» Google Analytics rules the ecommerce market in the US with a 60% plus share. That’s a lot of data flowing into Google. It might be free to use. But I’m sure in the small print you’ll find that Google can use data “to improve the service”. Rubbish. Data is the life blood of targeting, and there is no doubt in my mind that this data is being used to power Google’s ad infrastructure. IBM’s recent purchase of Coremetrics is an interesting strategic move. Stéphane Hamel writes on his excellent blog that this deal is more about core business processes than media buying:

IBM isn’t about ad placement, marketing or rich media, IBM is about running core business processes. It’s about business analysis and business intelligence contributing to bottom line core business optimization. We are in a whole different ballgame.

I’m not so sure. Data is a fundamentahl part of the automatedi ad buy and analytics remains the principle source for publishers to garner insight on website visitors. With the Coremetrics acquisition, IBM will now be running analytics for some of the biggest ecommerce players in the market. It’s only a matter of time before IBM realises it could make a lot of money by offering clients a re-targeting service. If that happens, IBM will have to start buying media. Realising it has the data to deliver improved campaign results, IBM will inevitably stray into the DR market. It will then probably pick up a DSP for a hundred million dollars or so to make it easier to trade across multiple inventory sources. It is indeed a slippery slope. [PRNewswire]

There have been two major developments in the past six months that suggest a more aggressive move into the ad display market by the company: first, the banning of location based advertising on new apps; and second, the big marquee purchase of Quattro, which serves as the engine for the new iAd offering. Apple has been looking to turn the screws on another potential lucrative revenue stream. It says it can do mobile advertising on the iPhone better than anyone else. Will they own the mobile display ad market by better innovation? Possibly not. I suspect it will engineer market dominance by kicking off all the ad nets currently servicing the iPhone app eco-system. Expect all this to happen to meet Steve’s expectations. It’s easy when you own the walled garden. [SmartCompany]

This is also a potentially large opening for the mobile ad market. If the union of PC and TV is successful think of the opportunity for those in the mobile space – given that this innovation will be built on mobile operating systems. Some of the mobile ad networks could be well placed to make serious money. And what happens if peoples’ online habits migrate from PC to TV? Where would that leave the online display market? I found it interesting as to why some of the yield optimisers were looking to move into the relatively small mobile display market (worth only £35 million in the UK). And indeed why Google and Apple would shell out such large sums for mobile ad networks with relatively low turnovers. It now makes sense. Mobile ads served on TV to billions of eyeballs can justify the hype. Watch the big display ad nets move into the mobile space aggressively over the coming months.

» WPP held an investor-focused event in London last week where it laid out its strategies for attendees. The main theme the day: WPP is big on data and technology. Investors were told that the company was investing heavily in technology that will help leverage the mountain of data in media buys. RTB and ad targeting were two areas WPP said it was throwing a lot of resource into – and it continues to develop buying platform B3, which has been hiring quite aggressively here in Europe. I’m thinking they also discussed technology partnerships as WPP can’ tbe expected to develop all these innovations in-house. It is afterall a media buying agency, not a tech comapny. Some interesting numbers around what % media spend digital gets also emerged from the event. Digital now accounts for 20% of the group’s overall media spend in North America. The EMEA was lower with a share of just 11% of overall media spend. [Clickz]

Apple unveiled its new ad platform yesterday. The iAd platform is looking to help developers monetise their free apps. Apple will give app developers 60% of any sales. Apple is looking to stand out from the other big players in the mobile ad market – notable Admob – by delivering more rich media ads within participating apps. But will developers allow themselves to be exclusively locked into the Apple advertising offering? Will be interesting to see how Apple deals with rival ad nets looking to grab market share among app developers? [Business Insider]

AdAudience is now live. The new audience network is a collaboration between five of the biggest publishers in the German market – namely, G+J Electronic Media Sales, IP Germany, SevenOne Media and Tomorrow Focus. AdAudience is being headed up by Frank Herold, formerly Director of Sales at IP Interactive Germany, and its sales team is now bringing its offering to market. Doubtless other big European publishers will be looking on with interest to see how the new partnership works out. [AdAudience]

» Hot on the heels of its recent announcement that it is to manage non-guaranteed inventory from owned and operated AOL sites in six European markets, Rubicon has announced that they are moving into the French market. The REVV marketplace is now available to French publishers as the yield optimiser looks to strengthen its position in the European market. There are no details of what publishers Rubicon will be working with. Publishers here always remain tight lipped about which vendors they’re using. At this stage though premium European publishers continue to test the three yield optimiser, as they try to figure which one best fits their business needs. Interesting to see how the French market will play out this year. It looks likely to follow similar buy-side trends seen in the US and the UK with publishers looking to increase their yield across non-premium inventory. [Rubicon]

