Economy Fuels Ad Shifts From Traditional To Online
Advertising on social networks soared during the first half of the year, jumping 20% in the U.S. and 12% in the U.K., according to PwC. Those rates were above what the firm projected and are “fueling” the collective Internet advertising market, which is in one sense benefiting from the struggling economy.
Search remains strong as does mobile, with the spread of tablets and smartphones. “It appears that the weakening economy is accelerating the shift of advertising from traditional media to the Internet,” PwC wrote in an update of its sprawling media outlook for 2011-15.
Social networking is also playing a role in a buoyed TV market, with it “stimulating interest, and live viewing, in shows.”
PwC said its projections across the ad market for 2011 remain on the “conservative side” and below others. Agency Zenith, for example, now forecasts a 2.5% increase in North America overall, while PwC projects 2.2% growth.
Globally, the figures are 3.6% and 3.1%, respectively.
There are three regions, however, where the two firms diverge considerably. In Asia-Pacific, Zenith calls for 5.5% growth, while PwC is at 2.4%. PwC says strength in China and India is being dragged down by a slower Japan.
Read More: MediaPost
Google, Private-Equity Firms Mull Bid For Yahoo
Google Inc. has talked to at least two private-equity firms about potentially helping them finance a deal to buy Yahoo Inc.’s core business, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Google and prospective partners have held early-stage discussions but haven’t put together a formal proposal and Google may end up not pursuing a bid, this person said. It is unclear which private-equity firms Google has talked to.
Any deal tying two of the biggest Internet companies would be sure to attract antitrust scrutiny.
Federal antitrust lawyers in 2008 thwarted a Web-search advertising partnership between the companies.
Read More: WSJ
It’s 9 p.m. Do You Know Where Your Ads Are?
By George John
“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
Online Video: The Media Industry’s New Frontier
The following interview was conducted with Ken Allen, a Vice President in Blackstone’s Advisory Practice, who leads Blackstone’s coverage of the Digital Media sector.
What are some of the macro trends you are seeing in the advertising industry today?
The advertising landscape is undergoing a dramatic transformation that began over a decade ago and that continues today. We have gone from a world in which advertising was once broadcast to large, homogeneous audiences to one where highly tailored messages are targeted to specific individuals through multiple digital channels, often simultaneously.
The chart below shows the broad transformation that has taken place in the U.S. market. As the online marketing channel has become more prevalent, increasing from only 5% of the total market in 2000 to 16% today, print has similarly experienced a dramatic decline, decreasing from a 38% share in 2000 to 22% today. Underpinning these share shifts is the rise of online advertising technologies, in particular, Paid Search and Display advertising.
Read More: Blackstone
HomeAway Looks for Reset After Last Year’s Super Bowl Gaffe
Vacation Rental Firm Looking for a New Agency
Smarting from its Super Bowl controversy earlier this year, HomeAway, the online vacation rental marketplace, is looking for a new creative agency.
The search for a new shop comes months after HomeAway attracted criticism for a 30-second Super Bowl spot, which was officially called “Test Baby” but earned the nickname “Smush” for depicting a baby doll thrown up against a window, with its face being smushed. The ad, created by Austin-based agency Vendor, was yanked shortly after its big debut after consumers accused HomeAway of trivializing child abuse and in showing a likeness of an infant being injured. Consumers also took issue with an online component of the campaign, where website visitors were told they could customize the ad by uploading pictures, and if they so chose, decapitating the baby.
Matt Cohen, senior director of global brand marketing at HomeAway, in an email told Ad Age that the company expects to select a new shop in the next month, and noted that the new agency will not be working on a Super Bowl commercial. “Our approach starting in 2012 will be to build our brand over the long term. A key component of our review process is to learn how different agency partners might attack this marketing challenge.”
Read More: AdAge
