Archive for the ‘Online Advertising’ Category

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Netezza Offering Solution For Big Math, Big Data In Digital Advertising

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

NetezzaNetezza recently announced its Netezza TwinFin(i) Appliance which extends data warehousing capabilities and supports the company’s i-Class data analytics platform. (Read the release about i-Class.) The company’s products are gaining traction with digital advertising tech companies as requisite computational power rockets.

Netezza’s Brad Terrell, VP and general manager of digital media, and
Michele Chambers, director of advanced analytics product management,
looked how Netezza products apply in digital advertising with AdExchanger.com.

AdExchanger.com: What is the application here for digital advertising? For example, would a demand side platform find this system useful – and why?

Netezza: A wide range of analytic applications for digital advertising apply, including but not limited to ad targeting, Web site optimization, ad inventory and pricing, ad sales forecasting, attribution analysis, network usage, click fraud detection and keyword portfolio optimization.

Can you define what is meant by “big data” and “big math”?

Big data is petabytes of data. Big math refers to the complex computational processing that’s required for advanced analytics.

How does pricing work for Netezza’s TwinFin(i) Appliance?

List pricing starts at $125K for a system that analyzes up to 10TB of data and goes up from there.

By John Ebbert

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Mpire Announces AdXpose API; CRO Winfield Discusses Pricing and Services Layer

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

AdXposeMpire announced a new API which provides “advanced reporting capabilities” from AdXpose, Mpire’s campaign verification and optimization technology, on such data points as domain verification, location on the page, geographic location of the user, user demographic and page or site context.  Read the release.

Mpire President and CRO Kirby Winfield shared his thoughts with AdExchanger.com about the evolution of the AdXpose product and the API.

AdExchanger.com: What’s the pricing like for the API? And, are you moving away from offering a services layer for the AdXpose product at Mpire?

KW: Pricing will be an incremental CPM fee on top of the base service fee. We will basically offer API access at or near “cost” – it is meant to be a value-add to our ad server, network, and DSP clients. We are in no way moving away from the services layer, however. On the contrary, we are currently hiring technical account managers  to help service our clients and prospects: because we provide so much more than just simple verification reports, it’s crucial that we make it easy for our clients to understand the implications of the data and make human decisions in addition to any algorithmic decisions made leveraging the API.

What about API integration? Is this difficult for groups that may be less technically skilled such as some agencies, for example?

We are finding that most agencies now have the ability and desire to integrate data from multiple sources into their dashboards, reports, and decisioning engines. As Google VP of Product Management Susan Wojcicki said today at the IAB Leadership Meeting, “if you’re using spreadsheets to manage campaigns, you’re leaving dollars on the table.” The holding company agency DSP’s are especially well positioned to integrate the API, and we work with the majority of these entities today.

How is Mpire’s AdXpose media business progressing? And how does this API release affect it or say about the company’s media business?

The media business is largely a sandbox for continued development of our AdXpose Analytics technology. Sitting on a consistent volume of directly purchased impressions (we do not buy from or compete in any way with ad networks – in fact, some buy from us) allows us to test new features in real time without using clients as guinea pigs. That stated, it’s the technology and our technology clients that drive the enterprise value for our business, and that’s the side of the business that gets the lion’s share of our investment. To that end, the API release is simply further confirmation of our commitment to creating the leading brand safety and display ad analytics company online.

By John Ebbert

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Convertro Tackling Cookie-Free Attribution For Digital Marketers Says CEO Zwelling

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

Jeff Zwelling is CEO and Co-Founder of Convertro, a marketing metrics attribution company.

Convertro

AdExchanger.com: What problem is Convertro trying to solve?

JZ: Marketers today are in large part “flying blind” when it comes to properly allocating their marketing dollars among their various marketing channels. I say this because most advertisers are relying upon outdated tracking technology that is cookie-based, relies upon sampled data, and attributes credit only to the last click preceding purchase. The last click fallacy results in overspending on navigational ad terms while under-spending or eliminating marketing spend on the so-called “top of the funnel” terms that actually introduce customers to the website. We have solved this problem for marketers by overcoming these hurdles and giving them unprecedented transparency into their marketing channels.

