We All Owe Federated Media A Debt Of Gratitude | MediaPost A sweet reflection on the purchase of Federated Media’s content marketing arm and the split from sovrn from Andrew Boer.

Funny Super Bowl Ads Are Getting More Violent. But Are They Working? | Slate Researchers have determined a few ways in which funny ads work: by getting people’s attention, and if relevant, memorable. Funny ads are more likely to be discussed. That said, there’s no conclusive proof they lead to purchase.

Google Looks to Ads Executive Susan Wojcicki as Next YouTube Chief | The Information Sending a the message that Google’s ad products are getting attention, Google is likely to put Susan Wojcicki as the new head of YouTube.

Survey: Super Bowl Ads Are Already Forgotten | Bloomberg BusinessWeek With only 10% average recall, advertisers need to ask themselves if the reach is worth four million.

The 5 Best Real-Time Marketing Moments of the Super Bowl | Digiday A look at Digornio Pizza, Oreo, Hilary Clinton, Buffalo Wild Wings, JCPenney and Newcastle’s best tweets during the superbowl.

IAB Head: ‘The Digital Advertising Industry Must Stop Having Unprotected Sex’ Business Insider With that um, provocative, headline, Randall Rothberg outlines problems with the digital advertising industry, including: fraudulent bot traffic, supporting digital piracy, fears about viruses and brand safety.

The Technium: A Conversation with Kevin Kelly | Edge.org An interview with former Wired editor, Kevin Kelly, looks closer into his theory of “The Technium.”

Chasing Their Star, on YouTube NYTimes A profile of YouTube entertainer Olga Kay finds revenues shrinking as audiences grow. The tension between viewers, production and advertisers will be something to watch in the next several years.

Rubicon Files for $100 Million Internet-Ad IPO | Bloomberg “Rubicon Project Inc., whose online-advertising platform reaches 96 percent of Internet users in the U.S., filed to raise $100 million in an initial public offering.”

Facebook operating chief Sheryl Sandberg. Getty Images

A BIG DAY FOR FEDERATED, AND THE BIRTH OF SOVRN HOLDINGS | Battelle Media LIN Media acquired all of Federated Media’s brand and content marketing business. Sovrn Holdings, Inc. will build on FM’s programmatic publisher platform — based on FM’s 2011 acquisition of Lijit Networks.

Federated Media Goes Full Programmatic And Declares Itself ‘Sovrn’ – Real-Time With New CEO Knapp | Mediapost Last Tuesday, Federated Media sold its content marketing arm to LIN Media and rebranded its programmatic business to sovrn Holdings, Inc.

How You Might Be Tracked for Ads in a Post-Cookie World | WSJ The industry is looking to device identifiers to solve for many of the problems for marketers dependent on cookie-tracking. Cookies can’t follow people across browsers — they lose track of people who clean them out.

IAB Locks in Traffic Fraud Guidelines | AdWeek Suggesting several guidelines, the IAB also suggests:
- Buyers shouldn’t leave campaign objectives “broad and open to interpretation.”
- Buyers should, “Be willing to pay the real price for the media [they] want.”
- Buyers should not pay anybody suspected of fraud.

Facebook Uses Data to Charm Advertisers | WSJ Google works when people search for things they already want to buy and then see ads for relevant products. Facebook works to educate consumers about products they might want to buy in the future. They’re using that edge to account for 6% of the $117.6 billion global ad market last year — compared with Google’s 31.5%.

Super Bowl 2014: Advertisers lose yardage Although Super Bowl advertisement costs are up to a high of $4 million per 30 seconds, marketers are finding it tough to justify that investment.

Nielsen: Internet Ads Up as Old Media Takes a Hit | CNBC Nielsen says that last year, internet ads saw the quickest growth between advertising platforms last year.

Yahoo Former Revenue Chief Joins Millennial Media | Business Insider Michael Barrett, Yahoo’s former chief revenue officer, joined mobile ad company Millennial Media as its new CEO. “Some time ago, I expressed my desire to the board to transition out of the company, and return to working with early stage entrepreneurs”

Twitter: We Will Impact TV Ad Rates at Upfronts | Hollywood Reporter The way TV viewers engage with their second screen is ready to change the rates of TV ads — just watch the cable and network adsales upfronts this spring.

