in.media » ad networks http://indotmedia.com Just another WordPress weblog Thu, 02 Feb 2012 20:13:28 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 News of the Day http://indotmedia.com/news/news-of-the-day-423/ http://indotmedia.com/news/news-of-the-day-423/#comments Thu, 02 Feb 2012 20:13:28 +0000 Adam Glantz http://indotmedia.com/?p=1534 Jumptap: Android, Apps Up Traffic Rates

While both iPad and Kindle traffic increased over the holidays, Kindle jumped from holding a 10% share of tablet traffic at the beginning of December to a 30% share at the start of 2012. At the same time, the iPad’s share over December shrank from 59% to 44%, while that of Android and other tablet platforms dropped five points to 26%, noted mobile ad network Jumptap.

Thanks to the proliferation of Android-powered smartphones, however, the Google platform strengthened its position as the dominant mobile operating system overall on Jumptap’s network, which reaches 95 million U.S. mobile users per month and 142 million worldwide.

Android’s traffic share jumped 21 percentage points in 2011 to finish the year with a commanding 59% piece of the market. That gain came at the expense of both Apple’s iOS, which dropped seven percentage points to 22%, and BlackBerry, which fell 11 percentage points to 15.7%.

Throughout 2011, however, iOS outpaced Android in ad click-through rates. For its year-end report, Jumptap compared click rates among the latest three versions of the rival platforms in wide use. While the rate for iOS has improved with each successive release, the opposite is true for Android. Apple’s new iOS 5 release had a click rate of .91% compared to .74% for iOS 4 and .61% for iOS 3.

By contrast, Android 3.0 had a rate of .59%, down from .69% for Android 2.0 and .75% for Android 1.0. The study didn’t evaluate click rates for Android 4.0, the latest version of Google’s mobile platform, also known as Ice Cream Sandwich.

The report also shed light on another long-running mobile rivalry — apps versus the mobile Web. While many predict HTML5 adoption will ultimately make the mobile Web triumphant, the Jumptap data showed apps actually narrowed the gap in traffic share last year. The two formats ended 2011 in a virtual dead heat after the mobile Web began the year with a 55.1% to 44.9% advantage.

Jumptap says marketers don’t necessarily have to have either a mobile site or app to advertise in mobile, however. Roughly one-third of its advertisers don’t have either, but are using mobile landing pages in their ad campaigns. Of course, if an ad is meant to drive traffic to a company’s own site, it’s best to have one optimized for mobile devices.

The study also looked at the effectiveness of data-targeted campaigns in the fourth quarter. The company works with third-party data providers, including Acxiom, TargusInfo, Datalogix and Polk, to provide information about consumer demographics from purchase history to income level to what cars people own.

Read more: MediaPost

Time Matters: The Role Of Real-Time Bidding for Publishers

Perhaps no single technology has as much potential to disrupt the advertising ecosystem of online publishing as Real Time Bidding (RTB). For an imperfect but simple 30 second visual primer on what RTB does, click here.  There is a shift happening and the surge of inventory that flooded onto exchanges in 2011 attests to it. As Demand Side Platforms (DSP) became ever more an executional tool of choice for many advertisers, the supply side has been pushed to follow suit and make their inventory available through marketplaces. Thus, the tried and true world of direct and network sales is threatened with disruption and the potential commoditization of inventory.

For small publishers, the advent of real-time, exchange-based marketplaces has been nothing but good. In many cases, it allows their impressions to compete on a level playing field against much more established titles, fueled by the individualized audience and interest information readily available through online data providers.

Large publishers, however, should be concerned that the growing importance and availability of targeting data on RTB platforms separates the importance of context from determining the value of the impression. In other words, if you can know what a person wants specifically, it matters less where you serve the display ad because you do not have to infer quite so much about them from where they are.

The impression transparency inherent in RTB environments causes some in the industry to fear that their use will cause CPMs to begin a “Race to the Bottom” as inventory becomes commoditized. Others think it a natural progression towards efficiency, especially for impressions that will always generate less demand such as those for remnant inventory. The Rubicon Project recently published a study that concurs with the latter and this study from Ignition One offers evidence for the former.  Obviously, the jury is still out.

