CHICAGO — Centro, the leading provider of media logistics software and services, today announces its partnership with Krux to provide the most secure, exclusive advertising exchange for premium publishers. An advanced platform connecting the highest quality publishers with the best content and brands, the Centro Brand Exchange is a private, invitation-only exchange platform supported by Krux’s leading publisher data management technology.

As ad networks, ad exchanges and SSPs continue to promise increased value for publishers’ unsold inventory, not only has their promise proven empty, they have become ushers allowing third-party companies to glean and repurpose valuable audience data from premium publishers. In fact, in a forthcoming study by Krux, upwards of 40 percent of all data being collected from publishers is being gathered via third party ad tags without the publisher’s knowledge or consent.  The Centro Brand Exchange, in choosing Krux, gives premium publishers the security they deserve from an ad exchange while allowing them to achieve higher CPMs through data-driven audience packaging.

The Centro Brand Exchange integrates Krux’s data platform into the fabric of its exchange software, giving publishers an unprecedented level of audience data and security protection.  The Centro Brand Exchange also gives publishers greater control over the quality and type of brands that appear on their sites.  Together, Centro and Krux are closing the data security loophole associated with today’s ad exchange, ad network and SSP offerings, while driving higher value and CPMs for premium publishers on their unsold inventory.

“Everyone in the exchange industry is talking about creating greater value for publishers’ inventories, yet no one is delivering on the promise,” said Shawn Riegsecker, Founder and CEO for Centro. “We recognize a significant gap in the market where high-quality publishers are being taken advantage of with no control and no good alternative solutions. Through our partnership with Krux, we’ve built the Centro Brand Exchange to be the highest quality ad exchange in the industry giving publishers more controls, high CPMs and the highest level of data protection available.”

Centro’s owned and operated ad exchange offers exclusive high-quality inventory from nearly 1,600 of the industry’s most respected publishers.

“Media companies spend billions annually creating high quality valuable content and attracting premium audiences,” said Christian A. Hendricks, Vice President for Interactive Media at The McClatchy Company, “while we have known about ad exchanges gleaning audience data from our sites for quite some time, solutions to the problem have been fleeting at best. With the Centro Brand Exchange, media companies now have a compelling solution designed to protect valuable audience data and reduce audience data leakage.”

Centro extensively vets all publishers and advertisers invited to the exchange to ensure brands are appearing next to quality content and reaching valued and most-desired customers.

“In today’s market, publishers have come to recognize that their audience data exists as a standalone asset with tremendous value.  Unfortunately, legacy remnant sales channels have done a poor job recognizing and protecting that value,” said Tom Chavez, co-founder and CEO of Krux.  “Through the Brand Exchange, Centro is delivering a unique, premium, and trusted experience for both publishers and brands, and Krux is proud to partner with them in setting new market standards for media monetization and web data protection.”

For more information on the Centro Brand Exchange, available as of April 2012, please visit www.centro.net/exchange.

About Centro
Centro is the leading provider of intelligent media logistics software and services for agencies, publishers, and advertisers.  Since the company’s founding in 2001, Centro makes it easier to buy and sell digital media as a partner to more than 2,900 advertisers and 750 agencies, helping them simplify complex media decisions, connections, and processes in an increasingly digital world.  With its proprietary software, Transis, market-driven insight, and a commitment to outstanding customer service, Centro executes flawless digital media campaigns, resulting in better campaign performance, higher retention rates, and greater profitability for its clients.   Headquartered in Chicago with 28 offices nationwide, Centro’s success and commitment to culture has led to many accolades, including the Inc. 500 Fastest Growing Companies, Red Herring 100 and No. 1 on Crain’s Chicago Business 2012 Best Places to Work for the second consecutive year in a row. For more information, visit www.centro.net.

About Krux
Founded in 2010, Krux delivers data fabric for the consumer web.  The company’s platform helps websites protect, manage, and monetize data across screens and sources.  With Krux, websites give their consumers cooler, safer, faster, smarter web experiences. With Krux, consumers gain confidence that their favorite websites are operating under the plain light of day.  Website operators in the US, Europe, and Asia have adopted Krux technology, including companies like The New York Times, NBC Universal, Sanoma, Recruit, Financial Times, BrainyQuote, GrooveShark, and The Wall Street Journal Digital Network.  Find out more at www.krux.com.

Xaxis Launches Asia-Pacific Headquarters to Provide Global Advertisers with Audience Targeting Capabilities Across Region’s Largest Markets

Taps Michel de Rijk to Lead Operations as Managing Director, Asia-Pacific

Xaxis, the world’s largest audience buying company, announced today the opening of a headquarters in Singapore to serve the Asia-Pacific region. With this launch, Xaxis is initiating an aggressive plan in the region with nine market roll-outs planned over the next 6 months – these new markets will include India, Malaysia, Taiwan, Vietnam, Indonesia and Hong Kong. The existing Xaxis operations in Australia will also come under the umbrella of the new headquarters, which represents the industry’s most comprehensive network of digital endpoints across online, mobile, social and video platforms.

Global digital media executive Michel de Rijk will lead the practice, joining Xaxis as Managing Director, Asia-Pacific. Prior to Xaxis, de Rijk served as a senior executive at digital ad firm EyeWonder, where he was responsible for launching operations in the Asia-Pacific, Benelux and Middle East regions. During his four years with EyeWonder, Michel served in several roles throughout each region and introduced the first ad-view-time metric to gain insights into the actual visibility of an ad. Previously, de Rijk worked for Dutch publisher De Telefoongids.

“As the largest audience-buying company in the world, Xaxis has an unmatched understanding of the global digital media-buying space along with local presence and expertise in each market it operates in,” said de Rijk. “This combination allows Xaxis to deliver proven audience solutions that are custom-fit for executing targeted campaigns market by market. From mobile in Indonesia to video in Taiwan, Xaxis offers maximum precision when delivering ads in all markets.”

Xaxis provides audience buying solutions to more than 700 global advertisers, delivering over 300 billion impressions each year. The proprietary Xaxis data management platform (DMP) houses the largest collection of unique anonymous audience portraits. Additionally, as the only universal and neutral data management platform in the industry, the Xaxis DMP allows advertisers to measure attribution, offline ROI, audience insights and brand impact based on the entire digital plan, not just the Xaxis portion of the plan. By year’s end, Xaxis will have offices operating in over 25 markets around the world.

“This commitment to expansion throughout the Asia-Pacific region follows a year of success and growth in North America, Europe and Australia,” noted Brian Lesser, CEO of Xaxis. “Ad spend in the region is expected to reach $170 billion within the next two years with online ad spend making up 31% of the growth.¹ Our clients have asked us to apply our knowledge and experience executing audience campaigns to the region. This launch displays the first step in our commitment to the region and will be followed with an aggressive expansion.”

Mark Patterson, CEO GroupM Asia Pacific, commented, “We have ambitious plans with Xaxis in the region. Our drive for value and improved audience delivery for our clients, as well as ownership of that capability – versus outsourcing as many groups do – will help us deliver on both, securely and rapidly, for our clients across the region and the digital spectrum.”

About Xaxis

Xaxis, a GroupM company and a part of WPP, is the world’s largest audience buying company. Through its proprietary platform, Xaxis offers advertisers a single, comprehensive resource from which to reach and engage with global audiences across the universe of digital media. Xaxis does this for its GroupM agency partners, Maxus, MEC, MediaCom, and Mindshare. Xaxis has a presence in 16 countries across North America, Europe and Asia. For more information, please visit www.xaxis.com.

1. source: eMarketer

NEW YORK - PubMatic (http://www.PubMatic.com), the digital media platform company for publishers, announced partnerships with publisher-side ad servers that will be integrated through PubLink, the company’s enterprise app marketplace for publishers.

PubLink is a set of open APIs and pre-packaged integrations that enable publishers to use PubMatic’s strategic selling platform as a single point of integration to access partners and services in real time. Through PubLink open APIs, PubMatic’s platform services are now available to several ad servers such as AdJuggler, Adzerk and Zedo. These companies can now extend PubMatic’s real-time bidding technology to the ad servers’ publisher clients.

“PubLink extends the publisher base for PubMatic beyond its existing customers who are using a variety of ad serving technologies,” said Rajeev Goel, Co-Founder and CEO of PubMatic. “We’re excited that ad serving companies are eager to integrate with our platform. Together, we will bring best-of-class monetization capabilities to publishers and help them grow their businesses.”

PubMatic will connect ad servers’ customers to the programmatic media buyers working with PubMatic. The integrations will increase liquidity in the real-time bidding marketplace and help them improve monetization for their publishers. To further illustrate the benefits of the integration to their customers, Adzerk announced the partnership on their blog.

PubLink allows publishers to access a variety of point solutions including audience data, ad verification and privacy controls, enhanced analytics, malware scanning, mobile content optimization and mobile ad serving. PubMatic will continue to add more partners in the coming months.

“Working with PubMatic represents another important step in AdJuggler’s publisher monetization strategy,” said John Shomaker, CEO of AdJuggler. “Our Exchange Media Program team has integrated closely with the PubLink API bidding and reporting infrastructure to extend our proposition of providing higher CPMs and fill for our publisher customers.”

PubLink is fully integrated with PubMatic’s strategic selling platform and a complementary set of capabilities that work with the PubDirect suite of management tools for premium publishers. Through PubDirect and PubLink, premium publishers are powering their own holistic revenue strategies and leveraging the influence of their brands for advertising partners and consumers.

About PubMatic

PubMatic (http://www.PubMatic.com) gives premium publishers a real-time media selling platform for managing revenue and brand strategy. PubMatic’s platform combines real-time bidding (RTB), the most comprehensive brand protection tools, extensive audience insights and hands-on support to serve the world’s leading publishers. PubMatic is privately held, backed by funding from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Nexus Venture Partners, and Helion Ventures, and has seven offices around the world in the U.S., Europe and Asia.

DALLAS - AT&T* announced that an affiliate of Cerberus Capital Management, L.P. (Cerberus) has agreed to acquire AT&T Advertising Solutions and AT&T Interactive. As part of the transaction, AT&T will receive a 47-percent equity interest in the new entity, YP Holdings LLC (YP).

YP will include:

• Approximately 1,200 The Real Yellow Pages^® print directory titles reaching about 150 million homes and businesses in 22 states;
• YP.com, a top 40 website according to a leading global digital measurement firm;
• The YP^SM Local Ad Network, which includes more than 300 mobile and online publisher websites nationwide providing digital reach to more than 71 million monthly unique visitors; and
• The YPmobile^® app, which allows users to search local businesses from their mobile devices.

The business units generated approximately $3.3 billion in revenues in 2011. Among other agreements, YP has agreed to honor existing union contracts.

“This transaction makes strategic sense for both AT&T and Advertising Solutions,” said José Gutiérrez, president and CEO of AT&T Advertising Solutions. “It enables AT&T to focus on its core strategy of leadership in wireless, IP, cloud- and application-based services. At the same time, it gives our advertising customers, partners and developers continued access to strong advertising and search innovation and performance.”

The transaction includes assets of AT&T Advertising Solutions, which delivers sales and customer support, and AT&T Interactive, which conducts interactive product development. It does not include the recently formed AT&T AdWorks, a New York-based operation that sells advertising offerings across 3-screen platforms (online, mobile and TV).

“YP will continue to deliver the industry-leading service and products our customers and partners expect from us,” said David Krantz, president and CEO of AT&T Interactive. “And everyone will work hard to make the transition seamless for the millions of consumers and thousands of advertisers, developers, publishers and resellers using our services.”

The transaction is subject to Hart Scott Rodino notification with the U.S. Department of Justice and is expected to close in mid-year 2012. For the business units, AT&T will receive approximately $750 million in cash, subject to adjustment primarily related to timing of closing, a $200 million note and a 47-percent equity interest in YP. AT&T expects a minimal effect on 2012 earnings from the transaction and does not expect to record a material gain or loss on the transaction.

*AT&T products and services are provided or offered by subsidiaries and affiliates of AT&T Inc. under the AT&T brand and not by AT&T Inc.

About AT&T

AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) is a premier communications holding company and one of the most honored companies in the world. Its subsidiaries and affiliates – AT&T operating companies – are the providers of AT&T services in the United States and around the world. With a powerful array of network resources that includes the nation’s largest 4G network, AT&T is a leading provider of wireless, Wi-Fi, high speed Internet, voice and cloud-based services. A leader in mobile Internet, AT&T also offers the best wireless coverage worldwide of any U.S. carrier, offering the most wireless phones that work in the most countries. It also offers advanced TV services under the AT&T U-verse^® and AT&T│DIRECTV brands.

Additional information about AT&T Inc. and the products and services provided by AT&T subsidiaries and affiliates is available at http://www.att.com. This AT&T news release and other announcements are available at http://www.att.com/newsroom and as part of an RSS feed at www.att.com/rss. Or follow our news on Twitter at @ATT.

New Research from Pretarget and comScore Suggests that Buyer Conversion is More Highly Correlated with Ad Viewability and Hover than with Clicks or Gross Impressions

SAN FRANCISCO and RESTON, VA – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, and Pretarget, the intent targeting company, today released results of an online advertising study which found that ad viewability and hover time are more strongly correlated with conversions (defined as purchases and requests for information) than clicks or total impressions.

“Your ad being seen matters more than your ad being clicked – if you have a back-end conversion metric,” said Pretarget Founder Keith Pieper. “After all, what good is an ad that can’t be seen? It’s intuitive that an ad must be seen to make an impact, and it’s even more intuitive than someone hovering and engaging with an ad might convert, even absent a click.”

Research Methodology & Approach

To arrive at these initial findings, Pretarget analyzed 263 million impressions over nine months across 18 advertisers in numerous verticals. Pretarget used comScore validated Campaign Essentials™ (vCE) to collect viewability and hover data and a DSP to collect click and cookie-based conversion data. Pretarget then performed a Pearson correlation analysis of the data, including gross impressions, “views” (75 percent of ad within screen, either above the fold or after scrolling)*, time in-view, hover/engagements and total hover/engagement time, clicks and conversions.

Traditional display ad impression measurement and reporting simply verifies the number of ads that were sent by an ad server to a user’s browser. For a variety of reasons, this way of counting impressions does not ensure that the ad ever rendered within a browser. In addition, ads can load below the fold (requiring a user to scroll down), which means that most users will probably never see the ad unless they scroll down. In the worst cases, some ads load within 1×1 pixels and therefore never render as viewable impressions.

Research Findings Show Ad Hover Most Highly Correlated with Conversion

The research findings indicate that the traditional way of buying mass impressions and hoping for conversions (aka “spray and pray”) is not the most effective approach. The results showed that ad hover/interaction (correlation = 0.49) and viewable impressions (correlation = 0.35) had highest correlation with conversion, while gross impressions (correlation = 0.17) was significantly lower. Perhaps most interestingly, clicks (correlation = 0.01) had the lowest correlation with conversion, far under-performing all other metrics analyzed in the study. These findings suggest that advertisers and media planners ought to break their addiction to clicks and instead look to more meaningful metrics for evaluating campaign performance.

“The Pretarget study helps illuminate several critically important findings for the digital advertising community,” said Kirby Winfield, SVP of Corporate Development, comScore. “First, it once again demonstrates the perils of relying on click-throughs for measuring the performance of display ad campaigns, with this metric showing virtually zero correlation with total conversions. Secondly, it highlights why the viewable impression – which is now easily measurable through vCE – is significantly more meaningful than the unvalidated impression. Finally, this study shows why other non-click metrics of engagement, such as interaction or hovering, may be much more important in evaluating campaign performance than the click ever was. It’s time to start measuring the impact of campaigns using metrics that really matter, not just the ones that are most easily measured.”

The Pretarget analysis supports several third party studies with consistent conclusions. MediaMind “2009 Benchmark Report” released in July 2010 found that “on average, increasing Dwell [hover] from 5% to 15%, increases conversion rate by 45%, from 0.4% to 0.6%.” Casale Media’s 2011 “Ad Visibility Report,” found that “ads appearing above the fold were 6.7x more effective at generating conversions than those appearing below the fold.”

Pretarget previously found that approximately 89 percent of display ads on its network load above the fold or appear after a user scrolls down, creating an opportunity for a user to see the banner. Pretarget’s position paper is available for download at http://www.pretarget.com

To participate in additional research as part of a broader study, please contact info@pretarget.com

*The Making Measurement Make Sense (3MS) defines “in-view” as 50%+ of the pixels of an ad being visible in the browser, and comScore vCE adheres to this definition for its typical definition of “in-view”. The Pretarget studies, however, used a more conservative in-view requirement of 75% visibility.

