33Across Acquires Publishing Data Gold Mine Tynt
Facebook may be the biggest social network on the planet, but social ad targeting firm 33Across says it now has the distinction of managing the world’s largest social and interest graph.
The company was set to announce today that it has acquired San Francisco-based publishing sharing tool Tynt, which says it reaches more than 1 billion global users monthly. Ostensibly, the acquisition expands 33Across’ data footprint to more than 1.25 billion people worldwide (which the companies say eclipses Facebook’s 800 million, although comparing Facebook’s network to 33Across’ isn’t exactly an apples to apples comparison).
Tynt, which tracks when readers cut and paste content forsharing via email and other social channels, has more than 500,000 publisher clients, including NBCUniversal, Sports Illustrated and MarthaStewart.com. 33Across will maintain the Tynt brand but take ownership of all of the company’s assets, including technology, patents, filings, analytics and tool sets, as well as its roughly 17 employees, including senior leadership.
Mobile Video Primed, Ad Model In Early Stages
Growth in mobile video consumption is so poised, it’s difficult to predict how high and fast the curve might move, while the same goes for advertising and other revenue streams.
“The opportunity appears to be enormous by any stretch of the imagination,” said Nielsen Senior Vice President Scott L. Brown, noting the boom in smartphone penetration.
Mike Bloxham, the executive director of the Media Behavior Institute, said: “There’s a huge amount of growth yet to come in mobile-related revenues … we’re almost at a Jurassic stage of development.”
Bloxham did caution that analyst suggestions that the mobile advertising market would parallel growth in usage could be too ambitious. If mobile accounts for 8% of media consumption time, that hardly means 8% of ad dollars would be apportioned in the space, given the many other factors that impact media buying.
“That’s complete garbage,” he said in joining Brown on a panel at the NATPE event. “Media money is not allocated based on time spent alone. It’s much more complicated than that.”
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?
