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

Many of us in this industry have been fighting the good fight for a long time now to make display advertising a better outlet for brand dollars. And, if we get it right, everyone wins. But up to this point, the focus has almost entirely been on better technology. That’s not going to cut it.

From my rough calculations, the vast majority of venture-capitalist dollars, roughly $2.5 billion of $5.7 billion in the first half of 2011 alone, and strategic exits have focused on the automation of the sales and buying process, targeting and optimization.

Improving technology obviously has its benefits, but as an industry we have a bigger problem to fix: the essence of display advertising itself. We are all so caught up on acronyms and technology that we sometimes forget what it is that we are doing: We are in the business of advertising. The problem? A lot of display ads are not noticed. Beyond click-through rates hovering at fractions of fractions of a percent, 43 percent of users say they ignore and disregard banner advertising. To fix this, we need to change the economics: fewer and bigger ads. Not just bigger ads, but fewer.

Read More: Digiday

Meet Your Audience (for the Second Time)

These days, advertising and data platforms are giving marketers a wealth of information that can be used to validate their strategies and optimize their digital campaigns for better performance. There’s a lot of data to sort through – some more useful than others. Sometimes, good campaign optimization comes down to the basics: understanding who your audience is, and why they are doing what they are doing.

Let’s look at a real-life example of a digital display campaign, run through the digital ad agency of a popular mattress retailer. The agency wanted to test new inventory sources for the campaign by running broadly on general interest sites, evaluating the demography of audiences that showed purchase intent, and optimizing over the course of the campaign to maximize impact.

A theory being tested was that older audiences, who report more difficulty sleeping than younger demographic groups, would respond more favorably to the retailer’s online display ads. Campaigns were initially skewed to sites that over-indexed against an audience composed of ages 50 and older.

Read More: ClickZ

Unruly Adds $25M In Effort To Scale Social Video Campaigns

Anxious to scale its social video advertising platform, Unruly just secured a $25 million Series A investment from Amadeus Capital Partners, Van den Ende & Deitmer and Business Growth Fund. Since its debut in 2006, the London-based company claims to have executed over 1,400 social video campaigns, while delivering, tracking, and auditing 1.34 billion user-intended video views.

“We set out to help brands capture the massive opportunity in social video,” said Unruly founder and Group CEO Scott Button.

Unruly’s proprietary technology, RAMP (Real-time Amplification and Measurement Platform) powers social video campaigns for Old Spice, Electronic Arts, adidas, Unilever, T-Mobile and Coca-Cola.

It also had a hand in spreading Evian’s “Roller Babies,” T-Mobile’s “Life’s for Sharing,” Coca Cola’s “Happiness Factory” series, and Old Spice’s “Man Your Man Could Smell Like” campaigns.

Profitable since 2009, Unruly reported full-year revenue of $25 million in 2011, and a current revenue run-rate nearing $50 million.

Industrywide, social video campaigns generated 2.7 billion views in 2010 and more than 8 billion views in 2011, and are predicted to generate 20 billion views in 2012, according to Unruly.

Read More: MediaPost

Just as marketers decide to push more of their budget from direct response and into brand campaigns, it could become more difficult to sway consumers in 2012 through loyalty. Consumers seemed easily influenced this year by advertised specials and daily deal coupons, but research suggests the online ad industry may need to rethink strategies and get to work on new technologies.

Target, for example, created a persona of stocking chic, yet inexpensive products, according to Stacy DeBroff, CEO and founder of Mom Central Consulting. “Michael Graves could create a teapot, but it’s only $11,” she said. “They designed coolness into better prices. That’s a persona.”

Ad media is great at generating awareness, but it doesn’t necessarily convert to purchases, DeBroff said. Mobile applications on the smartphone that most consumers keep close to them can create brand loyalty through continual use. Those that offer discounts on goods and services provide incentives to keep consmers using tham.

Read More: MediaPost

The Future Of Display: What’s Ahead For 2012

It’s the oldest format in online advertising, but it’s not stodgy by any stretch. Display Advertising is still changing rapidly as new technologies and innovations come along and are put to the test. That may be why display been gaining as a percentage of overall online advertising revenues, commanding 37% of the total dollars in the first half of 2011 according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s latest report (PDF).

But what’s ahead in 2012 for this space? One area that’s seen a lot of growth is performance-oriented display, often fueled by behavioral data from search or from a company’s website. To get some insight into what we might expect from this sector in the future, we tapped three experts to give us their predictions.