In your company’s description, you note that Convertro is self-funded. Does this mean you’ve been profitable from nearly the beginning? Are their any special challenges to being self-funded?

Convertro’s technology was built over several years prior to establishing Convertro as a standalone concern with live clients. We are supported by client-based revenue from our existing clients, and we’ve had investment from the founders and others. So no, funding has not been a challenge for us.

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OpenAmplify CEO Redgrave Discusses Brand Engagement With Semantic Technology

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

OpenAmplifyOpenAmplify recently announced research which showed that by using the company’s semantic technology, it was able to discover engagement levels for certain brand ads – such as Audi ads after the Super Bowl, in this case. Read the release.

Mark Redgrave, CEO of OpenAmplify, discussed the findings with AdExchanger.com.

AdExchanger.com: Are brands such as Audi requesting this information from OpenAmplify, yet? How is your semantic technology critical here?

MR: No. We ran the research out of general interest. Semantic technology is able to tell us how engaged people are, and what topics they are engaging in. We understand the conversation that is occurring – what people like and dislike, and their actionable and emotional engagement to the ads and how it compares to the brand.

It’s interesting that your data speaks to attribution modeling and ROI for brands. Can you see OpenAmplify’s data used for this purpose? Any plans to productize?

We are proving that the OpenAmplify semantic platform can power the next generation of intelligent applications that deliver unique and valuable insights. We are running projects for agencies and brands in both U.S. and U.K., which we hope to announce soon.

How do you translate engagement given the context of the site? For example, people might be more prone to talk about a car ad on a car buyer site.. but if they talk about it on Facebook – that could be more or less valuable depending on any number of factors.

True, although in the current state of the industry, brands want a big picture first to get a better sense if they are resonating with consumers overall. In this example, we wanted to establish a benchmark for comparison. We decided to track reactions and engagement across the major social media platforms because that is where most brands and clients are focused. We track how the reactions spread in various channels and also how the brand is being talked about. “What’s happening to my brand on Twitter? Or Digg? Or YouTube?” By concentrating on these, we are satisfying the focus of the brand majority.

By John Ebbert

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TagMan GM And Founder Baron Discusses Funding And Business Momentum

Monday, February 15th, 2010

TagManAdExchanger.com discussed TagMan’s new funding announcement (See release.) and recent momentum with Jonathan Baron, co-founder and general manager of Tagman.

AdExchanger.com: What attributes did you look for in a funding partner?  How have you found the funding climate?

JB: We sought partners that had an understanding of the online ad marketplace such that they could see the strategic and practical importance of TagMan. This meant, ordinarily, previous experience in founding and/or directing ventures that had shaken the online marketplace. We’re delighted that we were able to find the likes of John Taysom and Andy Phillipps, people who have done just that and that they were immediately convinced enough of TagMan’s ability to deliver on its promise to become involved.

There’s no question there are investment funds available for those businesses that can demonstrate a revenue model that’s already succeeding and something different enough to suggest additional, strategic value. We found plenty of willing potential partners and were able to be discerning about the size and type of money we took.

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New Dapper CEO Beriker On The Direct Response Display Channel

Monday, February 15th, 2010

DapperJames Beriker was named CEO of Dapper, an online advertising technology company. Beriker’s previous roles include CEO at Efficient Frontier, a search engine marketing firm. See the story.

Beriker discussed Dapper and his experience with AdExchanger.com.

AdExchanger.com: AdWeek quoted you as saying, “It’s [the] beginning days of display is a very powerful direct response channel.” But, display is about generating demand and addressing the top of the funnel, of course. How does display become a powerful direct response channel similar to search which is more “bottom of the funnel”?

JB: The same way search does — by understanding and targeting intent. We have the technology to identify what consumers are looking for or interested in during that 95% of the time they’re not searching. With dynamic display, we can efficiently and at scale deliver content-driven offers to users that map to their intent.

