Microsoft, Vibrant Innovate Display Ads
Display advertising will make a leap this year in an effort to keep up with changes across the Internet. Microsoft and Vibrant stepped up innovations, each separately releasing new ad units and technology this week.
Vibrant plans to release a suite of contextual tools for display ads beginning Thursday. The first in a line that will roll out this year taps semantic analysis, frequency of words, page positioning, source code data and demographics to determine contextual relevancy. The technology matches ad copy to the content in articles that appear on the Web page.
The company’s creative services team designs and builds VIA Dynamic ads with live feeds that enable the advertiser’s ad to match the page context in real-time, creating unprecedented contextual relevancy.
A typical Bertolli pasta ad would post on an Italian cuisine cooking Web site. With Vibrant’s VIA Dynamic technology, that same Bertolli ad would dynamically adjust to feature keywords and phrases from articles on the page such as ingredients, restaurants and chefs — enabling a more precise match between page and ad. VIA Dynamic also features Multivariant Creative Optimization, which helps performance by changing the ad’s background color, fonts and call to action.
Read More: MediaPost
AudienceScience, Tumri Partner To Boost Audience Targeting
In an effort to ingratiate clients with more dynamic and targeted creative, behavioral targeting firm AudienceScience on Thursday is expected to announce a partnership with Tumri.
Initially, AudienceScience will use Tumri’s Ensemble optimization platform to boost audience targeting. The partners have also developed a display ad platform that offers more targeting options for brands.
“The self-serve platform makes our display ad creation process more streamlined,” Jeff Hirsch, CEO of AudienceScience, said of the partnership. Regarding early tests, Hirsch added: “We’ve been able to improve the quality and speed of dynamic audience targeting.”
Per the Tumri deal, new applications include display ad optimization, product level re-targeting and display ad personalization, along with additional analytics.
Read More: MediaPost
Thinking About The Future Of Ad Verification
There appears to be good momentum in digital advertising for ad verification solutions, but where does it all end up? Can a “point solution” evolve into a sustainable, long-term business within the ad technology stack?
I’d argue more “points” will need to be added – especially if these companies want to “exit.” But first, let us review…
A Brief History
When pure-play ad verification companies arrived on the scene nearly two years ago, ad networks and publishers rejoiced.
[Record scratch sound here!]
Hardly. Agencies have been the happy ones.
As you may know, ideally with third-party ad verification solutions, agencies get to verify what they’re buying from ad networks and publishers as it’s stated on their insertion order (I.O.) agreements. For example, ad verification might confirm that a particular geographic requirement has been met (“target U.S. users only”) or that the context of the content in which an ad runs is deemed in or out of context.
Another benefit for agencies is that it allows them to say to their marketer client that they are insuring brand safety for the marketer’s campaign. With marketer’s hesitant to put their ad spend into digital, ad verification helps overcome the traditional mindset.
To date, it appears challenges still remain around ad verification being reactive rather than proactive. Rather than preventing an ad from being served before it hits a page, the technology may find out after the ad is served that it was an inappropriate placement. No doubt agencies want to prevent the phone call from the marketer: “I just saw my cell phone ad in a Gawker story about Brett Favre’s latest misstep.”
Read More: AdExchanger
AdMeld On Data
Close the blinds, publishers, as the AV club nerd sets up the film projector (wheezing the whole time): today’s educational film comes from revenue optimizer AdMeld and is called, “Data Is the New Black.” There’s a lot of confused and fearful chatter in the hallways these days about data, but do you actually know the many things that comprise user data? Or what collectors do once they get data? The video talks about real dilemmas such as data leakage, but also offers smart ways to make data selling work for you, including conversing with data buyers to learn more about your audience – all to a hip soundtrack made on space-age synthesizers. We hope everyone is mature enough to watch this video because, no, you don’t need a permission slip from your parents to view it on YouTube.
Read More: AdExchanger
Do You Have What — and Whom — It Takes to Compete in a Digital World?
We live in a world that’s increasingly connected, digital and mobile, and influenced by social networks. The shopping and media-consumption patterns of consumers are evolving at a dizzying clip. Entire industries such as travel and music have been largely reshaped almost overnight. Multibillion-dollar, digitally enabled companies evolve in a few short years.