So, if you represent a large publisher, what are you to think about the potential role of RTB in your organization? Is it friend or foe? There is no “one size fits all” answer to this question, but I do have some considered advice on an approach to find your own:

Read more: AdExchanger

]]> http://indotmedia.com/news/news-of-the-day-423/feed/ 0 News of the Day http://indotmedia.com/news/news-of-the-day-421/ http://indotmedia.com/news/news-of-the-day-421/#comments Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:53:02 +0000 Pramod Tummala http://indotmedia.com/?p=1528 Fox News Is Full Steam Ahead With Audience Buying And RTB Offerings Says VP Steinberg

Jeremy Steinberg is VP, Digital Sales & Business Development, FOX News Network.
Late last week, Steinberg offered an update to AdExchanger on his company’s efforts in the online audience buying space.
AdExchanger.com: Last May, you discussed with AdExchanger.com some of the things you were doing on the product side to address audience buying.  How has it worked out?
JS:  Really well, and – within the next couple months – we’re going to be rolling out a fully-revamped audience insights suite of services for our advertisers, which will provide enhanced targeting opportunities for audience, as well as context.
It’s equally important to marry the two together and is a key differentiator for us. This is a big investment in our business and in our future.
We’ve known for quite some time that we have by far the most engaged audience in news, and the numbers in comScore really speak to that.  We’re investing in new technology because we want to prove it to our advertisers that our advertising works.
We’re doubling down and offering robust segmentation of our audience so advertisers can dive in deep to reach their targets, or, even better, to find out who their ads are performing best against, and then optimizing accordingly.
Will the focus of this product be on PC-based display?  Mobile, video?
It’s focused on [PC-based] display to start. We’re certainly going to explore expanding it to other channels down the road.
Any trends you can share that you’re seeing with display today in your business?
There’s a lot going on in this area. There’s the direct, and indirect.
On the direct side, we’re seeing increased demand from the prior year, and one of the reasons for that increased demand is my team is out in the marketplace proving the value of our inventory. We’re doing that through our investments in custom solutions, and in ad technology. We’re talking about audience targeting about real‑time bidding. That’s something that has been of keen interest to our clients.
In addition, my national team is out there talking about how we can activate campaigns socially. We believe all of these solutions are differentiating us from the competition and the general Web. That’s why we’re seeing great demand.
Read more: AdExchanger
Videology: Connected TV Ads Have Great Completion Rates — And High Prices To Match

Given the nascent quality of connected TV advertising, it’s hard to really offer a substantive comparison between the value of such placements versus the comparatively more established PC-based video and mobile ads.
But you have to start someplace and Videology (the video ad network recently formerly known as TidalTV) has a few stats that appear to offer further evidence of the complementary quality of connected TV media buys as part of a larger video ad strategy.
Since there’s currently no uniform way to “click” a connected TV video ad the company’s study (pdf) discusses the value of video completion rates (VCR) for ads seen on wifi-enabled televisions.
The number that jumps out about connected TV ads is that it has a 110 percent video completion rate over regular online video. As if that we’re special enough, mobile video’s completion rates are around 10 percent lower than ones seen on PC-based web video ads. And the prices for ads across those devices tend to reflect that.
As Videology notes, the divergence in completion rates between mobile and connected TVs make obvious sense: mobile phone users tend to be on the go and given 3G buffering, people give up on a video that doesn’t load in a matter of seconds. With wifi-TVs, users probably are planted on their couch and home connections tend to be infinitely better than access a user can get on a street or a moving bus/train.
For an advertiser looking at click-through rates, mobile is still a very good addition, as smartphones deliver a 350 percent CTR increase for an average price increase of 30 percent. That’s a very strong, over 10 to 1 ratio.
If  ”engagement” like video completion is the main aim, connected TV delivers improved completed views at a ratio of 2 to 1 compared to cost increases, which is roughly 54 percent higher than online video prices.
But do these improved rates equal the cost required to reach them?
Videology just looked at eight campaigns — it doesn’t identify them further — and found that using multiple screens showed brand lift
increases between 70- and 300 percent, while the online video campaigns showed brand lift in the 15- to 130 percent range.
On average, multiple screen campaigns using  online video, mobile and connected television screens showed average brand recall rise 9 times higher than those relying solely on online video.
Read more: TVExchanger
]]> http://indotmedia.com/news/news-of-the-day-421/feed/ 0 News of the Day http://indotmedia.com/news/news-of-the-day-419/ http://indotmedia.com/news/news-of-the-day-419/#comments Thu, 26 Jan 2012 17:39:23 +0000 Jeff Kuntz http://indotmedia.com/?p=1523 Videology Measures Offline Segments Of In-Stream Videos