About Pretarget
Pretarget offers keyword based intent ad targeting using patented and patent-pending internet search and behavioral algorithms that reach users “ahead of the click”. Pretarget’s hybrid contextual-behavioral targeting complements existing search and retargeting campaigns with custom keyword based segmentation. No site tagging is needed. Pretarget is well suited for online advertisers who have maxed out search, find site retargeting offers little scale, are fiercely competitive and see the value of an ad impression.

About comScore validated Campaign Essentials (vCE)
vCE is a holistic solution for complete campaign delivery validation and in-flight optimization. Unlike existing single-point solutions, vCE provides an unduplicated accounting of impressions delivered across a variety of dimensions, such as ads delivered in-view, to the right audience, in the right geography, in a brand safe environment and absent of fraudulent delivery. vCE reports on reach and frequency, comprehensive demographics and behavioral segments. This measurement eliminates all impressions that never had a chance to make an impact, providing a more realistic and accurate picture of campaign delivery.

About comScore
comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) is a global leader in measuring the digital world and preferred source of digital marketing intelligence. For more information, please visit www.comscore.com/companyinfo.

TOKYO - Dentsu Inc. and Facebook, Inc. announced the continuation of the February 2011 agreement under which Dentsu serves as the official representative of Facebook’s sales and marketing support to advertisers in Japan.

Under the renewed agreement, Dentsu, as Facebook’s official ad sales representative in the Japanese market, will provide consultation on and support for effective Facebook Page development, and propose marketing campaigns that leverage the Facebook Premium Ad platform to which Dentsu has the exclusive marketing rights in Japan.

The number of Facebook users is continuing to grow exponentially. As announced by Facebook at their fMC (Facebook’s marketing conference) Tokyo event on March 16, the number of monthly active users¹ in Japan has reached more than 10 million. Furthermore, the number of companies with Facebook Pages as well as companies who use the “Like” button and other social plugins is also increasing steadily.

Sponsored Stories on mobile, Ads on log out, and New Facebook Pages with features like cover photo and the Page timeline, which were announced on February 29 at fMC New York, are expected to further increase the effectiveness of communication by companies.

Based on the expertise gained through working together with Facebook in 2011, Dentsu will continue to encourage the adoption of Facebook Pages to marketers and media companies. With regard to Facebook Premium Ads, Dentsu will collaborate with both Facebook and cyber communications inc., a Dentsu subsidiary in Japan, to enable more advertising agencies in Japan to market the new Premium Ad formats.

Looking forward, the Dentsu Group will encourage business innovation practices that provide optimal solutions for the new marketing activities required by companies in this age of social communication.

• Facebook® is a registered trademark of Facebook, Inc.

¹ monthly active user is defined as someone who connects to Facebook at least once every month

About Dentsu Inc.
Founded in 1901, Dentsu Inc. has held the position of the world’s largest single-brand agency for almost 40 years. Through its unique “Integrated Communication Design” approach, Dentsu offers multinational clients the most comprehensive range of advertising and marketing services in the industry. While continuing to pursue innovation in the digital arena, Dentsu is active in the production and marketing of sports, movies, anime and other entertainment content on a global scale. The Dentsu Group has more than 6,000 clients and over 20,000 employees worldwide.

New York – On the heels of a record Q4, the first quarter of 2012 generated continued, strong year-over-year growth for search advertising. Q1 2012 had a YoY growth in search spend of 30.3% — more than double the rate of both Q1 2011 and Q1 2010. During this time Yahoo!/Bing reasserted itself with the highest market share of their partnership.

Mobile search advertising continued strong growth YoY, with 67.4% of the mobile activity coming from tablets, showing the incredible adoption of these devices. Meanwhile, the global travel vertical had an unseasonably strong Q1 in search advertising with a 58.9% increase in expenditures.

These figures are released quarterly by IgnitionOne, a leading digital marketing solutions firm, managing more than $1 billion in online advertising.

Key findings in the report:

• Yahoo!/Bing have strongest showing since Q2 2010 – With a strong Q1 Yahoo!/Bing showed signs of a rebound with a 46.4% increase in US search advertising spend YoY compared to Google’s less expansive 26.6% growth YoY. And while Q1 search spend is normally down quarter over quarter due to the spike in holiday spending in Q4, Yahoo!/Bing posted a 14.3% increase in spend vs. Google’s decrease QoQ of 5.4%. The robust quarter may be attributed to Yahoo!/Bing’s push for increased utilization of broad match keywords, which leads to more competition in auctions. This growth also propelled Yahoo!/Bing to a 21.2% market share – their best quarter since before the two combined forces.
• Tablets drive usage as mobile stays strong in US – Mobile search accounted for 12.3% of total search advertising spend in Q1, holding steady following an amazing Q4. Mobile clicks were up 246.1% YoY, showing acceleration over the last quarter. Impressions were up 119.9% and ad spend was up 221.1% YoY, but both showed slower growth than the preceding quarter. Much of the mobile search activity can be attributed to tablet devices which accounted for 67.4% of total mobile search advertising budgets for the quarter. In addition, tablet click through rates of 3.1% were higher than those for PC of 2.5%
• Travel vertical has breakout quarter globally – In a time of the year that normally is soft for travel search advertising, there was impressive growth in activity and spend in Q1 compared to the same time period last year. Travel demand (impressions and clicks) was up by 34.6% and 34.1% respectively, and search spend among travel marketers increased 58.9% YoY. Revenue for travel grew by a large margin with a YoY increase of 32.3%

“This was a very successful Q1 on many fronts. The Yahoo!/Bing turnaround was arguably the most interesting with an uptick coming primarily from the adoption of broad match targeting by marketers,” said Roger Barnette, President of IgnitionOne. “And while the growth in mobile ad spend has been an ongoing trend, I am impressed by the level of activity and click-throughs on tablets. This should be a wakeup call for marketers who are not yet leveraging search advertising on these devices.”

This report is the latest in a series of reports from IgnitionOne reviewing trends across the online advertising landscape. This report can be found at http://bit.ly/HaCoih. Previous quarterly reports can be downloaded at http://bit.ly/ignitiononeresearch.

About IgnitionOne

IgnitionOne, the global leader in digital marketing solutions, enables companies to integrate cross-channel marketing efforts within one platform, allowing for deeper insights and greater online success. Managing over $1 billion of advertising annually across search, display and social, IgnitionOne provides the world’s top marketers with media optimization, cross-channel attribution and website conversion solutions. IgnitionOne’s solutions are backed by proprietary, best of breed technology: IgnitionOne’s Digital Marketing Suite^SM.

IgnitionOne currently powers more than $30 billion in revenue each year for leading brands, including General Motors, Chico’s, Ann Taylor, La Quinta, Travel Guard and Fiat, as well as advertising agencies such as MRM Worldwide and CyberAgent.

For more information, please visit http://www.ignitionone.com or follow the company on Twitter @ignitionone.

Earlier this week, digital media agency Exact Drive and display ad design platform Canned Banners announced a partnership to offer marketers a one-stop solution for launching and managing dynamic display ad campaigns. The service increases the performance and precision of display ad campaigns by personalizing ad creative in real time for each viewer. We’ve asked Myles Younger, Canned Banners Co-founder and Head of Marketing & Business Development, to give us more insights into the current display advertising market, the challenges and opportunities for SMBs and long tail advertisers.

 Otilia Otlacan: Recent news about the partnership between Canned Banners and Exact Drive have brought attention once again to the challenges in quickly sourcing display advertising creatives. Tell us a bit about Canned Banners and what drove you to create this company.

Myles Younger: We created Canned Banners with three goals/philosophies in mind:

1.) Good ad creative is important, but good creative shouldn’t be kept behind a high price barrier that marketers from launching display campaigns.

2.) There are many aspects of display ad design that are simple or repetitive, and which can be automated or delivered more efficiently through self-serve tools. This presents opportunities to streamline the creative workflow, reduce design costs, and offer the advertiser (or the agency or ad network) more flexibility in quickly making design updates or content changes.

3.) Most display ads are still created “the old fashioned way.” This stands in stark contrast to display media buying, which has seen an explosion of innovation in scalable, automated, and intelligent platforms. We’re developing a platform and tools that can add the same kinds of efficiency and economies of scale to the creative process.

Otilia Otlacan:  Last I checked, there were quite a number of DIY ad building services around. What’s different about Canned Banners, where does the company position itself on the market?

Myles Younger: There are several competing DIY solutions, but as we’ve learned first-hand, it’s not easy to build a simple self-serve interface for display ad design. Canned Banners is the best available (my unbaised opinion, of course) primarily because our team includes former ad and marketing guys as well as engineering talent; most of our competitors are lacking in one area or another, despite the fact that they’re both critical.

We’ll continue to position ourselves as a go-to resource for novice and SMB advertisers, but once we roll out our next wave of innovations, we’ll be marching “upstream” in terms of client size (this has already started), as well as expanding “horizontally” into new areas like performance advertising, search marketing, and marketing automation.

Our partnership with Exact Drive is one of these examples of horizontal expansion, where we’ve expanded from basic ad creative to dynamic creative. And supporting dynamic ads also puts us in a prime position to serve dozens of industry verticals that can benefit from display ads that are created in real time, such as e-commerce, real estate, and travel.

Otilia Otlacan: Let’s look a little into the display advertising market available to SMBs and the general small advertiser. The options for these buyers to access premium display ad placements used to be grim at best. Do you see any hope for them in the near future?

Myles Younger: Yes, absolutely. Why do I know this? Because SMBs have money to spend, and when you put them all together, they represent a massive market. But the barrier to providing SMBs with premium solutions lies in the fact that it’s historically been very expensive to aggregate hundreds of thousands of relatively tiny SMB marketing budgets into something meaningful.

However, with each passing month, more and more steps of the display ad workflow are being automated. Once the seesaw tips and it’s possible to serve SMBs without a staff of thousands and massive marketing expenditure (ex. Groupon), you’ll see a proliferation of more “premium” options become available to SMBs, either directly or through intermediary marketing platforms. Obviously Canned Banners wants to play a part in that transformation.

Otilia Otlacan:  You’ve recently partnered with digital media agency Exact Drive to create a real-time, dynamic display advertising platform. Can you explain us the mechanisms behind this offering and the requirements for advertisers to access it?

Myles Younger: The mechanisms fall into three categories:

1.) The Canned Banners API, which provides a programmatic interface to update ad creative on-the-fly.

2.) Creative rules and advertiser source content (e.g., XML, API, etc). These are the rules that define what content (e.g., product photos & prices) will be shown to which viewer segments. These rules will be unique for most campaigns, as every advertiser has different available content and different audience targeting strategies. This is where Canned Banners and Exact Drive overlap and come together to develop unique, performance-based targeting strategies. For example, we might develop a rule like this for a real estate company: “When prospects view the real estate ads, we’ll show nearby listings from the real estate company’s database, and we’ll only show listings that are in the viewer’s expected price range.”

3.) Media buying and targeting from Exact Drive. This is where they’re experts. When a client comes to us with campaign goals and target audiences, Exact Drive has a wide array of media buying strategies it can employ in very precisely defining those target audiences so that we can optimize the relevance of the ad content and achieve the goals of the campaign. Media buying strategies could include retargeting, geo-targeting, contextual targeting, etc.

As far as advertiser requirements, dynamic advertising becomes difficult to justify when you dip below a media spend of roughly $10K per month (the setup costs start to eat up the ROI). It’s also important that advertisers have a healthy variety of products, messages, offers, or content. More content variations means greater personalization of final dynamic ad content, which boosts performance. Within those two relatively simple criteria, we can work with any advertiser that wants to run a dynamic campaign.

Otilia Otlacan:  What’s next for Canned Banners, what are you working on?

Myles Younger: Canned Banners is all “next” right now! Things are moving very quickly. We’ll be relaunching our website in a few weeks to announce all our new solutions. We’ll keep improving upon our Basic Ad Builder, but we’ll be rolling out an API to allow ad networks, agencies, and brands to develop their own ad creation tools and dynamic ad solutions.

There’s always been a great deal of interest in the Canned Banners approach to automating display ad creation, but without an API, we’ve always had one hand tied behind our back when trying to meet our clients’ needs and integrate into their existing software and workflows. Look out for solutions for agencies, search marketers, and e-retailers, as well as more innovation with our partner Exact Drive (which won’t be limited to dynamic display ads, by the way).

Otilia Otlacan:  Is there anything else you’d like to share with us?

Myles Younger: We’re just excited to see what people do with our next wave of products and tools. There’s a whole world of “mash-ups” to explore where you can leverage outside data and APIs to automate certain aspects of display ad creation.

To illustrate what I mean, here are two demo apps we’ve created recently (apologies in advance if they’re slow or perhaps even broken…they’re just informal demos):

1.) This demo creates display ads using photos and property descriptions from the UK real estate listing service Nestoria.co.uk: http://demo.cannedbanners.com/nestoria/

2. This app automatically generates multiple banner variations using images imported from the Getty Images stock photo API: http://demo.cannedbanners.com/getty-images/

These are just two rough examples of how, when you have the right tools, you can add a whole new dimension of flexibility and scalability to display ad design. It’s worth noting that all together, we only spent about 2 days developing and launching those apps (i.e., we created two working ad design apps in less time than most designers could turn around a single piece of basic ad creative).

London, United Kingdom – Adap.tv, the company that provides a programmatic way to plan, buy, sell and measure television and video advertising, is partnering with European real time bidding (RTB) pioneer, BannerConnect (www.bannerconnect.net). The move will rapidly expand the reach of RTB for video across Europe.

Based in the Netherlands, BannerConnect is one of the leaders in automated ad trading of display advertising in Europe. The new partnership with Adap.tv announced today will allow BannerConnect to expand its offering to include video, while establishing a fast, efficient and accurate process for buying and selling inventory.

BannerConnect will use Adap.tv’s comprehensive programmatic platform that consists of real-time bidding, advanced targeting, an intuitive self-service interface and optimisation technology, designed to help buyers find and understand the opportunities in each video impression. The deal will also allow BannerConnect to help its publisher partners to enter the video RTB ecosystem, which will increase the availability of quality pre-roll inventory available to buyers in Europe.

Lisa Menaldo, head of UK and Ireland at BannerConnect, explains: “In just a few years, globally, RTB has rapidly become one of most important ways to do business across online display, the efficiencies of which can now include video. Adap.tv’s platform gives us the ability to RTB-enable our publishers’ video inventory while providing a single, unified dashboard that provides us with key insight and predictability, and therefore visibility into pricing and performance even before a campaign starts. This automation allows us to better plan and manage the video campaigns we run, thereby enhancing the efficiency of our business, and increasing the number of buyers and sellers with whom we work.”

“This new partnership signals a major move for the European video ad market towards more programmatic buying and selling,” says Brian Fitzpatrick, managing director for Adap.tv in Europe. “We are seeing the agencies and trading desks we work with gravitate towards more efficient and transparent methods of acquiring inventory and this deal will enable BannerConnect to link their quality publishers directly to these buyers.”

RTB is increasingly recognised as a key element of the online video advertising equation. Figures from the recent bi-annual ‘Online Video Advertising Market’ report undertaken by audience measurement company Collective reveal that 51% of UK video-on-demand (VOD) media buyers want to trial RTB for video.

About Adap.tv
Adap.tv builds technology that destroys the inefficiencies of television and video advertising. It delivers a programmatic way to plan, buy, sell and measure across multiple sources, screens and methods of transacting. Adap.tv is comprised of two operational units – the Adap.tv Platform and the Adap.tv Marketplace. The Adap.tv Platform provides advertisers, publishers and ad networks with automated ad trading solutions customized to meet any business goal. As the world’s largest source of video supply and demand, the Adap.tv Marketplace has thousands of sellers and hundreds of campaigns running daily. Headquartered in San Mateo, Calif., Adap.tv has offices in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, London and Sydney. Adap.tv is a privately held company backed by Bessemer Venture Partners, Gemini Israel Funds, Redpoint Ventures and Spark Capital. For more information, please visit http://adap.tv/. Follow Adap.tv on Twitter @Adaptv.

