rumblings heard from publishers suggesting that private exchanges are not working as well, as many had hoped. Neumann said to expect continued consolidation in 2012.

When the dust settles, the industry might see two or three dominant players in the space, according to Adrian Tompsett, vice president, business development at DataXu.

Read More: MediaPost

You Are Watching More Web Video Ads, and You Are Okay With That

We’re watching more Web videos than ever: More than 42 billion a month in the U.S. And we’re watching more Web video ads, too.

That seems like an obvious correlation. But, until recently, that wasn’t the case, for a couple reasons. Some Web video sites had held back a bit from shoving ads in front of users’ faces, for fear of scaring them off. And lots of folks who wanted to buy video ads couldn’t find places they wanted to place them.

This is changing now, and that means the Web video business might finally be catching up to the long-running Web video boom.

Here, for instance, is promising news for ad buyers and sellers, via FreeWheel, a start-up that helps serve and manage video ads for the likes of Turner, Vevo and Fox. FreeWheel says that last quarter, for the first time, the rate of video ad views grew faster than overall video views — 128 percent versus 97 percent:

Read More: All Things D

One year after its acquisition of online video company BBE, Specific Media surpasses past video leaders to draw the second-largest video audience in the world

IRVINE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Specific Media, a digital media company, today announced that it has surpassed historical video network leaders as well as portal and broadcast network behemoths to draw an audience second only to YouTube in size, according to the latest comScore Video Metrix data. The news coincides with the one-year anniversary of Specific Media’s entry into the video market through its acquisition of online video company BBE. Since then, Specific Media has been on an upward trajectory, growing its audience 242 percent to now reach over 80 million viewers each month.

Noting Specific Media’s continued video momentum, brands are partnering with Specific Media on their video campaigns more than ever. Nearly 25 percent of Specific Media’s clients now take advantage of the company’s ability to run integrated display and video campaigns — garnering compelling results in return.

For example, a leading telecom provider recently worked with Specific Media to run an integrated campaign that leveraged Specific Media’s ability to augment standard video campaigns. For incremental impact, display ads were used to reinforce core messages from the video creative. The smart approach paid off with a 75 percent view-through-rate for the client.

Read More: Businesswire

Enhanced advertiser-level controls and insights in DoubleClick Ad Exchange

Today, we’re happy to announce the roll-out of a new advertiser classification system that automatically scans and classifies each creative using sophisticated machine learning technologies to determine the associated advertiser or advertisers. This means that publishers can more easily and reliably block specific advertisers across all campaigns and buyers.

We focused on an algorithmic solution to this complex challenge, versus a more manual “self-declared” approach for buyers, which can often lead to inaccuracies such as misspellings or misclassifications. This quarter we are introducing this feature with coverage for the top 50 advertisers with a large expansion in advertiser coverage planned soon.

Further taking advantage of this new advertiser-level data, we’re now also able to give our publishers better insights into individual advertiser spending, CPMs and performance to help inform their overall sales efforts. Ad Exchange’s existing multi-dimensional reporting tool now includes an “advertiser” field dimension. This new field will allow publishers to slice and dice their data and see which advertisers are driving the most revenue by geography, domain, channel and a variety of other criteria.

Read More: DoubleClick

NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–24/7 Real Media, Inc., WPP’s ad technology company, announced today the availability of real-time bidding (RTB) within its proprietary ad management technology, Open AdStream®. With this new capability, 24/7 Real Media delivers the first enterprise-level technology solution that enables real-time bidding within a single ad management platform driving increased yield and superior control.

24/7 Real Media’s new RTB capabilities allow a publisher to put its inventory into a single ecosystem that dynamically allocates revenue and delivers optimal yield. This unique capability differentiates Open AdStream from other platforms in the marketplace today by allowing the publisher to filter and assign value to biddable inventory based on audience and context unlike other systems that require publishers to segment specific inventory for RTB. 24/7 Real Media’s new capabilities also give advertising clients a simple solution for bidding on premium, first-tier inventory from a trusted, accountable source.