Can you accurately measure the impact of online video advertising on offline consumer purchases?
Videology is going to try. The ad platform, formerly known as TidalTV, is entering into dual partnerships with database marketing and behavioral targeting services provider I-Behavior and Kantar Shopcom, which runs a database containing information from 231 million consumers across 270 CPG, retail, travel, lodging and services categories.
The goal is to help marketers reach users based on their demographic makeup or in-store activity, explained Kevin Haley, Chief Scientist at Videology.
“What advertisers really want to know is if their advertising moves soap off the shelves,” says Haley. He says the ability to provide advertisers with ongoing, offline ROI measurement should have a “significant impact on advertising strategies within the digital video space.”
With the three-way partnership, advertisers can target offline purchase-based segments across Videology’s in-stream video network of more than 80 million consumers, Haley promised.
Meanwhile, given the volume of data that will result from the enterprise, Haley sees an opportunity for analysis of purchase behavior at the brand level, including increases in sales volume, frequency of purchase and retail penetration.
Launched in late 2007, Videology was known to the world as TidalTV until earlier this month. The name change was meant to convey a more video- and technology-heavy image.
Read more: MediaPost
Publishers urged to take the plunge into private exchanges

Future Publishing and The Guardian have encouraged companies to embrace private exchanges while there is still time to learn.
Agencies and publishers have downplayed calls this week for more industry education (nma.co.uk 19 January 2011) to reduce nervousness around private ad exchanges.
Marco Bertozzi, MD of research firm VivaKi Nerve Center (right), said, “I don’t buy the nervousness anymore. A year ago not many publishers were as involved as they are now. Most didn’t trust it. Nine months later it’s a very different story. If you can get the FT to work with you in a private marketplace you can get anyone.”
He reckons almost every publisher is “dipping their toe in the water”, with feedback showing that they are seeing better returns through the exchanges than selling to ad networks.
He points to The Guardian, Future and Associated as some of the early adopters.
The Guardian began trading premium performance inventory via a private exchange with Rubicon Project in October 2011, but it first experimented with exchange trading in 2008, which it scaled in 2009 before developing new UK inventory to trade programmatically in March 2010.
Tim Gentry, Guardian News & Media’s commercial effectiveness manager, said the early move was driven in part by being able to gain experience while volumes were relatively low and the market was relatively immature. “The short-term aim for us is to grow our share of market by capturing trading-desk spend that was previously going to networks,” he said. “Longer term, we are aiming to gain the skills and experience that will make us one of the best premium publishers.”
Read more: newmediaage
]]> http://indotmedia.com/news/news-of-the-day-419/feed/ 0 News of the Day http://indotmedia.com/news/news-of-the-day-417/ http://indotmedia.com/news/news-of-the-day-417/#comments Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:01:28 +0000 Adam Glantz http://indotmedia.com/?p=1519 The Modern Agency

Ad agencies are engaged in a wrenching transition, driven by technological change. The very underpinnings of the agency business are shifting, as the business confronts a variety and challenges in digital media. Digiday is embarking on a series of video interviews with agency leaders to discuss how the modern agency is built. There’s little doubt there is not an easy blueprint for the “agency of the future.” There will be new agencies, evolved “traditional agencies,” and even new hybrid marketing companies that are part agency, part tech and part media.
The series is made possible through the sponsorship of Videology, the video advertising platform until recently known as TidalTV. To introduce the series, I sat down with Videology CEO Scott Ferber to get his view on how technology is shifting the agency’s role. Ferber, who founded Advertising.com and sold it to AOL for $435 million in 2004, believes that agencies will evolve to become technology enablers, stitching together pieces of tech created by others. He’s mostly down on the idea of agencies owning technology. See the full interview below.
Read more: DIGIDAY
Paid, Owned, and Earned Content…Ineffective Without Optimization

