Reinvented by technology: Advertising
Agencies help businesses send the right message at the right time.
Creative types used to be the top dogs at ad agencies. No more. Now they have to share the spotlight with the quants, the people who can massage massive amounts of data to help make on-the-fly decisions that will deliver the right ad to the right consumer at the most opportune moment.
Every big agency now has a trading desk for buying online space or is doing deals with ad networks and platforms. The goal: to parse online behavior, within milliseconds, into finer and finer slices that allow for more precise targeting.
“The transformation of the business is more subtle and substantial than the flavor-of-the-month technology,” said Larry Chiagouris, professor of marketing at Pace University’s Lubin School of Business and a former ad agency executive. “Technology is changing the way [agencies] do business.”
Some of the latest hot tickets are companies that can add targeting to video, mobile and social media advertising.
Read More: Crains New York
BuzzLogic Rolls Out Real-Time Ad Platform
Social advertising firm BuzzLogic has launched an updated ad platform that targets advertising by analyzing the content of individual Web pages — rather than site or domain level data — then executes real-time bids and ad placements based on the most relevant inventory for a given campaign.
Dubbed Spectrum, the system indexes and ranks more than 1.5 billion pages and targets display ads based on topic, audience and social activity. Instead of cookies, the platform relies on cognitive analysis of relationships between certain keywords within a topic area.
For example, a CPG marketer seeking people who want healthy snacks might target online content where terms like “calories” and “snacks” “whole grain” or “healthy trail mix” appear. Conversely, an advertiser could use the dashboard to list terms to be avoided, such as “coupon,” if it wants to bypass audiences looking for deals and discounts.
Once ads are running, the Spectrum platform can be used to optimize campaigns on the fly and track results. Through the new offering, BuzzLogic boasts that it can help brands forge an “emotional connection” with consumers by seeding ads within the pages of the Web’s most influential blogs and sites. Whether placement determines an ad’s emotional resonance, or lack thereof, is debatable. The main idea is that the company’s technology is designed to deliver contextually relevant ads, now in real-time.
“We put the right ad in the right place at the right time,” said BuzzMetrics CEO Dave Hills, reciting the holy grail of brand advertising. The new platform scores the content on thousands of pages on thousands of times in fractions of a second and then dynamically bids on the most relevant URLs. It also builds ad units customized for the page and audience while incorporating a brand’s ad creative.
Read More: MediaPost
Rocket Fuel Expands Executive Team Amid Record Year of Global Growth
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
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
