While both iPad and Kindle traffic increased over the holidays, Kindle jumped from holding a 10% share of tablet traffic at the beginning of December to a 30% share at the start of 2012. At the same time, the iPad’s share over December shrank from 59% to 44%, while that of Android and other tablet platforms dropped five points to 26%, noted mobile ad network Jumptap.

Thanks to the proliferation of Android-powered smartphones, however, the Google platform strengthened its position as the dominant mobile operating system overall on Jumptap’s network, which reaches 95 million U.S. mobile users per month and 142 million worldwide.

Android’s traffic share jumped 21 percentage points in 2011 to finish the year with a commanding 59% piece of the market. That gain came at the expense of both Apple’s iOS, which dropped seven percentage points to 22%, and BlackBerry, which fell 11 percentage points to 15.7%.

Throughout 2011, however, iOS outpaced Android in ad click-through rates. For its year-end report, Jumptap compared click rates among the latest three versions of the rival platforms in wide use. While the rate for iOS has improved with each successive release, the opposite is true for Android. Apple’s new iOS 5 release had a click rate of .91% compared to .74% for iOS 4 and .61% for iOS 3.

By contrast, Android 3.0 had a rate of .59%, down from .69% for Android 2.0 and .75% for Android 1.0. The study didn’t evaluate click rates for Android 4.0, the latest version of Google’s mobile platform, also known as Ice Cream Sandwich.

The report also shed light on another long-running mobile rivalry — apps versus the mobile Web. While many predict HTML5 adoption will ultimately make the mobile Web triumphant, the Jumptap data showed apps actually narrowed the gap in traffic share last year. The two formats ended 2011 in a virtual dead heat after the mobile Web began the year with a 55.1% to 44.9% advantage.

Jumptap says marketers don’t necessarily have to have either a mobile site or app to advertise in mobile, however. Roughly one-third of its advertisers don’t have either, but are using mobile landing pages in their ad campaigns. Of course, if an ad is meant to drive traffic to a company’s own site, it’s best to have one optimized for mobile devices.

The study also looked at the effectiveness of data-targeted campaigns in the fourth quarter. The company works with third-party data providers, including Acxiom, TargusInfo, Datalogix and Polk, to provide information about consumer demographics from purchase history to income level to what cars people own.

Read more: MediaPost

Time Matters: The Role Of Real-Time Bidding for Publishers

Perhaps no single technology has as much potential to disrupt the advertising ecosystem of online publishing as Real Time Bidding (RTB). For an imperfect but simple 30 second visual primer on what RTB does, click here.  There is a shift happening and the surge of inventory that flooded onto exchanges in 2011 attests to it. As Demand Side Platforms (DSP) became ever more an executional tool of choice for many advertisers, the supply side has been pushed to follow suit and make their inventory available through marketplaces. Thus, the tried and true world of direct and network sales is threatened with disruption and the potential commoditization of inventory.

For small publishers, the advent of real-time, exchange-based marketplaces has been nothing but good. In many cases, it allows their impressions to compete on a level playing field against much more established titles, fueled by the individualized audience and interest information readily available through online data providers.

Large publishers, however, should be concerned that the growing importance and availability of targeting data on RTB platforms separates the importance of context from determining the value of the impression. In other words, if you can know what a person wants specifically, it matters less where you serve the display ad because you do not have to infer quite so much about them from where they are.

The impression transparency inherent in RTB environments causes some in the industry to fear that their use will cause CPMs to begin a “Race to the Bottom” as inventory becomes commoditized. Others think it a natural progression towards efficiency, especially for impressions that will always generate less demand such as those for remnant inventory. The Rubicon Project recently published a study that concurs with the latter and this study from Ignition One offers evidence for the former.  Obviously, the jury is still out.

So, if you represent a large publisher, what are you to think about the potential role of RTB in your organization? Is it friend or foe? There is no “one size fits all” answer to this question, but I do have some considered advice on an approach to find your own:

Read more: AdExchanger

It’s hard to believe another year has gone by already. This past year, we’ve seen the online advertising landscape continue to evolve at a rapid pace, fueled no doubt by increasing accountability for online media, key acquisitions, and online marketers demanding more from their campaigns—and the technologies that power them. What’s on the docket for next year?