A year from now, can you share a key milestone which would you like to have seen Dapper accomplish?

Make dynamic display ads as high performing and easy to execute as search is today.

3. Isn’t Dapper an ad network? It would appear to have some of the characteristics such as managing publisher relationships and advertiser offers?

First and foremost, we’re a technology and product company- we use our deep technology assets to build products that help advertisers more efficiently buy, target, deploy and optimize display advertising campaigns. Dapper has cracked the code for intelligently serving highly relevant content from an advertisers site into an ad based on a near real-time understanding of that user’s intent and the context of the site the user is on. We work primarily through the ad exchanges and with our partner DSPs to deliver our customer’s dynamic display ads, so I would not call us an ad network.

By John Ebbert

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Mpire Announces Ad Blocking For AdXpose; CEO Kirby Winfield Discusses Feature And Clients

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

AdXposeMpire announced new ad blocking capabilities for its AdXpose product where, “AdXpose analyzes the content on publisher sites in real-time, and cross-references it with the prescribed rules set by the advertiser.” If the content is acceptable, the ad is served. If not, it’s not. Read the release.

AdExchanger.com spoke to Mpire CEO Kirby Winfield about the new feature and overall business.

AdExchanger.com: Can you explain the issue around Iframes? And, how does AdXpose tackle it for your new “proactive ad blocking” feature?

KW: The issue around Iframes for our agency and platform clients is that
 Iframes limit visibility into where ads are appearing, and how they are
 performing. Specifically, up to 40% of impressions on a typical 
non-premium display buy can “dead end” at an ad network or server URL 
due to multiple Iframes within the delivery path. So, our clients are 
initially unable to see whether their ads were delivered within 
IO-specified parameters, or whether fraudulent activities like ad 
stuffing (nested Iframes) or other impression fraud occurred.

 With AdXpose’s patent-pending technology, we’re typically able to get
 through several layers of Iframes to see where the ad is actually 
appearing and what kind of performance the ad is seeing, based on 
viewable impressions, user and brand engagement, geographic and 
demographic targeting, and more; reducing the obfuscation to single
 digit percentages in many cases. And where obfuscation remains, we 
encourage our clients to examine the channel and provider which is
 obfuscated and make a judgment call on how far they trust that channel.


 With our new ad blocking capabilities, the user can set any number of
 alerting thresholds around the above mentioned attributes, and once 
triggered, either receive notification or stop the ads from appearing
 down those channels or sites. One attribute of ad blocking that solves 
the Iframe issue is the simple ability to require that any obfuscated 
domain (unless it is on a white list provided by the client) be prevented
 from serving an ad.

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Solbright CEO Pace Says Advertising Will Remain Major Way Publishers Create Revenue; Discusses Company's Back Office Solutions

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

Tom Pace is CEO of Solbright, a web publisher solutions provider.

SolbrightAdExchanger.com: Solbright has been around for a while. Discuss the evolution of your company and how it has tracked changes in the online ad industry.

Solbright started out as a practical solution for addressing the basic business processes of publishers and Web sites looking to manage their online advertising businesses. It began with some improvements in the trafficking and operations area, including flight and creative management. Over time, as the process grew increasingly complex, features and functionality were added to the Solbright solution to address the sales and billing processes, followed by inventory forecasting and management. All of these features were strategically considered and added in order to reflect the needs of the online ad market as it grew over the years. Now ad hoc reporting, yield management, multiple ad server management, third-party system and buy-/sell-side integration are all being addressed due to the current and anticipated demands of the market. In addition, we’ve partnered with leading technology providers – such as Ad-Juster, with whom we announced a partnership last week – to integrate these technologies into our solution and further simplify the process of digital ad operations management for premium publishers. When you are managing processes for the best publishers and Web sites in the business, there is a terrific interplay of ideas and trends coming from this base of clients, all of which are setting expectations and needs for the market based on real-world experience.

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Dentsu Buys Innovation Interactive – As In 360i, Search Ignite, Netmining

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

Dentsu Buys Innovation InteractiveAnother independent digital agency has been gobbled.