Vox Media doesn’t just have to reinvent the news — it has to reinvent advertising too | GigaOM Vox Media, launching Project X, helmed by Ezra Klein, says it wants to reinvent the news by “providing more context and background for news stories.” Vox is also going to have to take a closer look at the advertising—dependent revenue model.

What’s Content Marketing Again? | Recode Asking, “What is content marketing again, and why is it a thing people are fighting over?” might find the idea that content marketing offers a big opportunity at the next phase of marketing technology.

Yahoo Results May Further Pressure CEO Mayer | Marketwatch Marissa Meyer’s mixed fourth-quarter results makes its advertising business — especially display advertising — all the more crucial.

Flexible Content for Brands > Content marketing strategy in the current digital landscape Medium “When executed well, brand marketing can deliver new levels of entertainment or information that rise far beyond the bar of simply not being rejected — they, in fact, make the consumer experience better.”

Why marketing isn’t marketing anymore | VentureBeat Two main points about hiring marketing people strong in analytics. One, the new marketers need to believe in product before content. Understanding that all the products they build – including their sites – need to be built with a solutions mindset. Two, new marketers need to deeply understand your company’s sales environment.

In Speech, Obama Conflates Ad Tracking With NSA Spying | AdExchanger Making things harder for online marketers, President Obama conflates digital advertising with the NSA’s intrusive surveillance program. AdExchanger goes far enough to call it a “branding calamity” for online advertising.

Google Launches AdSense Direct, A New Tool For Direct Ad Sales | TechCrunch This week, Google launched AdSense Direct, allowing publishers to make deals with individual advertisers – no matter whether the publisher is on AdWords or not.

Twitter Users’ Diversity Becomes an Ad Selling Point | WSJ Twitter’s multicultural strategist, Nuria Santamariahas been leading its effort to target black, Hispanic and Asian-American users. Accounting for 41% of Twitter’s 54 million U.S. users, minorities make up a bigger percentage of Twitter than Facebook. Ms. Santamaria says this information is advertiser-led. Advertisers want to know more about racial and ethnic minorities on Twitter.

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Featuring the latest in luxury auto tech, FM site KNSTRCT highlights Cadillac’s new crest.

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Data-Driven Thinking column…Native And Automated Advertising: Complementary Or Competing? by Jay Stevens, Rubicon Project | AdExchanger “So there you have it: Native advertising, just like advertorials in print, is nothing new. Rather, it is an area in which premium publishers have – and always had – expertise, and are in prime position to offer advertisers.”

Pinterest CEO Lays Out Growth Plan, Sees Revenue in 2014 | WSJ A fascinating conversation with the 31 year old founder of Pinterest, Ben Silberman. Here, he focuses on how he plans to build an ad business to support 240 employees and the kind of rapid growth that is valued at $3.8 billion.

Let’s banish the word ‘content’ | Kernel Mag Making a case to replace the all-weather word “content” (referring to anything on a site that’s not code or advertising), Lewis G. Parker suggests more specific replacement phrasing like narrative, article and story.

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Check out posts from Sydne Style and Could I Have that work out in Old Navy’s latest workout gear.

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NewsCred Raises $25 Million to Fill a Content-Marketing War Chest.  (What’s Content Marketing Again?) | ReCode With recent big investments in Contently and NewsCred, content marketing fills a current advertising need. This is good news for publishers, writers and photographers looking for new markets.

Facebook announces it’s testing its own ad network for third-party mobile apps | Facebook Facebook is looking to monetize mobile apps beyond its own Facebook app. “We are running a small test to explore showing Facebook ads in third-party mobile apps. In this test, we’ll be extending Facebook’s rich targeting to improve the relevancy of the ads people see, provide even greater reach for Facebook advertisers, and help developers better monetize their apps.”

The Inefficiencies Of Exchange Traded Media | AdExchanger Despite the fact that exchange-traded media gets big praise for making the ad market easier and more efficient, a closer look reveals billions of wasted media dollars. Laying out solutions like bigger investments in viewability, fraud detection and prevention, and algorithmic attribution solutions, as well as closer looks at frequency distributions will result in more efficient spends.

Viacom Unveils Unit to Create Content for Ads | Variety Viacom has created Viacom Velocity, formalizing a new ad-sales unit devoted to creating marketing content for advertisers — that content can then be seen on its cable networks, in digital venues, in news stories and online.

Image from The Awl.