About BannerConnect
BannerConnect has been specialising in display advertising since 2004, focused on automated ad trading via ad exchanges, sell side platforms, real-time bidding and audience targeting. With offices in London, Amsterdam and Sittard, BannerConnect operates on an international level. BannerConnect builds bespoke ad trading and data solutions for agencies, advertisers and publishers alike.

New YieldMetrics AdRoutes™ Offers Critical Business Insights for Advertisers, Publishers, and Technology Providers

Santa Monica, CA – YieldMetrics, a leading provider of advertising market intelligence solutions, today announced the public launch and general availability of YieldMetrics AdRoutes™, the advertising industry’s most comprehensive analytics solution. YieldMetrics also announced the release of its first AdTrends report, a quarterly look at the current state of the advertising industry.

“We’re excited to bring the power of YieldMetrics AdRoutes’ insights to the market,” said Gabe Gottlieb, CEO of YieldMetrics. “For too long, publishers, advertisers, ad networks, and technology providers have had to make decisions based on incomplete and unreliable data. Using YieldMetrics AdRoutes, our customers can inform their strategies with real-time, accurate analytics.”

Driving Business Through Data-Driven Insights

YieldMetrics AdRoutes is a groundbreaking analytics solution designed to help publishers, advertisers, ad networks, and advertising technology providers optimize their business strategies and improve their operations. YieldMetrics AdRoutes provides insights available nowhere else for sales, marketing, and business development teams. For example, YieldMetrics customers can discover:

- A full listing of competitors’ customers

- Details on an advertiser’s media plan

- A breakdown of how a publisher is selling its inventory

- The channels an advertiser is using to reach its targeted audience

- An accurate view of an advertising network’s inventory

Unlike other analytics solutions that provide only monthly or quarterly data, YieldMetrics AdRoutes is updated daily to provide the most up-to-date view of market activity. Real-time alerting enables YieldMetrics customers to react quickly to changes in the market, such as a targeted customer beginning a trial of a competitive solution.

Breakthrough Technology

YieldMetrics AdRoutes is built on a breakthrough, patent-pending technology called PathSource™. Using a farm of cloud-based, intelligent crawlers, PathSource is able to capture detailed information about advertising operations across thousands of publisher websites. For example, PathSource can identify which specific advertising networks, exchanges, and data providers a publisher is using, along with a full catalog of the specific advertisers buying inventory on that site.

Additionally, through the unique ability to follow the “path” of an advertisement, PathSource can determine the specific channels being used in the buying and selling of advertising inventory. For example, PathSource can identify whether a given impression was served via reservation or via Real-Time Bidding (RTB).

Pricing and Availability

YieldMetrics AdRoutes is available today, with site license pricing starting at $25,000 per year. For more information, please visit http://www.yieldmetrics.com/adroutes

YieldMetrics AdTrends

YieldMetrics also today released its AdTrends report for Q1, 2012. YieldMetrics AdTrends leverages YieldMetrics’ data to provide a unique snapshot of the advertising industry. AdTrends reports include detailed analyses of advertising provider market share, advertiser activity, and overall industry trends. This first edition of YieldMetrics AdTrends examines the market penetration of Real-Time Bidding, looks at who’s winning among ad networks and exchanges, and dives into the advertising of a top advertiser.

YieldMetrics AdTrends is published quarterly and available at no charge at http://adtrends.yieldmetrics.com.

About YieldMetrics
YieldMetrics, an advertising technology company, provides breakthrough market intelligence solutions to publishers, advertisers, ad networks and technology providers. Using patent-pending PathSource technology, YieldMetrics products deliver critical business insights to supercharge sales, marketing, and business development efforts. YieldMetrics is headquartered in Santa Monica, CA, and is currently self-funded. To learn more about YieldMetrics, please visit http://www.yieldmetrics.com.

New practice addresses intersection of paid, earned and owned media, enabling brands to amplify social initiatives and organic content through paid advertising

Seattle, WA – Banyan Branch, a full-service social media agency that provides end-to-end marketing services for the world’s leading brands, today announced it has launched a media buying practice, enabling global brands to amplify their social media programs through paid advertising. To lead the new practice and support the company’s significant expansion, Banyan Branch has appointed Matt Haynes as Director of Director of Social Strategy and Media Planning, and Kerry Antezana as Director of Agency Services. The company announced a $1.7 million series A funding round and almost 100 percent year-over-year revenue growth in October of 2011 as well as additional senior executive hires in December 2012. It also has an annual client retention rate of 85% and works with brands such as Amazon, Clarisonic, FOX, Gilt Groupe, Microsoft, Porsche, Parallels and T-Mobile.

“Paid media is a catalyst to promote great content, it ignites interest, engagement and action,” said Blake Cahill, president and Principal at Banyan Branch. “Brands need to amplify their social campaigns, and paid social ads provide an effective and measurable approach for extending reach and increasing interaction with a target audience. By innovating at the intersection of paid, earned and owned media, marketers can significantly increase brand awareness and community growth, turning those who might be just ‘passing by’ into emotionally engaged advocates.”

Complementing Banyan Branch’s existing end-to-end services, including Strategy, Digital Interactive, Engagement and Research & Analytics, the agency’s Media Buying practice will offer brands the full range of services to optimize and extend social initiatives, including:

• Strategy and Planning: Development of a media plan that includes appropriate channels and multivariate testing scenarios for easy optimization based on business objectives.
• Paid Social Media Buying: Set-up, implementation, management, optimization and performance reporting to ensure the media budget is completely maximized to achieve optimal results.
• Performance Measurement and Optimization: Development of optimal tracking methodology and performance measurement plan that is directly aligned with business objectives.

Agency adds executive hires amidst continued growth

Banyan Branch added two new executives to its management team to support both the agency’s new media buying practice and the continued growth of its Fortune 500 client base.

Matt Haynes joins Banyan Branch as its Director of Social Strategy and Media Planning. Haynes spent more than five years at MEC, most recently as the Social Media Lead and Media Director at MEC Interaction, where he developed strategic social media roadmaps and managed integrated media initiatives for global brands. He played a pivotal role in implementing one of the first social media community management and engagement platforms for Microsoft, and also managed strategic social programs for Chevron, E&J Gallo and Tommy Bahama.

Kerry Antezana joins Banyan Branch as Director of Agency Services, leading the agency’s Community Management, Content Creation and Influencer Relations teams. Antezana has over 16 years of experience in the advertising industry and was previously a Creative Director at JWT INSIDE, where she developed award-winning, multimedia campaigns for Microsoft, Starbucks, Boeing, Swedish Medical Center and The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Antezana has served on the Board of American Advertising Federation (AAF) Seattle and is currently on its Northwest ADDY committee. Her work has been recognized by the Webbys, WebAwards, iNovas, Internet Advertising Awards, Creative Excellence Awards and the Seattle Show.

“Over the course of 2011 and well into Q1 of this year, we’ve seen brands significantly increase their investment in addressing social across their entire marketing program, and as a result turn to partners like Banyan Branch with social in its DNA across all practices,” continued Cahill. “Our new media buying practice and the addition of Matt and Kerry to the team position us well for continued growth as social continues to both explode and be integrated across all marketing channels.”

To stay at the cutting edge of the latest social developments, visit Banyan Branch’s blog at http://www.banyanbranch.com/social-blog.

About Banyan Branch

Banyan Branch, based in Seattle, WA, is a full-service social media agency that provides end-to-end marketing services including strategy, creative, execution and analytics. With a holistic approach that integrates Strategy, Social Media Creative, Engagement and Research & Analytics, Banyan Branch delivers social media programs unmatched by smaller agencies, while providing more personalized service and quicker response than large-scale digital firms. Dozens of the world’s leading brands, including Amazon, Clarisonic, FOX, Gilt Groupe, Microsoft, Porsche, Parallels and T-Mobile have partnered with Banyan Branch to implement a wide variety of social media campaigns. Any company ready to connect with its customers where they live and breathe, can contact Banyan Branch via www.BanyanBranch.com

LONDON & NEW YORK - The latest in a series of exclusive insider webinars on the EU ePrivacy Directive is to be hosted 22 March by Evidon, the world leader in empowering consumers and businesses to see, understand and control data online. This 90-minute session will specifically address the issues facing sell-side companies – ad networks, DSPs, trading desks, publishers and others – as businesses look to demonstrate compliance and increased tracking transparency in accordance with the often ambiguous guidance provided by regulators.

This practical open session will include anecdotal evidence from the sell-side itself on what companies are already doing to comply with the EU ePrivacy Directive before the 26-May deadline in the UK, and how they’re communicating the issue to consumers. In addition, there will be an in-depth exploration of third party responsibilities, workable consent mechanisms and other examples of best practice.

Taking part will be IAB’s Director of Regulatory Affairs, Nick Stringer; Daniel de Sybel, Director of Technology and Operations at Infectious Media; Zuzanna Gierlinska, Global Agency Director of Microsoft Advertising; Jonathan Harris, Digital Associate Director, Starcom MediaVest Group; and Evidon CEO Scott Meyer and CSO Colin O’Malley.

“There’s mounting pressure on the sell-side from government officials, legal experts and trade bodies to show they understand the Directive and can demonstrate progress towards the transparency mandate,” said Scott Meyer, Founder and CEO of Evidon. “But many questions remain and sticking our heads in the sand is just not an option anymore. This webinar will help clarify the rudimentary elements of the law, and help businesses operating within the EU and who have yet to formulate a strategy to get on the right track.”

The session takes place 10am ET/2pm GMT, 22 March 2012 and will last one hour and 30 minutes. To register attendance, please visit http://tinyurl.com/6nbaev3.

ABOUT EVIDON

Evidon empowers consumers and businesses to see, understand and control data online.

With insights fueled by its Ghostery browser extension and rich, 800+ company privacy database, Evidon enables businesses to assess the cookies and other tracking activity on their websites, helping them to protect their audience data and improve performance.

As the first and largest dedicated provider of privacy and compliance solutions for digital media, Evidon also enables leading brands, agencies, publishers, advertising networks and others to comply easily with privacy laws and self-regulatory programs across North America and Europe. Evidon serves over a billion “Ad Choices” notices daily on behalf of these businesses – in the U.S. and in local languages across Europe – giving consumers transparency into and control over how their information is used online.

By protecting themselves and empowering consumers, businesses build their brands and improve results.

For more information, please visit: www.evidon.com.

NEW YORK - Total advertising expenditures increased 0.8 percent in 2011 and finished the year at $144.0 billion, according to data released by Kantar Media, the leading provider of strategic advertising and marketing information. Ad spending during the fourth quarter of 2011 dropped 1.0 percent versus the year ago period, the first quarterly decline since the end of 2009. Since reaching a post-recession peak in Q3 2010, advertising growth rates have slowed sequentially for five consecutive quarters.

“The contrast of resilient TV spending and waning budget allocations to other traditional media was plainly evident at the end of 2011,” said Jon Swallen, SVP Research at Kantar Media Intelligence North America. “Some mature digital media formats were also touched by the year-end tide of reduced spending. Whether this is an isolated occurrence or an early sign of digital dollars moving more quickly towards emerging and unmeasured digital platforms bears watching as 2012 unfolds.”

Measured Ad Spending By Media

Television continued to lead the ad market in the fourth quarter. Network TV expenditures jumped 7.7 percent year-over-year and were helped by strong pricing for football, a baseball World Series that went the maximum seven games and the launch of The X Factor singing competition program. The rate of Cable growth eased during Q4, finishing at +2.4 percent as higher demand from restaurants and retailers was offset by reductions from consumer packaged goods. For the full year, Network TV decreased by 2.0 percent while Cable rose 7.7 percent.

Spanish language TV ad spending surged 19.1 percent in fourth quarter, paced by higher sell-out levels at over-the-air networks. For all of 2011, the segment increased 8.3 percent.

Syndication TV benefitted from higher spending by department stores and health & beauty brands and saw expenditures soar 11.0 percent in Q4. Full year spending advanced by 15.4 percent.

Spot TV expenditures fell 8.7 percent in the fourth quarter but the more significant indicator was that November and December spending were each down, despite easy comparisons against diminished, post-election spending volume of a year ago. Full year Spot TV spending dropped 4.5 percent.

Free Standing Inserts achieved healthy gains in the fourth quarter with spend rising 3.0 percent. Although manufacturers have been distributing fewer FSI coupons, retailer promotion pages have increased significantly and this contributed to the improvement.

Ad expenditures for measured digital media declined in the fourth quarter. Paid Search budgets were 6.4 percent lower versus a year ago with continuing reductions from financial, insurance and local service advertisers. Display investments decreased 5.9 percent in Q4, dragged down by smaller budgets from auto manufacturers, telecom providers and travel companies. For the entire year, Paid Search declined 2.8 percent and Display increased 5.5 percent.

Magazine ad spending eroded at year end. Consumer Magazines declined 5.2 percent in the fourth quarter due to deep cutbacks in auto, food and pharmaceutical advertising. Total year expenditures were level compared to prior year. Outlays in Sunday Magazines fell 9.8 percent in Q4, the sixth consecutive quarter of year-over-year declines, and were down 7.2 percent for all of 2011.

Local Newspaper ad expenditures fell 3.9 percent during the fourth quarter, hurt by the reallocation of retailer advertising budgets to other media channels during the key holiday shopping season. Full year spending was 3.8 percent lower. The losses in Newspaper spending are consistent with reductions in the amount of space sold.

The pace of spending in Radio media also sagged. Local Radio expenditures were down 3.8 percent and National Spot Radio plummeted 13.9 percent in the fourth quarter. The telecom, financial service and automotive categories were prime contributors to these quarterly decreases.

Source: Kantar Media

Measured Ad Spending By Advertiser

Spending among the ten largest advertisers in 2011 reached $16,061.6 million, a 2.8 percent decline compared to a year ago. Among the Top 100 marketers, a diversified group that represents over two-fifths of all measured ad expenditures, full year budgets were down 0.2 percent.

For the ninth consecutive year, Procter & Gamble was the top advertiser with spending of $2,949.1 million down 5.4 percent compared to last year. While TV is still the foundation of its advertising media buys, P&G’s 2011 budget allocation saw share gains for magazines at the expense of TV.

AT&T was the second largest advertiser in 2011 with expenditures of $1,924.6 million, a decline of 11.7 percent. Media budgets were severely curtailed during the fourth quarter when the company abandoned its attempted acquisition of T-Mobile, triggering large breakup fees and a huge earnings loss. At Verizon Communications, full year ad spending was $1,636.9 million, a decrease of 11.8 percent. After a string of quarterly budget cuts dating to early 2010, Verizon sharply boosted its spending during the last quarter.

The largest growth rate among the Top Ten marketers was posted by Chrysler, up 36.2 percent to $1,193.0 for the full year. The increase was driven by marketing introductions for several new or redesigned models, coupled with the improved sales climate for new vehicles. In contrast, General Motors lowered its 2011 outlays by 16.1 percent to $1,784.1 million. Q4 media budgets dropped 24.7 percent. As factory support has been trimmed, GM dealers have been bearing a larger share of the overall marketing effort.

L’Oreal investments in 2011 rose 18.1 percent to $1,343.5 million as the company expanded marketing support for the L’Oreal Paris, Maybelline and Garnier brand lines. Comcast (+11.3 percent, to $1,577.2 million) and Time Warner (+5.8 percent, to $1,279.4 million) also posted full year spending gains.

Measured Ad Spending By Category

Expenditures for the ten largest categories grew 3.3 percent in 2011 and reached $81,629.2 million

Automotive was the leading category in dollar volume and finished 2011 at $13,890.4 million, up 6.3 percent. Category spending growth became increasingly bifurcated during the year with Tier 2 and Tier 3 dealer budgets continuing to expand and Tier 1 manufacturer expenditures flattening.

Miscellaneous Retail, which is comprised of all retail segments except Department Stores and Home Improvement purveyors, was the second largest category with 2011 expenditures of $10,019.5 million, up 4.0 percent. Robust ad spending during the critical year-end holiday season bolstered results.

Insurance registered the largest growth rate among the Top Ten categories with a 13.5 percent gain to $5,519.0 million. Aggressive competition among auto insurers to gain market share continues to drive media budgets higher.

Financial Services totaled $9,059.9 million of spending, a 3.6 percent increase. Growth has been fueled by the credit card segment, offsetting continued weakness in ad budgets for investment products and retail banking.

The Telecom category lost ground as 2011 expenditures fell 5.8 percent to $8,649.0 million. Declines were most pronounced among the leading wireless service advertisers. Aggregates expenditures from TV service providers also slowed.

