For those unaware of Netric Sales, can you give some background on company?

Netric Sales was founded in 2008 under the umbrella of parent company Wyatt Media, owner at the time of local Swedish social networks such as LunarStorm and Bilddagboken. Then CEO Daniel Ahlbert saw an opportunity to manage ad network optimisation for third party publishers in the region so launched Netric Sales. Netric has grown significantly over the past four years, working with premium publishers across Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland.

In late 2011 Wyatt Media and Netric Sales were sold to Nyheter24 Gruppen. The current, CEO Dilem Guler, manages a team of four based in Stockholm. Today the business manages relationships with over 40 publishers and 30 demand partners.

Can you give overview of the deal between Netric and Rubicon Project? How will the deal work? Is Netric reselling Rubicon tech in the region?

Netric has done a fantastic job of recruiting local publishers and brings a very strong team with local contacts and experience. Rubicon Project’s Real Time Trading Platform, REVV, is the first choice for premium publishers in both Europe and the US. This integrated partnership will see Netric Sales representing REVV Platform across Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Iceland.

Netric will manage sales, account management, yield management and demand generation in market, with support from Rubicon Project’s centralised management and operations team in London.

Is this partnership a sign of maturity in the data-driven ad market?

Certainly increased maturity yes, but at present the Nordic markets are not as mature as others in Europe such as the UK, France or the Netherlands. However, that is changing rapidly and we’re predicting these markets will grow significantly through 2012 as investment continues on both the buy and sell sides.

Is there more budget shifting into the automated channel in the Nordics?

Absolutely. We’ve seen a sharp rise in RTB revenue flowing through the REVV platform in the last twelve month. Since Q1 of 2011 there has been 500% growth. Sweden and Denmark are leading the way with Norway and Finland close behind.

There are a number of factors driving this one of which is the investment the large agency groups are making in the region. VivaKi, Xaxis and Accuen launching here, but the local players, such as Delta Projects and AdForm, are also driving growth. With the demand side developing this fast, we feel there’s a significant opportunity for publishers to benefit as they have done in other European markets.

What are we likely to see in terms of programmatic buying from publishers in the Nordic market? Are we likely to see similar parallels to other markets like France, Germany and the UK. Or will the market develop a little differently?

There are only five markets in the world where the online channel represents more than 25% of advertising spend and three of these are Norway, Sweden and Denmark! Historically these markets have been early adopters of new technology in advertising industry and we expect real time trading to follow this pattern. As with most other markets, we predict that this will start with direct response advertising but expand to a wider client base as premium publishers realise the control, transparency and incremental revenue opportunities afforded by real time trading and commit more inventory into the channel.

StrikeAd, the London and New York-based mobile advertising specialist, this week announced they’re teaming up with Celtra, an industry leader for rich media advertising and analytics across mobile devices, to offer advertisers the ability to deliver rich media ads via RTB. The partnership will offer the opportunity to optimise ad campaigns based on which traffic responds well to each rich media ad.

StrikeAd’s DSP uses RTB to bid across multiple exchanges and, as a result, can see which traffic works best for the rich media execution. The DSP can then buy more of the traffic that works well for that individual ad. The partnership follows predictions by Google that rich media ads will dominate the mobile ad space by 2015, and an additional advantage for the DSP in driving this growth in rich media is that advertisers will have a better understanding of which audiences respond best to specific components within the ad – whether that’s video, social media sharing or games, etc.

Alex Rahaman, CEO of StrikeAd, comments: “Brand engagement that can drive uplift in the form of a game, competition or film trailer will certainly increase interaction and awareness. From our experience we have seen that RTB is an extremely effective way to run an ad campaign, and teaming this with Celtra’s rich media capabilities will only serve to increase engagement with our clients’ audiences.”

Mihael Mikek, CEO and cofounder of Celtra, adds: “Rich media ads create value across the ecosystem, enhancing the consumer experience by delivering more meaningful advertising and improving ad engagement and campaign ROI for advertisers. Coupling Celtra’s rich media capabilities with the highly effective media buying impact of RTB increases the impact of high-yield rich media campaigns by allowing advertisers to better match their ads with the best performing inventory.”

StrikeAd offers the world’s first mobile-specific advertising Demand Side Platform (DSP). It allows media agencies to manage and optimise multiple global mobile advertising campaigns from multiple advertisers from a single platform. Advertisers can buy best performing inventory to provide effectively filtered and optimised sales leads.

Fabien Magalon Joins Criteo’s Paris Team

Criteo, a global leader in performance display advertising, announced this week the appointment of Fabien Magalon as European Director of RTB to further strengthen its Paris-based team. The announcement complements the recent addition of Meredith Goldman as Director of RTB for the U.S.

Jonathan Wolf, Chief Buying Officer at Criteo, comments: “Real Time Bidding is a highly sophisticated and technologically efficient solution: it will become an inevitable part of every large publisher’s adserving solution. Meredith and Fabien come from two of the leaders in the RTB Ad Exchange space, and we are delighted that having seen our scale and sophistication as buyers, they decided to join us. They bring a wealth of experience to a strong team, helping to strengthen our reputation as an industry leader. We believe that their understanding of the media buying landscape will only increase the performance that we can provide for our advertisers.”

Fabien Magalon joins from Rubicon Project, where he was Publisher Development Director, responsible for Rubicon’s entry and rapid growth in the French market. During his tenure, Fabien was responsible for the development and growth of many of Rubicon’s publisher partnerships. Prior to that, he was with Microsoft Media Network as Director of Operations for France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Holland. Today, Fabien will help to expand Criteo’s current platform and to further enhance its position as global leader, enabling Criteo to serve opportunities for RTB to its 2,000 clients in all 30 markets.

Fabien Magalon adds: “I am delighted to join Criteo, an innovative and forward-thinking company, a proven winner within the Real Time Bidding environment, and a leading driver of RTB’s growth in Europe. It’s an exciting time for our customers as we look at fully using the automation offered through the exchanges to further make display perform like search.”