This week in last week’s best links: Publishers cheap out, hacking gets results, Nest makes it big, Yahoo invests media-style, BBC Worldwide is thinking like a startup, Facebook set to release “Paper,” Twitter targets power users, a history of native, the cookie is with us, some vintage ads from BoingBoing, the auto industry increases RTB spend and some great social campaigns from 2013.

Report: Publishers Doing Native on the Cheap | AdWeek Representing more experienced (read: expensive) journalists, some publishers are using cheap freelance labor to create native content. “They represented themselves as giving access to their editorial staff,” one marketing exec said. “Then they delivered articles written by copywriters instead of journalists.”

Understanding the Underbelly of Online Marketing & Why You’ll Lose if You Don’t | Both Sides of the Table A straight-talking overview of the hacks, the sneaks and the workarounds that get big results until they are strongly policed or adapted as the way of doing business.

Google Buys Nest Labs for $3.2 Billion in Cash | CNN Google announced Monday that it’s investing in the internet of things, buying Nest Labs for $3.2 billion in cash. Nest develops “smart” home appliances like thermostats and smoke detectors that program themselves and communicate with smartphones.

Is Yahoo serious about media? | Monday Note Until Marissa Mayer, Yahoo focused on survival. But now, in Yahoo’s quest to become a big news media player, they seem to be acquiring strong bylines and have been are planning a mobile app.

Fired Yahoo Exec’s $109M Golden Parachute Was One Of The Biggest Ever | Forbes That’s a lot of cabbage for a person who barely stayed a year. Ouch.

Paul Dempsey: ‘Media companies must embrace the open internet to survive’ | The Guardian Paul Dempsey, president global markets, BBC Worldwide says the internet is challenging the establishment to become more consumer-focused and behave more like startups.

Facebook Preps News Reader to Rival Flipboard | Recode.net Called, “Paper,” Facebook is looking to release a Flipboard-like reader before the end of the month. As part of a multi-year effort from the News Feed team, Project Reader is led by Chris Cox, Facebook’s VP of product.

Twitter Power Users: You’re Now a Target for Ads | Digiday Twitter  now offers marketers the ability to target ads to specific users’ accounts. Based on their bios, follower count, verified status and past tweets, the most popular tweeters can now expect an influx of ads.

Google, Nest and the Rise of the Physical Graph | Mashable Are you ready?

A History Of Native Advertising | The Awl A history of native advertising from FM partner site, The Awl, this look at the relationships between newspapers and their advertisers is worth a read. From the New Yorker to the Honolulu Advertiser, sponsored content has a long history.

Reports of the Cookie’s Death Are Greatly Exaggerated — and That’s Good | AdAge Says Joshua Koran, “Next year, and the year after, the cookie will still be with us. And that is a good thing for advertisers, publishers and consumer privacy.”

40 outrageously offensive vintage ads | Boing Boing Oof. This collection of vintage ads reminds us how far we’ve come, and how far we still have to go.

Article: Programmatic Ad Buying in the Auto Industry Gathers Speed | eMarketer Second only behind retail in current RTB spend, the automotive industry will increase its programmatic buying in 2014.

The best social media campaigns of 2013 (so far) | iMediaConnection A historical post from June, these campaigns are worth revisiting as we budget for social efforts for 2014.

How the NSA Almost Killed the Internet | Wired Passing the blame from government to whistle-blower to tech company to host, this well-researched long-read from Wired, finds everyone guilty. The current state of surveillance finds tech companies with the following pickle, “While Silicon Valley must be transparent in many regards, spy agencies operate under a cloak of obfuscation.”Yahoo’s mobile mystery.

Twitter ‘Riskier’ for Ads Compared to Facebook | MarketWatch The year wasn’t even a week old, and the decision is still up in the air about whose ad platform is the riskiest. Industry sentiment is already pointing toward the dominance of Facebook Inc. and Google Inc. and away from the just-gone-public Twitter Inc.

Yahoo Advertising revamped to unify web, mobile, and video ad products | Yahoo Including a suite of web, mobile, and video ad products accessible through a purchasing platform, Yahoo’s rolling out everything advertising. This includes Tumblr posts, Yahoo ads, and their ad exchange.

The New York Times Embraces ‘Organic’ Ad Strategy | Digiday The NYT redesigns with an eye toward content marketing in the editorial well. What does that mean for consumers? Says Meredith Levien, EVP of advertising, “Premium [ad] growth is going to come from native, organic and custom.”