Top Spending Advertisers Within Select Media

The top ten TV advertisers spent $10,115.4 million in the medium during 2011, down 0.8 percent from a year ago. This group accounted for 14.9 percent of total TV expenditures by all advertisers.

The ten largest Internet advertisers invested a total of $2,360.6 million in paid search and display campaigns, up 10.0 percent versus a year ago. Despite fragmentation on the web, the group accounted for 10.9 percent share of all Internet ad dollars.

The top ten advertisers in Hispanic Media spent $1,403.6 million during 2011, an increase of 29.2 percent. This group accounted for 24.7 percent of all Hispanic Media expenditures, the largest Top Ten share concentration of any medium.

About Kantar Media

Kantar Media provides strategic advice and competitive intelligence to the world’s leading brands, publishers, agencies and industry bodies, helping them navigate and succeed in a rapidly evolving media industry. This includes analysis of paid media opportunities; counsel on brand reputation, corporate management and consumer engagement through owned media; and, evaluating consumers’ reactions in earned media. Kantar Media provides clients with a broad range of insights from audience research, competitive intelligence, vital consumer behavior and digital insights, to marketing effectiveness and online influence. Our experts currently work with 22,000 companies tracking 3 million brands in 50 countries.www.KantarMediaNA.com.

This month, Danish software company Adform opens local office in Finland, following expansion of a number of recent openings across Europe. Adform is uniquely represented in all Nordic countries, and boasts more coverage across Europe than any competitive solution. The company now operates locally serviced offices in eleven European markets.

While it is more than likely that Adform is the world’s most complete panacea for managing online display advertising, it is certainly Europe’s. Within the interface media agencies and advertisers can purchase display ads in real time – so-called real-time bidding – perform media planning, execute rich media solutions and optimise activities across media centralising all reporting.

Finland presented high growth rates in digital advertising in 2011. Especially online display advertising was instrumental in creating this result, and Adform is certain that there is much more to come.

“Display advertising isn’t afforded the respect or attention it deserves. Things have changed of late, and there is more focus on planning and producing effective display ads,” says Christopher Fernandez, Adform’s newly appointed Business Development Director in Finland.

He points to Web TV and rich media ads as a major source of growth for the future. “The use of video banners is increasing. The popularity of Web-TV and the widespread use of Web-TV from advertisers spur demand. Similarly, there is great potential for Rich Media. ”

For the past two years, Christopher Fernandez has been Head of Digital at the media agency Virta Mediacommunity and has previously worked for Aegis Media.

“We are at our best when executing locally with our partners. Our goal is to make display media simple, relevant & rewarding to the Finland media market – that’s quite unique and clear. We have great confidence in our recent developments in Real Time bidding and Rich Media Solutions and excited to bring to Finland, but leadership is key; Chris comes highly recommended and we’re really very excited to what is potential will bring the market,” says David Fulton, Chief Commercial Officer of Adform

About Adform
Adform close the loop by integrating media planning, buying, optimization, and reporting for all online display advertising in one place, thus saving an enormous amount of time, money and resources.

Adform’s unique platform incorporates display ad serving, rich media, video, mobile, dynamic ads, personalised targeting, and real-time bidding through integrations with major inventory players, making display advertising simple, relevant and rewarding for media agencies and online advertisers. Adform was established in Denmark in 2002 and now has offices in 11 countries including Nordics, UK, Germany, Spain and Italy.

Visit http://www.adform.com or www.twitter.com/adforminsider for more information.

Edison, NJ – Think Realtime, which provides advertisers with an infinitely scalable, fully automated system that optimizes the purchase of RTB-enabled banner inventory, has named Chris Smith, former President of VIBE Lifestyle Network, to the newly created position of Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing. Based in Think Realtime’s New Jersey headquarters, Mr. Smith will drive revenue and build a national sales team.

“Chris is the first of a number of key senior staff hires that we are making as we rollout Think Realtime’s innovative machine-learning real time bidding and optimization engine,” says Ezra K. Doty, the company’s President. “Chris will immediately establish and build a West coast office that will include account managers and additional sales staff.”

“Real time bidding has forever changed the face of advertising, ” says Mr. Smith. “I am pleased to join the industry leader in creating the highest possible value for advertisers and agencies that leverage RTB for lead generation, direct sales and branding.”

Before he joined Think Realtime, Mr. Smith built a track record as an entrepreneur, investor and sales leader. In 2005, he founded Blackrock Digital, a new media sales representation firm for leading entertainment, sports and music brands, and sold it four years later to Intermedia Partners and the VIBE Lifestyle Network. Mr. Smith also successfully built interactive sales teams for national media brands and publishers including the Wasserman Media Group, Primedia, SourceInterlink, VIBE, SPIN, Surfer, Snowboarder, and Tennis magazines. Earlier in his career, Mr. Smith held Senior Producer positions with various television entities including Paradise Television Network (Maui); CBS Sports; and NBC Sports.

Think Realtime LLC (www.thinkrealtime.com) has built, and continues to improve, an infinitely scalable, fully automated system that optimizes the purchase of RTB enabled banner inventory exclusively on the Google Display Network, to maximizing online display advertising effectiveness. Think Realtime’s proprietary deep machine, self-learning logic recognizes shifting consumer sentiment before anyone else in the world and combines the right creative offer with instant automated acquisition of the most appropriate inventory via RTB on the Google ADX. The result is ads that increase sales up to 30% with media cost savings of more than 50%. Think Realtime has never lost a head-to-head test against any remarketing vendor or ad platform.

The privately-held company, based Edison, NJ. was founded in 2009 by experts in a team of online advertising, high-frequency stock trading and machine learning. The company also has sales offices in Manhattan Beach, CA and Chicago. Think Realtime has a unique 1 to 1 connection to the Google ADX hubs in Ashburn VA and Denver.

First platform to launch upfront video buying technology

London, UK – Adap.tv, the company that provides a programmatic way to plan, buy, sell and measure television and video advertising, today announced the launch of the Adap.tv Upfront Marketplace, the first media buying platform to automate the way of securing future inventory across multiple screens. The new offering will reduce the amount of time and money spent by media buyers and sellers on managing this once time-consuming process.

Video advertising is a growing industry, but the RFP buyer-execution and seller-review is still based on an offline, manual system.  Most media planners agree that a significant part of the average media plan cost is currently wasted on administrative activities. In contrast, Adap.tv’s automated process allows agencies the ability to negotiate and execute upfront buys across hundreds of sellers at the same time.

Using Adap.tv’s Upfront Marketplace to engage sellers in an auction, media buyers can secure the inventory that is right for them, quickly and easily. Data is a key component as it enables users to identify audience-specific inventory using target demographics and connect with the sellers whose inventory matches their specifications.

For sellers, the improvements and automations made to the media buying process result in a reduced cost of sale and improved access to additional demand. Prior to being invited to participate in the Upfront Marketplace, sellers are pre-qualified across a variety of data and metrics, eliminating the need for RFP or response. The sale is qualified for buyers, which streamlines deal closings and time to cash for sellers.

“The traditional media buying process is not time and cost efficient when it comes to buying video. Adap.tv is combining its technical expertise and understanding of how media is currently bought to provide players with new opportunities and ways to do business,” says Brian Fitzpatrick, managing director for Adap.tv in Europe.  “The programmatic approach addresses the issues caused by audience fragmentation and the proliferation of viewing devices.”

Adap.tv’s Upfront Marketplace is now available. Please visit www.Adap.tv for more information.

About Adap.tv
Adap.tv builds technology that destroys the inefficiencies of television and video advertising. It delivers a programmatic way to plan, buy, sell and measure across multiple sources, screens and methods of transacting. Adap.tv is comprised of two operational units – the Adap.tv Platform and the Adap.tv Marketplace.  The Adap.tv Platform provides advertisers, publishers and ad networks with automated ad trading solutions customised to meet any business goal. As the world’s largest source of video supply and demand, the Adap.tv Marketplace has thousands of sellers and hundreds of campaigns running daily. Headquartered in San Mateo, Calif., Adap.tv has offices in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, London and Sydney. Adap.tv is a privately held company backed by Bessemer Venture Partners, Gemini Israel Funds, Redpoint Ventures and Spark Capital. For more information, please visit http://adap.tv/. Follow Adap.tv on Twitter @Adaptv.

Ad Agency Founder, Former Ad-Tech CMO, and 15-Year Digital Marketing Veteran Completes Executive Staff

REDWOOD SHORES, CA – Rocket Fuel, the leading provider of artificial-intelligence advertising solutions for digital marketers, announced that Eric Porres has joined the company as Chief Marketing Officer. Porres has over 15 years experience in the digital marketing industry, where he has founded several companies and held executive roles at leading agencies, brands, and technology organizations.

Proprietary Algorithm Automatically Adjusts to Individual Campaign-Critical Metrics to Optimize Media Allocations for Brands

REDWOOD CITY, CA – YuMe, the operating system for TV 2.0, today announced a first for the video advertising industry: the YuMe Placement Quality Index (PQI), a proprietary algorithm that monitors and identifies the optimal placement of video ads on digital properties. In this age of site list parity, media buyers need a better way to evaluate expected performance for their campaigns. Not all impressions are created equal, and the PQI ensures that campaigns deliver the best possible performance and maximum impression value to align with brand marketing objectives.

YuMe’s PQI algorithm is a composite function of key performance metrics that are important to brand marketers including: interaction rate (IR), video completion rate (VCR), video player size, player on-page location, among many others based on campaign objectives. A baseline PQI is calculated continuously for YuMe’s Connected Audience Network, so new campaigns can be evaluated in real-time against the average performance of the entire network. Additionally, as the campaign progresses, the real-time PQI calculations allow YuMe to automatically adjust campaign placements to optimize overall performance. As a result, the PQI highlights new opportunities to maximize the value of each impression per the advertiser’s desired price point, ensuring that each advertiser gets what they pay for. Placement quality is a critical component of YuMe’s 8 Essential Elements for successful video advertising.

“We are excited to be the first video ad network taking a dynamic approach to optimize performance so that advertisers do not have to rely on outdated or oversimplified data,” said YuMe CEO Jayant Kadambi. “With PQI, brands are assured that their campaigns will reach the right audience and run on sites that yield the highest possible performance according to their desired campaign objectives.”

YuMe has conducted extensive testing to demonstrate the impact of utilizing a PQI-based media allocation compared to a traditional site-list based media allocation on video ad campaign performance. In one instance, YuMe compared a set of 10 campaigns with major travel and telecommunications brands utilizing the PQI algorithm against 10 campaigns that opted out. These campaign sets and audience targets were identical, and the associated creatives were placed on the same digital publisher properties. Key findings of these tests include:

· PQI optimized video ad campaigns yielded a 215 percent lift in Interaction Rate (IR) as compared to campaigns which were not.

· PQI optimized video ad campaign yielded a 90 percent lift in Video Completion Rate (VCR) as compared to campaigns which were not.

PQI ultimately proves that site lists are less important than the actual placement on a page. One site might perform well for one campaign and quite poorly for another. PQI unearths valuable publisher inventory wherever it might exist based on the campaign type and goals.

Placement quality is one of YuMe’s 8 Essential Elements of video advertising for brands, which includes:

Ad visibility assurance: YuMe’s viewport detection solution guarantees that no impressions will go unseen, so every video ad impression truly extends reach and brand awareness.

Brand-safe distribution: YuMe ensures ads are associated with safe content to protect brand equity. Since video ad players are portable, YuMe’s brand security measures follow the video player wherever it goes to guarantee protection.

Cross-screen compatibility: YuMe enables marketers to reach any screen their customers are viewing, be it a computer, mobile device, or connected TV. Moreover, advertisers can build their YuMe Ads just once and run them on all screens.

Premium, 100% in-stream video inventory: User-initiated, well-lit video ad placements on quality publisher properties and applications yield high brand impact and optimal branding opportunities.

Video ad placement on professionally-produced content: YuMe ensures that the brand message is always paired with high-quality video content for brand credibility via the first-ever Placement Quality Index.

Highly interactive video ad units: Socially rich ad units drive brand awareness, favorability, recall, and purchase intent for immediate brand engagement.

Advanced, guaranteed audience targeting: YuMe delivers ads to the right audience using a variety of targeting techniques to meet audience guarantees, ensure relevance, and maximize brand favorability.

Powerful analytics for brand performance optimization: YuMe provides instant, actionable insight into video ad campaign performance across all connected devices.

About YuMe
YuMe is the software infrastructure provider powering digital video and the next generation of television with its operating system for TV 2.0. Its video advertising technology and services seamlessly connect advertisers, app developers, content distributors, consumer electronics manufacturers, and publishers across the globe. YuMe’s patent-pending Relevance Engine powers its premium in-stream video ad network, the YuMe Connected Audience Network, and its industry-leading advertising management solutions, ACE for Publishers and ACE for Advertisers. The YuMe Relevance Engine matches the right ad to the right audience on whatever screen they are viewing—PC, mobile, or connected TV. YuMe is a privately held company headquartered in Redwood City, CA with its European headquarters in London. The company is backed by Accel Partners, BV Capital, DAG Ventures, Intel Capital, Khosla Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Samsung Ventures, and Translink Capital. For more information, visit www.YuMe.com, follow @YuMevideo on Twitter, or like YuMe on Facebook at www.facebook.com/YuMevideo.

Common Methodologies for the Evaluation of Campaigns Will Promote Growth, Consistency and Greater Transparency in the Interactive Advertising Buying and Selling Process

NEW YORK – The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) released the final version of “Guidelines for the Conduct of Ad Verification.” This advanced framework, developed in conjunction with the Media Rating Council (MRC), will ensure a common set of methods and practices for ad verification, ultimately providing vital assurances to marketers and publishers alike that companies engaged in the verification of interactive advertising campaigns can themselves be audited against a common, transparent standard.

“These guidelines introduce a transparent and auditable approach to ad verification practices in the industry,” said Steve Sullivan, Vice President, Advertising Technology, IAB. “While ad verification in principle is valuable to the digital advertising industry, the lack of accountability created tension between the publishers and marketers. We developed these guidelines to introduce a level of consistency into campaign assessments commensurate the industry’s standards for impression measurement.”

The guidelines provide a detailed set of common methods and practices for verification of online advertising, useful to verification vendors and users of verification services (both buyers and sellers). They include mobile, e-mail or lead generation campaigns of all types and address a wide range of topics, including:

- Ad-serving prevention (“ad blocking”) carries larger implications to the buyer and/or seller because the intended ad serving transaction is interrupted. The guidelines recommend that ad blocking may be used in instances where the relevant domain or page-level URL is already on a blocking list, for competitive separation and fraud prevention. Ad blocking should only be built into ad serving systems, so decisions are made pre-serve.

- Nested iFrames are often recognized as legitimate technology, but because of browser operational/security considerations, there is limited visibility into the legitimacy of iFrames filled with content from outside the parent domain. For that reason, the guidelines recommend ad verification vendors have procedures to classify and report whether advertising served into iFrames from other domains has been appropriately executed. In addition, the general nature of the verification tools used to view iFrame content should be disclosed. Moreover, it is recommended that the industry minimize the use of nested iFrames.

- Geo-targeting IP-based processes can vary in quality based on the geo-targeting vendor used. The guidelines recommend geo-targeting vendors subject their processes to independent auditing and that natural differences in geo targeting accuracy between vendors be taken into account.

“Consistent and transparent conduct of ad verification is vital for deepening confidence in the industry and driving the advancement of digital advertising,” said George Ivie, Executive Director and CEO of the Media Rating Council. “We believe the issuance of these guidelines represent a major step toward achieving these goals.”

For a copy of the Guidelines for the Conduct of Ad Verification, please visit www.iab.net/ad_verification.

About the IAB

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is comprised of more than 500 leading media and technology companies that are responsible for selling 86% of online advertising in the United States. On behalf of its members, the IAB is dedicated to the growth of the interactive advertising marketplace, of interactive’s share of total marketing spend, and of its members’ share of total marketing spend. The IAB educates marketers, agencies, media companies and the wider business community about the value of interactive advertising. Working with its member companies, the IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices and fields critical research on interactive advertising. Founded in 1996, the IAB is headquartered in New York City with a Public Policy office in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.iab.net.