Blowfish Digital Announces Revenue Growth & Adds to Its International Management Team

Blowfish Digital, digital marketing services provider for brands including Reiss, TM Lewin, Laura Ashley, eBay and many more, announced last week record revenue growth of over 88% in 2011. Over £2m in revenue has come from international marketing. In addition, the company grew its team by 30% over the same period. Growth was fueled by the addition of new clients and added services for existing clients, including the Royal British Legion and TM Lewin. The company expects similar results in 2012 in support of the growing demand for search marketing, affiliate, mobile and social media services.

Farhad Koodoruth, MD of Blowfish Digital, comments: “Since 2005 we have consistently delivered outstanding results for our clients. Business growth last year has reflected this through the rise in demand for digital marketing services from our existing clients as well as the continued success of our new business division. We are continuing to evolve as a company, providing services in emerging markets such as social media and attribution.”

Blowfish Digital also announced key additions to its management team. Yekaterina Odintsova, a digital marketing specialist, has been appointed Operations Manager. She will focus on the company’s international services, delivering campaigns with geo targeted accounts including USA, Europe and Asia. Prior to joining Blowfish Digital, Yekaterina was senior SEM specialist at Kelkoo, where she was responsible for increasing revenue in the Scandinavian region.

Marco Felicio, has been appointed Account Manager. Marco, specialises in paid search, SEO, usability and social media. He brings a wealth of experience to the company, having worked with major blue chip companies. Marco will be responsible for Blowfish Digital’s social strategy development and implementation and its channel integration with SEO, display and search.

Swedish Eniro Chooses to Work with Group M’s Much-criticised Xaxis

Programmatic buying has prompted several media outlets to react with anxiety and anger, arguing that media agencies are losing their objectivity, and that it damages the transparency that should apply to the media buy. Dagensmedia.se has several articles about the launch of Group M’s Xaxis solution in the Swedish market.

Even Association of Swedish Advertisers’ CEO Anders Ericson is critical of Xaxis: “Clearly Xaxis moves the boundary around what is to be regarded as bulk purchases. I do not like their business model and do not see the long term benefit to us advertisers.”

According to dagensmedia.se, Eniro has now signed an agreement with Xaxis. After several reminders, for more than a week, Enrio answers dagensmedia.se’s questions via email.

Mattias Wedar, CEO of Eniro in Sweden, writes: “We have no written contract with Xaxis. We have offered Xaxis the opportunity to buy ads on the same basis as other operators, so when we have space available, they may buy in the same way as other players. They have not called or contacted us actively to buy anything to date, however our shared ambition is to do business together.”

Group M has previously defended Xaxis claiming the system is the “way of the future”.

Native advertising refers to ad models that are natively designed to be part of the environment they are hosted in. Facebook you could say was the first native ad model. But whether you buy into native or standard, it is still the same thing – yes, advertising.

This presents somewhat of a backtrack for a lot of these next gen social utility/platforms. To date, the likes of Tumblr have maintained that they are not interested in advertising, that monetising their sites with ads was never going to happen. The truth is, on some level, these companies hate advertising. Well, unfortunately people, VC’s love money. And therein lies the rub.

The Valley entrepreneurs of tomorrow (and to some extent those residing in hubs such as Shoreditch, Berlin et al) are quickly beoming accustomed to the real world of business principles. If you take on boat loads of investment, the people investing inevitably want to see a return. The desktop web model is still underpinned by advertising. These young founders need to get the message: you need advertising to survive.

It is inevitable that we will soon start seeing more and more closed network ad solutions. Many more Facebook marketplaces. You have to ask whether the industry will let this happen. Does this present too many challenges to gain critical mass?

A basic argument will be scale. How do you scale multiple numbers of siloed workflows when executing an ad campaign. The savvy amongst you will inevitably beat the drum of the social API platform specialists such as the Glow Machine and Adaptly. That the next natural evolution for these companies is streamlining the workflow to execute across multiple networks. Is this a realistic, viable solution? When you talk about scaling, it is not unfair to say that industry has failed to scale the execution of existing formats (rich media, video, mobile), what happens when you add another lengthy list of non standard ad specs, non standard implementation protocols?

We also must touch upon the viability of sustaining budget investment from major brands over the long term. We’ve already seen GM pull out of Facebook. They have their reasons. ExchangeWire won’t add anymore unnecessary speculation around why they made such a strategic move. Can you really expect other social platforms (which in some cases are dwarfed by Facebook’s huge reach) to rival Facebook? Maybe it’s a matter of time. Once you reach 70% of an audience, maybe an advertiser and its agency must accept it will need to customise process and workflow. Will this be replicated across every new social platform that emerges? It is unlikely.

The subject of data unification is one not to overlook. The trend currently is moving to a multi-device, multi-connected trading landscape. Data becomes completely interoperable and marketers finally are able to have every digitised channel communicate to one another, most likely in real-time. The growth of the native opportunity could make this unachievable. Facebook operates a walled garden. It is likely to do the same when it launches the offsite audience-driven network.

In a world where marketers are still frustrated with the lack of digital data unification, you have to believe that native advertising only exasperates the problem.

This is not to say that native advertising won’t build necessary momentum. Ad models live and die by their effectiveness at fulfilling marketer’s objectives. While fears linger around the efficacy of standard digital display advertising, maybe this is where native has a chance to disrupt and scale. If the ad formats are tuned to the environment and they resonate better with the end user, then budgets could flow in that direction regardless of the data openness problem.

Advertising will always continue to be the internet’s currency. Time will tell whether it is delivered in an open or closed network model. Display can and will evolve, but the much-touted native advertising is certainly not going to replace it. And it certainly won’t be be the silver bullet for monetising these outrageously priced social media companies coming out of the valley and elsewhere.

Is the Nordics ready for automated data driven buying and will it be a positive move for the industry?

Gustav Mellentin, CEO, Adform

The Nordics as a region holds around 20 million internet users across four local markets with few dominating publishers. For this reason, standardisation and automation will be key in more efficiently executing the large volumes of small campaigns, capping frequencies across publishers with overlapping users and executing co-ordinated targeted activities across the region.

It therefore makes sense that the Nordics is at the forefront of moving automated data-driven buying forward – the demand and drive for innovation witnessed among leading media agencies and advertisers confirms this viewpoint. The challenge at the moment lies in encouraging the supply side to better adapt to this shift. While some publishers have taken significant steps to benefit from the new opportunities, many show ongoing reticence to change old habits and increasingly miss the boat on the advantages of automation and data targeting.