“At 24/7 Real Media, we are always looking to innovate in ways that help our clients recognize new revenue opportunities,” said David J. Moore, Chairman, Founder and CEO at 24/7 Real Media. “By enabling publishers to open up their inventory for real-time bidding in a controlled way, we enhance the publisher’s ability to identify the actual worth of each segment of inventory on their site. Similarly, advertisers are guaranteed quality inventory from a biddable environment, where their messages are most likely to resonate with online users.”

Read More: Businesswire

ShareThis Creates New Social Measurement to Transform Media Buying Model, Starcom MediaVest Group to Test Methodology

New Index Empowers Publishers to Derive Greater Value From the Strength of Their Social Audiences

PALO ALTO, CA–(Marketwire – Nov 17, 2011) – ShareThis, the world’s largest platform for sharing and influence, today announced a new methodology to measure the social quality of sites across the Web. This new standard, the Social Quality Index, is the first measure of Web-wide sharing activity and will provide publishers and advertisers with site rankings across 27 key content categories. Sharing, as an inherently social activity, provides powerful insights on how valuable content is to consumers. As part of Starcom MediaVest Group’s ongoing partnership with ShareThis, the agency is assessing the standard’s ability to enhance their planning approach for a cross-section of their media buys.

The ShareThis standard derives a raw social traffic score by taking a combined measure of a site’s outbound share and inbound clickback traffic, and comparing it to page views. The resulting figure can then be benchmarked against the broader measure of social quality spanning the more than 1 million sites and more than 10 billion monthly sharing signals that make up the ShareThis network. This new measurement brings the value of sharing into consideration, adding more dimension to media buying models that rely more heavily on traffic and audience size. The measure:

• Favors rich content and audience interaction over broad reach
• Identifies users with higher purchase intent
• Identifies audiences who are more likely to disseminate content widely

Read More: Marketwire

Investment Comes Amid Continued Expansion of Network, Exchange and Mobile Video Solutions

SAN FRANCISCO, CA–(Marketwire – Nov 15, 2011) – BrightRoll, the leading provider of digital video advertising services, announces it closed $30 million in financing. New investor Trident Capital led the equity financing and Senior Managing Director Evangelos Simoudis will be joining the BrightRoll board. Existing investors True Ventures, Scale Venture Partners and Adams Street Partners all participated, as did Comerica Bank.

This funding comes amid significant momentum as BrightRoll continues to double revenue year over year. While demand for video advertising is increasing faster than any other online ad format — projected to rise 54 percent in 2012 by eMarketer — BrightRoll has continued to outpace the industry. The success is fueled by significant investments in technology and research, as well as expansion of the senior leadership team across key operations and strategic roles.

“As long-term adtech investors, we continually look for companies with a leadership position in important sectors of the online advertising space. After following online video advertising for some time we have decided to invest in BrightRoll, which we consider one of the market leaders. We are impressed by the company’s leadership, vision and cutting-edge technology,” said Simoudis. “Tod and the rest of the executive team have built a solid company and we look forward to helping them continue to grow the business.”

Read More: Marketwire

Conde Nast Becomes Latest Publisher to Unveil Private Ad Exchange

Admeld-Powered Exchange to Feature CPM Price Floors, Real-Time Bidding

The assault on third-party ad networks continues. Today, Conde Nast, publisher of magazines such as The New Yorker and Vanity Fair, is launching a private ad exchange to sell unsold inventory on its digital properties to a select group of advertisers. The exchange, powered by Admeld, will feature CPM price floors and real-time bidding.

“Like any publisher, we’re interested in maximizing the revenue on our inventory,” said Drew Schutte, exec VP and chief integration officer at Conde Nast. “By opening a private exchange, we’re getting all the controls we wanted while providing access to our premium advertisers who commit to Conde Nast in the most significant way.”

The minimum requirement for advertisers to get access to the exchange was that their fourth-quarter ad spend with Conde Nast this year had to be higher than last year’s. Five advertisers, including eBay and Macy’s, will have access to the exchange through the end of 2011. Mr. Schutte said Conde Nast will offer access to more advertisers in 2012.

Read More: AdAge

Tapad Taps Evidon For Mobile Opt-Outs

As the traditional online behavioral advertising industry engages the issues of consumer privacy and data control through new standardized ad icons and opt-out procedures, the best approach for a mobile privacy protection solution remains unclear.

