The Year Ahead
Scott Ferber, Chairman and CEO, Videology
2012 promises to be a pivotal year for video advertising. It’s an exciting year for our company, as we launch our new Videology brand and roll out a host of new products for agencies, advertisers and publishers. And it’s an exciting year for the industry, as increased media demand in 2012 promises to open new opportunities for video as advertisers seek new solutions and sources of inventory to meet their marketing goals.
I believe 2012 will be the year that video advertising as an industry gets our focus clear. Like any industry experiencing such burgeoning growth, the past few years were a bit chaotic for ad tech companies and our partners alike, as we all struggled to find our way in a new space. Since no one was sure exactly how the ecosystem would ultimately evolve, tech companies and networks alike all wanted to protect their future share of market by tapping into multiple segments of the demand chain. Exchanges became platforms, platforms became networks, networks become DSPs. Unfortunately, all of this shape shifting led to confusion in the marketplace—and confusion isn’t good for anybody. As the video ecosystem evolves and firms, it is time to focus once again on two key tenants of all successful technological innovation: Simplify and Solve.
Read More: Videology
Yahoo’s Choice: Double Down on Data
The choice of Yahoo’s new CEO can be interpreted as saying a lot about the company’s future. It is often held as being stuck between a tech-driven Silicon Valley company and a media company. The thought is often that it needs to choose one over the other. Maybe not. New Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson might not be well-known to Madison Avenue, but he’s got a keep grasp on the power of data after serving as the president of PayPal and formerly its head of tech.
At Yahoo, Thompson will enjoy a honeymoon period where he can square away some unfinished business. One obvious place to start is sorting out the Alibaba situation. After that, he can turn his attention to identifying what Yahoo is good at and what it’s not. Despite all the scorn heaped on Yahoo by the Silicon Valley press, it remains a powerful player in digital advertising with enviable scale and a trove of data assets. Thanks to Yahoo’s e-mail service, Yahoo has personal information on hundreds of millions of users. Unlike much of the data collected online, Yahoo’s is voluntarily given and verified. Thompson, no stranger to the power of data as PayPal’s tech lead, could easily double down on those and make Yahoo a distinctly modern data-driven media business that caters to brand advertisers. Here are three steps Thompson can take to make the most of those advantages:
Read More: DigiDay
Sell-Side Platforms Ramp Up, AppNexus, Admeld Highlight Field
Which vendors should publishers trust to help manage the sale of display ads? A new report from Forrester names AppNexus and Admeld as the two top-performing sell-side platforms.
In Forrester’s 34-criteria evaluation, each stood out for their highly granular controls and ability to support an array of sales opportunities.
Strong competitors include PubMatic and Rubicon Project — which, according to Forrester, are aggressively ramping up their development efforts and turning once-distinguishing platform features into standard offerings.
Forrester analyst and report author Michael Greene says sell-side platforms represent a key component of the new ad technology ecosystem.
“Managing multiple indirect sales channels can be an operational nightmare,” according to Greene. “It’s unlikely that sales teams fill 100% of their site’s inventory every month. To fill the gap, indirect sales channels like ad networks have helped publishers squeeze extra revenues out of their inventory, but put logistical strains on an ad operations team. SSPs help aggregate multiple indirect sales relationships and optimize revenue across them.”
Read More: MediaPost
US Companies Face Big Hurdles in ‘Big Data’ Use
Definition of ‘Big Data’ remains murky for some companies
Today’s uncertain economy has companies looking to data to influence decisions, inform strategy and anticipate outcomes. Marketers too are using such data to gain insight into consumer interests and preferences to better their customer retention and acquisition programs.
For many data-conscious companies, the use of “Big Data” has become increasingly important. Big Data incorporates multiple data sets—customer data, competitive data, online data, offline data, and so forth—for a more holistic approach to business intelligence.
Though the term Big Data is becoming more common within the online advertising industry, web data monitoring and collection company Connotate showed just how unclear many companies are on its definition and use.
Though almost half (49%) of US data aggregation leaders defined Big Data as an aggregate of all external and internal web-based data, others defined it as the mass amounts of internal information stored and managed by an enterprise (16%) or web-based data and content businesses used for their own operations (7%).
Read More: eMarketer
This Is How Ad Technology Needs To Tackle The Industry’s Data Explosion
Over the last five years, we’ve seen a growth in companies that generate audience data, like BlueKai, Exelate and 33Across, and those that capture transactional and conversion data, like Datalogix, Compete and Criteo. These companies have created new layers of business intelligence reporting aimed at helping advertisers to better monetize and analyze their media spend. Consequently, there has been an explosion in data, now widely referred to as “big data”.
The goal of “big data” is to bring an increased level of transparency and control to both buyer and seller, enabling more accurate evaluation of audiences, the ability to customize and blend behavioral segments and deliver optimal performance for marketers. This exercise has helped to educate the market about the potential of clustering and targeting and the resulting momentum has led to the creation of new businesses along the way. However, the industry’s thirst for data seems to be insatiable and the sheer volume now available to us has become overwhelming. This data explosion now requires automation in the simplest and most streamlined form via the application of predictive modeling.
Ad technology should dynamically build audience segment recommendations for buyers based on known (or observed) performance objectives, and the cheapest and most effective attributes for delivering that performance. For the seller, the technology should monitor market pricing for specific attributes and automatically package audiences that meet those needs. Additionally, it should also provide the opportunity for sellers to align those audiences with the highest quality content and environment to maximize value and performance.
Read More: Business Insider
Frenemies With Benefits: comScore, Nielsen Deal Seen As Positive For Online Ad Market
Wednesday’s surprise patent litigation settlement between online audience measurement giants comScore and Nielsen is expected to accelerate innovation, creativity, improvements, and possibly even better standards for the Internet advertising marketplace. That was the initial takeaway from observers who were trying to figure out the ramifications of the settlement, which one influential Wall Street group said made the two previous arch rivals, “frenemies.”
The settlement has the power, Deutsche Bank securities analyst Matt Chesler wrote, “to change the scope of the relationship between the two fierce competitors, which is the potentially more interest long-term implication.”
What the long-term will ultimately will bring will depend on a number of market developments, but in the short-term a few things are very clear, Chesler noted, including removing an unnecessary distraction for both companies that ran up significant time and legal costs that could’ve been better spent developing systems and services and improving methodologies for online advertisers, agencies and publishers.
In particular, Chesler said the deal is likely to help accelerate the deployment and acceptance of Nielsen’s new Online Campaign Ratings service, which Nielsen has been pushing hard to make for the online advertising industry, what its TV ratings are for the television industry, a “currency.”
Another clear near-term result is that comScore’s stock value will dilute by about 3%, due to the $19 million in shares it is giving to Nielsen as a form of payment to license its patents for online audience measurement
Read More: MediaPost