However, the Nordics should not be underestimated as a hub of innovation and has a strong heritage in delivering and adapting disruptive technologies. Spotify, Skype, Tradeshift and Izettle are just a few examples of where the region has excelled and demonstrated its digital prowess on the global stage. As the Nordics’ leading buy side platform we are proud to play a part in the transformation of the display advertising industry and we feel overriding positive change afoot across the region, where 2012 is already set to result in some tangible growth in automated data driven buying.

Jukka Sundquist, Head of Display, Partner, Klikki

In the long run it is the only move. It is impossible to fight against evolution. The ones who get onboard first will definitely have an advantage. It is time for all the different interested groups to come up with their own strategy regarding the matter.

The ones who are not necessarily seeing this as a positive thing are large publishers. They of course fear that it will reduce their revenue, however, there will always be a place for customised brand-related advertising within a strict media environment. Sales work should be focused on these premium campaigns, and all other inventory should be given to automated buying.

Other interest groups, mainly agencies and advertisers, are at least mentally ready for data-driven buying and see it as a positive move. Nevertheless, even they are looking at different ways to make the most out of these new possibilities. The business models are still developing. In summary, the Nordics are starting to be ready for data-driven buying. We just need to get large publishers involved and all the interest groups need to figure out their business model in this changing environment. The groundwork is now being done.

Joshua Mortensen, Founder, Managing Partner, GlibHippo

Is any market ready for data-driven buying?

But seriously, the Nordics are ready. The markets here remains primarily performance-focused, so to the extent data-driven buying is likely to remain a tool for tactical advertising, the Nordics are good to go.

The online ecosystem here has not been particularly dynamic. An understandable industry provincialism means digital lags behind international developments and the actually high level of local consumer sophistication. Digital is still a bit of a backwater. Data, as a new tool, could inject needed dynamism to online, if it can demonstrably deliver and enough skilled practitioners can be found.

However, what we are really asking advertisers and media agencies – with data-driven buying – is to unlearn the last 100 years of advertising. Determine audience. Buy content matching that audience. This is how it has been done. Convincing advertisers that audiences can be targeted independent of content – that a blackbox makes the model they know irrelevant – is an epic conceptual shift. This can not be understated. While clients and agencies are still asking to see site lists, fixating on the word “premium”, asking for screen shots and using CTR as a KPI, the ambiguity of “audience” buying is going to be a difficult sell.

In my previous post on ExchangeWire, I introduced the concepts of media quality and creative efficiency. The need for these arises as soon as someone starts drawing conclusions about a creative’s ability to draw attention without compensating for the highly volatile media environment in which it was served.

I referred to an ad placement as an empty picture frame with the sole responsibility of effectively displaying its content, no matter what that content is. The media quality becomes the baseline for the impact the impression can deliver. Everything above this baseline is up to the advertiser, and their creative agency, to make sure the placement is filled with appropriate content and a creative aligned with the campaign goals. This can then be evaluated through its creative efficiency, i.e. how viewers of the campaign react to it.

All successful advertising media up until today have a fairly consistent way of delivering their messages. A 30-second spot on TV will always be free from other commercial messages competing with you for viewers attention; it will always be as big as the full screen area and it will always be visible – for a whole 30 seconds! Simply put, TV has the highest possible media quality score every time an ad is displayed.

The online ad impression, on the other hand, usually competes with up to 10 other ads on the screen, and you don’t have the slightest clue how much of your ad is visible or for how long. Different impressions of the very same campaign will have vastly different media quality scores.

As an analyst, you will pretty soon find yourself in a labyrinth trying to judge if a small ad visible for 10 seconds results in a better or worse impact than a larger ad which stays visible for three seconds with two other ads. Due to the vast possibilities for measuring online display, you are constantly forced to make trade-offs between getting more out of one metric at the price of some other metric.

At Burt, we solve this with a simple, easy-to-grasp metric called “media quality”. It is based on the media parameters mentioned and weighed against each other to produce a score between 0 and 10. The key is, it is only when you combine all the components of media quality that you can judge their overall impact; and when you do, you are not really interested in how you reached your score of seven, as long as a media quality rating of 7/10 works for the purpose of your brand building campaign.

Creative efficiency, on the other hand, is an equally simple model, only it is focused on different types of metrics. Here we are interested in the attention the creative solution attracts from the audience. If there is a mouse pointer available, for example, it’s movement patterns – both frequency and duration – serve as a proxy for attention. The same applies to clicks.

What is very important, however, is to isolate the creative effects from the media effects. If you have an in-screen rate of 8%, you should only calculate the CTR based on those 8% of impressions where the user had an opportunity to see the ad if you want to use CTR as a measurement for attention. The same applies for the size of the ad, number of other ads or the visible duration – when the media quality varies, interaction, dwell and click rates will vary correspondingly, even if the creative solution is the same. Compensating for this is key when creating a useful model for creative efficiency.

So, as a publisher, what can you do to make a difference?

Creating more inventory with higher media quality is fairly simple and effective. Large ad formats take up a bigger portion of what your readers pay attention to. They need to stay visible on the screen for a certain amount of time so that a memory actually can be formed. Many other visible ads on the same page will steal attention, increase clutter and reduce your media quality.

Finally, I would recommend reading Gustav von Sydow’s ‘Three golden rules for successful advertising formats’ if you are responsible for developing your advertising product.

Not a publisher? As a brand advertiser, your job starts now.

Given this method of isolating the media effects from your creative, you are good to go with A/B testing of your campaigns. Design multiple creative solutions (variations in copy, color, font, …), evaluate the creative efficiency of each and learn the reason why some of them perform better than others. Use those lessons for your next campaign.

So to wrap this up, what might have appeared as a dilemma, or incompatibility, within display advertising is in fact just two sides of the same coin. When used properly, they enable us to isolate and understand two of the most important contributors to online display advertising – media vs. creative. That means we now truly are able to start maximising the effect of online display by creating even more clever advertisements while buying media which delivers results!

Gustav von Sydow, CEO, Burt is speaking at the upcoming ATS Stockholm event on May 24. Tickets are now on sale for the Nordic’s first data-driven advertising conference.

