Twitter inks big ad deal with Starcom

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo has always said that the social network is more than a social network – it’s a media company. Now Twitter is going headlong into that by signing a huge ad deal with the Starcom MediaVest Group, part of Publicis Groupe, one of the biggest agencies in the world. The deal is worth “hundreds of millions of dollars,” according to the Financial Times’ Emily Bell, and gives Starcom’s clients “special access to preferred advertising slots, research and data, and new products.” It also includes a “social TV lab” that the two companies will build together, Peter Kafka…  Full article

Betaworks adds Instapaper to news apps

Betaworks is slowly becoming a player to watch in the media business. It doesn’t produce news but it is one of a growing number of companies trying to claim what could be a very lucrative role in the news business: The tamer of news and information overload online. And that is precisely why Betaworks, which already has Bit.ly, Digg, Chartbeat and Social Flow, just bought the app Instapaper – a bookmarking/curating app for news that allows you to create your own “read it later” newspaper of sorts. Slate’s Will Oremus describes Instapaper like this: “On a deeper level, I see…  Full article

Mobile leads monster 2013 for digital

Several new studies are predicting a big year in U.S. advertising with spending on digital ads – and specifically mobile – continuing to climb to new highs. First, a Nielsen survey shows that 63 percent of brands are expecting to spend more on marketing this year and much of that increase will go to social media and mobile advertising. The study found that 70 percent are spending more on social and 69 percent said they’ll spend more on mobile. About 64 percent said they’ll increase their video ad buys. Meanwhile, 50 percent of those surveyed said rich media spending would…  Full article

The good and bad of programmatic ads

Publishers have worried about ad networks eating into CPM for years, and now that concern is compounded with the surge of programmatic buying. Programmatic ad buying—which allows advertisers to bid real-time on ads through exchanges—is surging and is expected to continue growing this year, according to a study from Digiday and OpenX. More than 70 percent of publishers surveyed said they’re already using some kind of programmatic buying. And 77 percent of those using programmatic buying expect to use it even more over the next year. What’s more is it seems to be working: 55 percent said revenues are up…  Full article

Of Note

Facebook: 30% of Our Revenue Now Comes from Mobile Ads (AdAge)
Facebook reports a 23 jump in mobile advertising in the first quarter and that mobile now accounts for 30 percent of all the social company's revenue – making it into more and more of a mobile company every day.

Tumblr Turns to Mobile Ads as Pressure Mounts for Greater Revenue (ClickZ)
Tumblr is experimenting in May with “sponsored posts” in its mobile apps with ads from GE, Pepsi, Warner Bros., ABC Entertainment and ABC Family.

YouTube to advertisers: You need us to attract a younger crowd (CNet)
Google touts YouTube as the way to reach 18- to 34-year-olds.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller Blasts Ad Industry In Senate Hearing Over 'Do Not Track' (AdAge)
Senator says at hearing that the industry is "dragging its feet" on development of Do Not Track, "and I believe they are doing it purposely."

Online Video Ads Have Higher Impact Than TV Ads (Adweek)
According Nielsen numbers, people streaming video watch ads for 20 seconds on average with an 87 percent average completion rate.

Publishers make sense of Boston tragedy

Moments after bombs went off at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, social media was filled with photos, video and news. The stream of information included eyewitness accounts, gruesome images, shocking video and an outpouring of support and help for those affected. While news organizations were certainly part of that initial on-the-ground breaking coverage, it was later, when the smoke had cleared, that their role in making sense of the disaster truly became clear. The tragedy certainly highlighted the power of social media and the ability of citizens everywhere to capture and share information in a crisis. But, perhaps…  Full article

Ad tech grows, but gets messy

Let’s agree that ad technology has hit a true tipping point. Everything from ad exchanges to programmatic buying to targeting and real-time bidding are now in vogue. At the recent (and sold out) Programmatic I/O conference in San Francisco, Brian O’Kelley, CEO of AppNexus put the growth into perspective: Right now, programmatic bidding is 10 percent of a $35 billion to $40 billion business. Five years from now, he said, it will be 50 percent. But, while ad tech such as programmatic buying may be the future of the industry, right now, it’s all messy. Very messy. There are privacy…  Full article

‘Do Not Track’ heats up

The “Do Not Track” debate is about to take another round in the spotlight. First, there’s new legislation in the works as well as the new FTC chairwoman calling for universal “Do Not Track” solutions. Then there was the news that Mozilla is launching “Do Not Track” as the default configuration for Firefox browsers. Naturally, publishers and advertisers are doing some hand-wringing – particularly about the Mozilla announcement. But is this really an apocalypse for online advertising as some have suggested? Or is it an opportunity? Brian O’Kelley, CEO of AppNexus, said at the recent Programmatic I/O conference in San…  Full article

Branded content on the rise

More and more brands are getting into the content game. And yes, some of that content is generated for so-called “native advertising” buys on existing platforms. But brands are also creating content to distribute themselves, including blogs, articles, videos, newsletters, webinars, mobile apps, infographics, podcasts and even books. In a story about the rise of branded content, PBS MediaShift’s Terri Thornton references a recent survey from MarketingProfs and the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) that shows 86 percent of companies serving consumers and 92 percent of “business to business” companies now use content marketing. Those surveyed said they spend between 28…  Full article

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