If content is the crux of all our marketing efforts, we should be learning, adjusting, and optimizing. If not, it will lead to a negative consumer experience.
One of my first columns for ClickZ was the importance of content and its role as a tangible media format. In the last few months, content continues to be a hot topic. The volume of content being distributed is increasing and the way an advertiser collects and uses data is changing. In our everyday professional lives, it’s easy to “set it and forget it,” but this can counter all the hard work put into content development and distribution.
So where to begin? The most common way a user will reach your content is through a basic search, meaning that search engine optimization is vital to your content planning approach. The optimization plan will need to take into account how all the content is distributed, be it via web, video, mobile, tablet, and social posts.
With media planning in its traditional sense merging with these specialized fields (search, social, mobile, experiential, and video), it’s important to make cross-channel content optimization central to any strategy. To do so (and remain sane), here are a few guidelines:
1.What are consumers already telling me? Social behavior, social trends, and search queries represent some of the best data for determining content needs and optimizations across all channels. It’s easily accessible to advertisers and beneficial when tied to syndicated and longer term research.
Example: Use data from Twitter, Facebook, or Google. The consumer is already being vocal, and as an advertiser you have access, so mine this data to improve content development and inform optimizations for existing content.
2.Is my content relevant to the experience? What is your consumer seeking? Take the research from step one and apply it to their experience, get a basic understanding of the consumer’s needs in a specific environment, and make sure your content answers their question.
Read more: ClickZ
]]> http://indotmedia.com/news/news-of-the-day-417/feed/ 0 News of the Day http://indotmedia.com/news/news-of-the-day-416/ http://indotmedia.com/news/news-of-the-day-416/#comments Mon, 23 Jan 2012 20:09:19 +0000 Pramod Tummala http://indotmedia.com/?p=1517 Tremor Video Buys TubeMogul’s InPlay To Complement VideoHub Analytics

Tremor Video’s acquisition of TubeMogul’s InPlay ad analytics tool helps both companies respectively sharpen their value to a fast-evolving video marketplace. The deal, terms of which were undisclosed, gives Tremor yet another layer of insight into publishers’ ad management programs. At the same time, TubeMogul can be seen as more fully ensconced on the demand end of the digital video ad sales equation and is no longer trying to play both sides of the fence.
Analytics is the difference: Tremor plans to integrate InPlay, which TubeMogul created about three years ago to attract more publisher business, with VideoHub, its end-to-end video ad sales platform. While VideoHub serves both ad sellers and buyers, Tremor is largely aimed at working with publishers. At a time when video ad spending remains the fastest growing category of ad spending — eMarketer said last month that video ad dollars will rise 40 percent in 2012 to $3.1 billion — the providers of video ad services are primarily differentiated by their analytics and tech stack.
Read more: TVexchanger.com
Video Ads Becoming More Interactive, Generating Better Results According to PointRoll’s Video Benchmark Study

PointRoll, a Gannett Company and the leading provider of digital marketing technology, today announced the findings of its recent Video Benchmark Study and revealed a robust new set of in-stream video formats. The study conducted concluded that 78% of viewers completed 100% of interactive in-stream ads, compared to 69% who completed 100% in-stream ads without interactive elements. Additionally, interaction rates, where users specifically took an action within the ad, for in-stream video ads were more than three times higher than that of in-banner video ads.
PointRoll’s Video Benchmark Study, which compared campaign results from April–December 2011, also revealed some interesting nuances across vertical ad categories. Among those that were top performing across interactive in-stream ads were automotive, entertainment and non-profit organizations. Consumer electronics manufacturers, consumer goods manufacturers and telecommunications companies were among the top three vertical categories for in-stream video ads that did not include interactivity.
Read more: PRWeb.com
]]> http://indotmedia.com/news/news-of-the-day-416/feed/ 0 News of the Day http://indotmedia.com/news/news-of-the-day-415/ http://indotmedia.com/news/news-of-the-day-415/#comments Fri, 20 Jan 2012 17:25:49 +0000 Jeff Kuntz http://indotmedia.com/?p=1515 Vibrant Acquires Image Space Media

