AdExchanger News for July 18, 2012

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Optimizing The News

For Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Today From AdExchanger...

Wednesday, July 18, News Round-Up (see below)
Yahoo Q2: New CEO Mayer Greeted With Small Revenue Gains And Continued Challenges "Yahoo CFO Tim Morse provided the overview of the company's Q2 2012 performance, noting that the prior two consecutive quarters saw display declines, hence Q2 2011 represents something of an improvement. He also noted that display was given something of a boost -- though a softer one than expected -- from the integration of interclick, which was recently integrated with Yahoo's data stack into the Genome offering...." (visit AdExchanger)
As Facebook Automates Premium Ads, Marketers See Impact On Price "Late last week Facebook released Premium Ad inventory to its self-serve and Ads API channels. By doing so, it intends to relieve the burden of selling these ad types solely from its direct sales force and make them more widely available. But the eventual impact of the move could be more complicated..." (visit AdExchanger)
ANA Marketers Question 'Likes,' But 96% Use Facebook Channel "In its 'Digital/Social Media Survey' of 224 client-side marketers, the ANA notes 'Facebook 'likes' or Twitter 're-tweets' fell to the bottom of the list' of preferred metrics, with just 30 percent and 39 percent of marketers, respectively, finding them useful. 'Nevertheless, marketers are using these two metrics despite their apprehensions'..." (visit AdExchanger)
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Estimating Display

ThinkEquity analyst Ronald Josey offers his thoughts on Thursday's Q2 2012 earnings release by Google. He tells investors about "display and new products: We believe YouTube and Google's AdExchange continue to take share of the overall display market and we currently project display to represent ~12% of total gross revs in 2012E." Josey's team estimates $35 billion in estimated revenue in 2012.. so, that looks like a little over $3.5 billion for YouTube/AdExchange in 2012.

Ad Stack Strategy

On ZDnet, Larry Dignan features Evercore research on the options for Yahoo! and its ad technology strategy. Dignan writes, "Financially, Evercore estimates that Yahoo could save $275 million by outsourcing. Most of those savings are related to the headcount supporting Right Media, APT and legacy ad systems. If ad yields improve, Yahoo can drive revenue growth too." Read more.

On The New Yahoo! CEO

Former Right Media CEO Mike Walrath gives his view on the hiring of Marissa Mayer on his personal blog. Walrath digs in, "Will Marissa Mayer, who has come of age in the culture of Google understand that Yahoo truly is a media company at its core? Will she recognize that the 'history of technical excellence at Yahoo' is a myth? Will she see that going toe-to-toe with Google and Facebook for tech talent is a losing proposition? Will she settle for 'good enough' when it comes to technology to drive the company's growth? I just don't see it. I think she will try to do what Yahoo has been trying to do for years - beat Google (and now Facebook) at a game Yahoo can't reasonably expect to win." There's more. And for a January 2012 flashback to advice to the new Yahoo! CEO (at the time it was Scott Thompson), read this AdExchanger collection.

Mobile Display

In a note to investors, Citi analyst Mark Mahaney offered up his top observations from Monday's IAB Mobile Summit. At the tippy top: "1) Google Now Gets A 'Material' Number Of Queries From Mobile - Head of Mobile Ads, Jesse Haines, noted that across almost every major vertical, GOOG now gets a material number of queries from mobile devices - Telecom at 20%, Restaurant related at 30%, and Movies at 25%. However, many sites are still not optimized for mobile, and 40% of mobile users tend to bounce off those sites to a competitor's site for a better mobile browsing experience. Google also noted that companies that do mobile marketing must develop ads that are relevant to the use case of customers. For example, Starwood's mobile search ads allow users to click-to-call a hotel or find directions to a property based on the users' location." Separately, for the IAB's Mobile study that was presented at the Summit, read the release, and then get it (PDF).

Finding $ignal

Russ Fradin and Jim Larrison of the old vertical ad network Adify crew (Adify was acquired by Cox for an eye popping $300 million in 2008) are back in the startup saddle with Dynamic Signal. All Things D's Peter Kafka covers their latest round of venture funding from Venrock and Time Warner's investment arm among others - to the tune of $13 million. Kafka explains Dynamic Signal's social CRM world: "Plain-English definition of 'social CRM': Dynamic Signal offers a white-labeled community-management platform, which helps brands find and recruit online fans, and gives them tools that will let fans evangelize on behalf of their favorite products, across the Web." Read it.

Local Digital's Rising Tide

Another day, another forecast about the tremendous growth for digital advertising. This time, BIA/Kelsey provides the sanguine look at local digital media from 2011-2016, and while the rising tide is lifting all, some are doing better than others. For instance, mobile search is expected to jump 77.2 percent this year, while online video will grow 51.6 percent and social will grow 26.3 percent. But this is not a new media versus old view. The real money will be in tying the two together. "With traditional media getting more than three-quarters of the total local media ad budget, coordination between traditional and online media is the best way to explore how to effectively optimize new media, such as social networks and online video, to increase the chance of achieving business goals," says Mark Fratrik, BIA/Kelsey's VP and chief economist. Read the release.

RTB and Brand Safety

MediaMind GM, former Peer39-er and data-driven auteur Alex White just can't stop himself over on iMedia Connection as he delivers his second, real-time-bidding-related post in the last week. (Here's number 1.) In this one, White talks brand safety tactics via RTB, "Because preemptive technology is deeply integrated directly into an ad server or RTB agent, it can utilize page data to avoid serving ads to certain pages in a far more granular approach than blacklisting -- it's essentially a dynamic blacklist of pages, as opposed to the exaggerated blacklist of entire sites. The fresh data means brands can avoid entire content categories, even within the new inventory that makes its way into the exchange every day." Have another shot of RTB.

R/GA's Big Ideas

Even digital agencies have to diversify and differentiate beyond the usual "social media practice" and search specialists. Interpublic's interactive agency R/GA is adding to its mix of creative and mobile offerings by moving into the consultancy business (think McKinsey for digital). It will also be building a "product innovation" unit to conceive of new services for clients. The idea, Chris Stutzman, who is joining the agency as managing director, tells the NYT's Stuart Elliot, is to answer the frequently heard marketer question, "How do you leverage digital technology to create true competitive advantage and make us more relevant in the market?" The creative-focused version of AppNexus move into services. Creative as platform.

AdSafe Tackles Fraudsters

Verification, viewability... and now fraud prevention. Ad verification player AdSafe Made has added "thwarting bad guys" to its remit. A new solution aims to prevent click and impression fraud by scoring RTB inventory. Says the press release, "Buyers of online media can make better informed purchase decisions around the probability of fraud, and sellers can better understand and manage their inventory and eliminate fraudulent activity if discovered." Oh, and the feature is called Suspicious Activity Detection. Now that's just SAD. Read it.

Display And Retail

Display ads behave differently for each vertical. In the case of retail, order volumes go up when people see display ads during early consideration, according to research from IgnitionOne. "Even on its own, display drives a 29% higher [average order volume] than other single channel paths. Combined with search channels (both paid and organic), it drives a 16% higher AOV when it's at the top of the path and converts users 43% faster than other multi-channel paths. At the end of the path, latency tends to be higher but AOV is 36% higher than other multi-channel paths." Read a press release or download the whole report.

Infographic Wednesday

A cross between a peacock and Egyptian necklace of the B.C.-era.... it's a global ad spend infographic from Nielsen. See it now!

Earnings