The in-ad AdChoices icons that signal a display unit use behavioral targeting to find that consumers seem unwieldy on diminutive mobile ads. The number of app, banner and operating system platforms on which a reliable opt-out system must ork is daunting — even in the world of complex demand-side platforms and real-time targeting.

But cross-platform retargeting ad platform Tapad has partnered with Evidon to start looking for a solution.

Evidon is one of the early developers of notification and opt-out systems that comply with the requirements of the Digital Advertising Alliance program, a self-regulatory regimen led by a collation of online and offline advertising and business associations.

Read More: MediaPost

As a real-time media buying platform for video advertising, TubeMogul processes a lot of data on ad spots available for bidding in a given day across both pre-roll and display inventory. In all, these marketplaces are bigger than the New York Stock Exchange in terms of daily transactions.

While it is widely known that display volume is large due to a glut in inventory, a less known fact is that pre-roll video advertising is steadily catching up. Aggregating across the major exchanges and sell-side platforms, from Doubleclick (which includes YouTube pre-roll) to spotXchange and beyond (see a full list of inventory partners here), and controlling for inventory pushed live due to new company partnerships, TubeMogul analyzed average growth in daily volume of ad spots available in the U.S. (inset).

In the past five months, pre-roll volume grew by an average of 34.9% per month, far outpacing display advertising’s 7.8% monthly growth rate. In November, we are seeing an average of over 200 million auctions per day.

Read More: TubeMogul

The Collision of Ad Exchanges and Sell-Side Platforms – Does it Matter?

We are in the midst of industry consolidation in online advertising. Companies are merging (MediaOcean), selling (MySpace, AdMeld, interclick), and buying (Tremor Video, Federated Media) as they adjust business models to meet market demands. Companies like ad exchanges, DSPs, ad networks and sell-side platforms (SSPs), continually innovate and add new offerings to create competitive advantages.

It’s inevitable that exchanges and SSPs collide, as they are essentially in the same space. I see it firsthand when my company, an exchange, is confused as an SSP competitor, even though we are actually a close partner and do business with the majority of SSPs.

Can publishers and advertisers manage this complex environment when both sets offer similar value propositions?

For publishers, they are inundated with choices to sell digital inventory. While looking to sell the most volume at the highest value to maximize yield, publishers also seek advertisers with similar brand values that are relevant to their audience. In sales, publishers want to monetize inventory through partners, while avoiding channel conflict and maintaining direct sales control.

Read More: MediaPost

Efficient Frontier, one of the larger remaining independent digital marketing firms, is getting a little bigger. The company is buying one of the largest digital agencies in Australia, Downstream Marketing, for an undisclosed sum.

The deal gives Efficient Frontier immediate scale in Australia and the opportunity to expand in Asia as the company seeks to tap faster-growing international markets. Downstream Marketing’s clients include American Express, Avis, Vodafone and Weight Watchers. The 30-employee company is run by CEO Steve Knowles, former head of marketing for eBay in Australia.

It’s the second big deal in a year for Efficient Frontier, which acquired social-agency Context Optional in May for a reported $50 million.

Like a lot of foreign markets, digital ad spending is small but growing fast. Online advertising spending in Australia reached $2.45 billion in the 12 months ending June 30, 2011, up 20% from a year ago, and is on track to surpass $3 billion in 2012, according to the Australian Interactive Advertising Bureau. “Those aren’t small numbers and it’s another extension of our business,” said CEO David Karnstedt.

Like a lot of firms born in search, Efficient Frontier is attempting to expand beyond its original purpose into all areas of marketing where automated auctions are transforming media buying. Originally that was search and then display advertising, but has since expanded to ads on social networks such as Facebook, video and mobile.

Read More: AdAge

5 Ways to Reinvent the AOR for the Digital Age
 
I had a lively conversation over lunch last week with an agency head and his largest client. We were talking about digital media, connected consumers, and how they’re shaking up the advertising business as we’ve known it. We each saw things a bit differently, but we all agreed that the traditional ad agency business model is fatally broken and needs to change.

