As retailers increasingly embrace mobile to boost foot traffic and drive m-commerce, mobile advertising is expanding as well. To capitalize on that trend, mobile ad network Jumptap has partnered with hyperlocal data provider PlaceIQ and appointed a director of retail to oversee ad efforts in the category.

Through the alliance with PlaceIQ, Jumptap says it will allow advertisers to reach the precise areas most likely to contain members of their target audience, whether luxury shoppers, tourists, students or travelers.

PlaceIQ claims its ad-targeting technology creates a “hyperlocal digital index of the physical world,” by understanding not only what is there, but who is in a place, when, and what they’re doing.

While some of this is static data about a location (down to a city block), much of it is gleaned from user actions, like searches people perform or ads they click on in a given spot at a certain time via mobile devices.

The start-up claims its technology is “privacy-friendly,” since it profiles locations rather than people, without gathering or storing personally identifiable information (PII).In December, PlaceIQ landed $4.2 million in first-round venture funding.

Jumptap 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. That anonymized data helped double click-through rates for retail campaigns in the fourth quarter.

In addition to teaming with Place IQ, Jumptap announced its hiring of Matthew Mulderink as its first director of retail to lead strategy for retail publishers and advertisers. Prior to joining Jumptap, Mulderink was director of strategic accounts at ad optimization firm at Dotomi, acquired last August by ValueClick. He was previously in a similar role at Yahoo, working with retailers including Best Buy, Target and Sears.
Read more: MediaPost
SpotXchange First to Provide Auto- Versus User-Initiated Video Advertising Information to Real-Time Bidding Buyers
DENVER – February 21, 2012 – SpotXchange, Inc., the largest global marketplace of video ad inventory, today announced that it is the first real-time-bidding (RTB) supply source to offer its partners initiation type (auto-initiated versus user-initiated) information for video ad inventory in real time with every bid request.  This information will help SpotXchange’s RTB partners valuate inventory more effectively and make more efficient buying decisions.
There is a significant difference between auto- and user-initiated video ads, which results in two different user experiences.  An auto-initiated ad plays automatically when a user visits a web page, but the video ad does not block the user from viewing intended content.  User-initiated ads must be viewed by consumers before reaching their desired content, such as a video or game.  Because higher levels of consumer engagement are associated with user-initiated video ads, advertisers are willing to pay a premium for them.
Historically, however, user- and auto-initiated placements have been bundled together in brokered deals by ad networks and sold at a flat CPM.   With SpotXchange providing partners with initiation type information in real time with each bid request, SpotXchange’s RTB and direct buy partners can value each placement opportunity independently. This transparency coupled with robust audience data, leads to higher ROI for advertisers and increased yield for publishers, by providing high-quality inventory to the exchange.
Read more: SpotXchange

Modeling an audience segment that targets consumers traversing the Internet has become more of a science than an art, especially when large brands must make quick changes to campaigns and need the data to verify decisions.

Supporting the need to create custom audience segments, eXelate built maX Data — modeled on audience eXtension — a data platform the company plans to roll out Monday.

Audience segments are built in real-time based on the goal of the campaign, rather than the brands settling for generic or pre-populated segments. The platform that creates data sets specific goals for target audiences, based on the clients’ impressions to conversion data, combined with eXelate third-party data, according to Damian Garbaccio, eXelate’s chief revenue officer.

For example, a car manufacturer markets a new car. In mid-campaign, the results suggest a new segment to target — college graduates with specific demographic patterns who have a proven record of generating results, based on showroom visits with their parents. The goal is to get them to sign up for the auto email newsletter online or opt in to “Learn More” on the Web site.

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Social@Ogilvy Spans Agency To Integrate Digital Strategies
In response to social’s spreading influence, Ogilvy & Mather has realigned its related assets into a single practice. Social@Ogilvy aims to connect over 550 dedicated social media experts around the world — and strengthen ties with another 4,000 digital experts.

What was once a specialty offering within Ogilvy Public Relations now spans all agency disciplines, including marketing, communications, CRM, sales and shopping insights.

In addition to social media marketing and communications, the practice now covers social shopping, social CRM, social care, social business solutions, listening and analytics and the agency’s standard measurement model “conversation impact.”

“That [equals] access to social experts deep in every marketing and communications discipline,” said John Bell, Global Managing Director of Social@Ogilvy.

Bell said the agency spent the past seven years defining and applying “best practice” use of social media to business. It wasn’t easy, he said, but it was necessary. “The real power of social media for business in 2012 and beyond lies in fully integrated solutions, not stand-alone social programs,” Bell notes.
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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