Vibrant Acquires Image Space Media
Vibrant Media, the global leader in premium contextual advertising, announces today the acquisition of Image Space Media (ISM), the in-image advertising technology company.
The deal is part of Vibrant Media’s mission under new CEO, Cella Irvine, to expand upon its existing suite of contextual solutions with innovative placements that deliver high performance for top brands, new revenue opportunities for quality publishers, and relevant experiences for consumers. With several key innovations in 2011, Vibrant Media’s contextual platform (VXPlatform) now includes a suite of advertising products – Vibrant Image, Vibrant Video, Vibrant Bar, and Vibrant Display – in addition to Vibrant In-Text.
“Traditional ad models were brought online through pre-roll and display, but we create unique media placements that are designed for the interactive nature of the internet and deliver truly relevant ad experiences to users,” says Cella Irvine, CEO of Vibrant Media. “Roughly 30% of our publishers’ content is images and they now play an important role in our strategy to deliver new media placements.”
“ISM shares Vibrant’s vision to create industry-leading in-image contextual advertising,” says Kevin Tung, Co-founder and COO of Image Space Media. “By combining our image technology with Vibrant’s unmatched scale, robust contextual platform, and incredible sales force, we’ve built a significant offering. Vibrant is a company unafraid to invent – we love everything about that.”
The Role Of Real-Time Bidding For Marketers
“Ad Agents” is a column written by the agency-side of the digital media community.
Joseph Leon, Managing Director EMEA of Essence Digital, a global, digital marketing agency based in London and New York.
In 2011, the biggest hype, the loudest buzz and the best conversation starter in digital media was without doubt RTB – (Real Time Bidding). Big words, such as revolutionary, seismic and rocket science, were bandied around and based on remarkably similar sales pitches from several leading RTB players, you’d be hard pressed not to believe that half of NASA’s scientists had jumped ship to join the digital revolution.
At its most basic, RTB is a mechanism for trading ad space in real time – sellers can essentially hold an auction for each impression and advertisers can assess, price and bid for it dynamically.
The main benefits for advertisers are indisputably cost efficiency and targeting – you pay the right price for what you need and discard what you don’t. But in practice, what does this mean for advertisers?
Adobe Completes Acquisition of Efficient Frontier
Today, Adobe solutions are central to how digital marketing and advertising are created, managed, executed, measured and optimized. Our focus on market leadership in the digital marketing space has driven some dramatic changes at Adobe including the recent acquisition of Efficient Frontier, a leader in multi-channel and auction-based digital advertising optimization across search, display and social media.
With Efficient Frontier, Adobe delivers an industry-leading independent platform for digital ad buying to our customers. With this addition to our Digital Marketing Suite, we offer a more powerful solution for managing search, display and social media to better answer the needs of our customers. Even more importantly, we add the expertise of over 300 talented Efficient Frontier employees to our team.
Collective UK Launches Private Exchange for Premium Video Advertising
Collective has today announced the launch of a private marketplace to offer media buying agencies and advertisers real-time bidding (RTB) access to its premium video platform.
Combining Adap.tv’s RTB technology with Collective’s audience data, Collective’s private exchange will offer pre-roll video advertising space across targeted audiences and premium publishers in real-time auctions. Publishers include IPC, WWE, The Independent, Sony Music and iVillage.
The move will see Collective become the first in the UK to launch an RTB private ad marketplace for premium video programming.
“Our marketplace gives advertisers and agency partners a new way to access premium VoD inventory, but with this inventory being in such demand, we don’t see it as a low cost entry to buy video in the UK,” said Jamie Estrin, Director of Collective Video. “RTB pricing is controlled by supply and demand, and high quality premium video is always in high demand in the UK.”
Wall Street Keen On Internet Prospects, But Touts Commerce Vs. Ad-Supported Players
The influential Wall Street equity research team at J.P. Morgan released a 2012 outlook for the online industry saying it “remains positive on the Internet sector,” and expects the medium to “be driven by strong secular growth, increased online accessibility through smartphones and tablets, and strengthening trends around social, local and video.” That said, the securities firm said its favorite picks for the year are not the Internet’s ad-supported biggies, but major e-commerce players Amazon and Priceline.
“Amazon and Priceline are our top picks for the year,” opined lead Internet analyst Doug Anmuth in a note to investors, adding: “We continue to like Google at current levels, but believe the risk/reward is now more favorable in these other large-cap names.”
While J.P. Morgan did not tout any specific online advertising players, it is positive on the overall sector, noting that online ad spending will continue to be driven by display and is expected to rise about 16% in 2012.
“We expect online advertising to continue to see strong growth, driven by increasing consumer consumption of digital media and increasing allocations of branded ad budgets online,” the report reads, adding: “Consumers have greater touchpoints to digital media through the rapid adoption of mobile devices and tablets, supported with higher engagement trends through the use of social media and networks. We believe consumer time spent online will continue to increase, and the online advertising dollars to follow.
Read More: MediaPost
Brands Will Choose Online Video Over Display Ads in 2012: Adap.tv
Study shows that advertisers will increase online video spending this year, and that brands want viewer engagement.
Adap.tv completed a research report on the digital video industry shortly before the recent Streaming Media West conference in Los Angeles, and company co-founder and vice president of product Teg Grenager sat down at a red carpet interview to share some of its findings.
This is a good time to be in the online video advertising space, as nearly all the advertisers surveyed said they were sure they would increase their online video spending this year. In previous years, advertisers were more hesitant to jump in.
“This year there were some very interesting findings. The industry is changing and maturing a little bit,” said Grenager, noting that the market was due for significant growth.
That extra spending has to come from somewhere, and the loser in advertising budgets looks to be display advertising.
“Digital video actually is, in some ways, a replacement for some of what display was trying to achieve. It’s trying to achieve branding on the Web, and digital video’s just much better at that,” Grenager noted.
Advertisers’ goals are also changing this year. In previous years, they looked to online video ads to build awareness. Now they want brand engagement with their ads. Noting that engagement is more a tactic than a goal, Grenager explained that viewers who engage with an ad in some way are more likely to think about that brand and see it favorably.
Read More: Streaming Media
DataXu Thinks Global, Acts Hyper-Local: Acquires Europe’s Mexad
In a move it says gives it the biggest global footprint of local manpower of any demand-side platform (DSP), DataXu has acquired London-based Mexad, a leading European DSP with offices in Western Europe and Brazil. Both companies are privately-held and terms were not disclosed, but DataXu Co-Founder and CEO Mike Baker says the acquisition gives DataXu a competitive advantage in a sector that increasingly is about local service and market knowledge.
With 36 employees, Mexad manages real-time bidding campaigns and inventory in about 60 countries in Europe and Latin America, complementing DataXu’s local market knowledge in North America, he says.
“They have an on-the-ground presence in all the major markets in Europe right now,” Baker tells Online Media Daily, adding that “feet-on-the-street” is becoming a key differentiator for the DSP business, because it’s not just about having the best software, algorithms and access to RTB inventory that determines success in local markets, but understanding local cultures, ways of doing business in specific markets, and the ability to advise and service local marketers and agencies in those markets.
Read More: MediaPost