Here are my thoughts:

A NEW WAY OF LOOKING AT ROI

Finally—The Death of the Click
As the Drago of online advertising, the Click has been beat on from all corners, but has refused to fall. Next year will be the final round in the fight – and Drago is going down. I foresee the majority of savvy, online marketers finally abandoning the click as a success metric in display advertising. It’s been a long time coming, and marketers everywhere, particularly those targeting business professionals, have finally realized that high CTRs do not generally correlate to the most qualified leads. Among other things, I bet we’ll see an increasing focus on the value of branding and post-impression attribution.

First- and Third-Party Data Unite
In 2011, we witnessed more and more online publishers achieving a better understanding of the value of their audiences, and as a result, better monetizing their inventories. However, from the advertiser’s perspective, first-party data is only the beginning. Advertisers have seen the ROI benefits that come from using both first- and third-party data to target prospects. As a result, I predict that in 2012, these two types of data will begin to blend seamlessly, ultimately driving deeper insight and ROI for marketers. Advertisers will also buy third-party data sets to integrate with their own data for better efficiency and targeting.

Read More: Bizo

Mobile Behavior Could Finesse Search Strategy

Mobile queries on tablets spike between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. while consumers sit at home watching television — which could support a cross-channel search and TV campaign strategy, according to Michael Slinger, director of mobile advertising at Google.

That type of insight, shared by Slinger at the Search Insider Summit, should provide brands with a road map for charting search campaigns.

For instance, Slinger said the single biggest barrier that companies have in entering the mobile search space is their mobile sites. In February, Google reported that 80% of the Fortune 500 companies have a mobile ready site. About two weeks ago, Google released a tool at HowToGoMo.com that shows companies what their Web site looks like when viewed on a mobile phone.

Industry executives suggest that the average consumer stores about seven apps on their mobile phone. And while they might have an app for banking, they might not have an app for a specific retail brand. Companies need to give consumers choice.

Slinger points to research that Google conducted with Compete on the use of mobile devices during the automotive research process. The goal was to get consumers into dealerships. About 34% of consumers use tablets throughout the research process, versus 30% on mobile devices. Still, 20% of consumers rely on tablets at the top of the purchase funnel — compared with 22% on mobile phones — to do research on cars. In the middle of the process, consumers use tablets 34% of the time and mobile phones 19% of the time. At the very end of the funnel, as consumers enter the buying process, 8% will rely on tablets versus 27% for mobile phones.

Read More: MediaPost

Having surpassed 50% penetration among the general population in 2011, online video viewing is now a mass-market pursuit. Increasing numbers of Americans are watching more content on more devices than ever before.

Even though growth rates will necessarily slow as the number of users swells from year to year, there is still room for expansion. By 2015, US online video viewers will represent 60% of the general population and 76% of internet users.

“Audience growth over the next four years will come from all demographic segments, but it will be more pronounced among preteen children, older boomers and seniors,” said Paul Verna, eMarketer senior analyst and author of a forthcoming report on premium video content. “These groups have traditionally lagged teens and younger adults in their video viewing activity, but the gaps will start to close as the market matures. This will give marketers opportunities to take advantage of growth pockets among viewers at either end of the age spectrum.”

Read More: eMarketer

Guardian Merging Yield Metrics For Print And Digital With Operative Says Beale

In November, Guardian announced a partnership with Operative where Guardian’s “print and digital media businesses, including guardian.co.uk, as well as The Guardian and The Observer newspapers, will all be running from the same platform – Operative.One – in the first half of 2012.” Read the release.

Andy Beal, Technology Director at Guardian News and Media, discussed the deal and its implications.

AdExchanger.com:  What was the turning point for bringing the print and digital operations together into one ad platform?

AB: If you go back to the start, it was driven initially by efficiency. What can we give the sales teams to make their lives easier and make them more efficient in a sales process? That was the initial driver. We had practical issues around the age of the system too. With nothing else going on, we needed to look to modernize. But the philosophy for the project changed about three years ago as it became more about supporting the growing digital revenue than it was about simply integrating systems, and then making those systems efficient. It became a revenue-driving project.

How does the revenue breaks down for you all in terms of digital versus print – especially over time?

The real story there is the direction the arrows are going. We still make a significant proportion of our revenue from the combined sale, but a lot is still from our print products. But digital is a growing area. And that is a structural position that is not going to change. Regardless of the detail, it’s about supporting our growing revenues. The actual product that we are providing our clients, in terms of that monetized audience, is a combined cross‑platform package almost always now. It’s not quite from a revenue perspective. Print versus digital – they have symbiotic relationship.