» Rubicon announced yesterday it was entering into the mobile ad market. Following in the footsteps of Admeld and Improve Digital, TRP is aiming to help publishers manage yield across unsold mobile inventory. Rubicon has partnered with m0cean Mobile, a mobile advertising platform, allowing publishers to manage its online and mobile display advertising through its REVV Marketplace. This is an interesting move. I expect all three to come out with a similar offering for video later in the year as they look to become the publisher’s main sales channel for all unsold inventory. The mobile space is becoming incredibly competitive. As well as the arrival of the three yield optimisation specialists you already have two large ad network optimisers in the European market, namely Yoc and Smaato. They are all now going to be fighting for the attentions of premium publishers and mobile ad networks alike. And we shouldn’t forget Google in all this. Soon to be owners of Admob, and with new Dart ad server products now available for agencies and publishers, Google look set to become the biggest player in this market. New entrants into the market will also need to be aware of a developing trend in the mobile display space: premium publishers are being very selective about what inventory they give ad networks and are keen to keep a tight rein on their available ad impressions. Quite a few publishers have deliberately chosen not to work with ad networks, as they look to sell directly to agencies and advertisers. [The Rubicon Project]

Mobclix, the largest mobile ad exchange for the Iphone ad market, has announced it will re-sell audience profiles to its ad networks partners. The move will allow agencies and advertisers to better target specific audiences through the Mobclix exchange. The demographic segments will be provided from Nielsen’s PRIZM and ConneXions programs. Read more about this story here.

Greg Hills On Why He Thinks 2010 Will Be The Year Of Ad Visibility

In an interesting post about ad visibility, Greg Hills argues that this metric is becoming more important to advertiser and agencies – and 2010 is the year it will come to the forefront of the minds of media buyers. Many display ads never actually get seen and this, Hills argues, is a massive drag on campaign performance. He points out that DFA and Atlas allow unseen ads to gert credit for driving purchases, and cites a number of companies working in the space who have a big focus on ad visibility. More on that post here.

Facebook Moving Up A Gear

comScore released its year-in-review figures for the US, and it makes for interesting reading. Facebook is now the third biggest publisher of display ads in the US, serving over three hundred and thirty billion ad impressions annually. Facebook sells its display advertising at a much lower price than all of the other publishers in the top ten. And it’s presently only selling a portion of its ad inventory. If Facebook figures out a way of improving targeting and campaign performance, it will have found its illusive business model. TechCrunch has more on this story here.

There’s also been a big move towards more transparent and open buys. Agencies and advertisers are now looking for this when they are buying mobile ad impressions. Adfonic are looking to meet this demand head-on by launching its new open ad marketplace for premium mobile ad inventory. Paul Childs, Adfonic CMO, took time to speak to ExchangeWire this week to discuss the new offering from Adfonic and what effect the recent spate of acquisitions will have on the mobile display market.

Can you explain how the new platform works?

PC: We’ve just released the industry’s first open and transparent mobile ad marketplace for Premium publishers including mobile sites and applications (iPhone, Android, JAVA and WebOS supported). We are aiming this offering at established brands, digital plays and popular apps across multi-platforms, giving advertisers the choice of buying Performance or Premium via a single integrated platform and user experience. This builds on Adfonic’s state -of-the-art mobile advertising platform and demonstrates our strength and agility to deliver innovative solutions to the market quickly.

What are the key differences of this new version?

PC: The key differences are: offering a Premium Network that complements our Blind Network; and giving advertisers a truly open and transparent marketplace to buy high quality mobile media. For Premium buys we know advertisers demand full control over where they buy media coupled with real time reporting and analytics that enables them to track how their campaigns are performing across all mobile sites and apps.

Was the new launch motivated by a move by publisher and advertiser in the mobile ad market towards more transparent and open platforms?

PC: In other forms of digital advertising, like online, there’s an implicit expectation that total transparency is already built into platforms and advertisers navigate their way around choosing the best publishers that closely fit their media buying requirements. Other types of digital advertising follow the established world of offline advertising, where a media buyer would never purchase any time or ad space unless they knew exactly where their ad was going to be shown.

Brands and advertising agencies are now starting to ask for this level of transparency to match how they work online and offline.

What are the benefits to the publisher?

PC: For publishers the key benefits are: the ability to set minimum floor price for CPC and / or CPM; global reach; brand safety, as only approved agencies will get access to the Premium Network; the ability to set up a private network within the platform; and finally we offer publishers a white label option.

What are the benefits for the advertiser?

PC: For advertisers the key benefits are: media buying profile behind every publisher; the choice of sites and apps to advertise on; the option to track the performance of campaigns at publisher level using real time reporting and analytics; the ability to divert spend to sites and apps that are delivering results thereby optimising advertiser budgets; providing better accountability to advertisers; and we will work with larger ad units (e.g. 300 x 250)

Can you explain a little more about the targeting functionality of the new Adfonic platform?