Display advertising specialist Adform announced last week their opening a new regional office in Lisbon, Portugal. The move comes as a result of an increase in media agencies and online advertisers looking for local support in running display marketing campaigns in the Portuguese market, which previously had been largely run out of Spain.

Adform will enable Portuguese clients to more readily run campaigns through its single platform that hosts a complete gamut of services for display advertising, from traditional ad serving to real time bidding, to dynamic creative optimisation, to rich media and attribution.

To open the new office, Adform has recruited Jose Fradé as its new Business Development Director for Portugal. Fradé will be largely responsible for the opening and development of the local Adform office in Lisbon, looking to complement the rapid growth achieved in the neighbouring Spanish market.

Fradé joins Adform from Havas Digital Portugal, where he was Country Manager working with clients including Peugeot, Citroên, Nike, Reckitt and Barclays. Fradé will report to David Fulton, Adform’s Chief Commercial Officer.

Fradé comments: “The boom in real time bidding across major markets in Europe is now prompting a similar response in Portugal, with publishers looking for solutions to sell their remnant inventory and get more revenue. These changes in the buying landscape together with an influx of creative rich media innovations in how display campaigns are run, provides the perfect base for success in delivering effective campaigns for media agencies and online advertisers alike.”

Fulton adds: “Our local presence in the European markets is a major advantage. Our new Lisbon office will offer the Portuguese display advertising market greater local support and flexibility, meaning we are swift to turnaround responses to any client requests. We have our ears to the ground in terms of what are the best technology developments for our clients so that we can provide services that reflect the local and European needs of our customer base.”

Mark Your Calendars for DoubleClick Insights on June 5

DoubleClick see unprecedented opportunity as the digital media world continues to grow and diversify. What does this mean for the future of buying and selling ads online?

DoubleClick invites everyone to tune in and find out as Google’s Neal Mohan, VP of Display Advertising, sits down with industry leaders to explore how the digital ecosystem is swiftly evolving, and how advertisers and publishers can work better together to chart a path to capitalise on every opportunity, while simultaneously addressing the challenges we face.

The live stream will start on June 5, 2012, at 9:00 am PDT, and you’ll be able to watch from your computer, tablet, or mobile device.

You can register for this virtual event by visiting the DoubleClick Insights Live Stream page.

DoubleClick Insights
Tuesday, June 5th 2012
9:00am – 1:00pm PST

Hashtag for event: #dclkinsights

Your Adobe’s on Fire: Five New Announcements

- Adobe Digital Index Report: Tablet traffic has grown 10x faster than smartphone traffic
Adobe has just announced findings from its most recent Adobe® Digital Index report examining how global website traffic and engagement differ when the visitor is on a tablet, smartphone or personal computer (PC). The report found that tablet devices will generate more Web traffic than smartphones by early 2013, and that consumers find browsing websites on tablets nearly as engaging as on PCs.

The results indicate that tablets have become a channel very distinct from smartphones. While apps have proven a highly valuable and important component of a mobile strategy, companies would be well served to invest in optimising mobile Web pages for the growing and affluent tablet demographic.

- Adobe CQ Cloud Manager
Adobe announced last week the availability of Adobe® CQ Cloud Manager, a Software-as-a-Service application that provides enterprises the ability to easily and quickly launch marketing initiatives in the cloud. With CQ Cloud Manager, part of the Adobe Digital Marketing Suite, digital marketers have access to an integrated set of cloud-hosted Web Experience Management (WEM) services to create, manage, measure and optimise personalised experiences on websites, mobile devices and social media.

- Adobe TagManager privacy solution for digital advertisers and publishers
Adobe announced last week enhancements to Adobe® TagManager, creating a flexible privacy solution that helps digital advertisers and publishers give consumers notice and control over how their data is used online. The solution will initially focus on managing third-party cookies used for behavioral advertising, a requirement of the ePrivacy Directive. Having a flexible, rapidly deployable privacy solution is proving essential for digital advertisers to address privacy issues in an evolving landscape. This is especially true for global companies operating in multiple geographies. Adobe TagManager can help digital advertisers quickly and easily configure data collection practices by geography.

- Adobe CQ5.5 Social Communities
Adobe also announced last week Adobe® CQ 5.5 Social Communities, providing digital marketers with the ability to better leverage social engagement across owned digital properties to build loyalty and drive conversion. Part of the Adobe Web Experience Managementsolution, CQ Social Communities enables organisations to build deeper relationships with and between customers by connecting context from leading social networks to multiple marketing channels, including company websites, mobiles sites and applications.

- Adobe CQ eCommerce
And finally, Adobe announced the availability of Adobe® CQ eCommerce, providing digital marketers capabilities for managing and optimising the entire buying process on websites, mobile devices and social media. With Adobe Web Experience Management (WEM), part of the Adobe Digital Marketing Suite, organisations can now quickly deliver branded, personalised experiences across online channels that incorporate powerful e-commerce functionality. Adobe CQ eCommerce comes integrated with market-leading technology from hybris, a provider of multichannel commerce and communication software.

Japanese NTT Docomo to Acquire Italian Mobile Content Company Buongiorno

Mobile carrier NTT Docomo announced last week a move in its strategy to grow its content business outside of its traditional base in Japan: it issued a tender offer to acquire Buongiorno, a mobile content company based in Italy, paying up to ¥24 billion ($300m) for the assets.

Docomo notes in a statement that the acquisition would be made by its Germany-based subsidiary, Docomo Deutschland, and that Maruo del Rio, Buongiorno’s majority shareholder and chairman with 20% of Buongiorno’s stock, has already agreed to sell his stake to the carrier. The deal would see Buongiorno become a subsidiary of NTT Docomo.

This is not the first time Docomo has made moves to build up its European/rest-of-world business in mobile content, but it is an area that has been lying somewhat dormant for a while. A decade ago, well before the mobile world was hit with the revolution that became the iPhone and then Android following closely behind, Docomo made a foray to bring its popular i-mode mobile content service to the Continent, starting out first with a partnership with France’s Bouygues Telecom with plans to extend that to other markets.