The Wall Street Journal’s Suzanne Vranica reported last night that top-5 holding company, Dentsu, was in the final stages of acquiring Innovation Interactive which owns 360i, Search Ignite and Netmining (AdExchanger.com Q&A). According to Vranica, “The deal under discussion is valued at roughly $200 million… In 2009, Innovation’s revenue was about $69 million.” Read more. This morning, the deal was confirmed in a release by Dentsu here. Ad Age has more here and notes that iCrossing may be next.

Tim Andree, President & CEO, Dentsu Holdings USA, gives the corporate perspective in the release: “Unmatched digital expertise, world class capabilities and proven performance are what led us to Innovation Interactive, but it is their unique culture, commitment to clients and industry leadership that make this marriage a true win-win. Will [Margiloff, co-CEO at Innovation], Bryan [Wiener, co-CEO] and I have spent nearly a year walking in each other’s shoes, and the farther we walked, the more clearly we saw compatibilities that would result in a higher value proposition for our clients. We share the same passion for client-centric operations and continual innovation for some of the largest brands in the world.” It would seem Margiloff and Wiener will have important roles in the company going forward as Dentsu transitions its agencies into a digital world. Getting digital leaders can be a key part of any acquisition by a holding company.

And, Dentsu aspires to be a data-driven company if their website’s home page is any indication. The tag line says, “Good Innovation.” Is today’s news coincidence?

AdExchanger.com gathered some reaction from the ad ecosystem…

Darren Herman, President of Varick Media Management said:

I think this move by Dentsu is another nod to advertising and technology aligning. If you are going to build the agency structure of the future, having technology at the core is a must. Will and his team over at Innovation Interactive innovated and executed towards this aligned goal and now it’s a new chapter in their life with Dentsu.

Randy Nicolau, CEO of Demdex added:

This is a great exit for Innovation Interactive. During the past 10 years Innovation Interactive has built a solid, diverse business which includes search technology, analytics/targeting, and agency services. I would keep an eye on the demand-side platforms, ad verification services, and behavioral data management firms. An acquisition of one of these companies will likely signal that the race to own the best ‘audience platforma has begun.”

Kirby Winfield is CEO of mPire, makers of AdXpose commented:

“It is interesting to see this news on the heels of the recent Vivaki announcement (no more equity investing) and the relative silence on the tech deal front for the past few quarters from the traditionally tech-acquisitive WPP Group. That said, IPG looks to have reorganized its efforts around tech with the recent formation of Split, and digital leaders within agencies are certainly being promoted more frequently into leadership roles within traditional agencies.”

Zach Coelius, CEO of Triggit said:

“I think agencies are starting to recognize that technology is reshaping their business just like it has in every other sector in the economy.”

By John Ebbert

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Better Advertising Will Create More Trust Between Consumers, Companies And The Government Says CEO Meyer

Monday, January 25th, 2010

Scott Meyer is CEO of Better Advertising, a company focused on provide a solution for privacy self-regulation for the online advertising industry.

CEO Scott Meyer of Better AdvertisingAdExchanger.com: Please discuss your background and how it brings you to where you are today.

SM: I’ve been in the digital media business since 1998, including eight years with The New York Times Company where I was CEO of About.com and also General Manager of NYTimes.com. Before the Times Company, ran the consumer business at Multex, which was a successful IPO and is now owned by Reuters.

So, I know first-hand what some of the pressures are on our industry, including the role privacy concerns play in how major brands allocate their digital media dollars.

What problem is Better Advertising solving?

There is an immediate need for self-regulation to succeed. The Principles put out by the cross-Industry Coalition have to be successfully implemented. Better Advertising simplifies and makes that process scalable. The larger ongoing problem we solve is creating more trust in the online advertising ecosystem between consumers, companies and the government. This current lack of trust leads many brands to stay on the sidelines, missing out on great marketing opportunities, such as Online Behavioral Advertising (OBA). Multiple studies show that many millions of new branding dollars would come online if privacy concerns weren’t so severe. A recent study by Forbes found that 77% of brand marketers are worried about the privacy concerns with OBA. That is clearly keeping dollars out of the market.