The client chided the agency head: “We need you to do more with less, especially when it comes to execution tasks like media planning and buying. I don’t want to pay by the head for monkey work.” Ouch. More generously, she said she valued the agency’s strategic message and program development work and hoped they could make better use of analytics to connect total client investment to results.

The agency head noted that the client’s procurement department had squeezed the AOR (agency of record) fees so tightly that it made it difficult for the agency to invest in innovation efforts – like analytics – that would enable it to become more strategic. “Procurement has drained the life blood out of agency-client relationships.” The client nodded sympathetically.

I had to chime in with, “Isn’t this why programmatic buying was invented?” I qualified my question by explaining that tech geeks like me are excited about the rise of ad exchanges, demand-side platforms (DSPs), real-time bidding (RTB), etc., but the reason these things are being adopted so quickly is that they solve a fundamental business problem for both the agency and the client. Using smart software to help do “monkey work” means – at least in theory – that the agency can reallocate staff and resources to focus on more strategic messaging and communication work that moves the brand forward.

Read More: ClickZ

Media6Degrees Becomes Ad Matchmaker Via RTB, Data

Media6Degrees will officially roll out a tool dubbed Planner next week that gives advertisers and publishers access to targeting data.

For advertisers, the report provides a list of the best publisher sites. For publishers, the report provides the same for advertisers. The tool relies on technology that creates matches based on data collected from Web page tags, or code, placed on advertisers’ and publishers’ Web sites. The data represents clusters of consumers with similar likes.

Calling the data that creates this “fingerprint” unique to a specific customer base, Andrew Pancer, COO at Media6Degrees, describes the code as a targeting pixel that gathers information. He believes the data can help publishers generate premium sales from real-time bidding insights, along with revenue generated from putting remnant into exchanges.

Publishers have been looking for ways to take advantage of RTB, but most don’t like the idea that inventory gets sold without the support of their direct sales force. These days it’s about adding “value” and “efficiencies” to inventory, which RTB allies suggest will bring to the process.

Read More: MediaPost

“Change is good.” So goes the tagline of arguably the first viral commercial – a Doritos ad featuring recently defeated governors Ann Richards of Texas and Mario Cuomo of New York talking about “change” as they munched Doritos from the newly changed and re-branded packaging.

Change has come to the $30 billion digital advertising industry. The “Mad Men” days are over (well, the suits and secretaries are gone, but you could argue drinking, ennui, and client resentment are still fixtures of Madison Avenue). In the old days, agencies used to place an ad in relatively few places. “Give me the back cover of Life magazine and a TV spot at the beginning of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom,” a media director could say, and then the agency and client could just buy the magazine and turn on the TV to see that the ad was correctly placed.

If you could teleport “Mad Men”’s media buyer Harry Crane directly from 1968 to 2011 and ask him to plan a campaign, he wouldn’t believe we now talk in terms like online ad networks, real-time bidding, inventory exchanges, data exchanges, and offline metrics studies.

Read More: Forbes

Yang eyes Yahoo buyout with private equity

(Reuters) – For the last few years, a widely circulated joke about Jerry Yang was that he had the best tan in Silicon Valley from all the time he spent on Stanford University’s golf course.

But the jests stopped about six months ago, when the Yahoo Inc co-founder and former CEO put away his golf clubs and began showing up on a daily basis at the Internet company’s headquarters in Sunnyvale, California, according to a high-ranking Yahoo executive.

Now, Yang is interested in a deal with private equity firms that would take the $20 billion company off public markets, according to people familiar with the situation.

Such a deal would involve rolling over Yang’s stake in Yahoo, which stood at 3.63 percent as of April 2. Yahoo’s other co-founder, David Filo, would likely follow Yang’s lead and roll over his stake, said other sources close to Yahoo. Filo held 5.90 percent of Yahoo’s shares as of May 11.

Shortly after firing Carol Bartz as CEO in September, Yahoo and its longtime advisers at Allen & Co and Goldman Sachs began working on a strategic review, which could include a sale of the Internet pioneer, after receiving unsolicited expressions of interest.