Read More: AdExchanger

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

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Jumptap, the leader in targeted mobile advertising, released its October MobileSTAT report, which, among other findings, showed that Apple is the industry leader in getting its customers to embrace new platforms and features – a conclusion that reveals something about the habits of Apple users, as well as the company’s approach to marketing and product.

October proved to be a release-heavy month with high profile launches of iPhone 4S and iOS 5, the announcement of Android 4.0, and the release of Blackberry’s BBX operating system. However, the most interesting insights from the Mobile STAT report focused on the way in which device releases impacted OS adoption rates. In less than three weeks since its official release, iOS 5 had already accounted for 32 percent of the total iOS traffic on the Jumptap network. In contrast, new Android releases were slower to catch on. More than six months after the launch of Android 2.3, the OS had an adoption rate of less than 50 percent of the overall Android market. The previous system, Android 2.2, kept its share of approximately 40 percent of the market.

October handset releases also impacted the Jumptap network. Both the highly anticipated iPhone 4S and rival handset Android Samsung Galaxy S2 showed steady increases and acquired market share against other devices. The MobileSTAT showed that Samsung smartphone users access applications 27 percent more than iPhone users. On the flip side, iPhone users are twice as active on the mobile web as Samsung smartphone users. Gaming is the top content channel on Samsung smartphones, which is most likely tied to the higher app usage and suggests a younger audience. For iPhones, News and Entertainment is the top channel, which helps explain the prevalence of web browsing and suggests an older audience.

Read More: Businesswire

Three Years Later, the Guardian Wants a Buyer for PaidContent

Three years after buying PaidContent, the Guardian Media Group has put the New York-based media news site and its parent company ContentNext Media on the block.

The British newspaper publisher has hired boutique bank Coady Diemar Partners to market the company. People familiar with the sale believe the Guardian is looking for something in the $15 million to $20 million range for the property, which would let it recoup its initial investment and subsequent infusions of working capital.

The move, which the company has contemplated for the last year or so, comes as the British newspaper publisher is going through a cost-cutting round while simultaneously gearing up for an attempt to create a U.S. foothold, via a New York-based Web operation. Alan Hudson, a Bank of America executive hired by the Guardian this summer to “oversee the company’s investment portfolio,” is overseeing the sale.

Read More: AllThingsD

Investment Comes Amid Continued Expansion of Network, Exchange and Mobile Video Solutions

SAN FRANCISCO, CA–(Marketwire – Nov 15, 2011) – BrightRoll, the leading provider of digital video advertising services, announces it closed $30 million in financing. New investor Trident Capital led the equity financing and Senior Managing Director Evangelos Simoudis will be joining the BrightRoll board. Existing investors True Ventures, Scale Venture Partners and Adams Street Partners all participated, as did Comerica Bank.

This funding comes amid significant momentum as BrightRoll continues to double revenue year over year. While demand for video advertising is increasing faster than any other online ad format — projected to rise 54 percent in 2012 by eMarketer — BrightRoll has continued to outpace the industry. The success is fueled by significant investments in technology and research, as well as expansion of the senior leadership team across key operations and strategic roles.

“As long-term adtech investors, we continually look for companies with a leadership position in important sectors of the online advertising space. After following online video advertising for some time we have decided to invest in BrightRoll, which we consider one of the market leaders. We are impressed by the company’s leadership, vision and cutting-edge technology,” said Simoudis. “Tod and the rest of the executive team have built a solid company and we look forward to helping them continue to grow the business.”

Read More: Marketwire

Conde Nast Becomes Latest Publisher to Unveil Private Ad Exchange

Admeld-Powered Exchange to Feature CPM Price Floors, Real-Time Bidding

The assault on third-party ad networks continues. Today, Conde Nast, publisher of magazines such as The New Yorker and Vanity Fair, is launching a private ad exchange to sell unsold inventory on its digital properties to a select group of advertisers. The exchange, powered by Admeld, will feature CPM price floors and real-time bidding.

“Like any publisher, we’re interested in maximizing the revenue on our inventory,” said Drew Schutte, exec VP and chief integration officer at Conde Nast. “By opening a private exchange, we’re getting all the controls we wanted while providing access to our premium advertisers who commit to Conde Nast in the most significant way.”