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Inuvo CEO Howe Reviews $4.2 Million Public Offering And Lead Generation Opportunity

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

InuvoPublicly-traded Inuvo announced that it has raised $4.2 million in a public offering with funds to be used for ongoing expansion of its ad platform for the lead gen space.  Read the release.

Rich Howe, CEO of Inuvo, discussed the new funds and the evolution of Inuvo with AdExchanger.com.

AdExchanger.com: How does raising funds in the public markets present special challenges?

RH: For Inuvo™, three questions drove our strategy:

  1. Could we afford to pay the fees and take the dilution associated with using an outside party to manage the transaction?
  2. Could we convince new shareholders that the new strategy and team were worth the risk?
  3. Could we fully subscribe the offering at market?

For our company, at this point in the evolution of the business, we were successful in directly convincing shareholders to invest in the company at the existing market price of the stock. The transaction was oversubscribed and as a result, the best interests of shareholders were realized. The stock has risen 60% subsequent to the closing. It was certainly a challenge to execute on all the fronts simultaneously and the procedural requirements for public companies most certainly do not make the process any easier.

AdExchanger.com: What is the key market that the ad platform serves? What does your competitive set look like?

RH: The company is targeting advertisers interested in performance-based advertising, where the advertiser is willing to pay for a generated action online, such as a sale, a click or a lead. With top-notch advertisers, we simultaneously target quality publishers who are looking to monetize online efforts and receive the highest possible payout.

We offer customers three principle advantages over our competition. First, since we are a platform and not a network, we have eliminated the traditional layers in the value chain between advertisers and publishers and as a result, are able to offer the platform services at competitive rates relative to our competition. Second, the Inuvo Platform provides advertisers with full transparency and control over their advertising campaigns, right down to individual publishers and the lead transactions they generate. Finally, we allow advertisers to integrate the Inuvo Platform with their existing lead or sales management systems. In so doing, manual reporting and consolidation activity that plagues existing affiliate management systems is mitigated.

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Ad-Juster CEO Lewis Discusses Traction And SaaS Implications

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

Ad-JusterAd-Juster announced a deal with software solutions provider Solbright which will allow Solbright clients “to automatically access third party delivery data from Ad-Juster for billing reconciliation and discrepancy management.” Read the release.

AdExchanger.com caught up with Ad-Juster CEO Mike Lewis to discuss his company’s positioning and the marketplace.

AdExchanger.com: What types of companies are buying your services right now? Can you identify specific verticals – and/or horizontals?

ML: Its difficult to identify any specific verticals or horizontals as thematic in our current customer base. We have premium content publishers using our system from almost all types, genres and sizes. Pretty much any company that’s serving third party ads as part of their revenue operations have seen tremendous value in what we offer them. Up until recently our focus has been on larger digital publishers, companies that often have
their own in-house ad operations groups. However, in the last several months we have expanded our view of the world and found that there is strong demand for this type of delivery performance measurement and insight among smaller publishers, ad networks, ad agencies, and even direct advertisers.

We provide value to our customers by paying attention to their work-flows and reducing “stove-pipe” system gaps between different organizational systems. Our current product has been well adopted by two primary areas of responsibility within our customer base: Ad Operations and Billing/Finance. We are working both internally and with potential technical partners to expand our integration of these stove-pipes to include the Sales and Proposal personnel, and see several great product offerings coming to market in 2010.

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Mpire Announces AdXpose Deal With WPP Group And GroupM's MediaCom, Discusses Risk Management

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

MediaCom and MpireMpire announced in a release today that over the course of four months, WPP Group agency, MediaCom, implemented Mpire’s AdXpose technology for a consumer electronics firm resulting in what it says was significant performance improvement by, among other things, “removing underperforming sites from the network buy.” Read the release.

AdExchanger.com followed up with Mpire CEO Kirby Winfield…

AdExchanger.com: Are you surprised about the number of “underperforming sites”? What are some of the characteristics of these sites? Specific types of UGC, images, etc.?