Vibrant Media, the global leader in premium contextual advertising, announces today the acquisition of Image Space Media (ISM), the in-image advertising technology company.
The deal is part of Vibrant Media’s mission under new CEO, Cella Irvine, to expand upon its existing suite of contextual solutions with innovative placements that deliver high performance for top brands, new revenue opportunities for quality publishers, and relevant experiences for consumers. With several key innovations in 2011, Vibrant Media’s contextual platform (VXPlatform) now includes a suite of advertising products – Vibrant Image, Vibrant Video, Vibrant Bar, and Vibrant Display – in addition to Vibrant In-Text.
“Traditional ad models were brought online through pre-roll and display, but we create unique media placements that are designed for the interactive nature of the internet and deliver truly relevant ad experiences to users,” says Cella Irvine, CEO of Vibrant Media. “Roughly 30% of our publishers’ content is images and they now play an important role in our strategy to deliver new media placements.”
“ISM shares Vibrant’s vision to create industry-leading in-image contextual advertising,” says Kevin Tung, Co-founder and COO of Image Space Media. “By combining our image technology with Vibrant’s unmatched scale, robust contextual platform, and incredible sales force, we’ve built a significant offering. Vibrant is a company unafraid to invent – we love everything about that.”
Read more: Vibrant Media
The Role Of Real-Time Bidding For Marketers

“Ad Agents” is a column written by the agency-side of the digital media community.
Joseph Leon, Managing Director EMEA of Essence Digital, a global, digital marketing agency based in London and New York.
In 2011, the biggest hype, the loudest buzz and the best conversation starter in digital media was without doubt RTB – (Real Time Bidding). Big words, such as revolutionary, seismic and rocket science, were bandied around and based on remarkably similar sales pitches from several leading RTB players, you’d be hard pressed not to believe that half of NASA’s scientists had jumped ship to join the digital revolution.
At its most basic, RTB is a mechanism for trading ad space in real time – sellers can essentially hold an auction for each impression and advertisers can assess, price and bid for it dynamically.
The main benefits for advertisers are indisputably cost efficiency and targeting – you pay the right price for what you need and discard what you don’t. But in practice, what does this mean for advertisers?
Read more: AdExchanger.com
]]> http://indotmedia.com/news/news-of-the-day-415/feed/ 0 News of the Day http://indotmedia.com/news/news-of-the-day-414/ http://indotmedia.com/news/news-of-the-day-414/#comments Thu, 19 Jan 2012 19:08:19 +0000 Amanda Maffey http://indotmedia.com/?p=1513 Startup Unified Unveils Social Marketing Platform for Enterprise

Powerful though it may be, for marketers, big data can be a big headache.
For brands that want to reach audiences across the growing landscape of social platforms, executing effective campaigns can mean managing different strategies, different planning and buying processes, and different analytics tools. Crunching data across multiple social platforms and reporting performance can become a labor-intensive operation for a lucky (or not so lucky) few.
Unified, which launches today, aims to streamline the entire cycle of marketing across major social ecosystems with technolog intended for enterprise clients. Calling it the industry’s first “Social Operating Platform,” the company says it will help global brands and agencies simultaneously execute campaigns on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, StumbleUpon and other social services with a patent-pending tool that manages each step of the process, from planning, buying and optimizing campaigns to analyzing earned media and determining returns on the investment.
“There’s a definite shift happening from traditional buying to real enterprise-class, big data management in the advertising space,” Unified CEO Sheldon Owen told Adweek.
Read more: ADWEEK
Break Accelerates Social, Boosts CPVs With Pass-Along Content

Break Media, the big digital video advertising network, says it has started a new video technology designed around the growing cost-per-view ad-buying metric.
The new technology, called Social Video Accelerator, combines guaranteed video distribution including pass-along advertiser content. It will run across the Break network — including Break.com, the Web’s big comedy video site, which now reaches more than 120 million unique viewers each month.
While cost per view (CPV) ad models are growing, less than half of video publishers are offering it, says Break Media.
Read more: MediaPost
]]> http://indotmedia.com/news/news-of-the-day-414/feed/ 0 News of the Day http://indotmedia.com/news/news-of-the-day-413/ http://indotmedia.com/news/news-of-the-day-413/#comments Wed, 18 Jan 2012 19:59:31 +0000 Adam Glantz http://indotmedia.com/?p=1510 BrightRoll Surpasses 100 Million Monthly Unique U.S. Video Viewers