The Super Sad Executives Of CES | Buzzfeed A hilarious look at the sighs and mehs of this week’s CES presentations, Buzzfeed shows what this week has been all about.

The Shady Practice of Mobile App Install Ads | Digiday Redirects to Apple’s app store from Google ads show how obfuscated mobile advertising can bevome. “The ad was remnant inventory which is controlled by Google. We resolved the issue when we learned of the item,” NBC said in a statement. “Google said redirecting users from a mobile website to an app download page without the user’s consent is a violation of its policy.”

Target Data Breach Much Worse Than First Thought | Recode.net Friday morning, Target announced that up to 70 million of its customers had personal info stolen during the holiday buying season. Not only that, the security breach could affect anyone who has ever shopped at a Target.

This Clear, Flexible Electronic Circuit Can Fit on the Surface of a Contact Lens | Smithsonian Mag Swiss scientists have demonstrated a flexible, transparent circuit — tiny and thin enough to fit on a contact lens. This is huge for monitoring intraocular pressure for glaucoma sufferers or any kind of biological context.

Pandora’s CES reveal: Ads for cars, radio’s wheelhouse | CNET At the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show, Pandora said it will launch audio ads specific to the cars that feature Pandora — which includes 130 car models with native Pandora integration.

HBO’s ‘Silicon Valley’ Aims to Be New ‘Entourage’ | Hollywood Reporter
The Office’s Mike Judge will produce an upcoming HBO comedy set in Silicon Valley, where “the people who are the most qualified to succeed are the least capable of handling success.” Starting April 6, producer Berg said, “…Anyone who takes themselves too seriously and is full of themselves is ripe for a kicking.”

Publicis Moving Ad Money to Spotify, LinkedIn | CNBC Maurice Levy, CEO of Publicis talks about moving money to digital “We are moving money to Spotify,” adding that his brands are also increasingly working with LinkedIn. Nearly 40 percent of Publicis’ revenue comes from digital.

Report: Native Advertising Set to Dominate Digital | Mediapost J.P. Morgan predicts that native advertising will take over digital in 2014. Lead analyst Doug Anmuth says, “We believe native ads are quickly becoming the de facto ad format on mobile and increasingly moving into desktop.” There are strategists urging restraint. Steve Rubel, EVP of global strategy and insights at Edelman said, “As an industry, we’re going way too fast.”

The real action at CES: Quietly closing the mega-ad deals that keep the consumer Web running | PandoDaily On Battelle Media, I talk about the 4 phases of CES. Pando suggests a fifth wave. “The real reason that so many Valley and New York tech CEOs whose companies have absolutely nothing to do with electronics are increasingly coming here every year religiously: They are sitting in Strip hotels closing big honking six and seven-figure ad deals.”

Twitter Inches Closer to the Local Ad Market | Digiday Making Twitter slightly more like Foursquare, Twitter seems to be parlaying its ambitions as an ad platform to local advertising.

Agencies React To Yahoo Ad Products; Mobile Advertising Remains A Mystery | AdExchanger Sharing the spotlight with consumer-facing products, Marissa Mayer rolled out Yahoo’s new ad products at this week’s CES. Although some ad execs were optimistic, their mobile strategy remained unclear.

More than half of cell owners affected by ‘distracted walking’ | Pew Research Center A mid-2012 survey found 23% of cell owners have physically bumped into another person or object because they were distracted by using their phone — a marked increase from the 17% of cell owners who said that this had happened to them in May 2010.

Predictions 2014: A Difficult Year to See | Battelle Media
From action on climate change to the auto industry, from Twitter to tech acquisitions, Battelle’s 2014 predictions recommend we squirrel our nuts away.

Mobile Advertising Projected to Increase 64% in 2014 | Mashable “Companies nearly tripled the amount of money spent on mobile advertising, from $1.2 billion in 2012 to $3 billion in 2013, according to LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. Roughly 65% of both ad agencies and marketers plan to invest in native advertising, for an estimated total of $4.3 billion, in 2014.”

Facebook faces suit for allegedly intercepting private messages Facebook is being sued by users who have claimed that Facebook “intercepts private messages, without consent.” They are also claiming that Facebook will mine this data for its own profit.