Partnership Will Help eCommerce Companies in the UK Unleash the Power of their Websites

BOSTON & MANCHESTER, United Kingdom – SiteSpect, Inc., announced it has partnered with full-service agency Digital & Wise to provide SiteSpect’s industry-leading non-intrusive multivariate testing and behavioral targeting technology to its clients. Digital & Wise has already signed up Speedo International Ltd, the world’s leading swimwear brand, to improve the operability of its UK website, store.speedo.co.uk, using SiteSpect’s unique multivariate testing technology.

“We’re pleased to partner with Digital & Wise, which is well-known for its world-class online marketing services,” said Eric J. Hansen, Founder and CEO of SiteSpect. “By adding SiteSpect’s testing, targeting, and personalization solutions to its array of services, Digital & Wise can now deliver the conversion optimization strategies that its clients are seeking.”

“Partnering with SiteSpect is a very exciting opportunity for us, as we are constantly looking at adding value to our client’s online businesses, which SiteSpect does in abundance. We will be helping retailers in the UK optimize their conversion goals with the great functionality that SiteSpect provides,” said George Ioannou, Head of Agency, Digital & Wise. “Our vast experience in the eCommerce industry and knowledge of best practices in online retailing, combined with SiteSpect’s ability to be implemented on any platform, makes this a partnership like no other in the marketplace.”

Digital & Wise will be using SiteSpect to simplify the entire process of running targeted A/B and multivariate tests. With SiteSpect, Digital & Wise will be able to:

- Quickly and easily determine what content will have the greatest impact on a visitor’s behavior.

- Determine the best ways to effectively influence and persuade visitors to take the desired actions.

- Make confident, quantitatively backed decisions about optimizing its clients’ sites based on actionable reports and analysis.

- Quickly identify the right place to get started and develop an incremental testing, targeting and personalization strategy to maximize short-term and long-term value.

SiteSpect’s unique patent-pending technology allows the world’s most successful online businesses and agencies to create tests and optimize conversions without page tagging, JavaScript, or site content changes. SiteSpect can test content variations on pages that are formatted using virtually any mark-up language (e.g. HTML, WML, XML), stylesheets (CSS), or scripting languages (e.g. JavaScript). Within those pages, SiteSpect can test variations of virtually any type of content, whether it is static and/or dynamic, including audio and video files as well as web-based applications. SiteSpect’s technology is 100 percent turnkey, sparing marketers the implementation and maintenance headaches of competing solutions.

About Digital & Wise

Digital & Wise, part of Maginus, the UK leader in multi-channel and eCommerce, offers a full suite of creative and online marketing services to deliver improved web usability increase traffic and conversion rates which all help to deliver increased web revenue. The services include eCommerce design, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay Per Click Management, Social Media Optimization, Email Marketing, Affiliate Marketing and conversion optimization services such as user experience testing (UX) & Multivariate Testing (MVT).

About SiteSpect, Inc.

SiteSpect provides the world’s only non-intrusive optimization platform, enabling web and mobile marketers to significantly improve key metrics such as conversion rate and engagement. SiteSpect’s solutions include rapid A/B testing, multivariate testing, behavioral targeting and personalization, landing page optimization, mobile web optimization, and web performance optimization. With SiteSpect, marketers enjoy unmatched speed and flexibility without the need for ongoing IT involvement. SiteSpect’s patent-pending technology and professional services are used by many of the world’s leading online businesses, such as Wal-Mart, Staples, Mozilla, JCPenney, MTV, ASOS, Overstock.com, VEGAS.com, and leading financial services companies. For more information, visit www.SiteSpect.com or call 617-859-1900.

Industry veteran Frannie Danzinger has recently joined Bizo (www.bizo.com), the world’s largest business audience marketing platform, where she will lead strategic account development and media strategies. She joined the company during a period of triple-digit run-rate growth and we wanted to hear first hand about her new role and about current media buying trends.

Otilia Otlacan: Congratulations on your recent move to Bizo! It’s been a week already – how does it feel, what do you like most about your role at Bizo?

Frannie Danzinger: My move to Bizo feels fantastic! What I like most is the culture and the passion fueled by great people.

Otilia Otlacan: Could you share with us some of the projects that you’ll be working on?

Frannie Danzinger: As Director of Marketplace Development, I am creating two Advisory Councils, one for CMO’s/Marketing Directors and one for Agencies (Media Planners/Buyers). The goal of these Advisory Councils is to foster a thought-provoking environment for peer-to-peer networking and communication, while impacting and shaping the future of digital marketing. I will also focus on furthering communications with marketers and agencies on how Bizo can help accelerate digital success starting with a sound marketing and media strategy.

Otilia Otlacan: You have a wealth of experience in B2B media strategy. In your opinion, how does audience targeting find its place into the mix?

Frannie Danzinger: Thank you. My recent move over to Bizo was fueled by my obsession with not only making sense of great data, but using this data with strategic vision to help marketers succeed in the current, fast-paced, highly competitive environment. Audience targeting is pretty simple and makes perfect sense! The greatest challenge and also the greatest opportunity is building a media strategy that is nimble enough to use the compelling data to learn, to grow and ultimately, to succeed. Additionally, audience targeting certainly can be successful on its own merits (assuming it meets the needs of stated objectives), but also should be considered as a part of an overall strategic approach, and multi-faceted media program.

Otilia Otlacan: Numerous reports have surfaced in the past couple of years about the unintentional budget waste happening in many agencies. Are there any specific tools or metrics available to B2B media buyers to help maximize the efficiency of online campaigns?

Frannie Danzinger: This is a pretty challenging question to answer. I don’t think “budget waste” is necessarily attributed to agencies, nor marketers, per se. In digital media specifically, budget waste is really a function of the need to test, learn, optimize and repeat, to garner the greatest levels of success. So one marketer’s waste is another marketer’s investment in getting the most out of a given campaign or program, as long as learnings are being applied methodically to optimize performance. As the optimization process advances, waste percentage gets smaller, however the best online campaigns are still seeing 95%+ waste. This begs another interesting discussion around the notion of “waste” itself. If the core KPIs or a given program involve driving traffic to a destination URL or engaging with an audience and 95% of the audience targeted still did not take action, an additional measure of awareness or brand lift should be considered as well. In turn, this changes the view of waste, and properly channels the expectations of a media effort against primary and secondary KPIs.

Otilia Otlacan: In your view, which of the current media buying trends will have the highest impact in 2012?

Frannie Danzinger: The greatest impact in this coming year will come from the maximization of true, quality, content integration in messaging, coupled with that content reaching the most succinctly targeted audience.

Otilia Otlacan: Last but not least, is there anything else you would like to tell our readers?

Frannie Danzinger: I feel lucky to be in this every-changing world of marketing each and every day. The environment that we face is both exciting and scary all rolled up into one, and those opposing emotions have a profound effect on the accelerated energy in our business. If you are reading this all the way through, I congratulate you on sharing my passion and energy, and encourage you to dig deeper, father and smarter with every thought you have, and to understand that the wild and crazy media ideas we come up with, can all become reality – keep digging!

About Frannie Danzinger
Prior to joining Bizo, Frannie Danzinger spent more than 14 years at gyro (formerly HSR Business to Business and GyroHSR), a leading business-to-business advertising agency. Most recently, she led gyro’s global media strategy practice as the senior vice president of media.  Danzinger was instrumental in gyro’s media business expansion, growing overall media revenue by more than 250 percent and building a global media team of 20.   Key media clients included Lincoln Financial Corporation, Dymo, Pitney Bowes and PNC.  Prior to this role, Danzinger founded ProMedia LLC, where she served as president and media director.  While running ProMedia, Danzinger was instrumental in establishing first-to-market media ideas for clients such as Flight Options, Avantair, Cleveland Grand Prix and Duke Energy, while exceeding expected ROI benchmarks.  Before launching ProMedia, Frannie was associate media director at Wyse Advertising in Cleveland.

About Bizo
Bizo is how marketers reach and engage business professionals, wherever they travel online. Bizo can precisely target more than 100 million professionals around the world, including more than 80 percent of the U.S. business population. This unprecedented reach and targeting gives marketers cost-effective access and insight into business professionals – the most valuable online audience segment. Simply put, Bizo knows business audiences. More than 400 leading brands including AMEX, Monster, Salesforce.com, Microsoft, and FedEx count on the precise display ad targeting, social media measurement, and deep audience analytics that the Bizo Audience Marketing Platform provides to successfully execute their branding and direct response initiatives.

For more information on Bizo, or for a free look at the Bizographic make-up of your website audience, visit www.bizo.com.

Research finds “huge untapped potential” in social advertising

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – With Facebook’s initial public offering last week, the social networking giant can look ahead to a potentially huge new source of revenue from “social advertising,” according to new research by MIT Sloan School of Management Associate Professor of Marketing Catherine Tucker. Tucker says that Facebook itself is only beginning to recognize the “untapped potential” of this kind of advertising fueled by its own technology.

Tucker’s research counters the prevailing view of recent years that social network websites are unfruitful venues for paid advertising. Instead, she finds that social advertising has been under-valued and underrated as a revenue stream and as an effective way to deliver messages, though only if those messages are delivered the right way.

“Facebook has only recently figured out what is unique about all the data they collect,” says Tucker. “Facebook knows who peoples’ friends are, which can be hugely valuable to marketers. Feeding that social network into the Facebook algorithm creates huge and under-exploited profit potential.”

In social advertising, marketers use online social relationships to target and improve their ads. For her new research paper, Tucker examined data from an experiment in which a nonprofit charity used both traditional and social advertising on Facebook. Tucker found that the social ads, which were targeted to friends of `fans’ of the nonprofit on Facebook, attracted far more clicks than those that were not. “When you target ads based on who is friends with whom, you can double the number of click,” she says. “This is because advertisers can uncover consumers who could also get excited about their product.”

“Social advertising is not necessarily replacing display advertising,” adds Tucker. “Rather, it is a different and more effective form of targeted advertising that still remains unrefined, even on Facebook.” So far, Facebook’s algorithm appears to treat all Facebook friends equally, Tucker explains. “But among your friends, certain people have more influence; they are the `gatekeepers’ whom you tend to follow more closely. When Facebook refines its algorithm to incorporate such gatekeepers as part of social advertising, we will see ever greater improvements in advertising response.”

But Facebook must be careful about how it uses such powerful information, Tucker cautions. “There is a level of intrusiveness that no advertiser should cross. Advertisers must avoid being overt in their attempts to exploit social networks in their advertising. If Facebook too explicitly takes advantage of your friend, it could cross that line.” For example, in her study she finds that an ad that states explicitly, “Be like your friend” deters users, who could resent that Facebook or any other company is openly commercializing friendship. But if the consumer is simply informed that “Susan likes this,” it is not seen as a personal intrusion. “Speculatively, the results suggest that intrusive or highly personal advertising is more acceptable if done algorithmically by a faceless entity such as a computer than when it is the result of evident human agency,” Tucker writes.

These are the kinds of issues with which Facebook itself is grappling as it gets more deeply into social advertising. “Facebook is not giving much guidance to advertisers about how to use this new technology, partly because it is so new. But the results of my research suggest that social networks will be able to exploit their unique data on who is friends with whom to enlarge their share of advertising dollars.”

Study reveals gap in brands’ perceptions of local digital advertising activity compared to reality of implementation; calls attention to need for education and assessment of localized business strategies

ST. LOUIS – GMS Local, a service of GroupM and provider of local online services for national brands, announced research revealing a gap in the perceived local digital media activity expressed by national brands with brick and mortar locations versus what is actually being implemented. While 69 percent of marketers surveyed indicate they spend greater than the national average of 25 percent of budgets allocated to local marketing, 33 percent have yet to implement basic local digital efforts that positively impact business performance, such as online business directory listings. An exploration of the research is detailed in the white paper “Perception vs. Execution: Examination of Brands’ Local Business Strategies Reveals Gaps to Act On.”

As the Internet speeds to the forefront of local advertising, marketers are bullish about their current and future investments in local advertising – particularly in local digital media, the research revealed. Eighty-three percent of marketers surveyed expect their local online spending to increase at a greater rate than the projected national growth (25 percent) over the next three years. Such growth supports the expansive consumer activity happening in the local digital marketplace, where up to 20 percent of searches conducted have local intent (jumping to 40 percent on mobile devices), and the adoption of location-based check-in services is happening in the masses, with companies such as Foursquare topping 1 billion check-ins. According to Borrell Associates, local digital advertising is expected to grow 18 percent in 2012, with local online spend projected to surpass all other channels by 2015. This growth, compared to the gap in what marketing executives perceive their brands are doing at the local level and the reality of their execution over the past 12 months – and into 2012 – shows national advertisers are missing the opportunity for sizeable gains.

“Every single data point we see shows consumers becoming more mobile and reliant on digital for their local information. This rapid consumer shift has created challenges for brands as they attempt to keep up, and we are seeing a willingness to invest, as validated in this research,” said Chris Copeland, CEO, GroupM Search. “The research also shows a clear disconnect between what brands believe they are doing with those investments and what is actually being done. We speak to advertisers daily that have enormous blind spots in local digital coverage, and who welcome the education and strategy needed to resolve their willingness to spend and target which is hindered by the inability to determine what to do first and next.”

Additional insights from the research include:

- One of three national brands has yet to invest in the basic local digital effort of online business directory listings.

- Only 55 percent of national brands surveyed have initiated geo-modified paid search campaigns.

- While half of all consumers are making business selections off consumer ratings and reviews, less than 50 percent of national advertisers invest in local online review sites.

- Thirty-two percent of marketers attribute their insufficient engagement to a lack of awareness, with respondents specifically stating they are unaware of offerings, don’t understand them or believe them to be unnecessary.

- Fifty-eight percent indicate that funding prevents them from engaging more in the local digital space.

Brands will continue placing big bets on the online local space given the consumer shift to this space for their discovery efforts, with 70 percent of marketing executives for national brands reporting their local online investments as a percent of total local advertising outpace current national averages. As detailed in the whitepaper, national advertisers can overcome these challenges with deeper education around opportunity in the local digital space and self-assessment of the reality of their allocation and programs.

Additionally, following a three-step action plan will help advertisers reach optimal performance and local digital success:

- Conduct an online local listing business audit

- Diagnose the ‘local storefront’ for your brand by applying social media tools that listen to consumer sentiment at the local store level

- Practice education, innovation and experimentation

“Technology and mobility have opened the gateway for national brands to be able to create personalized experiences with consumers at the local level,” said Steve Scherfy, Local and Mobile Manager for GMS Local. “From business location listings to local social intelligence, managing the entire digital storefront is key.”

For the study, marketing executives and managers of national brands with a minimum of 500 physical locations were surveyed. The comparative study, conducted between September and November 2011, set forth to investigate the challenges that brands within the digital marketplace face, including the ability to understand emerging technology, analyze what is relevant and act on these tools based on their business needs. It also explored how engaged each national brand is with local marketing. Survey questions with local digital marketing averages and best practices from national data were utilized to gain reaction and comparative “self-assessments” against those averages by participating respondents and brands.

About GMS Local

GMS Local is a service of GroupM, and comprehensive digital solution focused on creating meaningful connections between brands and consumers at the local level. Using paid, earned and owned media solutions, GMS Local maximizes local consumer engagement opportunities for national advertisers with an extensive local footprint. Local digital marketing perspective can be found at www.gmslocal.com, or on the GMS Local blog.

NYC, NY – MediaMind Technologies Inc., the leading independent provider of integrated digital advertising solutions, announced today the establishment of the MediaMind Global Publisher Unit (http://publisher.mediamind.com ). Following the unification of three technology powerhouses—MediaMind, Unicast, and Eyewonder under the DG umbrella—now online publishers have access to additional resources and services worldwide to bolster their rich media offering.

Typically the first to adopt new advertising technologies, online publishers demand innovative solutions along with white-glove service supported by teams that understand their business. The Global Publisher Unit helps publishers expand beyond the basic ad unit experience and scale their rich media product offering with advanced, innovative technologies such as dynamic creative optimization, mobile and in-stream video.

The MediaMind Global Publisher Unit has collaborated with the IAB to develop four of the six IAB Rising Star Formats recently launched for North America. In response to MediaMind’s announcement of this new Unit, Peter Minnium, Head of Digital Brand Initiatives at the IAB stated, “The IAB views the MediaMind Global Publisher Unit as a key partner in setting industry standards and developing innovative formats that will enable consumers to connect with brands more effectively.”