Read More: Reuters

Leading Real-Time Ad Targeting Company Names Peter Bardwick as CFO and Hits $50M Run Rate Milestone

REDWOOD SHORES, CA, Sep 30, 2011 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) — Rocket Fuel Inc., the leading real-time ad targeting company, today announced that it has named media and technology industry veteran Peter Bardwick as CFO. The company also announced that Dinny Devitre, former CFO of Altria and current member of the Board of Directors of Altria, SABMiller, and Western Union, has become a strategic investor in the company. For the first half of 2011, Rocket Fuel tripled six-month revenues, quadrupled gross profit compared to a year earlier, launched a UK operation, and is on a $50M annual run rate based on August revenue.

News Facts:

• Rocket Fuel is announcing these key additions at a time of rapid growth and expansion. The company grew its headcount by 2.5 times in the last six months, adding nearly 40 employees. According to LinkedIn, Rocket Fuel is the fastest-growing digital advertising
  technology company in the U.S. — and the company continues to sign new leading brands and agencies each month.
• Bardwick is an IPO-ready CFO with a proven track record directing the financial strategies of high-growth technology and media companies. He was instrumental in taking CBS Marketwatch public and has supported over $10B in transactions. He joins Rocket Fuel from online brokerage Zecco, where he served as CFO. A former investment banker, he also has a wealth of hands-on operational experience, having served as CEO, CFO, COO and board member of a number of leading Internet, media, and data companies.

Read More: Marketwire

DoubleVerify Report Shows That Media Verification Improves Compliance for Online Advertising Industry

Trust Index Recognizes Best Performing Ad Companies — Ad Networks Are Proving to Be Brand Safe, and Advertisers Are Finding Value in Top Platforms

NEW YORK, NY–(Marketwire – Sep 30, 2011) – DoubleVerify, the pioneer and worldwide leader in online media verification and compliance, today published its 1H 2011 Trust Index. The report found a significant reduction of non-compliance among the industry’s best-performing ad networks and platforms. The findings illustrate that advertisers and networks are continuing to standardize their brand protection and compliance practices, ensuring their online media spend brings the highest return on investment. The worst-performing online advertising companies continued to demonstrate inconsistency in their ability to comply with advertisers’ preferences. According to the report, the most compliant ad networks from January to June 2011 were (alphabetically): AudienceScience, Casale Media, Dedicated Media, Epic Marketplace, interclick, Microsoft Media Network, Specific Media, Spectrum, a Centro product, Undertone, and Yahoo! Network Plus. Advertising platforms that were most compliant include (alphabetically): DataXu, Invite Media, The MIG’s Zeus Advertising Platform.

As advertisers have increasingly demanded verification to be included with third-party buys from ad networks, exchanges, DSPs and agency trading desks, the Trust Index has provided advertisers with in-depth data about partner compliance and brand safety trends in online advertising. Other key findings from the report showed:

• In the first half of 2011, the non-compliance rates for ad networks were at their lowest ever, since 18 months ago. The best-performing networks had an average non-compliance rate of 0.6 percent, but the bottom tier’s rate was 26 percent (compared to 2 percent and 35 percent respectively in 2H 2010).
• The most compliant ad platforms (DSPs and agency trading desks) maintained an average non-compliance incident rate of 4 percent, and the lower tier platforms decreased their average non-compliance rate to 20 percent — showing that ad exchanges can provide great value when verification is applied.

Read More: Marketwire

Ad Execs: More Than Half Our Display Ads Now Bought Via Nets, DSPs, Exchanges

More than half of all online display advertising is now bought via an ad network, exchange or DSP (demand-side platform), according to findings of an Econsultancy survey of advertisers, agencies, publishers and their reps released Friday by Rubicon Project.

By platform, the study found that ad networks still account for the majority of online display advertising buys, representing 55% of the inventory, according to the respondents, followed by DSPs (32%) and exchanges (30%). Those numbers add up to more than 100, because the purchasing platforms are not mutually exclusive and are frequently used together.

The study found that the role of DSPs is much greater in North America than in Europe. Half of all online display ad buys placed by American companies are now made through a DSP vs. only 27% in Europe.

The study also found that almost half (46%) of online display advertising media plans now include ad networks, up from 32% in 2009.

Read More: MediaPost