Why the Lowly Banner Will Go Down as Hero of Post-Search World | AdAge From the request to the process to the response, the banner ad and everything called “ad tech” will be the model for our worldwide processing layer behind nearly all of our real-time transactions. “That layer deserves to be named as perhaps the most important technological artifact extant today.”

Facebook’s so uncool, but it’s morphing into a different beast | The Conversation Sixteen to 18 year olds are fleeing Facebook in droves to Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and WhatsApp. Lessons learned include: surveillance doesn’t matter, kids don’t want to be where their parents are, and slick isn’t always best.

The Year We Broke the Internet | Esquire “A look at our year of internet whoopsies — asking hard questions about our current breakneck journalistic model. Give me the viral pictures, and I’ll give you the truth. And then, after an appropriate waiting period, I’ll give you the other truth, and capitalize on that traffic too.”

Content, good pricing drove media deals in 2013 | USAToday U.S. media and entertainment companies completed $75.8 billion worth of acquisitions and mergers this year, a 47% increase on 2012, according to Thomson Reuters. The number of deals was up, as well — 766, vs. 596 a year ago.

The Complications Of Merging Marketing And Ad Tech | AdExchanger A conversation with Wilson Raj, SAS Intelligent Advertising global customer intelligence director about the coming integration of advertising and marketing technologies, the data challenges companies will face and the future for SAS in ad tech.

Viewability Is Just A Beginning, Not An End | AdExchanger Jonah Goodhart, CEO of analytics services provider Moat, shares his view that ad viewability is only a starting point. It’s not the only way we can determine the worth of a display placement.

Rob Norman: Advertisers, the Future of Hard News Is on You Too | LinkedIn Advertisers have traditionally shied away from being close to hard news. This needs to change — with the evolution of journalistic placements, with links, traffic and attention showing up in different ways, we need to be prepared to advertise anywhere.

Twitter Tests Localization Mobile Feature ‘Nearby’ | MarketWatch For some users who’ve location-enabled Twitter on their phones, Twitter seems to be testing a new timeline for its mobile app called “Nearby.”

Google to Seek Brand Ad Billions with YouTube | USA Today Through YouTube and new display ads, Google is stepping into the world of brand marketing. This is different from its previous focus on performance ads, like AdWords, where it’s already a leader.

Facebook Leak Reveals Plan to Nab TV Ad Dollars | Techcrunch Sent to Facebook’s Preferred Marketing Developer partners in late November, this leaked presentation urges buyers to be where people are, reach all of the people who matter to you and be in the most engaging digital real estate. As well, don’t disparage YouTube.

The Number of Online Video Ads Is Up 205% in the Last Year | AdWeek Says Vindico president Matt Timothy, “The number of ad impressions have exploded, but it’s totally manufactured viewing.” The biggest problem is autoplay ads below the fold — not viewable, but counted just the same.

IAB Releases Content Marketing Primer | MediaPost Content marketing is defined in the IAB’s newest primer, outlining guidelines for transparency as well as useful, educational and entertaining information.

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We love this post for Best Buy from FM site How to be a Dad showing “How to give gifts that are actually for you.”

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Venturing Into 2014: Predictions From The Investment Community | AdExchanger Looks like the men with the money are making predictions about the future in digital advertising. Lots of programmatic, lots of cross-media play.

Marketer’s Note: Programmatic Is Table Stakes | AdExchanger Thanks to efficiencies and targeting, programmatic actually encourages ad buyers to spend more.

Tech executives to Obama: NSA spying revelations are hurting business | Washington Post In a meeting last week, tech executives reiterated their demands that the administration stop bulk data collection of e-mails, address books and other information. Also requested — limits on the ease of court orders from the NSA

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Uncrates’ Outdoorsman collection from Levi’s makes me want to grab a bespoke canoe paddle, and head for the nearest Levi’s store.

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On Ad Viewability: Why the V­-Word Needs to Become a Common Currency | AdAge Greater integrity, better insights, transparency, actionability — all of these things are what better ad viewability will offer marketers.

How an impressionable media industry fell in love with fraud | CNN Money The media is happy to overlook fraud in digital advertising as long as it pads the bottom line. The industry shouldn’t be resisting fraud reductions efforts, rather embracing them for long-term success.