Many of the leading global publishers already benefit from partnering with this unit. “As a unified team, we are even better positioned to support key global publishers such as MSN, Yahoo!, the budding social media marketplace, as well as news and entertainment broadcast channels such as NBC, CBS, etc.,” said James Dillon, Senior Vice President of the MediaMind Global Publisher Unit.

For more information on MediaMind, visit http://www.mediamind.com .

About MediaMind
MediaMind, a division of DG (NASDAQ:DGIT), is a leading global provider of digital advertising campaign management solutions to advertising agencies and advertisers. MediaMind provides media and creative agencies, advertisers and publishers with an integrated platform to manage campaigns across digital media channels and a variety of formats, including rich media, in-stream video, display and search. During 2010, MediaMind delivered campaigns for approximately 9,000 brand advertisers, servicing approximately 3,800 media and creative agencies across approximately 8,200 global web publishers in 64 countries.

Leading Search Syndication Network Boosted By Direct Advertiser Growth

NEW YORK – Powered by increased spend from direct advertisers, adMarketplace, the leading search syndication platform, posted its fourth consecutive record quarter as revenue increased 78% in the fourth quarter over the same period in 2010.

“The Internet’s largest search advertisers are demanding search performance at scale outside of the major engines and these results show that adMarketplace delivers,” said Chief Executive Officer James Hill.

Direct advertiser spend increased 115% year over year while the average cost-per-click increased 44% from the year-ago quarter. This was driven by exceptional performance on adMarketplace’s platform.

adMarketplace published three case studies in the fourth quarter documenting outstanding performance results that it delivered to Volvo, ADT and CreditCards.com.

“We are seeing increased budgets from 85% of our direct advertisers who pass us sufficient, relevant performance data,” said Adam Epstein, President and Chief Operating Officer. “This gives us the ability to scale our search syndication platform.”

adMarketplace expects continued growth in 2012, aggressively hiring engineers and salespeople. The company hired 25 new employees in Q4.

adMarketplace’s success comes amid mixed results from the other major search syndication networks. In their recent fourth quarter results, Google reported a paltry 15% gain in network revenue and Yahoo reported that search revenue declined 3%. Last week, InfoSpace purchased TaxACT for a reported $285 Million, diversifying itself away from its search syndication business.

About adMarketplace: The Internet’s largest marketers and agencies rely on adMarketplace to deliver search performance outside of Google, Bing, and Yahoo. With over 250 million searches each day across distribution channels worldwide, and backed by powerful, easy to use tools and expert account specialists, adMarketplace is the leading platform for search syndication advertising.

SARASOTA, Fla. – Could the click-ad era be drawing to a close? It certainly could be, if Obscene Jeans Corp. (OTCBB:OBJE) has its way. The company is exploring the development of new crowd-sourcing ad software and online technology platforms that could make online ads generate cash for both clients and consumers.

This new trend and related technology would enable OBJE’s clients to turn advertising campaigns over to their social networks, resulting in custom, peer-generated ads and campaigns that engage the online community they’re intended to attract. In addition to boosting clients’ brand awareness, this new kind of advertising would compensate social media superstars for designing creative ads and sharing them with friends.

By enlisting the very consumers that advertisers hope to attract, this type of software could result in a new generation of less intrusive, more engaging online advertising that pays consumers.

OBJE is making plans to help spur this evolution in advertising along by acquiring and joint venturing with innovative startups, getting them funded and leveraging their expertise to develop all-new platforms.

For more information on the company’s social media analytics initiative, please visit www.obsceneinteractive.com/investors.

Obscene Interactive is a division of Obscene Jeans Corp. that develops innovative technology tools to service the fast-growing social media and online content production sectors alongside companies such as Monster Worldwide (NYSE: MWW), LinkedIn Corp. (NYSE: LNKD), Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ: NFLX), and Groupon, Inc. (NASDAQ: GRPN).

About Obscene Interactive

Obscene Interactive (OTCBB:OBJE) is an emerging global developer of social media tools and applications. OBJE’s cutting-edge technology platform enables its titles to be accessible to a broad audience of consumers all over the world, supporting multiple platforms for universal appeal. Obscene Interactive is focused on delivering the best in social media solutions to the mass market. For investment information and performance data, please visit www.ObsceneInteractive.com/investors.

Integration with Convertro’s Attribution Service Gives Advertisers a Greater Understanding of the Value of LiveIntent’s Publishers’ Exchange Inventory

New York – LiveIntent, the platform for buying and selling email ad inventory exactly like display, today announced it has integrated its services with advertising technology from Convertro, the leader in providing advertisers enhanced transparency into the effectiveness of their online marketing channels and optimization. This integration provides advertisers with a better understanding of the value of LiveIntent’s inventory within their overall digital media footprint.

Previous constraints in the email space only made it possible to track last click conversions or direct consumer behaviors back to email, but Convertro’s Multi-Attribution service allows advertisers access into every marketing touch that led to a conversion without limits on the number of touch points, cookie windows and other constraints. By partnering with Convertro, LiveIntent can now attribute an action back to an email ad placement, even if the consumer decides to shop around before converting into purchase.

“This integration was driven by our goal to provide advertisers with more knowledge and transparency into the impact of our email advertising offerings, ” said Jason Oates, President LiveIntent. “With Convertro’s unique attribution service, we can now prove to advertisers how effective their email advertising campaigns are by identifying how they impact the top (awareness) and bottom (conversion) of the sales funnel. This is important to brand and direct advertisers.”

“By tapping into Convertro’s technology, LiveIntent will now be able to prove to advertisers accurate contribution of email marketing efforts to best optimize their revenue from email ads,” said Jeff Zwelling, CEO and Co-Founder, Convertro. “Convertro strives to provide advertisers with transparency and in turn, give our customers the attribution they deserve.”

This integration is one of many strategic initiatives from LiveIntent, including new product offerings to its portfolio and personnel additions to accommodate the company’s rapid growth.

About LiveIntent
LiveIntent is the only company with a real-time display ad platform for email. LiveIntent works with advertisers, publishers and agencies to provide ad optimization, DSP / trading desk and exchanges capabilities. The company is venture-backed by Shasta Ventures, Battery Ventures, First Round Capital, Lerer Ventures and Grape Arbor VC. LiveIntent was founded in 2009 and is headquartered in NYC. For more information and a demonstration of the company’s technology in your own inbox, visit www.liveintent.com.

Deal Gives Tremor Video Robust, Enhanced Reporting on Publisher-side Video Performance while TubeMogul Retains its Promise of Complete Transparency and Detailed Reporting to Advertisers

NEW YORK – Tremor Video, the largest independent online video advertising technology company, and TubeMogul, the fastest-growing media buying platform for video advertising, announced that Tremor Video has purchased InPlay, TubeMogul’s industry-leading video analytics for publishers. Tremor Video will integrate InPlay directly into VideoHub, its enterprise video platform, enabling a complete end-to-end video analytics solution for publishers.

InPlay helps publishers understand real-time engagement, viewership and performance data, and is relied on daily by hundreds of top media companies, video platforms and content creators. The transfer of ownership gives Tremor Video an industry-best set of publisher video analytics, allowing the company to give publishers and their partners the ability to measure, track, report and deliver on the signals driving the performance of video content.

TubeMogul, which started as a video measurement company for publishers, shifted its focus in the past year after launching the industry’s first demand side platform for video advertising. Although TubeMogul is divesting its publisher analytics, the real-time reporting tools developed for TubeMogul’s video advertising platform will be unaffected, giving clients uninterrupted access to audience, engagement and brand impact data by site and by ad.

The deal continues to enhance Tremor Video’s VideoHub suite of products, making insights gathered from more than 1 billion video streams available to help publishers understand how their videos are discovered, what drives engagement and much more. InPlay will be available to all publishers as part of VideoHub for Publishers, launching in Q1 2012.

“Publishers are demanding an analytics suite that provides a clear picture of how viewers are interacting with content in order to determine what creates the most value for advertisers,” said Bill Day, CEO of Tremor Video. “InPlay gives us industry-leading technology and a sound product that meets this market demand. By integrating with our existing VideoHub technology, Tremor Video can now offer our partners a view across the entire video landscape.”

“TubeMogul InPlay was built to help publishers better understand their viewers to drive deeper engagement, and it has largely delivered on that promise,” said Brett Wilson, Co-founder and CEO of TubeMogul. “As we shift our focus from publishers to brand advertisers, this deal helps us align our capabilities with the needs of marketers, while ensuring they get the transparency and reporting they have come to expect.”

The InPlay acquisition is the latest in a series of deals for Tremor Video. The company’s other recent purchases include ScanScout in November, 2010 and mobile ad platform Transpera in February of this year. Tremor Video plans to continue to be acquisitive, fueled by $37 million in funding raised earlier this year.

TubeMogul is also seeing tremendous growth, with recent partnerships in the connected TV, mobile and social space as well as new contracts with major agency trading desks worldwide. The company was recently named the seventh-fastest growing independent company in the San Francisco Bay Area, spanning Silicon Valley and beyond.

About Tremor Video

Tremor Video (www.tremorvideo.com) provides in-stream video advertising solutions to Fortune 1000 brand advertisers and top tier publishers. Widely regarded as the leader in online video advertising technology, the company leverages its award-winning decisioning engine, innovative video ad formats and publisher technology to deliver the campaign results and scale advertisers should expect from digital video. Tremor Video is the only video ad platform that can provide 100% brand safety by scanning and categorizing every single video stream before an ad is ever served. In addition, Tremor Video’s award-winning SE2 technology gets smarter at finding and engaging viewers with every ad served, enabling the company to welcome and encourage pay-per-engagement pricing. Founded in 2005, Tremor Video is backed by top-tier investors, including Canaan Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson Growth, General Catalyst, Keating Capital, Meritech Capital Partners, Time Warner Investments, and W Capital Partners.

VideoHub, a division of Tremor Video, is a first of its kind analytics console that helps marketers and agencies monitor the complex video ecosystem to dynamically match ads with content and viewers, deliver upon marketing goals, and maximize brand impact. Unlike traditional video management platforms, VideoHub focuses on effectiveness and delivers real-time analytics for deep transparency across ads, content, viewers, and performance. To request a demo, visit videohub.tv.

About TubeMogul

TubeMogul is the only video marketing company built for branding. As a demand side platform for video, TubeMogul integrates real-time media buying, ad serving, targeting optimization and brand measurement into its PlayTime platform. Over half of the Fortune 500 use TubeMogul to simplify the delivery of video ads in any format, optimize the impact of their brand message and maximize the effect of every dollar they spend.

Founded in 2006, TubeMogul is based in Emeryville, CA with offices in New York, London, Chicago, Los Angeles, Toronto and Sydney.

New York – LiveIntent, the platform for buying and selling email ad inventory exactly like display, is now supporting the Digital Advertising Alliance’s (DAA) consumer notification offering, AdChoices. This self-regulatory service is being deployed by LiveIntent to support consumer awareness and choice in online advertising. Consumer privacy and control is a top concern for LiveIntent, and complying with the Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising (OBA) is a priority.

LiveIntent’s technology serves ads into a publisher’s email newsletters. When the user opens an email sent by any standard email service provider (ESP) that contains a LiveIntent ad tag, LiveIntent’s server delivers that reader the most relevant ad in real-time, right to their inbox, based on the user’s device, location, time of day and more. LiveIntent allows publishers to extend their premium display inventory into email and achieve 100 percent sell-through, all while maintaining full control of their inventory.

Now, all ads served by LiveIntent technology may contain the AdChoices logo. Clicking on the logo will bring users to the LiveIntent AdChoices page that explains why that ad was served to them and how they can opt-out of future ads from LiveIntent. There, users will also be able to read about LiveIntent’s privacy policy as well as visit the Network Advertising Initiative and the Digital Advertising Alliance to see their opt-out choices from other participating companies.

“At LiveIntent, we’re committed to being fully transparent and notifying users of their choices,” said Matt Keiser, CEO, LiveIntent. “Consumers have the right to know they are being targeted for ads and making them aware of this trackingwill strengthen advertiser-consumer trust in the long term.”

LiveIntent for Publishers (LFP) enables publishers to insert LiveTags into their newsletter templates to serve direct sold and LiveIntent exchange campaigns into emails newsletters, to monetize and maximize the yield of their newsletter inventory. LiveIntent for Advertisers (LFA) give marketers the ability to target and deliver ads to relevant audiences, on email open while optimizing results.

“We strive to be fully transparent to our readers and all consumers,” said Brian Riback, E-Marketing Strategist for The New York Daily News. “As our readership grows, we want to continue to protect consumer privacy and remain completely supportive to our readers, whether we reach them on the desktop, tablet or mobile.”

“Maintaining a rock-solid relationship with our customers is paramount as we look to keep the highest standards of choice in how they consume ads every day,” said Paul Rostkowski, President of Varick Media Management (VMM).  “Having LiveIntent be AdChoices-compliant gives us the assurance and confidence in their process of delivering our ads to the people who want to see them.”

About LiveIntent
LiveIntent is the only company with a real-time display ad platform for email. LiveIntent works with advertisers, publishers and agencies to provide ad optimization, DSP / trading desk and exchanges capabilities. The company is venture-backed by Shasta Ventures, Battery Ventures, First Round Capital, Lerer Ventures and Grape Arbor VC. LiveIntent was founded in 2009 and is headquartered in NYC. For more information and a demonstration of the company’s technology in your own inbox, visit www.liveintent.com.

Brand-focused mobile ad network experiencing tremendous growth with plans for global scale

SAN FRANCISCO – Greystripe, a division of ValueClick Inc. (Nasdaq: VCLK), is announcing impressive expansion within the company, strengthening its position as the go-to mobile ad network for brand advertisers in North America and Europe. Since May, the company has doubled its team and opened four new offices in the U.S. while expanding its presence in Europe.

The largest brand-focused mobile ad network has doubled the size of its sales, engineering and operations staff, allowing it to offer innovative new products to its base of thousands of brand advertisers, agencies and mobile publishers.

As part of the expansion of its team, Greystripe has opened new sales offices in Atlanta, Seattle, Minneapolis and Phoenix. They are also announcing nine new executive hires. These new hires are:

Brian Pearlman, senior account executive, from Millennial Media
Ryan Bleich, senior account executive, from AOL
Chris Backschies, regional sales manager, from WeatherBug
Terah Bocchi, senior account executive, from Belo Phoenix
Jeff Margolis, senior account executive, from Adfusion
Bill Kramer, regional sales manager, from quadrantONE
Josh Parker, account executive, from Specific Media
Matt Sexton, regional sales manager, from RadiumOne
Ken Yonan, regional sales manager, from Specific Media

“We’re excited to grow our team and continue expanding in the coming year,” said Kurt Hawks, vice president of operations for Greystripe. “In 2012, we look forward to using this growth to reach advertisers in every significant U.S. market, continue innovation and push the envelope by creating the best in brand advertising for mobile.”

In 2011, Greystripe launched two new mobile ad units: video advertising and its popular Ad Boosters. Both have seen impressive results. Over 55 brands have run mobile video ads, delivering over 200 ad creatives. On average, 50 percent of consumers have watched the entire video ads, with click-through rates between 1 and 3 percent. Ad Boosters are a next generation ad format featuring social media integration, local content and deals. These Boosters make mobile advertising more relevant and valuable to smartphone users and have shown a 300 percent increase in click-through rates compared to similar ads without the Boosters.

After officially launching in Europe in February through a series of partnerships, Greystripe hired Tim Scoffham to head EU mobile growth. Scoffham came to Greystripe from 4th Screen Advertising, where he was the commercial head. The company has now established a direct European presence in the U.K., France, Germany, Spain and Sweden.

To find out more about Greystripe, visit www.greystripe.com

About Greystripe:

Greystripe, a division of ValueClick, Inc. (Nasdaq: VCLK), is the largest brand-focused mobile advertising network in the US by reach. Greystripe delivers the highest engagement and most sophisticated targeting for brand marketers, the maximum revenue for publishers and app developers, and the best ad experience for users. Greystripe’s proprietary advertising platform serves billions of rich media impressions to over 40 million users of touch-driven devices through more than 3,500 application titles and mobile websites across all major mobile platforms.