That never really followed through as a successful business, though, when the game for mobile content changed from “walled gardens” run by operators to app stores run by the handset makers. Since then, Docomo has also been involved in an LTE chip joint venture (with Samsung) that ended last month, as well as other European initiatives.

For example, it inked a partnership with France Telecom’s Orange to co-sell a Sharp 3D handset, the Aquos SH80F. And it also owns, in Germany, a mobile payments business net mobile, which in September 2011 got an investment from Docomo of €28.4m, so that it could in turn take a controlling stake in Bankverein Werther, a private German bank with e-commerce and payment service operations.

As Docomo announced in a statement at the time: “Utilizing Bankverein Werther’s existing banking license and credit card licenses, as well as the bank’s main systems, net mobile will be able to greatly enhance its mobile payment platform.”

This time around it looks like Docomo, which has 60 million customers in its home market, wants another local/international partner to help export its business model more effectively.

Buongiorno is one of the oldest mobile content companies around, first being established back in 1999 and currently employing 848 people. And it is profitable: in 2011 it reported revenues of €228.6 million (¥24.52bn; $295m) and operating profit of €7m (¥7.5bn; $9m).

Its services — which include a sprawling list of direct-to-consumer offerings and those it creates in partnership with carriers and others — cover gaming, music, casual content like wallpapers and ringtones, and mobile payments. Its services are used by some 2 billion customers in 57 countries across four continents, the company says, and you can see how this distribution channel could get used by Docomo for the services that it has created itself, in addition to those from Buongiorno.

Docomo notes in its statement: “The acquisition will combine Docomo’s innovative mobile business and services know-how in Japan and other countries with Buongiorno’s advanced mobile technologies and extensive global customer base. As part of expanding the businesses of both companies, Docomo expects to strengthen the foundation of its mobile platform businesses overseas.”

This is also part of the ongoing trend that we are seeing from the likes of other carriers, like Telefonica, to create new lines of revenue that take operators beyond their traditional business of mobile voice and data sales in their traditional geographic footprints. Telefonica last week launched TU-Me new app that offers an all-in-one free voice, text, photosharing offering to all iPhone owners that it hopes can help it snag a new base of users.

Pending regulatory approval, Docomo says that it will officially begin its tender offer at €2 per share, which will last 25 days. Del Rio’s 20 percent holding is equivalent to 111,888,895 shares in Buongiorno.

Yell Acquires Moonfruit

Yell, a leading provider of digital services, announced last week a further important step in its creation of a local eMarketplace with the acquisition of Moonfruit Limited, a leading UK DIY website and online shop builder. The total cash consideration for the acquisition is approximately £18m, funded out of Yell’s cash reserves. Retention bonuses of up to £5.2m will be paid to key Moonfruit management after two years, provided they remain exclusively employed by Yell.

The deal is a significant move in Yell’s ongoing transformation from its established position in providing print and online advertising for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to become a leader in the emerging local eMarketplace. The eMarketplace comprises an innovative platform and digital portal where consumers and SMEs can connect and transact. This acquisition helps Yell secure the foundations for this strategy by significantly enhancing its ability to provide cutting edge websites, mobile sites and simple – “light” – commerce services to millions of SMEs.

The deal complements Yell’s acquisition of multi-store ecommerce leader Znode last year. While Znode technology is providing SMEs with enterprise opportunities through its ecommerce platform, Moonfruit offers them “light” commerce, and the opportunity to enhance their presence online, on mobile and on social. This makes the eMarketplace more accessible to more merchants, enhancing the consumer experience.

The deal provides Yell with potential future cost efficiencies and enhanced capability in areas such as website construction, proofing and editing, reflecting the calibre of Moonfruit’s platform. The deal accelerates Moonfruit’s own expansion worldwide, building on its rapid growth in the UK and U.S.

Mike Pocock, Chief Executive Officer of Yell, comments:: “We believe there are significant strategic, cultural and operating synergies between Yell and Moonfruit. The addition of Moonfruit’s services and team helps us provide competitive advantage to our global SME customers in connecting with consumers through digital, mobile and social.”

Moonfruit’s website Moonfruit.com was launched in the UK in 2000 with a mission to make the web easily accessible for local businesses and consumers. When a customer builds a Moonfruit site, with a click of a button they can add a commerce option, a mobile presence and build a Facebook store, all from the same platform.

Nearly five million websites and 230,000 online shops, mainly in the UK and U.S., have been created using Moonfruit.com technology. Updated HTML5 versions of their sites that build on their existing HTML5 mobile and Facebook versions will be launched later this year.

Yell is acquiring Moonfruit’s technology as well as its technical and design teams. Moonfruit.com will remain a sub-brand. Moonfruit co-founders Chief Executive Officer Wendy Tan-White, Chief Operating Officer Joe White and Chief Technology Officer Eirik Pettersen will take senior roles in Yell Group. Wendy Tan-White and Joe White will report directly to Scott Moore, who joined Yell last December in the new global role of Chief Digital Officer. Scott was previously Partner and Executive Producer at MSN, having held senior roles at Yahoo! and Microsoft businesses.

Wendy Tan-White, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Moonfruit, adds: “We built Moonfruit to make it easy to publish and sell on the internet, and provide stylish web, blog and shop designs as well as easy-to-use web tools for SMEs. Joining Yell and integrating with its local eMarketplace provides access to larger audiences and additional resource to accelerate what is a common vision for the future.”

Moonfruit took £1.57m in funding in 2010 from investors Stephens(US) and Silicon Valley-based angels – Dave McClure 500 Startups, Robbie Van-Adibe and Theorem.

Microsoft rolled out its Ad Exchange in 10 European Markets over the course of the last 12 months. We opened our premium inventory supply to real-time bidding in Sweden, Norway and Denmark in October 2011, and are currently also active in other European markets — UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, and Spain.

We have enabled significant volumes of our discretionary/non-guaranteed inventory (available after premium reserved sales), across premium publishers including MSN and Windows Live.

Progress is strong, ahead of our expectations and we see partners having great buying success leveraging our Exchange inventory for their campaigns. This affirms our belief that not all inventory is equal and that there is a lack of true premium supply in the market, which we have been able to provide through our premium Exchange.

Where is the current level of RTB adoption in the region? Do you have demand partners lined up ahead of any proposed launch?