Illustration: Dale Edwin Murray

This week in last week’s best links: The Guardian goes programmatic, 72andsunny shines, David Simon lays it out, the big guys fight back with the Reform Government Surveillance coalition, Google+ takes recommendations to ads, cookie hacks, retailer’s data, identity and the internet, nerds fuel Rocketfuel, mobile raises CPMs, Discuss tries Native, Hearst sues Aereo, ads ain’t that bad, Digiday learned from ad tech and Twitter MoPub evolves.

The Guardian’s Programmatic Play: Performance First, ‘Premium’ Second | AdExchanger Using MediaMath’s DSP, The Guardian will be gathering data about user behavior on the inventory of other sites. Most of this programmatic activity is through private marketplaces instead of on the open exchange.

72andSunny Is Adweek’s 2013 U.S. Agency of the Year | AdWeek Taking over the Smirnoff account, while working with Target, Samsung, ESPN, Google and Starbucks — 72andSunny wins Adweek’s biggest accolade.

David Simon: ‘There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show’ | The Guardian From a speech given in Australia, the creator of The Wire lays out a frank examination of how far our stratified economy has to go. Laying blame at the metric of “capital is the metric, that profit is the metric by which we’re going to measure the health of our society is one of the fundamental mistakes of the last 30 years.”

Facebook, Google, Twitter, and more create the Reform Government Surveillance coalition | Venture Beat The big guys, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, AOL, LinkedIn, and Yahoo, have created the Reform Government Surveillance coalition — aiming to change tactics in spying throughout the entire world. From the letter, “We urge the U.S. to take the lead and make reforms that ensure that government surveillance efforts are clearly restricted by law.”

Google Launches Google+ Social Ads on Other Sites | All Things D Google is running posts from Google+ on sites that use their ad network. Calling them “+Post” ads, they’re currently testing. The question posed, “Since the ads aren’t going to run on Google+, why go through the effort of making them seem like “real” Google+ posts?”

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Carry-on travel tips help everyone this holiday season. Learn more from Brett McKay from Art of Manliness shares his tips on MyLifeScoop.

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NSA uses Google cookies to pinpoint targets for hacking | Washington Post Internal presentation slides show the NSA is “secretly piggybacking” on cookies and location data that allow advertisers to track consumers.

Study: Retailers Struggle With Data ‘Readiness’ | AdExchanger “Eighty-three percent of retailers profiled in EKN Research’s “Big Data in Retail” study said they are either “at par” or “lagging behind” similar vertical competitors in their strategic use of analytics.” Sixty-eight percent of retailers said “data organization” as their biggest challenge.

The Future of Advertising Hinges on Understanding Identity | AdWeek We need better systems to understand privacy and identity by service and object. “The way we measure identity now severely lacks in accuracy and robustness. The future of identity lies in digitizing the physical world, and the context in which we collect data about identity needs to become transparent.”

2014 Forecasts: Global Ad Dollars Surge, Driven By Mobile, Social | AdExchanger More money will be allocated to mobile and social buys and programmatic growth. Thanks to more specific metrics, CPMs will likely rise nearly 5% by 2017.

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Shape a surfboard, take off for Mexico. FM site, The Inertia, made a video for Subaru that gets us in the mood for a coastal adventure.

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Rocket Fuel CEO: ‘Nerds Are In Charge’ Of Brand Media Teams | AdExchanger In an interview with Rocketfuel CFO Peter Bardwick and CEO George John, AdExchanger talks about their growth and plans for video.

Native Ads Are Coming to Internet Comments | Digiday Disqus follows Outbrain and Taboola with a promoted-post ad product.

Hearst Pushes for Ban of ‘Most Dangerous’ Aereo | MediaPost Hearst is suing Aereo, like other TV broadcasters across the country, saying Hearst will suffer “irreparable harm” if Aereo is allowed to continue operating.

5 Things We Learned About Ad Tech in 2013 | Digiday Ad tech taught Digiday that ads won’t save online publishing, Wall Street doesn’t get it, it has a significant fraud problem, mobile-centric ad businesses are hard, and ad tech can generate big margins. Hmmm.

Twitter MoPub Opens Up Native Advertising | WSJ Twitter’s MoPub – a Twitter-owned mobile-advertising exchange — released a product to allow the mobile-app publishers on its exchange to use native advertising.

Image by Rafat Ali at LinkedIn.

