Vibrant Media, the global leader in premium contextual advertising, today announced the launch of Vibrant Lightbox Video, connecting brands and audiences in a cinematic way that is user-initiated. A recent study, which Vibrant conducted with Dynamic Logic, found that 81% of consumers prefer online video advertising they can initiate, as opposed to the forced view of pre-roll ads.
Vibrant Lightbox Video brings together sight, sound, and motion for a relevant video experience that captures 100% share of voice for brands. It delivers contextually targeted ads in a brand-safe environment.
Lightbox aligns with Vibrant’s strategic vision to expand its existing suite of contextual solutions with innovative placements that deliver high performance for top brands and new revenue opportunities for quality publishers. Unlike pre-roll, which has a limited supply of content inventory, Lightbox can reach audiences wherever relevant content exists and the video can be triggered by users through Vibrant in-text hyperlinks in content or from Vibrant Image in-image ads. As a result, Lightbox extends the reach of video advertising beyond the confines of pre-existing video content.
Read more: PRWeb

Rocket Fuel Packages Up CPG Booster
REDWOOD SHORES, CA–(Marketwire – May 2, 2012) – Rocket Fuel, the leading provider of artificial-intelligence advertising solutions for digital marketers, today released CPG Booster, an integrated solution to help CPG brands reach the right audience, drive lift in brand metrics, boost coupon downloads, measure offline sales, and maximize campaign ROI.
Key Facts:•Rocket Fuel’s new CPG Booster helps brands optimize digital campaigns — display, video, mobile, and social — to dramatically increase sales, online and off. Already in use by some of the world’s leading CPG companies, including Pinnacle Foods, CPG Booster drives results in every phase of the consumer purchase cycle — from boosting brand awareness, to increasing consideration, to stimulating purchase.

•Based on Rocket Fuel’s flagship advertising management platform that leverages artificial intelligence and predictive data analytics technology to automatically improve campaigns in real-time, CPG Booster enables brands to easily optimize digital campaigns across channels. Campaigns use AI technology to “learn” from each other, automatically adjusting placement, creative, and targeting across billions of advertising opportunities in online display, video, mobile, and social media to reach the right audiences with the right messages at the right point in the purchase process.

•Rocket Fuel and Forrester Research CPG analyst Tracy Stokes will cohost a webinar on the digital challenges CPG marketers face and the impact CPG Booster can provide on 5/30 at 2pm ET. Register here.
Read more: marketwire

NEW YORK, April 20, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Alloy Digital, a leading creator and distributor of media and entertainment for the 12-34 demographic, today announced that it has completed the acquisition of B5Media, one of the fastest-growing female-oriented lifestyle digital publishing and media networks.
B5Media’s websites include award-winning TheGloss.com, Crushable.com, Blisstree.com, Mommyish.com, and TheGrindstone.com, featuring content focused on fashion, beauty, wellness, career, relationships, parenting and entertainment.  The B5Media network, which has distinguished itself through honest, intelligent and relatable content, reaches females 14-34 and boasts a combined audience of more than 4 million monthly unique visitors.
The B5Media sites join Alloy Digital’s top ranking network of owned-and-operated web properties, including Gurl.com, Teen.com, and Smosh.com, which is also one of the top-three most subscribed to channels on YouTube.

Alloy Digital is the largest media and advertising network of young adult targeted websites, attracting more than 70 million consumers each month and reaching over 43% of P12-34 internet users. The network holds its position as a top-10 video network delivering several hundred million streams monthly and has ranked at top of its category for more than three consecutive years running according to industry measurement leader, comScore.
Read more: GlobeNewswire
Does Everyone Hate Banner Ads?
Whether you’re in advertising or not, at some point, everyone has been a banner ad hater. From a loud auto-initiated video at the office to an inundating takeover by Taylor Lautner – one that mysteriously became the background of my iPad and then wished me a “Happy St. Patrick’s Day” – we’ve all been victims of an unwanted, unwarranted, or irrelevant banner ad. Even when I tell people what I do, and mention online banner ads, their faces typically show a mild tolerance for the topic. Or they say flat-out, “I hate pop-ups.”
EMarketer estimates spending on U.S. online advertising will grow by nearly a quarter in 2012. However, banners’ projections are below average for the category. And they’ll continue to grow at a slower pace than other forms of online advertising such as paid search, video, and mobile. While banner click-through rates continue to decline, marketers are working to find more ways to validate that banner messaging resonates with consumers, from engagement to direct response metrics.Guess what? The secret is out: blasting billions of untargeted impressions to the masses and tracking latent activity is not an effective form of advertising – at least to some of us it is.

According to comScore Ad Metrix, AT&T, which has been the leader in advertising impressions for the last several years, served nearly 106 billion impressions in the U.S. during 2011. What’s more, the number of advertisers who served over 3 billion impressions in Q4 2011 increased from 24 to 46, compared to the same quarter the previous year. But let’s put this in context. EMarketer reported 231.9 million online users (18+) in the U.S. last year. So, if every adult watched an AT&T ad an even number of times, then it would have been seen an average of 456 times during the year. Yikes! Apparently we have a ways to go in shifting the paradigm.

Read more: ClickZ

DG announced today a strategic partnership for deeper collaboration in advertising technology between MediaMind, its online unit, and 24/7 Media, WPP’s marketing technology company.
The partnership could form the basis of a global – in scope and in media – advertising delivery system that unites television advertising with digital. Here’s the score card: MediaMind was recently acquired by DG, a company that acts as the delivery system for between 80 to 90 percent of television ads, as well as syndicated content.

The DG platform takes content and creative from agencies or post-production houses and delivers it over IP network or satellite to the network operations centers of broadcasters. 24/7 Media, acquired by WPP in 2007, provides its Zeus Advertising Platform, or ZAP, to WPP clients. ZAP is an audience-management platform that lets brand advertisers track the effectiveness of individual marketing elements and how they influence conversion.

The acquisition of MediaMind by DG is significant because it brings together capabilities for traditional TV advertising and digital, according to Andrew Bloom, SVP of corporate development for DG and MediaMind. He said, “You have a company that sits at the heart of the TV ecosystem buying a digital campaign management platform that does delivery, planning, buying, optimization and reporting. A roadmap is laid out for how a single platform could begin to address TV, digital TV, digital and social media.”
Read more: CLickZ
Think Globally, Act Mobile-ly
The rise of the mobile Internet is a worldwide phenomenon with distinct local manifestations. Significant differences from country to country argue against imposing a monolithic, global approach to mobile media – tactics or practices that work well in one market may not prove optimal in others. However, there is much to gain from comparing the evolution of mobile in different markets and from cooperating and sharing information across countries. With that in mind, last year the Interactive Advertising Bureau (where I work) established the mobile committee-global.
Consisting of staffers from IABs around the world working on mobile media in their markets, this group holds calls every two months to share information and insights, provide project updates, and facilitate mobile coordination between the various international IABs. As a kickoff project, the IAB has published a global mobile anthology providing insights into different countries’ experiences with mobile media, contributed by about a dozen of the global IABs. A few key themes emerge around adoption of voice and data and the state of basic and advanced mobile media.
Read more: ClickZ