All of this has the management teams of all sorts of companies asking a key question: “Are we prepared to operate in an increasingly technology-driven world?”
Companies that have the right leaders in place will be able to answer with a confident “Yes.” Spencer Stuart recently completed a global and multisector study to provide insights into this very issue. Through 50 interviews with top-level executives in nine industry sectors across North America, Europe and the Asia Pacific region, we honed in on a series of best practices for companies building their organization’s digital capabilities. Here are the top four pillars for solving the digital-leadership challenge:
Senior-level buy-in. Investments in digital require the appropriate buy-in and support of the board, CEO and top leadership because of the breadth of digital’s impact on the company. Digital is about more than simply a new approach to marketing campaigns; success ultimately will be measured by the seamless integration of technologies across advertising, direct response marketing, sales, supply chain, public relations, employee communications, and supplier and vendor relationships.
Read More: AdAge
Yahoo Makes Display Ads Smarter With Dapper Acquisition
Looking to make their display ads more appealing to advertisers and agencies, Yahoo today announced on its blog that it has plans to buy Dapper, a mashup technology to bring the advantages of search-based advertising into the world of display ads.
Dapper’s technology lets users easily set up their display ad preferences online, such as total amount to spend on a campaign, and put the most updated and accurate website information into display ads. For example, an e-commerce website selling electronics would be able to showcase its most recent sales items in its display ads in real-time.
The company launched back in 2008 when companies like Yahoo ironically were saying their display ads were declining and rumors had it that companies like Yahoo and Google were working on their own similar technology.
Competitor LucidMedia, a similar platform for optimizing display ads, was used by Yahoo Right Media in 2008 to ensure that advertisers’ creative display advertisements appear alongside relevant content on publishers’ sites.
When the company launched, results were promising but not well documented due to the early stages. Today, Dapper appears to showcase some impressive statistics, including results of 2 1/2 and 8 times higher engagement from consumers.
Read More: VentureBeat.com
AppNexus Raises $50M! And We’re Hiring…
I’m super excited to announce that, as of today, we’ve closed on a $50M Series C funding. We’ve raised this round from existing investors and one of our key strategic clients, Microsoft. I think this is a great validation not just of the company, but also of the real-time bidding (RTB) space in general. You can read more about it in our press release found here
Also… we are hiring across the board! We are looking for great talent – especially on the engineering side. From rock-star, amazing engineers and product managers (ranging from junior, entry-level to team leads and directors) to work on data pipelines, adserving and bidding, user-interfaces, web services and general management. If you are someone amazing — or know someone amazing — that might want to work on some crazy, globally-distributed technology, send them my way (mike at appnexus dot com) or check our careers site here: http://www.appnexus.com/careers/
For you less technical folks, we are also hiring for services, account management, finance and marketing!
Read More: MikeOnAds.com
For Content Owners, Digital Changes Everything
In two weeks I will be leading two discussions at The CTAM Summit in New Orleans. I will be joined by an amazing group of innovators and leaders in the content and content marketing space to dig into how “social media” is impacting the content landscape. In preparing for the discussion, it is daunting and exciting to consider the number of ways that social media is affecting every aspect of how content creators and distributors operate. When you think about the questions surrounding the viewer/consumer life cycle and touch points, you can see just how pervasive change is going to be.
Viewer acquisition/marketing - Methods for reaching consumers with advertisements are changing for every marketer, from CPG to content producers. But while many CPG brands have been around for generations, content companies are looking for ways to create brands every day. This means that finding the required effective reach to launch new shows and drive tune-in, is paramount to content companies thriving in a new media landscape. How will content owners solve the challenges facing all marketers in a way that meets their unique needs? Content companies do actually have some advantages here.
Content creation/distribution – The changes in consumer content consumption habits, especially time- and screen-shifting, will forever change the way content creators produce programming and plan distribution. Should separate content be develop for mobile and Web? Should the programming be pre-released or delayed for digital viewers? Is there an effective strategy for building an audience through social media distribution and then scaling distribution through traditional channels? What about the other way around? Can social media be used to test content and adjust to audience preferences in real time? (Hint: the answer to the last one is a very big YES.)
Read More: MediaPost