As expected, we have seen varied levels of adoption across the spread of markets. We have seen a high level of connected buyers and bidders across most markets, with the UK and the Netherlands being the more mature markets in terms of adoption. However, we are seeing that the market gap is closing rather rapidly. Combined efforts from Microsoft, other players and of course Exchangewire to educate and raise awareness about RTB are definitely increasing the speed of adoption.

Our global partners who have leveraged our Exchange in other markets, like the U.S., have been keen to replicate that success in European markets and are connected here too. Besides these global players, the local partners are also playing an important role in the RTB evangelism.

How important will the likes of ad networks be in terms of providing sufficient levels of demand in the exchange?

We have an open approach to demand sources, and see demand coming from a varied range of buyers. Agency trading desks are key partners, and we have always looked to launch with a number of trade desks connected. We also see good demand from specialists such as Infectious, YD, Matiro, and dynamic creative optimising partners such as such as Criteo. Each of these bring their own approach, skills and unique value adds to the Exchange ecosystem.

We also see an increasing emergence of new and local players in EMEA markets and are excited by their potential. The likes of Delta Projects, Klikki and Adform, to name a few, will help fuel this market alongside established trading operations in the Nordic regions.

What role do agencies and their holding groups play right now as far as programmatic buying goes?

Agencies are our primary partners, and we see great adoption and activity across many markets. Microsoft Advertising is very focused on partnering closely with them to help them meet their goals. As more programmatic buying opportunities evolve, these partners will continue to play a crucial role in this space.

As a publisher business, how important is RTB/programmatic buying in the Nordic region?

The Exchange, as one of our sales channels, is very important in any market. We believe in premium value hand-sold and creative work to support top brands and advertisers, and enabling technology to support buying is equally important.

We are just at the beginning of a long curve of benefits of efficiency and reduced friction in the media buying process. The reduction of administrative friction will be good for the whole industry.

Nordic markets are always strong adopters of technology, and real technologists, and so we see RTB becoming an integral part of their buying strategies.

The Microsoft Exchange has developed a position around premium real time liquidity, will this be the same if/when the exchange is launched in the Nordics?

We have actually already gone live in the region. Our goal is to build a global, scaled premium RTB marketplace, and we have launched our Exchange with this proposition across all markets, although depth of inventory sets will vary by market. We are the first global premium publisher of this scale to have put all their non-guaranteed inventory in RTB in all the markets in which we are present. We also strive to match local and regional needs and requirements.

We believe this helps multinational buyers work globally and regionally with us seamlessly, and makes us an easy partner to work with. We are able to deliver them quality inventory whether they want to buy in a reserved manner or via RTB.

Many of the categories on the Nolet “no nonesense” map were replaced with just two: namely, tech enablers and buyers/sellers. He pointed out to the audience that Google was slowly assembling the complete stack, and that many feature companies would get crushed by this formidable end-to-end stack. In fairness to Nolet he did intimate that AppNexus was taking a similar approach albeit with a more open strategy.

The Buyers/Sellers Layer Is Still A Great Business

Tech is a tough business in online advertising. The margins are horrible, and there is a constant need for investment to scale the business. The buyer/seller layer is a good place to be in. Despite the rise of the DSPs and the SSPs the ad network business seems to be holding up well. A shift away from re-targeting, cookie-chasing and into the world of prospecting is giving the web’s greatest business model (FACT!) a new lease of life.

These are the new ad trading specialists of our eco-system, delivering performance for agencies and advertisers. The rebooted ad net model is now complimenting the agency trading desks. The slash-and-burn strategies towards the ad nets seems to have abated somewhat as the smart ad net players have figured a way to work with the big agency groups – building their own tech and data layer on the top of the infrastructure plays (Google, AppNexus, IPONWEB, etc)

Let’s not forget the agency trading desks. The ATD might still be hampered by internal politics and client concerns over hidden margins and – gasp – the media arb. These are issues that most agencies seem to be dealing with competently now. But certain sections of the media seem hostile of an in-house buying capability. Why is there so much negativity around agency trading desks anyway? Agencies are well within their rights to offer this solution to clients – and if they are doing a better job than third-party buyers then they are worthy of their place on the plan.

And we should also mention the independent trading desks – or what ExchangeWire likes to call, the Next Generation Agency (NGA) – who are blazing an optimisation trail across Europe (more on that next week).

The Complete Stack, It Cometh

There has been some serious debate around this in the more intelligent quarters of the industry. Kawaja called it the rise of the advertising operating system. Effectively what we are looking at is maybe 4-5 players (you can chose from about ten candidates at the minute) that will have the ability to offer an infrastructure layer for the rest of the industry to build/trade on top of. It takes a serious amount of cash to develop this – probably between £100 and £150 million. It is simply beyond any one tech vendor in, let’s admit it, a horribly fragmented Europe to raise that kind of money to build a sustainable/competitive solution to the likes of Google.

VCs would pass – suggesting instead a death-spiral pivot into some rubbish mobile social sharing app solution. If you look at most of the feature-focused companies Google has acquired over the past three years, you begin to wonder how the humble European FNAC solution providers will compete with the simplified easy-to-use targeting and optimisation capabilities built into both DFA and DFP.

Let’s Roll-Up The Industry: Europe Needs Its Own Stack

There is no doubt the Improve Digital map is being poured over by VCs and P/E firms looking to see if they can join the dots. And join the dots they should. It might be time to roll it all up. There are going to be 4-5 infrastructure companies in two-to-three years, and as it stands they will be all US-based. Many of the advertising technology companies on the eco-system map are Europeans so we are only applying this strategy to them – and of course they are cheaper in comparison to the heaviily VC-backed US vendors.

If a private equity firm was prepared to give ExchangeWire four hundred million pounds, how would it go about assembling the technology and companies required for the Euro stack? The trick here is to overlay the messy eco-system with geographical and market penetration – as well as tech and development resource. Where would you start? Fill in the blanks as you go along…

Spending £400 Million… The Shopping List For The CES

We need an ad server with Northern Europe, Southern Europe, German and French market penetration. Next we need a native DSP – or a provider who builds customised algos or buying platforms. We need a dynamic creative solution – for re-targeting purposes. Then move on to ad verification, semantic targeting. Move onto the exchange – with SSP/ yield optimisation capability. There’s a data management gap to be filled on both the buy and the sell side so let’s chuck a DMP into the mix. Then we need supply. Pick up some big ad networks in Germany, France and Eastern Europe. Let’s not forget about social, mobile and video so let’s bolt those vendors on to the CES (Complete Euro Stack).