SAN FRANCISCO, CA–(Marketwire – Jan 17, 2012) – BrightRoll, the leading provider of digital video advertising services, today announced that it became the first ad network to exceed 100 million unique viewers, according to the most recent comScore Video Metrix in December 2011. According to the data, BrightRoll reached more than 110.4 million unique U.S. viewers, with an average of 7.9 videos per viewer. Additionally, the company’s data shows it managed 3.5 billion video ads in December, representing one out of every two U.S. video ads.
“We are thrilled to be the first video network to surpass the 100 million unique viewers milestone,” said Tod Sacerdoti, BrightRoll CEO. “We believe this continued dominance by video networks versus legacy broadcast publishers maps directly to the movement of ad dollars from broadcasters to aggregators.”
Top 10 Video Advertising Properties by Unique Viewers
BrightRoll is ranked as the top online video advertising property in December 2011 with 110.4 million video ad-exposed unique viewers, while Specific Media ranked second with 81.8 million. Adap.tv was third with 81.1 million viewers, followed by Videology with 56.6 million viewers and Tremor Video with 56 million viewers. More than 7 billion video ads ran in December, averaging 19.3 minutes per viewer.
Read more: Marketwire
Savvy Marketers Utilize Digital Data To Optimize Ad Targeting

Among marketers, what separates the good from the bad? Nothing less than effective real-time audience measurement, according to new research from the Interactive Advertising Bureau, in partnership with strategic consulting firm Winterberry Group.
Smart marketers, they found, are already shifting from traditional data focused on products, channels and campaigns to the real-time identification and optimization of consumer audiences.
The long-established use of personally identifiable information — like names and postal addresses — for targeted marketing purposes is increasingly being complemented by aggregated and “anonymyzed” digital data.
The point is to improve ad effectiveness through better targeting as well as efficiency through more economical media buying, according to Patrick Dolan, EVP/COO at the IAB.
“The plethora of new data sources, targeted technologies and advertising delivery platforms enable marketers to amass more intelligence from varied sources,” said Dolan. “This promising resource can only bear fruit if marketers can take that raw data and harness it effectively, going beyond traditional usage.”
Read More: MediaPost
]]> http://indotmedia.com/news/news-of-the-day-413/feed/ 0 News of the Day http://indotmedia.com/news/news-of-the-day-408/ http://indotmedia.com/news/news-of-the-day-408/#comments Wed, 11 Jan 2012 15:14:49 +0000 Amanda Maffey http://indotmedia.com/?p=1491 TidalTV Becomes Videology, Pushes Tech

Seeking better market position, online video ad platform TidalTV is rebranding as Videology and seeking a more technology-heavy image.

“To be honest, TidalTV is not a good name,” confessed Scott Ferber, chairman and CEO of Videology. The new name “is more reflective of our core offering — a screen-agnostic, data-driven approach to video advertising, encompassing both supply-side monetization and demand-side ROI,” he said.

Also this week, Videology is launching a sell-side platform to complement the capabilities currently offered to media agencies. AOL Video has signed on as the first participating publisher.

Launched in late 2007, the Baltimore-based company built its reputation offering video advertising, optimization and yield management services to clients, while its AdOSTM technology uses relevant data to improve ad delivery.

Read More: MediaPost

Mapping the Future of Media Buying

I had the opportunity to sit down with Ben Fox, EVP of Adconion Media Group’s Magnify Platform, a few weeks back and we shared a long discussion on the future of many things digital. For the past year, Fox has been on the road sharing his thoughts on how digital media buying and selling infrastructure is evolving, not only in how money is being earmarked, but the impact of digital advertising on consumers and brands.

While there were a number of great takeaways from our conversation, Fox’s overall perspective on the digital media buying process is invaluable. At the center of media buying today is that most advertisers need a combination of unique ad types, analytics, and targeting tools to get the job done. In short, it’s nearly impossible to create a digital media buying “recipe” because each advertiser has different ingredients.