Read More: Marketing Land

RESTON, VA, December 15, 2011 – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released data from the comScore Video Metrix service showing that 183 million U.S. Internet users watched online video content in November for an average of 20.5 hours per viewer. The total U.S. Internet audience viewed 40.9 billion videos.

Top 10 Video Content Properties by Unique Viewers

Google Sites, driven primarily by video viewing at YouTube.com, ranked as the top online video content property in November with 151.6 million unique viewers, while VEVO ranked second with 55.4 million. Facebook.com ranked third with 50.8 million viewers, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 50.4 million and Viacom Digital with 47.4 million. More than 40 billion videos views occurred during the month, with Google Sites generating the highest number at 20.5 billion. The average viewer watched 20.5 hours of online video content, with Google Sites (7.4 hours) and Hulu (3.3 hours) demonstrating the highest engagement among the top ten properties.

Top 10 Video Ad Properties by Video Ads Viewed

Americans viewed 7.2 billion video ads in November, with Hulu generating the highest number of video ad impressions at more than 1.3 billion, followed by Tremor Video in second with 1.1 billion. Adap.tv crossed the 1 billion mark for the first time earning the #3 spot, followed by BrightRoll Video Network with 722 million and Specific Media with 513 million. Time spent watching video ads totaled more than 3 billion minutes during the month, with Tremor Video delivering the highest duration of video ads at 594 million minutes. Video ads reached 53 percent of the total U.S. population an average of 45 times during the month. Hulu delivered the highest frequency of video ads to its viewers with an average of 44.

Read More: comScore

Microsoft Accelerates Rollout In Yahoo, AOL Display Deal

Data has become one of the most important pieces in the recently announced Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo display ad alliance. Microsoft ad executives have found that data-rich markets tend to have the greatest success for bidders and buyers tapping the exchange, according to Mary Ann Benack, director of scale enablement at Microsoft Advertising.

The alliance is intended to give Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo a fighting chance to compete against rival Google in the display ad space. eMarketer estimates that Microsoft’s share of the overall U.S. display market would fall to 4.9% this year, down from 5.1% in 2010.

AOL’s share will fall to 4.2% — down from 4.8% — and Yahoo’s share would slide to 13.1%, down from 14.4%, respectively. Conversely, Google’s share of display revenue will grow to 9.3% this year, eMarketer estimates, up from an 8.6% share in 2010. Facebook has also become a rival. By 2012, eMarketer expects Facebook will hold 19.5% of the display ad share market, up from 12.2% in 2010.

Perhaps that is one reason for the accelerated rollout. It will provide Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo with the ability to compete with Facebook too. “We only expected to roll out in six markete this calendar year,” Benack said, but the alliance now supports buying and selling in 15 markets, from the Americas to Europe to Asia-Pacific.

Read More: MediaPost

Rocket Fuel Inc., an online advertising company, may join what’s becoming a long parade of technology companies.

If market conditions allow, Rocket Fuel is aiming for an initial public offering in 2012 as the company expands its sales, said Chief Executive Officer George John. Rocket Fuel will have more than $40 million in revenue this year, up from about $16 million in 2010, he said. That’s more than Zillow Inc., the online real estate company, had before its IPO earlier this year, John said.

The company, which helps companies place ads on websites and mobile devices in real time, is benefiting from international growth and strong demand from current customers. More than 90 percent of its clients renewed spending on Rocket Fuel in the third quarter from the second quarter, he said. Those customers increased their spending by an average of 50 percent.

The company’s backers include Nokia Growth Partners and Northgate Capital. Before a potential public offering, the Redwood City, California-based company plans to raise capital in the first quarter to fund growth and acquisitions, he said.

Read More: Businessweek

Interclick + Yahoo! = Major Benefits for Advertisers and Publishers
Interclick acquisition closes; Yahoo’s Seth Dallaire outlines what that means and what’s ahead

On November 1, Yahoo! announced its intention to acquire interclick, a technology company that provides innovative audience-targeting solutions for data-driven advertising. Today I’m proud to announce that the acquisition has closed, and interclick is officially part of Yahoo!

