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
Internet Ads Reach $15 Billion, First-Half 2011
Internet ad revenue rose 24.1% to $7.7 billion in Q2 2011, contributing a 23% uptick to $14.9 billion in the first half of the year, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers U.S. stats.
Display-related advertising-banner, rich media, digital video and sponsorships rose 27.1% to more than $5.5 billion in the first six months of 2011.
Breaking it down for the first six months, display-related advertising revenue totaled $5.5 billion or 37% revenue, up 27% from the $4.4 billion reported in 2010. Banners took 23%, or $3.4 billion; rich media, 5%, or $763 million; digital video, 6%, or $891 million; and sponsorship, 3%, or $467 million.
Aside from display ads, paid search ads continue to take the majority of the media buy. Search — which remains the leading format since 2006 — accounted for 49% of Q2 2011 revenue, up 47% to $3.8 billion. Search revenue for the first six months of 2011 totaled $7.3 billion, up 27% from $5.7 billion in 2010.
Brands also spent more on video and lead generation. Digital video rose 42.1% to $891 million. Lead generation grew 25.4%, compared with the first six months in 2010, accounting for 5% during the first six months of 2011, or $805 million.
Read More: MediaPost
Casale Partners With Turn To Enhance Publisher Reach
Casale Media on Thursday is expected to announce a partnership with demand-side platform Turn. The union combines Turn’s roster of Fortune 200 brands with Casale’s network of nearly 3,000 publishers.
Amid a wave of interest (or what critics call hype) around demand-side platforms, Turn is quite popular these days. Just weeks ago, it partnered with Nexage to power real-time bidding for mobile advertising inventory through its media-buying platform.
Last month, Turn struck a similar deal with Web video ad company TubeMogul to power real-time buying of mobile video ad space for TubeMogul’s PlayTime DSP.
Such partnerships help Turn expand the scope of the inventory it provides. “Having scale and access to quality inventory from partners like Casale is critical for our clients,” said Bill Demas, president and CEO of Turn.
Take Snagajob, a provider of talent management solutions for hourly employers, which currently uses Casale’s CasaleX exchange to help sell its ad inventory of some 250 million monthly impressions.
Read More: MediaPost