For more information, please visit: http://www.greystripe.com

About ValueClick, Inc.:

ValueClick, Inc. (Nasdaq: VCLK) is one of the world’s largest digital marketing companies. Through a unique combination of data, technology and services, ValueClick increases brand awareness and drives customer acquisition at scale for the world’s largest advertisers, and maximizes advertising revenue for tens of thousands of online and mobile publishers. ValueClick’s brands include Commission Junction, ValueClick Media, Dotomi, Greystripe, Mediaplex, Smarter.com, CouponMountain.com, Investopedia.com, and PriceRunner. The Company is based in Westlake Village, California, and has offices in major advertising markets worldwide. For more information, please visit http://www.valueclick.com.

YuMe-Nielsen Study Reveals How Major Consumer Healthcare Brand Increased Reach by 14%, Frequency by 18%, and Decreased CPMs by 11% with a Combined TV and Video Campaign

REDWOOD CITY, CA – YuMe, the operating system for TV 2.0, today announced the results of a joint study with Nielsen, which quantifies the true impact of online video when combined with a major CPG TV advertising campaign:  reach, frequency, and recall increase substantially even as the CPM rate decreases. The results offer a compelling look at how brands can effectively and easily reach more viewers with a complementary, TV 2.0 media mix of TV and online video. Planning across both media as part of a single holistic campaign delivers an impact and return on investment which dramatically exceeds that of TV alone.

For this study, YuMe utilized Nielsen TV/Internet Fusion to assess the impact of a $500,000 online video ad buy for a PHD client’s $2.6 million TV flight. The flights ran concurrently throughout September 2011. Results show that a $500,000 spend on the Connected Audience Network, YuMe’s premium, in-stream video ad network, increased reach against the targeted 35–54 age demographic by 7 percentage points. In addition, more than 6 million people in the target demographic were not reached by the TV schedule alone, and were picked up only when online video was added to the schedule.

A high level summary of key findings from the YuMe-Nielsen study highlights the many benefits of a TV 2.0 campaign strategy:

•    Content present on multiple media extends reach:  YuMe online video increased reach for the targeted 35–54 age demographic by 7 percentage points when complemented by a TV flight. In addition, nearly 9 million people were exposed to the campaign on multiple screens.

•    Average frequency across screens increases:  The number of respondents exposed to the PHD campaign three or more times increased by 31 percent, while those exposed to the campaign six or more times rose by 52 percent.

•    Low eCPMs for online video drive substantial cost efficiencies:  Although less than one-sixth the cost of the TV schedule, the $500,000 spend invested in the YuMe Network drove an increase of 34 percent in gross rating points (GRPs) from the original TV schedule. The efficiency of the online video spend was nearly double that of the concurrent TV spend and the cost per point (CPP) was reduced by 11 percent.

•    Brand and message recall improves with YuMe:  Impression-per-impression, YuMe online video outperformed TV in terms of both brand and message recall compared to the campaign TV norm. Results of a Nielsen TV Brand Effect analysis showed an increase of 22 percent for brand recall and 31 percent for message recall one day post-exposure.

•    YuMe outperforms online video ad network norms:  YuMe’s Connected Audience Network outperformed its peers in both brand and message recall, demonstrating an increase of 33 and 50 percent respectively seven days post -exposure.

“We know our consumers are watching multiple screens throughout the day and sometimes watching more than one screen at a time,” said Kelley Train, PHD. “Because of this fact, we are constantly pushing our media to be more about reaching the right audience versus the platform in which the ad is being delivered. Utilizing both TV and YuMe’s video network as complimentary partners, we were able to achieve valuable additional reach, efficiency and effectiveness for our client.”

As consumers diversify their entertainment activities across an array of connected devices, it becomes more difficult for advertisers to maximize reach on a single platform. By complementing a schedule of TV ads with a concurrent online video flight, advertisers can reach consumers whether they are watching TV or online video to increase scale and reinforce the brand’s message.

“TV and digital ad planners can no longer operate in a vacuum in which online video advertising remains a silo apart from TV spend, because it fails to account for the fact that audiences are no longer stationary,” said Ed Haslam, Vice President of Marketing for YuMe. “Dual-platform campaigns offer demonstrable value and greatly outperform a TV-only campaign while improving overall cost efficiency.”

For more information, and to download the full report on the YuMe-Nielsen study, please visit www.yume.com/content/whitepapers.

About YuMe
YuMe is the software infrastructure provider powering digital video and the next generation of television with its operating system for TV 2.0. Its video advertising technology and services seamlessly connect advertisers, app developers, content distributors, consumer electronics manufacturers, and publishers across the globe. YuMe’s patent-pending Relevance Engine powers its premium in-stream video ad network, the YuMe Connected Audience Network, and its industry-leading advertising management solutions, ACE for Publishers and ACE for Advertisers. The YuMe Relevance Engine matches the right ad to the right audience on whatever screen they are viewing—PC, mobile, or connected TV. YuMe is a privately held company headquartered in Redwood City, CA with its European headquarters in London. The company is backed by Accel Partners, BV Capital, DAG Ventures, Intel Capital, Khosla Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Samsung Ventures, and Translink Capital. For more information, visit www.YuMe.com, follow @YuMevideo on Twitter (www.twitter.com/YuMevideo), or like YuMe on Facebook at www.facebook.com/YuMevideo.

comScore Releases Overview of European Internet Usage for November 2011

LONDON, UK – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released an overview of Internet usage in Europe, showing that 379.4 million Europeans went online in November 2011 for an average of 27.8 hours per person. This release highlights Internet usage in 49 European markets aggregated into the European region and provides individual reporting on 18 markets. Amongst its findings, the study also showed that 47.8 percent of Europeans visit Newspaper sites, with a notable percentage of visits to the top 5 Newspaper sites preceded by a visit to Facebook.

Nearly 1 in 2 Europeans Visit Newspaper Sites
In November 2011, 181.5 million unique people in Europe visited Newspaper sites, an increase of 9 percent from the previous year. The Daily Mail continued to attract the largest audience at 20.1 million unique visitors, followed by the Guardian at 15.7 million unique visitors. Turkish newspapers Hürriyet and Milliyet and German newspaper Bild rounded out the top five Newspaper properties, with each attracting approximately 10 million unique visitors.

An analysis of the sites visited by Europeans prior to visiting the top 5 Newspaper sites shows that Google Sites preceded at least 12 percent of visits to the top 5 Newspaper sites, with a significantly higher percentage seen for the Daily Mail and the Guardian (more than 23 percent of inbound site traffic). At least 10 percent of visits are preceded by a visit to Facebook, second only to Google Sites. (This data includes both direct referrals from Facebook links and visits initiated by direct user navigation following a visit to Facebook.)

Interestingly, the percentage of traffic to these sites preceded by a visit to Facebook has significantly increased in each case, highlighting both Facebook’s growing prominence in the European web landscape and its increasing ability to drive referral traffic. The percentage of inbound site traffic preceded by a Facebook visit was highest at Turkish site Milliyet, where it accounted for nearly a fifth of traffic (18.9 percent). Facebook visitation also preceded a significant percentage of inbound traffic to the Daily Mail and the Guardian, with both sites at approximately 13 percent, while German newspaper site Bild.de saw an even higher share (14.8 percent). Milliyet, the fifth largest European Newspaper site, demonstrated the highest point change in such traffic (9-percentage point increase), followed closely by the Guardian (8-percentage point increase).

Google Sites continued to rank as the top European web property in November with 347.3 million unique visitors, reaching 91.5 percent of the total European Internet audience. Meanwhile, Russian social network VKontakte continued to display the highest average engagement amongst the top properties, with European visitors spending 438.9 minutes (7.3 hours) on the site. Amongst the fastest growing properties in Europe from October to November were the home improvement retailer Kingfisher (up 21 percent), followed by French film property AlloCiné Sites (up 19 percent). Social networking site LinkedIn.com and daily deals site Groupon also ranked amongst the fastest growing properties, exhibiting a 6-percent month-on-month increase and a 4-percent increase, respectively.

* Amongst the Top 100 online properties

European Internet Usage by Country
Below is a snapshot of European internet usage in the 18 reportable markets for which comScore provides individual reporting. The Russian Internet audience continued to grow and surpass Germany as the largest online market in Europe. The UK continued to show the highest engagement, with users spending an average of 38.2 hours online during the month.

About comScore
comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) is a global leader in measuring the digital world and preferred source of digital marketing intelligence. For more information, please visit www.comscore.com/companyinfo.

Early adopters leverage cutting-edge opportunities in marketing data, but barriers remain to broader use of new practices.

Survey of Nearly 200 Advertising and Marketing Industry Thought Leaders Showcases Emerging Data Approaches & Identifies Key Challenges to Widespread Adoption

NEW YORK – Continuing to demystify the myriad of digital data now available to marketers and online publishers, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) teamed with strategic consulting firm Winterberry Group to create a new study titled “From Information to Audiences: The Emerging Marketing Data Use Cases.” The white paper reveals new practices in data aggregation, management and deployment and spotlights barriers to widespread adoption. Its findings are based on research results from a survey of nearly 200 industry thought leaders and influencers, as well as Winterberry Group’s own quantitative and qualitative research.

The study found that forward-thinking marketers have begun shifting from traditional data focused on products, channels and campaigns to the real-time identification and optimization of consumer audiences. The long-established use of personally identifiable information (like names and postal addresses) for targeted marketing purposes is increasingly being complemented by aggregated and anonymyzed “digital data”—with a focus on improving ad effectiveness (through better targeting) as well as efficiency (through more economical media buying).

“The plethora of new data sources, targeted technologies and advertising delivery platforms enable marketers to amass more intelligence from varied sources,” said Patrick Dolan, Executive Vice President and COO, IAB. “This promising resource can only bear fruit if marketers can take that raw data and harness it effectively, going beyond traditional usage. This study shows us that there are some hurdles we need to address before we can expect widespread adoption—and the ability for ‘big data’ to deliver big result.”

Currently, the data-driven marketing use cases with the most potential are still in the early adoption stage, and the white paper scrutinizes four of them in greater detail:

Audience Optimization – At a low maturity level. Early adopters include digital advertisers and ecommerce players who use resulting audience profiles to find “look-alike audiences” across channels–-from tablets and laptops to smartphones and other mobile devices.

Channel Optimization – At a low maturity level. Early adopters include publishers and e-commerce players who integrate data on customer preferences and intent across the various media channels to deliver more relevant advertising in real time.

Ad Sales/Yield Optimization – At a low maturity level. Early adopters are primarily publishers, who use such tactics as third-party data overlays, enterprise data management platforms and data exchanges to create richer audience data sets designed to maximize rates and improve the attraction of remnant inventory.

Media Buying/Ad Targeting – At an intermediate maturity level. Early adopters include digital ad agencies and demand-side platforms that enable advertisers to identify and target high-value customers across channels by using real-time bidding and more efficient bidding prices.

The study also identified several challenges to widespread optimization of marketing data, including the need for:

Aggregation and Anonymization – While traditional data management practices were built largely around “personally identifiable information” elements—usually consumer names and postal addresses—the collection, analysis and segmentation of online data now requires the aggregation and anonymization of virtually all data sets.

Improved Operating Infrastructures – The primary barrier to widespread marketing data optimization is legacy operating infrastructures—characterized by rigid organizational “silos” and a lack of data-savvy expertise in marketing, IT and sales operations.

Strong Service- and Technology-Enabled Partners – The fastest, most efficient “big data” aggregation, analysis and throughput solutions require strong service- and technology-enabled partners. The burgeoning data supply chain is proving to be extremely agile in streamlining and processing data for marketing performance—supported by of a new class of open-source tools, as well as maturing advertising optimization that offer new solutions for managing and redeploying large quantities of disparate data sources.

Marketing Data Governance – Data governance has emerged as a critical priority for everyone in the data ecosystem. But whereas organizations have long employed policy experts to advise on the regulatory ramifications of data utilization, many are coming to see marketing data governance—defining the “rules of the road” for assigning distinct data sources to different promotional tasks—as equally important.

“The digital marketplace has been growing by leaps and bounds, with data collection and usage representing a very complex and integral part of the puzzle,” said Jonathan Margulies, Managing Director, Winterberry Group. “Early adopters are making strides in pointing the ecosystem in the right direction, but a substantial ‘data divide’ continues to distinguish a small group of early adopters from those who have yet to explore the real potential impact that data may have on their advertising effectiveness.”

“From Information to Audiences: The Emerging Marketing Data Use Cases” represents the latest addition to the IAB’s efforts to demystify data and bolster dialogue between media planners, publishers and data providers. It builds upon last year’s “Data Segments & Techniques Lexicon” and an earlier “Data Usage & Control Primer” The former provided media planners with a framework for clearer communication with publishers and data partners, while the latter addressed and helped resolve the contractual and competitive challenges that surround data usage and collection within the interactive advertising landscape. Both of those industry efforts were developed by the IAB Data Council, which is dedicated to enabling revenue growth through the establishment of quality, transparency, accountability, and consumer protection in data usage.

Supporting sponsors for the study include BlueKai, eXelate, Janrain, ShareThis and V12 Group.

Complete findings are available for download at www.iab.net/marketingdatause.

About the IAB

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is comprised of more than 500 leading media and technology companies that are responsible for selling 86% of online advertising in the United States. On behalf of its members, the IAB is dedicated to the growth of the interactive advertising marketplace, of interactive’s share of total marketing spend, and of its members’ share of total marketing spend. The IAB educates marketers, agencies, media companies and the wider business community about the value of interactive advertising. Working with its member companies, the IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices and fields critical research on interactive advertising. Founded in 1996, the IAB is headquartered in New York City with a Public Policy office in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.iab.net.

About Winterberry Group

Winterberry Group is a unique research and strategic consulting firm that helps advertising, marketing, media and information companies grow value. Affiliated with Petsky Prunier LLC (“PPLLC”)—a leading investment bank providing merger and acquisition advisory services to companies in the same industries—the Firm offers its clients strategic perspective that is unparalleled in its addressable industries, while PPLLC maintains exceptional relationships with industry executives and business owners. This combination of market intelligence, research and strategic operating experience (as well as the ongoing dialogue among buyers and sellers of marketing businesses) provides an educated outside perspective that we bring to each engagement. For more information, please visit www.winterberrygroup.com.

Collective has today announced the launch of a private marketplace to offer media buying agencies and advertisers real-time bidding (RTB) access to its premium video platform.

Combining Adap.tv’s RTB technology with Collective’s audience data, Collective’s private exchange will offer pre-roll video advertising space across targeted audiences and premium publishers in real-time auctions. Publishers include IPC, WWE, The Independent, Sony Music and iVillage.

The move will see Collective become the first in the UK to launch an RTB private ad marketplace for premium video programming.

“Our marketplace gives advertisers and agency partners a new way to access premium VoD inventory, but with this inventory being in such demand, we don’t see it as a low cost entry to buy video in the UK,” said Jamie Estrin, Director of Collective Video. “RTB pricing is controlled by supply and demand, and high quality premium video is always in high demand in the UK.”

Adap.tv’s interface will run the exchange that connects buyers with Collective’s pre-roll inventory.

“Our unique partnership with Collective will see the launch of the UK’s first RTB private marketplace for video,” said Brian Fitzpatrick, MD for EMEA at Adap.tv. “Real-time bidding is relatively new in the video space – our technology will offer Collective Video’s clients a new way to trade VoD directly.”

About Collective
Collective helps brand advertisers connect and engage with target audiences across display, video and social media. Collective’s industry expertise provides a strategic advantage to its clients by leveraging proprietary audience modelling, insights and ad effectiveness metrics. Our flagship products, Collective Display and Collective Video®, are powered by AMP®, our market-proven data and media management platform. Collective is headquartered in New York with offices in London, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Collective’s investors include Accel Partners®, Greycroft Partners and iNovia Capital.
http://uk.collective.com/

About Adap.tv

Adap.tv builds the technology that makes buying and selling video advertising simple and efficient. The company’s products – Adap.tv for Advertisers, Adap.tv for Publishers and the Adap.tv Marketplace – work in harmony to connect video advertising buyers directly to sellers on a single platform. The Adap.tv Marketplace is the industry’s largest video marketplace for premium publishers and brand name advertisers, with over 6,500 sites selling inventory and hundreds of campaigns running daily. Based in San Mateo, CA and with sales offices in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle and London, please visit http://adap.tv/.

Innovative advertising platform will drive growth in the Smart TV content ecosystem, with new opportunities for advertisers, developers and consumers

LAS VEGAS – Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd, a global leader in digital media and digital convergence technologies, announced the launch of Samsung AdHub, its advertising platform for the Samsung Smart TV platform. Through the newly-announced AdHub service, brands can deliver 3D, video and interactive advertisements into the living room via Samsung’s market-leading Smart TVs.

