The Rise Of Video Ad Networks

Editor’s note: The following guest post was written by Ashkan Karbasfrooshan, founder and CEO of WatchMojo, a video publisher.

Venture capital is flowing into video ad networks: Brightroll recently raised $30 million, Yume raised $12 million.  Tremor Video’s raised over $100 million.

But not everyone’s buying the hype: “it’s just not a big enough market for all the money invested, there can’t be six or seven category leaders”, argues Will Margiloff, chief executive officer of Ignition One, a unit of Japan’s Dentsu.  Some have raised more money than their revenue potential.

Not all of the top 100 marketers even buy video advertising, but those that do frequently repurpose a 30-second TV ad spot and run it as a pre-roll, seeking massive scale.  Investors are betting that ad networks can provide that scale.  Meanwhile, while marketers continue to shun user-generated content and traditional media companies (TMCs) scale back free, ad-supported distribution, VCs don’t seem willing to start investing content plays.  I asked a panel of VCs at Vator TV’s VentureShift if they planned on backing content startups; I might as well have asked the question in Swahili.

This would be fine if VCs were returning abnormally high returns to their limited partners, but they’re not.

Read More: TechCrunch

Targeting Travelers: CEO Rabe Discusses New Sojern Media Platform And Airline Partnerships

Mark Rabe is CEO of Sojern, a travel data and media company with exclusive partnerships with several major airlines.

Adexchanger.com: So, in some ways, are you building an Orbitz competitor with Sojern?

MR: The answer is no. We are partnered with our airline partners – and it’s the majority of the large domestic airlines, who are also equity holders in Sojern.

We essentially render media and advertising to their travelers as they’re passing through the check-in process.

The company came into being when our founder, Gordon Whitton, who was based in Omaha, Nebraska, sold his last company to Intuit and was essentially doing the weekly commute from Omaha to San Diego. He was an organized guy and would wake up in the morning, print out his boarding pass, get to the Omaha airport and find himself staring at essentially a blank 8.5×11 sheet of paper.

He hit on the idea of, “I can program relevant content for travelers on that printed page as well as find advertisers that want to monetize it.” That was the germ of the idea. The printed boarding pass still represents a sizable chunk of our total annual revenue, and phase one of “the business.” Phase two was in the works when I arrived six months ago, and we launched it about three months ago -  it was about taking a step back in the check-in process and creating a rich, personalized experience for travelers as they navigate the check-in experience. Imagine weather in the destination city, the top five restaurants as provided by one of our content providers, events that are happening in the city, and increasingly make the experience more customized or personalized to a user.

Read More: AdExchanger

DataXu Announces DX3: The First Enterprise Digital Marketing Management Platform

Powerful Solution Enables Marketers to Turn Big Data Into Profit

BOSTON, MA–(Marketwire – Nov 7, 2011) – DataXu (www.dataxu.com) today announced the launch of DX3. DX3 is the only fully-integrated digital marketing management platform. DX3 enables marketers to acquire and retain more customers by optimizing across the most profitable audience segments, media channels, and creative messages. Using DX3, marketers can improve campaign performance by up to 2X and save millions of dollars on media, technology and service fees.

The deluge of consumer behavioral data created by ubiquitous computing presents a historic opportunity and challenge for the CMO. The rapid evolution of digital media, and the accompanying proliferation of hard-to-implement point solutions, has made it difficult to formulate and act on enterprise-wide decisions driven by the effective use of real-time customer intelligence.

Industry experts are taking notice. In the September 2011 Forrester Research Inc. report, “The Future of Digital Media Buying,” report author and senior analyst Joanna O’Connell observed that the demand-side platform (DSP) model would evolve, alongside data management and analytics capabilities, into an integrated enterprise solution. “DMP/analytics platforms and centralized media buying platforms will increasingly merge into a unified stack.” That vision is now a reality with the launch of DX3.

Read More: Marketwire

Yahoo Adds Ad Targeting Options 

Aiming to better monetize its vast inventory, Yahoo Tuesday announced a pair of new or upgraded ad targeting services designed to deliver more relevant messages and higher interaction rates. The new services, focused on location and purchase-based targeting, come on the heels of Yahoo’s  $270 million acquisition of behavioral targeting firm interclick last week. But the Web portal said the new initiative was in the works prior to the deal.

The location-focused service rolled out today, called Proximity Match, allows advertisers to target consumers through Yahoo according to the distance between their home address and a retail or business location. The goal is to help marketers improve campaign results by localizing target audiences, driving in-store traffic and boosting the ability to track cross-channel sales.

Yahoo’s upgraded Consumer Direct targeting tool has added features allowing marketers to target specific consumer segments at scale as well as measure the offline impact of online campaigns. It combines in-store purchase data for a range of CPG categories from Nielsen Catalina Solutions (NCS) with Yahoo’s online user data to power audience targeting across its network.

Read More: MediaPost

comScore Media Metrix Ranks Top 50 U.S. Web Properties for September 2011
Online Gambling Sites Collect Web Traffic Winnings
Students and Teachers Kick Off the New School Year at Education Sites

RESTON, VA, October 20, 2011 – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released its monthly analysis of U.S. web activity at the top online properties for September 2011 based on data from the comScore Media Metrix service. Online Gambling sites witnessed the strongest lift in traffic in September with sports betting front-and-center as the NFL season kicked off. The new school year also swung into gear in September, which encouraged students and teachers to visit Education Information and Resource sites.

“In September, Americans browsed a variety of web content, with Online Gambling, Education and Political News sites ranking at the top of our fastest-growing categories list,” said Jeff Hackett, executive vice president of comScore. “Fall television lineups also premiered in September, earning ABC Television and TV Guide Online Network spots on the list of top-gaining properties, along with NFL Internet Group and ESPN as the long-awaited NFL season began.”
Americans All-In For Online Gambling

Online Gambling sites represented the fastest growing category in September, up 13 percent to 9.7 million visitors. PokerStars ranked first in the category with 1.1 million visitors (up 11 percent), followed by UPickEm.net with 993,000 (up 36 percent), FullTiltPoker with 753,000, SimSlots, Inc. with 655,000 (up 5 percent) and Wooga.com with 520,000 (up 85 percent).

Read More: comScore

Eric Roza, Digital Media Industry Veteran, Promoted to CEO of Datalogix

WESTMINSTER, Colo.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Datalogix, the leader at integrating database marketing and digital media, today announced it has promoted Eric Roza to Chief Executive Officer.

Roza joined Datalogix in 2007 as its President. Since that time the company has experienced rapid change and expansion including the hiring of over eighty new employees and a doubling of revenues in the past twenty-four months.

“Eric has done a wonderful job of assembling a very experienced and motivated senior management team which has transformed our business from a direct marketing company to become the leader in digital advertising via our use of real-world purchase data,” said Rob Gierkink, former CEO of Datalogix who will continue to serve as its Chairman. “At a time when the economy is struggling we’re very pleased with the double-digit annual growth we’ve seen in our direct mail business and the confidence our clients have shown in our team and our capabilities.”

“Our growth has been driven by our client’s desire to deliver meaningful messages to customers, both online and offline, based on their demonstrated purchase behavior,” said Roza. “Datalogix is at the forefront of the data-centric marketing approach that is changing the way marketing messages are delivered to consumers. Our team is single-minded in its focus to provide these capabilities to our clients so they can realize exceptional and measurable returns on their marketing investments.”

Read More: Businesswire