This week in last week’s most interesting links: AOL’s automated creativity, anthropological thinking, ad supported phones, brand newsroom challenges, DRM removal = more sales, Mediadata startups, Amazon aims at Apple, Cyber Monday records, Apple + Topsy for search dominance, 2014 global dollars in media and entertainment, Native ads, barbells and Viacom staff merging, Ad Tech extrapolated, Adblock extortion? Twitter’s tailored audiences, Facebook’s strong arm and the FTC weighs in on native. Onward!

AOL Networks’ Bob Lord: In 2014, Marketers Will Fall In Love With Automation | AdAge AOL Networks CEO Bob Lord says that automation through programmatic is key for 2014 — and that automation allows marketers to be more efficient in more creative content expressions.

To Understand Consumer Data, Think Like an Anthropologist | Harvard Business Review Deriving meaning from all that quantitative data requires a change in thinking — here, using an anthroplogical approach to performance is recommended. “…Social-listening data is inherently qualitative. That means learning to appreciate the value of the stray remark and synthesizing bits of information into a higher-order sense of what’s going on.”

Why We’ll See The First Ad-Supported Phone In 2014 | AdExchanger Russell Glass from Bizo makes a case for ex-Facebookers or ex-Googlers going down the funded free phone funnel. With the average person seeing their lockscreen 110 times a day, those impressions could be put to good use.

The myth of the brand newsroom | The Guardian Although it is turned around much faster than it used to, real-time marketing isn’t there yet. To act like a brand newsroom, companies need to plan for three significant investments. They need flexible and anticipatory planning, relevance and permission and to plan for technological advances.

What Piracy? Removing DRM Boosts Music Sales by 10 Percent | Torrent Freak A new study comparing album sales of four major labels before and after the removal of DRM has been released. It finds (no big surprise) that digital music revenue increases by 10% when restrictions are lifted.

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The American Express Open Forum continues to engage small business owners for six years running. This time, with a forum connecting small business owners — to succeed together.

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Here Come The Mediata Startups | LinkedIn Mediata companies — that pair up data and presentation — look to present data through a lens that is “hybrid, curated, lean, API-hungry, open and multi-faceted, built at the intersection of design and user-experience.” Building revenue and speed to market both enable this growth.

Amazon Kindle Fire commercial mocks the iPad Air with a Jony Ive parody | The Verge Matching Microsoft’s Apple potshots, Amazon’s Kindle Fire commercial takes on the iPad in a “startling” point by point comparison.

Cyber Monday Sales Surge to Record $2.29 Billion | USA Today So far, it seems Cyber Monday was a record breaker, IBM’s Digital Analytics Benchmark, put the sales increase at nearly 21% compared to last year.

Apple+Topsy: It’s Not About Twitter (And Twitter Is Probably Cool With That) | Battelle Media “Apple most likely bought Topsy because Topsy has the infrastructure to address one of Apple’s biggest problems: the iOS interface. Let’s face it, iOS (and the app-based interface in general) is slowly becoming awful. It’s like the web before good search showed up. To move to the next level, Apple needs a way to improve how its customers interact with iOS. Topsy will help them get there.”

Media Execs Bullish on Deals in 2014, Survey Says | Hollywood Reporter There’s more money loosening up globally in light of positive spending sentiment. Some of the industry’s biggest executives predict more investment in media and entertainment. Great news for all.

Report: ‘Native’ Ads to Drive Digital Media Growth | NYPost The IAB released a white paper looking at different forms of native marketing investment — and finding significant growth in paid search, advertising and recommendations — namely, content.

Putting Some Weight On Your “Barbell” Strategy | AdExchanger Steve Goldberg, senior adviser at EmpiricalMedia writes that simply, “Programmatic is bought, not sold.” For premium publishers, this is not business as usual and can lead to unconventional solutions.

Viacom Merges Ad Staff to Sell Across Platforms | Broadcasting Cable Merging television, digital and mobile ad sales teams, Viacom has made a big shift at its music and entertainment networks. Jeff Lucas, Head of Sales for Music and Entertaiment says, “For a client-centric organization like ours, a convergent structure will keep us on the leading edge of marketing innovation.”

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Rachel and the family behind FM site Handmade Charlotte creates a thrilling video for Subaru featuring a two-in-one adventure.

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Can Ad Tech Really Change the World? | Digiday  From real-time pricing used to help large retailers maximize inventory, to the way doctors treat hospital patients, to better traffic management to the environment, the way real time auctions work could have a huge impact.

Is it ethical to block adverts online? | BBC Technology A look at AdBlock’s practices consider whether their whitelist is extortion or smart business.