The minimum requirement for advertisers to get access to the exchange was that their fourth-quarter ad spend with Conde Nast this year had to be higher than last year’s. Five advertisers, including eBay and Macy’s, will have access to the exchange through the end of 2011. Mr. Schutte said Conde Nast will offer access to more advertisers in 2012.

Read More: AdAge

Tapad Taps Evidon For Mobile Opt-Outs

As the traditional online behavioral advertising industry engages the issues of consumer privacy and data control through new standardized ad icons and opt-out procedures, the best approach for a mobile privacy protection solution remains unclear.

The in-ad AdChoices icons that signal a display unit use behavioral targeting to find that consumers seem unwieldy on diminutive mobile ads. The number of app, banner and operating system platforms on which a reliable opt-out system must ork is daunting — even in the world of complex demand-side platforms and real-time targeting.

But cross-platform retargeting ad platform Tapad has partnered with Evidon to start looking for a solution.

Evidon is one of the early developers of notification and opt-out systems that comply with the requirements of the Digital Advertising Alliance program, a self-regulatory regimen led by a collation of online and offline advertising and business associations.

Read More: MediaPost

Display advertising is changing rapidly and getting more and more confusing. And many people are looking to understand its landscape.

Here are five things you need to know that you may not have thought of when it comes to display:

1. There will be fewer ads per page. One of the problems with online advertising today is that there is no barrier to creating new inventory. Constructing a billboard alongside a highway costs capital. There are a limited number of :30 spots you can run during a top-rated TV show. But if you’re a publisher that wants to create new revenue, it is much easier to add more ads to a page than it is to get more users to the site, or to get the ads to perform better. I estimate that there is about five times more supply than there is CPM/CPC demand. The rest of the inventory is spent on CPA offers or site promotions. Smart publishers should be focused on their audience and properly pricing those ads, to make for a more efficient marketplace – rather than flooding the exchanges and networks with new inventory. As the market gets more mature, the market will get closer to a balance between supply and demand.

2. RTB will be the primary way to retarget and your DSP technology will be the difference between success and failure. For some, this goes without saying. Only a demand-side platform (DSP) accessing all of the major ad exchanges can provide enough reach to power retargeting at scale, particularly when there are any kinds of restraints, like targeting by geo. A good DSP is like a racecar or precision surgical tools – it allows the buyer using the DSP to distinguish between good inventory and bad, cheap and expensive, and premium and remnant.

Read More: ClickZ

Limelight Networks Announces Its Dynamic Site Platform for Mobile to Enable Publishers to More Effectively Create and Manage Mobile Web Presence

Service Allows for Tailoring of Content-Rich Web Sites — Ensuring Content is Displayed as it Should be, Regardless of Device

TEMPE, Ariz., Nov 8, 2011 (GlobeNewswire via COMTEX) — Limelight Networks, Inc. /quotes/zigman/105873/quotes/nls/llnw LLNW +0.63% today introduced its Dynamic Site Platform for Mobile, an innovative new service that enables publishers to create and manage their mobile web presence. By providing the ability to create mobile-specific sites and repurpose content for multiple devices, the solution ensures that content-rich sites are optimized for every device — regardless of screen size, processing power or bandwidth.

Limelight Dynamic Site Platform for Mobile is built on the company’s cloud-based Dynamic Site Platform to integrate all web content management tasks — saving time and money while ensuring that publishers’ brands are expressed consistently across all online platforms. Using industry-standard languages (XML, HTML, CSS and Javascript), it allows web designers to create mobile sites that leverage the content and features already built into corporate sites. The solution eliminates the need for a separate mobile CMS, further speeding time to market.

Read More: MarketWatch

Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL Share Display Inventory

Still no merger news, but Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL have agreed to share unsold “premium” display inventory among their respective ad networks.

The partnership, announced Tuesday, appeals directly to Madison Avenue’s desire for scalable reach — something that has been increasingly hard to come by via TV, but not yet achievable online.

“This agreement should begin to change the industry’s perception of premium” inventory, Ross Levinsohn, Yahoo EVP of the Americas, said on a conference call late Tuesday.

More to the point, “this is about differentiation,” Levinsohn added, in response to a direct question about increasing competition from Google and Facebook, and whether their rise brought Yahoo, AOL, and Microsoft together.   

A clear and present threat, Facebook and Google are expected to increase their share of domestic display advertising this year by 9.3% and 16.3%, respectively, according to eMarketer.

Yet by adding greater scale into the equation, the partners hope the deal will increase demand for their premium display ad offerings.

Read More: MediaPost