Integration Would Be Painful, But The IPO Would Be Spectacular

You’ve got to be upfront with the P/E firm that has just given you £400 million to roll up the entire Euro ad tech eco-system by telling them straight out that the integration of all this tech will be horrible. It will not be seamless. Far from it. Look at the problems Google has had integrating Teracent into DFA/invite – and that was just a dynamic creative solution. The pay off would be huge though. The company would go public. The IPO would be over-subscribed as you took the new CES public and then onto global domination.

You can’t deny the industry has not been working hard to increase the flow of TV budgets.

Agencies bring video buying under a TV team’s remit

A very early ploy to align video closer to TV was to physically bring agency buying teams closer together. If the TV planner buyers were also buying video then surely more money would flow across? That has not necessarily happened.

Incremental Reach studies

Many argue that unless the incremental reach of a video campaign can be determined then it is going to struggle to increase “investment” in video. This again is evidence that video plays by TV’s rules. Why wouldn’t you lead with a large scale video campaign and assess the incremental reach of a TV spot?

Regardless of this situation, the likes of Tremor and Nielsen have still invested heavily in studies to show this incremental reach. It is doubtful whether it delivers enough credibility to convinces advertisers of the effectiveness of video.

The introduction of GRP metrics

The likes of TubeMogul went one step further and started to display performance that were aligned with GRP metrics. This is a fairly shrewd move but again it is doubtful whether it’s enough to convince an advertiser moving out of the branded content and environments they trust into longer tail RTB inventory. It also feels a like a dilution of the medium’s potential – and rather than speaking in a new data-driven language, reverting to traditional dialogue is seen as an easier bet.

It still feels like video is stuttering and agencies have to take some responsibility for the situation. For too long agencies (some not all) have been the “yes” men with regards to “investment” decisions around video.

It has been too easy to replicate a TV spot schedule and buy it online. The advertiser understands the programming and despite not getting any form of joined up measurement (FYI: TV-to-Online is still incompatible) it has been the path of least resistance in getting some incremental spend. In the agency’s defence, they initially did not have many other options around video. This unfortunately has created a legacy which now threatens the ability to scale the video channel.

An environment has been created where broadcaster content represents perhaps circa 80% of Video investment – while perhaps only accounting for circa 20% of the overall pool of video supply. When you also consider recent reports from Comscore suggesting that the size of the video audience is not increasing, you have to worry how video ad spend will increase. If broadcast content still dominates share of budget and the amount of users watching videos isn’t increasing then two things must happen to ramp-up spend: increase frequency or increase pricing.

If too much power resides with the major broadcasters in the video market, then you have to look to the agencies who have put them in that powerful position. Agency trading deals have and continue to threaten any innovation in the industry. If a major agency network commits to a certain amount of spend for the year (of which video volumes are also rolled up into) then where is the onus to drive greater innovation? However, we must not forget that these trading deals are only in place because advertisers want to be in and around those programmes, and want to ensure their commitments generate the lowest possible price.

The current situation isn’t helping the growth of online video – and despite the prediction of a convergence in the two markets we are likely to see the trend of “investment” disparity continuing between TV and online video.

Evidon announced this week their new partnership with Adobe. The integration will enable Adobe clients to access Evidon’s privacy controls directly though Adobe TagManager, and help them comply with global privacy regulations across all domains, advertisements, applications, and devices. In phase I, they’ll use Evidon InForm to help consumers control their behavioral advertising preferences, including giving them a mechanism to provide their consent to be tracked for OBA—a key requirement of the ePrivacy Directive.

This partnership is significant for two reasons:

First, it will help to ensure the safe use of consumer data. By integrating privacy tools into TagManager, Adobe is now ensuring that their clients capitalise on Big Data and use those tools responsibly, with respect for consumer privacy. That not only helps them comply, but also helps to ingratiate themselves to consumers.

The Evidon privacy tag will be activated through the Adobe SiteCatalyst tag, which is ubiquitous across the internet. This makes it simple for marketers to activate privacy control, and it means privacy assurance for consumers at massive scale. It also means that, as regulations change, privacy controls adapt with them—clients will be able to modify their notice and choice solution on the fly through the tag.

Second, it brings the newest consent tools to market. Adobe clients will hopefully empower consumers and demonstrate their compliance with the ePrivacy Directive in a comprehensive way. Released this week (with a final interface coming on its heels), the Evidon “robust implied consent” solution was designed in concert with European regulators, privacy experts, businesses and consumers themselves. Evidon built it to give people an easy way to provide their consent to be tracked, consistent with regulators’ guidance on how to comply with the Directive, including clear disclosure of all tags and cookies, clear descriptions of each, and an easy way to turn tracking on or off.

PubliGroupe’s Spree7 Appoints Oliver Busch as Managing Director

PubliGroupe announced this week that Oliver Busch has been named Managing Director of Spree7 GmbH, the recently-founded special service provider for online real-time advertising. Busch will take responsibility for the expansion of the joint venture between Swiss-based PubliGroupe and the US technology provider, MediaMath.

Busch, who holds a degree in Business Administration, has extensive knowledge of the online advertising business having joined Spree7 from Parship.com, where he was responsible for the German business and European marketing. Busch has also held roles at BBDO Consulting and Scout24, and was general manager of ad pepper media Germany.

Busch comments: “The market for real-time advertising is extremely exciting, and offers many opportunities for German businesses to benefit from the expertise that Spree7 has to offer. We will use our expertise, combined with MediaMath´s world-leading technology, to secure a competitive edge with a clear agency focus.”

Spree7 aims to enhance the efficiency of agencies and advertisers online advertising space. Each ad impression is acquired on the basis of a data-based bid in real-time. The technology behind this is provided by MediaMath. The technology can be used for branding and performance targets across different channels for display, mobile, social and video inventory.