KW: I am not at all surprised. I spent 10+ years in the search market, so I’ve seen the types of publishers and problems that can exist in a blind or unregulated environment. To me, the non-premium CPM display market, although it predates search, is way behind when it comes to quality control and fraud prevention. Impression fraud and unseen inventory, specifically, are rampant.

Advertisers, platforms and publishers have not traditionally viewed the impression-based ecosystem through the lens of transparency or site-level performance. Optimization generally occurs at the 10,000-foot level, with advertisers typically viewing performance at the network or exchange line, where items like passed tags, URL spoofing, URL padding, and specific publisher underperformance are simply not visible. The CTR and impression totals always magically turn out the way they should – it’s what informs those totals that advertisers need to be concerned with.

The good news is that there’s finally a focus on establishing some standards, and creating a marketplace where transparency, trust, accountability, quality are commonplace.

As far as characteristics of the sites, here are some red flags: hyphenated domains, unusual TLDs, movie sites, foreign UGC, Manga/anime sites, cricket/rugby/soccer sites, work from home sites. Of course, you have to be able to see the referrer URL to even catch these red flags.

AdExchanger.com: Is the brand marketer showing more interest in running awareness campaigns from your vantage point?

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Click Forensics CEO Paul Pellman On Display And Search Traffic Quality

Monday, December 14th, 2009

Paul Pellman is CEO of Click Forensics, a traffic quality management company which released “an upgraded version of its Yahoo! TQ Forecast feature” last week.

Click ForensicsAdExchanger.com: Can you explain the problem CF is solving a bit more in detail – with an example? And, how does an ad network send search traffic?

PP: Sure. Most performance-based (cost-per-click) ad networks have a relationship with one or more of the major search ad providers (Yahoo!, Google), either directly with a feed from that provider or through an intermediary. Some networks send all of their search traffic to these feeds (getting back a set of ads from the search provider). Other networks use one or more feeds as a “backstop” for ad categories in which they do not have direct advertiser relationships. The major search providers all employ some form of quality-based pricing which adjusts prices paid by advertisers based on that quality of traffic being delivered from the distribution network. So, for example, ad networks providing traffic to Yahoo! receive a score each week indicating the level of quality that Yahoo! feels they’re delivering to advertisers. This score ranges from 0 to 10, with 10 being best quality. This “Yahoo! TQ Score” directly determines how much commission an ad network receives for traffic delivered to Yahoo!.

Unfortunately for ad networks, the formula for computing the Yahoo! TQ score is proprietary to Yahoo!. In order to prevent networks from “gaming the system,” it’s necessary that it be somewhat opaque, but conversion rates play a large role in the calculation. So this is the problem we’ve solved for ad networks. Click Forensics provides a Yahoo! TQ Forecast feature that allows ad networks to accurately predict the scores their traffic will receive from Yahoo! so that they can take action before delivering poor quality traffic. For example, an ad network may decide that a specific
publisher has traffic that will damage his Yahoo! TQ score and so he may choose to monetize that traffic differently instead of sending it to Yahoo!

What trends are you seeing in terms of traffic quality from display that you track these days?

While we have historically specialized in performance-based advertising (cost-per-click), we are seeing major opportunities in display emerging right now and it’s an area we’re particularly excited about. “Traffic quality” in the cost-per-click space is largely about eliminating invalid traffic and scoring valid clicks based on their propensity to convert for advertisers. In the display world “traffic quality” is a broader issue. Advertisers need to know more than just: “did that click come from a human or a bot?” They need both audience verification (how many people saw my ad?
how many times were they in the target demographic/geography?) and content verification (was the ad above or below the fold? was the associated content appropriate for my brand? were competitors displayed more prominently?).

We’re seeing that ad networks want to apply the same level of performance management to their display campaigns that they’ve historically applied to their CPC campaigns. The end result is more transparent, measurable results for advertisers.