Twitter opens up ‘tailored audiences’ so brands can target their Promoted Tweets using browser cookies | The Next Web After experimenting, it’s ready for action. Businesses will supply browser cookies to Twitter — and then Twitter will match that information to corresponding Twitter users for a Promoted Tweet, making sure that promoted tweets are seen by users who have visited a brand’s web site.

Facebook Admits Organic Reach Is Falling Short, Urges Marketers to Buy Ads | AdAge Forcing the hand of many marketers, Facebook states: “We expect organic distribution of an individual page’s posts to gradually decline over time as we continually work to make sure people have a meaningful experience on the site.” Marketers will soon see the organic reach of their posts reduce significantly.

U.S. says online ads should be clearly marked, undeceptive | Reuters FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez says, “By presenting ads that resemble editorial content, an advertiser risks implying, deceptively, that the information comes from a non-biased source.”

This week we are grateful for last week’s best links. Note: There will not be a Signal next week, due to the Thanksgiving break. 

DailyTekk gives us the first list of 2014, traditional publishing v programmatic, facebook privacy (again), the corporate site is dead – sort of, a content marketing overview, Gurley’s Law and Snapchat, MediaMath grows, sponsored content grows faster than expected, tech’s culture and Twitter serves TV audiences.

The 100 Best, Most Interesting Blogs and Websites of 2014 | DailyTekk A great list of the sites to look out for for next year.

We’re proud of our publishers:

• WireCutter
• GadgetReview
• Anandtech
• Splitsider
• Oatmeal
• TheDailyDot
• Narrative.ly
• TheDailyWhat
• TheBillFold
• GoodMenProject
• Shutterbean

Traditional Publishers Are Struggling as Buying Goes Automated | Adweek With 85% of advertisers buying programmatic ads, traditional publishers struggle with dependence on a premium sales model.

Why The Banner Ad Is Heroic, and Adtech Is Our Greatest Artifact | Searchblog Meanwhile, Battelle writes a tribute to adtech and the lowly banner ad, and it kinda goes viral.

Facebook Reasserts Posts Can Be Used for Ads | NYTimes Last Friday, Facebook moved ahead with official privacy policy changes. “By having an account on the service, its 1.2 billion global users are allowing the company to use their postings and other personal data for advertising.”

The corporate Web site is dead, long live the new corporate Web site | Geekwire
As content marketing becomes necessity, Geekwire asks, “Will the future of all corporate Web sites rely on a publishing model that looks more like The New York Times, USA Today, Huffington Post or the entire TechMeme leaderboard — compared to a traditional corporate Web site?”

Samsung defies critics, ships 800,000 Galaxy Gear smartwatches in two months | The Verge Despite initially critical reviews, Samsung has shipped 800,000 smartwatches to retailers. Behind the large shipments, we’ll find luxury marketing and celebrity endorsements.

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FM publisher, A House in the Hills features American Express Small Business owner, Helene Cornell remaking “canned ham trailers.”

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The State of Content Marketing | Blog @ Percolate Originally presented at the Percolate Customer Summit, this overview of content marketing’s ecosystem relates to all digital marketers.

Snapchat plans an API and experimental monetization with ads, emoticons, stickers, and virtual gifts | Business Insider If ‘Gurley’s Law’ plays out, Snapchat reaches $120 million of profit, advertising and virtual goods, experts say Snapchat has an opportunity to be worth its three billion dollar valuation.

MediaMath, Once A DSP, Sees Clients Are Responding More To ‘Marketing OS’ | AdExchanger Recently, MediaMath has grown its staff to 306 and introduced the role of Chief Commercial Officer as it evolves from being a demand-side platform to an end-to-end enterprise solution.

Sponsored-Content Spending Growing Faster Than Predicted | AdAge Thanks to publishers’ attempts to create more bespoke advertising products for brands in an effort to raise ad rates, content marketing spending is growing faster than expected.

The Culture of Technology | Medium Changes to our culture that come from technology aren’t uniformly good or bad, they are simply changes. Lee Schneider examines the need to feel connected through technology.

Twitter Adds Product for Advertisers to Target TV Conversations | Bloomberg Adding a tool that lets advertisers target tv show viewers, Twitter looks to take advantage of the ways people use it. A Nielsen study in August found that Twitter can boost TV ratings when users share their immediate reactions to a show.