During the past decade the process used to get digital ads in front of target audiences has gone through a phenomenal evolution. The process of buying media directly from publishers has given way to automated systems that tie advertisers together with available inventory. Not only are today’s ad ops faster, but generally more efficient, measurable, and effective.

Read More: ClickZ

Adconion Media Group Bolsters Financial Prowess by Adding FD All-Star Robert Dighero to the Board

SANTA MONICA, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The Adconion Media Group announced today that Robert Dighero will join its board of directors, effective immediately. Robert will become a non-executive director and chairman of Adconion’s Audit Committee.

Robert Dighero has over 20 years operational experience, the last 15 working with internet companies. He is a partner at Passion Capital and White Bear Yard and an active investor across Europe focused on early stage e-commerce, payment and marketplace businesses. He has led several investment syndicates and taken on a number of board and advisory roles.

Robert was CFO of QXL ricardo plc from 1998 to 2008, overseeing development from start-up to the company’s sale to Naspers. He managed a wide range of corporate actions including the company’s dual listing IPO, consolidating the European online auction market with nine acquisitions, the largest over $1 billion, and launching an MBO. The QXL Group was the best performing share on the London Main Market in both 2004 and 2005 and in the All-Share in 2007 with an over 35,000% share price increase in 5 years. Robert was short-listed for CBI / Real FD, “FD of the Year” in 2007 and the following year negotiated the £1 billion sale of QXL via a public take-over offer. Prior to QXL, Robert was CFO of AOL UK and previous roles included that of M&A at Bertelsmann USA and at Verulam Investments. Robert started his career at Bain & Co, having left Cambridge with a First class degree and a post-graduate degree in Engineering. He has an MBA from Insead.

Read More: Businesswire

]]> http://indotmedia.com/news/news-of-the-day-408/feed/ 0 News of the Day http://indotmedia.com/news/news-of-the-day-403/ http://indotmedia.com/news/news-of-the-day-403/#comments Tue, 03 Jan 2012 17:23:59 +0000 Amanda Maffey http://indotmedia.com/?p=1477 Banner future for digital advertising
Online spending has leapfrogged every traditional medium except television, and that gap is narrowing

When Sprint Nextel this month moved its $1.1 billion account from San Francisco-based Goodby, Silverstein & Partners to Digitas Chicago and Leo Burnett, it was one of the biggest wins in Chicago advertising history.

Beyond the 300 or so new jobs the account will bring to the city, with online-focused Digitas named lead agency, it also represents what may be the tipping point for digital advertising, which has rapidly transformed from a fringe buy to an integral part of the media mix.

“I think it’s a validation of the next evolution of this industry,” said Tony Weisman, president of Digitas Chicago.

Once the insular domain of direct marketers and tech-savvy programmers, online advertising accounted for just a fraction of total media spending in the U.S. at the start of the new millennium. Since then, the medium has leapfrogged every traditional advertising vehicle except television, and it is closing ground fast.

“The Internet has become as important as television to advertisers,” said David Hallerman, principal analyst at eMarketer, a New York-based research firm. “This is where people spend a large share of their time. Marketers chase the audience.”

Read More: Chicago Tribune

Akamai is acquiring Cotendo for $286M

App delivery company Akamai is acquiring app delivery network Contendo, the companies jointly announced today.

Akamai will purchase all of Cotendo’s outstanding equity for a net cash payment of $268 million.

Pending regulatory approval and other typical acquisition conditions, the deal is expected to close sometime over the next six months.

In a release today, the companies stated that they expect their combined technologies, which each have a lot to do with safely and securely delivering content and application packages in the cloud, to accelerate innovation in cloud and mobile services.

“As we look to accelerate growth across the dynamic landscapes of cloud and mobile optimization, we are excited to be joining forces with Cotendo,” said Akamai president and CEO Paul Sagan in a statement.

“Cotendo’s technology, partnerships and people are a strong complement to Akamai. Together, we believe there is tremendous opportunity for our combined technologies as enterprises embrace the move to the cloud and seek solutions for an increasingly mobile world.”

Read More: VentureBeat

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