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Struq Customizing Ads In Real-Time According To User Behaviors Says CEO Barnett

Thursday, October 29th, 2009

Sam Barnett is CEO of Struq, an online advertising technology company.

Sam Barnett of StruqAdExchanger.com: Would you say that the secret sauce in Struq’s technology sn the matching of ads according to a behavioral profile? How is this different than other solutions which retarget and match users with specific creative?

Display ads have a poor click-through rate and a reliance on post impression sales because the content, marketing messages, offers and products within a creative are static and predefined by creative teams. The result is that the content of the display ads are irrelevant to the majority of user’s who view the ad and irrelevant ads result in banner blindness and wasted ad spend.

Struq customizes the content of the ad to the user with relevant products, services, offers and marketing messages in real-time based on user’s online activities. Have a look at our live demo to see how Struq personalises ads for you www.struq.com/demo

We have built proprietary technology to enable advertisers to serve the most relevant ad to users (a Data Engine which creates logic about users; a Matching Engine which matches consumer interest and intent with the right advertiser, product, service and offer in real time; a Presentation engine which collates the creative elements and ad template and an Ad Serving Engine to deliver the dynamic display ads tailored to the user’s interests and activities).

We are fortunate to have leading minds in Artificial Intelligence, Rocket Science and Adserving technology working on Struq’s technology – but it’s the math that matters in each of those Engines – building proprietary technology means the data is extensible, enabling Struq to utlize all the data to successfully influence a campaign to deliver superior performance for our clients.

Do you use multi-variate testing for your creative similar to a  Tumri or Teracent? Any plans here?

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The New Easter Egg of Search Rankings: Display Advertising and The Launch of Google DoubleClick's Ad Exchange

Sunday, September 13th, 2009

Hello, search engine marketers. This one’s for you. Media traders, you may like this, too.

The New Easter Egg of Search Rankings: Display Advertising There is no question that search engine marketing is a lucrative field that positions marketers as gatekeepers to the bottom of the digital purchase funnel for clients. Whether through organic listings using search engine optimization (SEO) techniques or through pay per click (PPC) advertisements that ride along side the organic listings, both capture a critical moment of intent – and “intenders” are valuable, obviously.

With the hoopla around the launch of Google DoubleClick’s AdX 2.0 ad exchange, the display advertising opportunity will come into focus as the next tactical overlay for search engine marketer (SEM) strategy.

For most SEMs, Google’s search platform is the primary obsession these days as it easily eclipses the traffic of Yahoo’s soon-to-be-shuttered search engine and Microsoft’s Bing. Consequently, core to the function of the SEM is managing their rankings or positions in Google’s organic results or paid listings for keywords and keyword phrases.

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TagMan GM Baron Says UK Media Agencies Need Technology Leadership – And Build or Buy Tech

Thursday, September 3rd, 2009

Jon Baron is Co-Founder and General Manager of TagMan.

Jon Baron, Co-Founder and General Manager of TagManAdExchanger.com: What challenge is Tag Man solving for advertisers? How do you help publishers?

JB: TagMan addresses a challenge facing all businesses involved in digital media.
At all levels of the digital media business (creative through to publisher placement through to buying/selling) there is a transition from ‘talking’ about data-driven services – to actually doing it.

The tangle of platforms offering buzz-services such as behavioral, bidding, re-targeting, user insight, content manipulation, data-point creative etc – all have their own ’special sauce’ and all need to be tested/rolled out before a decision can be made on their effectiveness.

The challenge(s) are that each service requires their own ’serving and tracking tags’ to be inserted across publisher and client sites alike; often a time consuming, costly and political exercise in itself.
 Throw in other concerns such as data-ownership, transparency and contractual obligations putting extra stress on an already complex issue. The final straw – is the recent research that demonstrates a proven ‘latency’ on page load times that each tag can cause. This can mean a loss in sales, delivery or tracking.

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OpenAmplify To Provide Categorization, Targeting and Segmentation For Ad Exchanges Says CEO Redgrave

Monday, August 31st, 2009

Mark Redgrave is Founder & CEO of OpenAmplify, an online advertising technology company.