PC: Adfonic offers advertisers a comprehsenive range of targeting options for reaching specific audiences, including geography, mobile operators / WiFi, mobile devices, mobile platforms (iPhone, Android), mobile browsers (excluding Opera Mini), demographics, day parting, tags and language

What differentiates this from the multitude of ad networks, yield optimisers and indeed mobile ad exchanges on the European market?

PC: What differentiates Adfonic from other players in this space is three key areas: our comprehensive set of self service tools and features; giving advertisers and publishers more control over campaigns and inventory; and our shift towards openness and transparency starting with our Premium Network.

Publishers can set a floor price and can choose the buyers they want to trade with. Is the control offered to publishers a key feature of the new Adfonic platform?

PC: The Adfonic platform gives both advertisers and publishers the control they are demanding. The demands of premium publishers are different to those of performance publishers and we have give premium publishers a flexible solution via our self-service platform.

Do you think the $750 million takeover of Admob represents a seminal moment for the development and growth of the mobile display market?

PC: I think we have reached a tipping point in the evolution of the mobile advertising industry. This is highlighted by the following three key milestones.

First, the recent wave of mobile advertising acquisitions including Google (Admob), Apple (Quattro Wireless), Amobee (RingRing Media) and Opera Software (AdMarvel).

Secondly, a rapid shift towards performance based marketing models and demand for better quality publisher inventory.

And finally, brands and traditional media buying agencies are now starting to look at mobile as an additional channel to market. 2010 will be the year when innovative brands action their mobile strategies and start to implement monetization strategies.

The acquisition of Admob provided the market with the first valuation of a successful mobile advertising business (subsequently followed by three further acquisitions). Now investors will start to look seriously at players in the space.

Exchanges and ad network optimisation are now emerging in mobile display. The latest mobile ad net optimisation service to be rolled here in Europe comes courtesy of Improve Digital. Janneke Niessen, COO of Improve Digital, took time this week to speak to ExchangWire.com about the new offering for European publishers.

Can you provide more details on the new new mobile ad optimisation service?

JN: Improve Digital’s mobile ad optimisation platform will connect to the optimal mix of mobile ad networks according to the publisher’s content, audience and brand safety requirements. From there it makes decisions in real-time about which of these networks can best monetise each impression, and then selects the highest paying network to serve the advertisement. Basically it will undertake the same as we currently do for web display but take the specific requirements of mobile into account.

Will the optimisation service be radically different for mobile?

JN: Improve Digital’s mobile ad platform will offer the same ad network optimisation techniques (outlined above) as its web-based service, which sees premium publishers in the UK and Europe increase their advertising revenue by anything between 50 and 300 percent. Mobile specific data points such as device, user location and user demographics will also be considered as part of the ad network and exchange selection process.

The mobile display market is a lot smaller than online. Do you see big growth in the market?

JN: Compared to its online equivalent, the mobile display market appears small. However, the more important figure is the growth that the mobile advertising market is seeing. Among the key findings of the IAB UK’s mobile ad spend figures published in 2009: £28.6 million was spent on mobile in 2008, a figure almost double the previous year. Looking ahead, recent study by GroupM forecasts that mobile advertising spend will increase 19 percent to $3.3 billion in 2010.

Will it be available on the same platform?

JN: Yes – Improve Digital’s mobile offering will be integrated with its current platform. This sees various advantages including the same comprehensive brand control capabilities that protects Improve Digital’s web publishers from unwanted ads, channel conflict and ad latency. There will also be a consolidated dashboard so that publishers can manage and review reporting and analytics from both their web-based and mobile ad sales.

How is this going to benefit the publisher?

JN: The huge increase in the number of people using smartphones has assigned vast revenue-making potential to the mobile internet. However, despite the increasing need to monetise the mobile web, publishers have very few tools with which to do this. The Improve Digital offering will tackle this issue, and premium publishers will be able to maximise their advertising revenue regardless of the device on which their site is being viewed.

How is Improve Digital going to help publishers maximise revenue from their mobile ad inventory?

JN:Through our advanced algorithms we optimise eCPM’s and revenue for our publishers, and the different ad placements on mobile do not limit this. The web offers many different buying methods and the technology calculates everything back to eCPM – again, that will be the same for mobile. In addition we take the specifics of mobile into account in the optimisation as mentioned above.

Is this the start of a convergence between mobile and online display?

JN: We believe it is important to retain a distinction between mobile and display. As long as the screen sizes and use of applications differ as much as they currently do between web and mobile, advertisers will regard them as separate channels. However, from our perspective, it does not matter how people view content We will optimise revenue for the publisher across all digital devices and platforms.