This acquisition underscores our focus on enhancing the performance of our display business across Yahoo! and our partner sites.  interclick brings new solutions and expertise that will benefit our advertisers and publishers in the following ways:

Audience-targeting technologies and campaign-reporting tools will help advertisers hit the right audiences for improved campaign performance, and help publishers earn more for their inventory.
Campaign-reporting tools will help Yahoo! provide richer and more detailed insights on campaign performance to our advertisers.
The interclick team is experienced in selling audiences across disparate sources of pooled inventory, which is key to succeeding in today’s large, complex digital marketplace.

Read More: RightMedia Blog

Google Inc. (GOOG)’s $400 million acquisition of AdMeld Inc. has been recommended for antitrust approval by U.S. Justice Department staff attorneys, two people familiar with the matter said.

The staff urged approval after a detailed analysis found that AdMeld’s competitors in online display advertising were strong enough to offer companies alternative ways to advertise, one of the people said. The recommendation still must be approved by senior department officials, said both of the people, who didn’t want to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak about the matter publicly.

The recommendation contrasts with the department’s reservations about Google’s purchase of ITA Software Inc. In that case, the department required oversight of Google’s actions before giving approval because government attorneys determined online travel agencies that used ITA’s software, which aggregates flight information, didn’t have many alternatives.

AdMeld offers technology services to Internet publishers that help them boost revenue by managing display ads from hundreds of sources, including ad networks. Customers of the New York-based company, founded in 2007, include News Corp. (NWSA)’s Fox News and the Weather Channel.

Read More: Bloomberg

Collective Introduces Ensemble

Full Integration of Tumri and Oggifinogi Products and Operations Gives Way to Comprehensive Audience Platform for Brand Marketers

NEW YORK, Nov 30, 2011 — Collective, a full service provider of media and technology solutions for display and video advertising today released Ensemble(TM), its new technology platform designed to service brand advertisers seeking a complete buy-side audience platform and services solution. The full integration of recently acquired Tumri and Oggifinogi products and operations into a single business unit allows advertisers to leverage rich media and dynamic creative optimization, powered by Collective’s AMP(R) audience data and media platform.

“The integration of Tumri and Oggifinogi into the Ensemble platform coupled with key leadership appointments makes it possible for Collective to help advertisers deliver rich, video-enabled and optimized creative to audiences at scale,” said Joe Apprendi, CEO, Collective. “We’re enabling brands to intelligently connect with consumers across the entire spectrum of online display advertising with a truly integrated technology suite versus reliance on multiple third party vendors.”

Collective’s new solution eliminates the need for multiple service providers, presenting advertisers with the opportunity to leverage dynamic creative, engaging ad formats and Collective’s industry leading audience data all from one place. Ensemble works across their entire media buy, including real-time bidding (RTB) on leading ad exchanges. Collective is also offering comprehensive creative and production services with Ensemble, ranging from full to self-serve options.

Read More: Collective

Acquisition Enhances Ad Optimization Capability for Social, Search and Display Campaigns

SAN JOSE, Calif.—-Adobe Systems Incorporated today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire privately held Efficient Frontier, a leader in multi-channel ad buying and optimization. Adobe solutions are central to how digital marketing and advertising is created, managed, executed, measured and optimized. Adobe currently captures approximately five trillion digital transactions per year for more than 5,000 customers, including many of the world’s largest advertisers, publishers and advertising agencies.

The acquisition of Efficient Frontier will add multi-channel ad campaign forecasting, execution and optimization capabilities to Adobe’s existing Digital Marketing Suite. Along with the Suite, Adobe’s digital marketing capabilities include an enterprise-class data management platform, a leading video ad management and monetization platform, and an enterprise content management system. Adobe will continue to build upon the foundation of its independent ad buying and optimization platform for search, social and display, enabling the company to offer a more complete suite of capabilities to digital marketers, advertisers and publishers for reporting and analytics, personalized experiences, multi-channel campaign management and media monetization.

“With the explosion in global Internet advertising, our customers need to know where, when and how to spend their digital marketing dollars to get the greatest return,” said Brad Rencher, senior vice president and general manager of Adobe’s Digital Marketing Business. “The addition of Efficient Frontier will give our Digital Marketing Suite customers a leading platform for turning ad spend into business impact.”

Read More: AdExchanger

When Is Audience Targeting Worth It?

ADOTAS – The field of audience targeting – also known as audience analytics – has long proven attractive and effective to online marketers. Honing campaigns to focus on specific audiences is not only logical, but it promises to provide a better way to generate return on ad dollars for the goals an advertiser is trying to achieve.