OpenAmplify CEO Mark RedgraveAdExchanger.com: How did your experience at an agency (HHCL Group in London) prepare you for running OpenAmplify?

MR: I was lucky to work under some really brilliant client services and creative teams on some of the world’s most important brands. I learned to listen. I learned how to think strategically and tactically. I learned how to engage with people and how to focus on the end-game. All very useful skills when you are running your own business.

Who is OpenAmplify’s target market? And, please describe your revenue model? Any plans for a white label version?

OpenAmplify packages $15M of patented Natural Language Processing technology into one beautifully simple API. We deliberately created OpenAmplify as an open web platform as its potential applications are huge and we wanted to make our technology accessible, efficient and usable. Today, many of our customers, partners and users are in the digital media space. We have publishers, ad networks, agencies and brands all using OpenAmplify to better understand content that’s being created on the web. In the near future, we will no doubt see OpenAmplify used in the search, CRM, homeland security and mobile markets, to name just a few. In all instances, the basic revenue model is the same: we charge per transaction and the cost of those transactions depends on the required speed and depth of the analysis you require.

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Reply.com CEO Zamani Says Now Is The Time To Invest In Local Advertising

Friday, August 21st, 2009

Payam Zamani is CEO of Reply.com, a lead generation marketplace.

CEO Payam Zamani of Reply.comAdExchanger.com: Reply.com started in lead generation. Why did you transition the business into an exchange and marketplace?

PZ: Until the summer of 2006, Reply.com was focused on lead generation for the real estate and automotive markets. During that quarter, many of our largest real estate buyers informed us they were going to stop buying leads due to the slowdown in the market. We started discussing the tremendous innovation in paid search and display / traffic exchanges. However, lead generation had been around for over ten years and hadn’t evolved. The writing was on the wall: Lead Generation 1.0 was going to die and Lead Gen 2.0 would replace it. We had to rethink and revise our business model.

To give you some context, in a Lead Gen 1.0 model, a car dealer negotiates with a 3rd party lead provider for a fixed fee, price-per-lead, locked contract with no insight into lead quality.  At the end of the month, some sources have a $300 cost of sale and some a $1,000, but lead quality at the time of purchase was unknown. If that dealership has too many cars on the lot, or is running a weekend special, there isn’t a way to segment and do more of what works and stop spending where it isn’t working. So more often than not, the dealership gets frustrated and quits the program.

We decided to protect our revenue base, but stopped growing it. Instead of continuing on an inefficient path, we went dark for 18 months. During that time, our engineering team built a lead exchange and marketplace. We formally launched in April of 2008; it has grown tremendously since.

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Digital Element Finding Demand For Granular IP Targeting Says Co-Founder Friedman

Thursday, August 20th, 2009

Digital ElementRob Friedman is Co-founder and EVP of Digital Element.

AdExchanger.com: Can you layout the basic ways your clients are using Digital Element’s IP detection services?

RF: Digital Element’s customers use our IP Intelligence solutions in a variety of ways such as improving response and click-through rates through more accurate ad geotargeting; reducing advertiser variance issues by using an industry-standard technology; creating more impactful interactions with site visitors through content localization; creating communities—both online and off—by connecting visitors with similar interests in similar geographic regions; improving online marketing through audience geo-segmentation; offering geo-based content distribution with geographic rights management; and more.

In the online advertising space, the largest ad networks, servers, exchanges, and portals such as DoubleClick, ValueClick, The Rubicon Project, Microsoft Advertising, Facebook, Yahoo, Blue Kai, AOL and many others use our technology to deliver real-time, highly targeted and optimized ad messaging. Armed with Digital Element’s industry-standard technology, ads can be geotargeted down to a zip code or town level based solely on a visitor’s IP address. Furthermore, companies can target based on other IP Intelligence data factors including company name, domain, connection type, home or business user, and more. In a nutshell, Digital Element’s IP intelligence targeting data allows for increased ad relevance, which improves ROI and delivers more revenue for our ad customers.

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