Rocket Fuel Attracts Adconion MD to Head Up DACH Operations

Rocket Fuel has brought Oliver Hülse, formerly managing director at Adconion Media Group, on board as managing director DACH.

Hülse will be responsible for the growth of Rocket Fuel in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, as the company acts on the growing interest in automated online ad targeting across the region.

The appointment comes off the back of Rocket Fuel’s rapid growth in the UK and U.S. markets. The Silicon Valley firm has experienced growth in the burgeoning technology-led online advertising market.

In the DACH region, Hülse will lead the development of relationships with brand advertisers and agency networks. He will also build the Hamburg-based team and is currently recruiting for sales and account managers.

Hülse started his career in digital media sales before progressing to manage international sales and operations for digital media companies in Germany, signing eight-figure contracts for digital media campaigns across major ad networks, including Google Search.

He was appointed managing director at Adconion Media Group in 2010 and has led the company to greater levels of success, earning a place amongst the most highly-regarded personalities in the industry.

Hülse comments: “The future of digital advertising is all about trading inventory, and Rocket Fuel has some of the best artificial intelligence and data systems on the market. I am already excited by the response from companies in DACH and look forward to building a successful company in this region.”

Dominic Trigg, Managing Director Europe at Rocket Fuel, concludes: “It is a major coup for Rocket Fuel to attract Oliver to this position. He has a wealth of experience in delivering sales and international expansion and I am thrilled to appoint him to the helm of the DACH operations.”

Criteo Event Identifies Five-Point Plan For Big Data

Following an event which gathered the thoughts of advertisers, agencies, publishers and technology providers from across the world of online, Criteo this week aimed to expose the myths behind big data. Featuring presentations from Twitter, Microsoft, Google and Engine; “Exploding the myths behind big data” identified five points which companies should be thinking about online. Big data should be placed at the top of the agenda to make sense of the inordinate amounts of data that are increasingly being collected:

1. Advertisers aren’t capitalising on their own data: Contrary to accepted wisdom, the majority of sales often actually come from existing or active users (up to 70%) rather than new customers. It is therefore imperative that advertisers understand the interactions of this group of individuals.

2. The role of premium content is changing: Despite an increasingly user centric marketing world online, premium content is still important. Context will play a lesser role with a re-emphasis on the performance and returns derived by advertisers from publishers investments in rich content.

3. Advertising is the same whether in social media or on publishing sites: Whether presented as a sponsored tweet or on a publisher’s site, the principles are the same, only the executions differ. Understanding the consumer’s intent in each channel is the main requirement.

4. The importance of fostering creativity: Robin Wight, President Engine comments: “If data is the new oil, then creativity is the new drill.” Data need not be the enemy of creativity, but too much can stifle originality. Better analysis of data can improve understanding of consumer intent, which can stimulate more creative executions. Increasingly “Data scientists” or “Detectives” will be required to provide this insight, and data literacy will drive the next level of growth for creative advertising.

5. Analytics doesn’t just sit in the analytics team: The whole organisation, from the CEO downwards, needs to respond to data in real time. There is a growing talent gap for the right people to work in these roles. It needs to be at the top of the agenda for companies as data is changing the way in which we do business.

Michael Steckler, Managing Director Northern Europe & Benelux Criteo, adds: “Most of the growth online is coming from companies that are able to manage an inordinate amount of data. I see advertising following the same route – thriving in the era of big data means analysing it in ways that add value to your customers, understanding consumer intent and then delivering compelling, creative executions that transform intent into measurable action and sales. For me the event showed there is a massive opportunity for advertisers to use data not only to understand consumers online but also to provide them with creative and relevant content.”

nugg.ad Opens New Targeting Opportunities for Microsoft’s Advertising’s Polish Customers

The more advertisers know about their target groups (behaviour on the site, lifestyle, product interest) the better they can adjust ads to its needs. W&V Vermarktercheck, from November 2011, valued Microsoft Advertising’s targeting offer as the best on the online market. Working with the largest European targeting platform, nugg.ad, it is now extended to Predictive B.T.

A key determinant of success ‘PBT’
With help, PBT advertisers can even more precisely drive offers to their target group — based on its interests, sociodemographic data and ways of using the internet. “This targeting form allows us to issue ads precisely on those platforms where at any given time is found the target group,” explains Markus Frank, Director Sales & Marketing Microsoft Advertising. “Drastically limiting the losses arising from advertisers dispersion of action.”

For Microsoft Advertising this creates new opportunities, especially in display advertising. For the first time in branding campaigns it is possible to optimally consolidate three elements – brand awareness, popularity of the brand and purchase intentions. By working with nugg.ad, Microsoft Advertising may also additionally utilise the Open Targeting Platform in extensive campaigns covering a range of markets.

Developed by nugg.ad, Predictive Behavioral Targeting technology is based on cookie that are placed by nugg.ad through a users browser. In this way, it obtains information about the behavior of internet users of MSN. Compliance with the ePrivacy Directive is assured to a degree even beyond the requirements of EU law: according to nugg.ad, they are currently the only targeting technology provider holding a valid certificate for data protection, EuroPriSe, given by Landeszentrum für Datenschutz Schleswig-Holstein (Independent Centre for Data Protection of the Land Schleswig-Holstein).

“In addition to an effective solution for the premium segment of our customers and unique opportunities opening for branding companies, we offer first of all full security in terms of data protection,” says Karim H. Attia, a board member nugg.ad. “Thus, Microsoft Advertising expands its targeting capabilities, offering customers more attractive advertising offers. We look forward to working with Microsoft. ”

Small numbers of users visiting a particular Web site participate in a survey aimed at obtaining additional information about their interests and lifestyle. On this basis, in combination with data on user behavior on the Internet, nugg.ad predicts interests and ways of using the internet by other users. In the goal of accurately determining the target groups, from the viewpoint of advertisers, internet users are assigned to different segments, which can be combined in any way. This will allow advertisers to specify each time the user group which they actually intend to reach.

nugg.ad technology aims to enable customers of Microsoft’s advertising business even more targeted campaigns, and in turn, Microsoft Advertising aims to keep to a minimum the losses caused by the dispersion of activities, and the message will actually reach the intended recipient.