Because advertisers pay a premium for audience targeting, it’s important to examine the return on investment as it relates to all aspects of a campaign. As online marketers are beginning to understand, it’s rare that any one dimension of a media campaign is responsible for success. Furthermore, they’re finding out that each dimension delivers different results depending on a number of variables.

Whether you’re trying to determine the best creative, the highest performing website, the right audience demographic or all of the above, the ability to simultaneously analyze these variables is key to determining the optimal mix of online ad campaign attributes.

Taking a holistic look at the ways audience analytics combines with other online marketing factors is essential to knowing how, when and where to invest in audience targeting. This is no easy task. A brand may be looking at targeting 10 different audience segments across multiple ad networks, making it difficult to determine the right combinations of creative, placement, timing and other campaign considerations that work best.

Read More: Adotas

RESTON, Va., Nov. 28, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released data from the comScore Video Metrix service showing that 184 million U.S. Internet users watched online video content in October for an average of 21.1 hours per viewer. The total U.S. Internet audience viewed 42.6 billion videos, representing an all-time high.

Top 10 Video Content Properties by Unique Viewers

Google Sites, driven primarily by video viewing at YouTube.com, ranked as the top online video content property in October with 161 million unique viewers and reached a record high of 20.9 billion videos viewed. Facebook.com ranked second with 59.8 million viewers, followed by VEVO with 57 million, Microsoft Sites with 49.1 million and Viacom Digital with 48.2 million. More than 42 billion videos were viewed during the month, with the average viewer watching a record 21.1 hours. Google Sites demonstrated the highest engagement with 7.1 hours per viewer

Top 10 Video Ad Properties by Video Ads Viewed

Americans viewed 7.5 billion video ads in October, with Hulu generating the highest number of video ad impressions at more than 1.3 billion. Tremor Video ranked second overall (and highest among video ad exchanges/networks) crossing the 1 billion mark for the first time. BrightRoll Video Network ranked third with 756 million, followed by Specific Media with 512 million and CBS Interactive with 415 million. Time spent watching video ads totaled more than 3.2 billion minutes during the month, with Tremor Video delivering the highest duration of video ads at 614 million minutes. Video ads reached 53 percent of the total U.S. population an average of 47 times during the month. Hulu delivered the highest frequency of video ads to its viewers with an average of 46.5.

Read More: PR Newswire

A beginner’s guide to mobile ad networks

Mobile advertising spend is expected to grow from $3.3 billion to $20.6 billion by 2015 (according to Gartner). A major component in this projection is the staggering number of users moving to smartphones who are quickly growing more comfortable with mobile apps as well as their mobile browsing experience.

With those users spending even more time on their mobile devices, advertisers are itching to get their attention, and the best way to do it is through mobile ad networks. Just like the advertising giants on the web like Yahoo Network, Real Media, AdBrite, and Google Ad Network, mobile has spawned a new host of major players that include InMobi, Jumptap, Millennial Media, Tapjoy, and others. Of course, we’ve also watched the big guns enter the race, including Google, which purchased AdMob, and Microsoft, which created Microsoft Mobile Advertising.

The two main reasons mobile advertising is exploding are:

Mobile ads are highly targetable — enormous amounts of information are available about smartphone users, helping you to determine exactly which demographics you need to target.

You can reach customers at the point of purchase. Reaching out to customers as they are actively making purchase decisions gives marketers an incredible opportunity to convert them.

Read More: iMedia Connection

Google Looks Forward to an Early Christmas Present From Washington: An Okay for Admeld

Google’s deal to buy ad tech start-up Admeld, announced in June, looks like it is finally ready to close.

Industry sources expect the Department of Justice, who had been reviewing the $400 million transaction for antitrust violations, to approve the deal in the next couple weeks, perhaps as early as this Friday.

It’s unclear whether the DOJ will impose any restrictions on the deal. But Web ad players, reading tea leaves and DOJ body language, are betting the sale goes through unhindered. No comment from Google; I’ve yet to hear back from a Department of Justice rep.

Admeld helps publishers sell their ads by negotiating bids from multiple buyers, and is a big player in the complicated and fractured display advertising business. Google, which has long been dominant in search advertising, has been steadily increasing its presence in display ads via acquisitions like DoubleClick and Invite Media.

Read More: All Things D