Samsung AdHub allows delivery of advertisements to the front-page of Samsung’s Smart TV interface, with multiple forms of compelling digital interactivity. Advertisements will be dynamic, allowing audiences to click to access video content, new applications and services, or the web browser. The company’s new Smart TV advertising platform will provide marketers and ad creatives new monetization models and opportunities to engage and interact with target audiences.

Samsung AdHub also enables a unique 3D video advertising experience within the Samsung branded 3D VOD service, ‘Explore 3D’ application. Samsung is the first consumer electronics manufacturer to offer 3D advertising on Smart TVs, giving advertisers new opportunities to create compelling and visually dynamic content in native 3D.

“Samsung is delivering the future of Smart TV now. With Samsung AdHub, we are enabling a richer content ecosystem that will benefit advertisers, application developers and consumers. Samsung’s global reach and expertise in Smart TV is creating a unique and innovative way for marketers to reach audiences with exciting and interesting content. We are helping brands break creative boundaries,” said Daniel Park, Vice President of Samsung’s Media Solution Center.

“Our complete Smart TV advertising solution is another example of our commitment to drive innovation in the TV market. Our goal is to create new opportunities throughout the Smart TV value-chain; providing a platform for advertisers and developers to participate is a key element of this goal. Ultimately, we think this is a win for consumers, because a dedicated way for developers to monetize services will contribute to a richer, more robust content experience,” added Park.

Samsung has already begun running several campaigns from leading advertisers such as State Farm and Best Buy. The company has also formed advertising sales partnerships with Rovi and YuMe. Smart TV advertising has launched in Korea and the United States.

Samsung expects to deploy its Smart TV in-app advertising solution in 2012. Smart TV application developers will be able to incorporate in-app capabilities available through the Samsung SDK (Software Development Kit) 3.0 for Samsung Smart TVs.

Visit http://www.samsungadhub.com for more information about Samsung AdHub.

About Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. is a global leader in semiconductor, telecommunication, digital media and digital convergence technologies with 2010 consolidated sales of US$135.8 billion. Employing approximately 190,500 people in 206 offices across 68 countries, the company operates two separate organizations to coordinate its nine independent business units: Digital Media & Communications, comprising Visual Display, Mobile Communications, Telecommunication Systems, Digital Appliances, IT Solutions, and Digital Imaging; and Device Solutions, consisting of Memory, System LSI and LCD. Recognized for its industry-leading performance across a range of economic, environmental and social criteria, Samsung Electronics was named the world’s most sustainable technology company in the 2011 Dow Jones Sustainability Index. For more information, please visit www.samsung.com.

About Rovi

Rovi Corporation is focused on revolutionizing the digital entertainment landscape by delivering solutions that enable consumers to intuitively connect to new entertainment from many sources and locations. The company also provides extensive entertainment discovery solutions for television, movies, music and photos to its customers in the consumer electronics, cable and satellite, entertainment and online distribution markets. These solutions, complemented by industry leading entertainment data, create the connections between people and technology, and enable them to discover and manage entertainment in an enjoyable form.

Rovi holds approximately 5,100 issued or pending patents worldwide and is headquartered in Santa Clara, California, with numerous offices across the United States and around the world including Japan, China, Luxembourg, and the United Kingdom. More information about Rovi can be found at http://www.rovicorp.com/.

About YuMe

YuMe is the software infrastructure provider powering digital video and the next generation of television with its operating system for TV 2.0. Its video advertising technology and services seamlessly connect advertisers, app developers, content distributors, consumer electronics manufacturers, and publishers across the globe. YuMe’s patent-pending Relevance Engine powers its premium in-stream video ad network, the YuMe Connected Audience Network, and its industry-leading advertising management solutions, ACE for Publishers and ACE for Advertisers. The YuMe Relevance Engine matches the right ad to the right audience on whatever screen they are viewing—PC, mobile, or connected TV. YuMe is a privately held company headquartered in Redwood City, CA with its European headquarters in London. The company is backed by Accel Partners, BV Capital, DAG Ventures, Intel Capital, Khosla Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Samsung Ventures, and Translink Capital. For more information, visit www.YuMe.com, follow @YuMevideo on Twitter (www.twitter.com/YuMevideo), or like YuMe on Facebook at www.facebook.com/YuMevideo.

Projected to Continue to Increase, Specifically Within Mobile and Connected Devices, in 2012

Leading video company Break Media releases Digital Video Advertising Trends: 2012 study, detailing digital video landscape for the upcoming year

LOS ANGELES – Break Media, a leading creator and publisher of digital video content, announced the findings of its annual Digital Video Advertising Trends study, which found that digital video advertising spending is up and expected to continue to increase throughout 2012. In addition to organic growth of budgets, the increase is projected to come from a number of existing sources, including 32 percent from television budgets, and be reallocated into new platforms such as mobile — easily the fastest-growing format — connected devices and the emerging ad selector format.

The study compiles data from hundreds of advertising decision-makers about their digital video advertising plans heading into 2012. In addition to discussing budget growth and allocation, the study includes shifts in cost models and distribution formats. Use of video ad networks has reached a nearly universal level, which has also driven uptake in usage of the Cost per View (CPV) model. The video ads, themselves, come in a number of formats, but most advertisers still prefer pre-roll. However, the mass adoption of multimedia-ready smartphones and tablets has driven significant growth in mobile, which increased almost two-fold in the past year and is expected to jump another 16 percent in 2012.

Key findings from the study include:

- Video spending to increase: In the coming year, 68 percent of advertisers will increase the share of online display advertising devoted to video ads.

- Video budgets being driven up from multiple sources, including TV: Advertisers increasing video ad spend in the next year say the dollars will come from television budgets (32 percent), overall advertising budget growth (38 percent) and non-video display budgets (45 percent).

- Video Ad Network use skyrocketing: More than 90 percent of all advertisers plan to use video advertising networks in the coming year, increasing the share of spend devoted to them from an average 20 percent to 41 percent of total video dollars.

- Cost per View model offered by more publishers and networks: The pervasive use of video ad networks (VANs) has driven variety in the pricing models available, and the CPV model has increased two-fold in the past year (to 40 percent). A number of advertisers indicated they used Cost per Thousand (CPM) and Cost per Click (CPC) models because CPV wasn’t offered by publishers or VANs.

“Video advertising spending is growing faster than expected, and this is the first time a significant portion of the increased resources devoted to it are coming from television budgets,” said Andy Tu, vice president of marketing for Break Media. “New ad formats and pricing models are changing the landscape for how video inventory is bought and sold. The Cost per View model has clearly caught traction in a short amount of time, and new formats including mobile video and advertising on connected devices will be compelling ways for brands to connect with consumers in the coming year.”

For the full study from Break Media, visit: www.breakmedia.com/Digitalvideoadstudy.

About Break Media

Break Media is a leading creator, publisher, and distributor of digital entertainment content including video, editorial and games. The company’s properties include the largest humor site online — Break.com — as well as Made Man, Game Front, Holy Taco, Screen Junkies, Cage Potato, All Left Turns, Chickipedia, and Tu Vez. The Break Media Creative Lab is an in-house production studio creating original videos that range from award-winning branded entertainment to celebrity-driven web shorts to viral one-offs. The Break Media Network represents hundreds of publishers as one of the largest video advertising networks online, reaching more than 120 million visitors each month. For more information, visit www.breakmedia.com.

HOPKINS, Minn. – Mediaspace Solutions has released its first application for the iPad and iPhone. The iPad and iPhone app provides convenient, mobile access for advertisers and allows them to get real-time updates on their campaigns. Mediaspace clients will be able to use their iPad to search, view and filter past, future and current newspaper and magazine advertising campaigns, and access a complete reporting suite.

“We are always looking for ways to improve the advertising process for our clients and agency partners,” said Scott Jagodzinski, CEO at Mediaspace. “Bringing on-demand updates of newspaper and magazine campaigns to the iPad is another example of Mediaspace taking traditional media to new levels.”

“To date, tablet apps have focused almost exclusively on business to consumer markets. However, the business to business tablet app market is a rapidly growing segment as users are showing extreme loyalty and desire to fully exploit their tablet’s capabilities,” said Rick Ehrman of Frank N. Magid & Associates. “Enterprise mobility is a big topic and we expect to see more apps in 2012 in customer relationship management (CRM), accounting, project management, and for people who need access to apps while on their feet, such as warehouse and retail staff.”

According to research compiled by Frank N. Magid & Associates, nearly 70% of tablet owners prefer their tablet compared to their PC and more than 20% are already using the limited number of business applications. These numbers are expected to grow as more business applications are developed and released.

“Our goal with the iPad application is to give clients full access to their advertisements and make it as easy as checking their email or getting on Facebook,” said Isaac Ferreira, Operations and Technology Director. “In addition to the reporting, the application will provide users direct access back to the Mediaspace website, which is already fully optimized for the iPad.”

Mediaspace Solutions is a leader in national, regional and local newspaper, magazine and tablet buys throughout North America. For more than 11 years Mediaspace has delivered unmatched media placement services to advertisers and agencies throughout the United States.

This announcement follows the recent introduction of the Mediaspace Tablet Network. The company is also in the midst of a multi-part blog series on tablets and how they are changing the way advertisers reach their target audiences. Mediaspace continues to expand its offering to meet the needs of the ever-changing advertising marketplace. For more information call Scott Olson at 612-253-2137, or e-mail solson@mss-mail.com.

About Mediaspace Solutions

Mediaspace Solutions works with national and regional advertisers to successfully reach their target markets. Mediaspace maximizes advertising budgets, increases ROI and reduces operational drag. We do this through expert talent, incredible service and proven buying strategies. To learn more about Mediaspace or download our latest white paper or executive interview, visit www.mediaspacesolutions.com.

adtivity embraced by 125+ publishers and advertisers, and delivering engagement significantly above industry average; fresh venture capital round to fuel growth and efforts to unlock and create new, display advertising across web, social and mobile

NEW YORK – appssavvy (www.appssavvy.com), an activity advertising technology company, and its platform adtivity™ by appssavvy, since launching in September has been embraced by more than 125 publishers and advertisers. To further adtivity by appssavvy’s growth and strong results delivered by the platform, including an engagement rate of 4-to-8 times industry average across unlocked and newly created, center-of-the-experience, activity-based display ads, the company today announced the completion of its Series 1-A $7.1 million venture capital round.

“Activity-based advertising we believe will be the emerging digital advertising category that paid search and behavioral targeting were a few years ago, and which video is today. Today’s Series 1-A venture capital round is further evidence of the activity advertising opportunity for both publishers and advertisers,” said Chris Cunningham, co-founder and CEO of appssavvy. “Following the lead of the social space, especially social games, web publishers have identified the need to make their properties a more active, rather than passive, experience. This will create new activity ad inventory and opportunities for our vision and the adtivity by appssavvy platform, but more importantly better display advertising that reaches people when they’re most engaged and as part of what they’re doing.”

appssavvy had previously raised $3.1 million from True Ventures, The New York Times Company and individual investors, including Scott Kurnit, founder of About.com and currently founder and CEO of AdKeeper, and Howard Lindzon, co-founder and CEO of StockTwits, among others. Today’s completed Series A-1 round of $7.1 million includes current investors and new investor, AOL Ventures, and brings the total raised by appssavvy, to date, to $10.2 million.

“Behavior on the Internet has changed where people are much more activity-focused. We feel there is a tremendous opportunity for advertising to adjust to this shift, focusing on reaching consumers as they engage in sites versus the current focus on where people are,” said Tony Conrad, founding member and venture partner at True Ventures. “Since its inception four years ago, appssavvy identified people’s activities online as a tremendous opportunity to not only change advertising, but change it for the better, and for all those involved, including publishers, brand advertisers and, most importantly, consumers.”

adtivity by appssavvy, prior to launch, was under development for more than a year and built on appssavvy’s vision that the future of advertising is focused on what people are doing, not where they’re doing it. In just a few months, more than 70 publishers and developers have partnered with appssavvy and integrated the adtivity platform and adtivity Mobile SDK into activities representing millions of daily opportunities for advertisers.

Unlike existing technologies that deliver ads based on a page loading, the adtivity API is attached to the event of performing an activity, including updating statuses, collecting, sending and earning virtual goods, polls and contests, and completing a level, visiting a friend or sending a message within a game, and “Like”ing something to name a few.

“The adtivity platform is enhancing our ability to monetize our games in the context of our players experiences,” said Dan Hart, chief revenue officer of Arkadium, a premier developer, publisher and distributor of casual, social, and mobile games. “We have found that activity-based advertising delivers a strong additional revenue stream and enhances our profitability.”

Since launching adtivity by appssavvy, every partner has expanded their integrations and usage of the platform to include new, additional activities, thus increasing the inventory creating the largest activity network available to brands. More than 50 brand advertisers, including American Express, Chase, Coca-Cola, Electronic Arts, HP, Sony and State Farm, to name a few, have implemented activity advertising campaigns.

appssavvy will put today’s Series 1-A round to work by continuing to enhance the adtivity platform, build partnerships and relationships with publishers and advertisers, and expand internationally. For more information about adtivity by appssavvy, visit: www.appssavvy.com.

About appssavvy
appssavvy (www.appssavvy.com) is an activity advertising technology company. Through its adtivity™ platform, appssavvy enables leading web, social and mobile publishers to unlock and create new, display advertising opportunities reaching people as they perform activities. adtivity by appssavvy offers scalable, center-of-the-experience, display ads, thus creating the most effective way to deliver and receive advertising. For more information, visit www.appssavvy.com.

First Outside Funding for Transparent Data Supplier

NEW YORK – Cross Pixel Media, the first and only fully transparent audience marketplace that provides buyers with superior audience data, today announced the completion of its first round of funding, led by kbs+ Ventures, the venture arm of Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal + Partners (“kbs+”), a leading full-service advertising agency. Cross Pixel Media intends to use the funding to expand its analytics offering, develop new data partnerships, and enhance its technology. Terms of the investment were not disclosed.

“We have been using an increasing amount of data to make marketing decisions for our clients, across planning, buying, research, social, and CRM. With this in mind, we sought out an investment in a data management company who can help us enrich our insights and data access, which led us to Cross Pixel Media,” said Darren Herman, President of kbs+ Ventures and Chief Digital Media Officer of The Media Kitchen and kbs+. “Their unique data offering enables agencies like ours and our brand clients to identify and access high value audiences for insights and to serve them advertising based on their specific interests. Their approach provides a level of transparency, customization and creativity like none other we’ve encountered in the data ecosystem.”

Cross Pixel Media provides audience data for more than 50 FORTUNE 500® advertisers. Cross Pixel Media’s unique approach to data transparency enables these advertisers to increase the performance of their audience-based campaigns by as much as 500 percent while providing unique insights into the online behavior of each client’s audience. Their transparent way of doing business enables buyers to know the source of the data being utilized and align advertiser with beneficially situated audiences. Cross Pixel manages more than 90 million unique US profiles containing more than 300 million data points at any given time. No other online data provider offers as much exclusive data that is gleaned from exclusive relationships with online retailers and research web sites as Cross Pixel Media.

“Marketers are increasingly leveraging data to find new consumers and drive online ad performance, and they need better quality data to do that. Because we are fully transparent about our sources, advertisers can trust that there ads are being delivered to a mutually aligned, high value audience,” said Alan Pearlstein, CEO of Cross Pixel Media. “The support from kbs+ will help us identify new opportunities that are meaningful to the advertising community and with their guidance, continually improve our product and data offering. We are very excited about this partnership and the value it will bring to Cross Pixel.”

This story was first reported in Venture Wire, here.

About KBS+ Ventures

kbs+ Ventures is a thematic investment arm of kirshenbaum bond senecal and partners which backs early stage entrepreneurs who have solid teams and great ideas. The main investment areas that kbs+ Ventures focuses on are: ad technologies, mobile, and design infusion. For more information, please visit: www.kbsp.vc

About Cross Pixel Media

Cross Pixel Media provides marketers, agencies, and their technology partners with superior data gathered exclusively from superior sources. The Company has relationships with more than 450 ecommerce sites and deep research sites that provide audience data to advertisers for use in their audience targeting campaigns. Cross Pixel is the only provider of this kind of data that enables buyers to see the data source and optimize campaigns against such data from these individual sources. For more information, please visit: http://www.crosspixel.net/