WPP has agreed to acquire AKQA, considered a pioneer in the digital agency space and one of the last big independent digital agencies. The holding company said Wednesday that the deal was subject to regulatory approval. The Dublin-based holding company also announced the start-up of a new Silicon Valley-based firm, WPP Ventures, which will explore new digital investment opportunities. AKQA chairman Tom Bedecarré will lead the new start-up, WPP confirmed. Bedecarré will remain in his AKQA role as well. The agency will continue to operate as a stand-alone entity under WPP, led by Bedecarré and agency founder and CEO Ajaz Ahmed, the holding company said. The shop, whose work has been recognized with 19 agency of the year awards and numerous other accolades, was founded in 2001. It provides an array of digital services, including social media, mobile, interactive experiences, gaming and content creation. Commenting on the deal Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO, WPP stated that the holding company has “admired [the agency’s] creativity and technological skills for a long time, along with their outstandingly effective and award-winning work for clients.” Clients include Delta, Diageo, EDF, GAP, Google, Microsoft Xbox, Nike, Target, Unilever and Virgin Money, among others. Terms weren’t disclosed, but WPP said the agency had gross assets of $282 million at the end of last year with revenues of $189 million. Revenues at the agency are expected to grow nearly 22% this year to $230 million. The shop employs 1,160 worldwide with offices in the U.S., Europe and Asia. “With increased resources and access to new geographies, our partnership with WPP will fuel the next level of … opportunity, delivering innovation and creativity at scale,” AKQA founder Ahmed stated.
Marketers have continually questioned Twitter's ability to produce a viable search engine. They may soon get their answer. John Wang, former search engineer at LinkedIn, joined the real-time social marketing site to work on the "next-generation Twitter search infrastructure" as a software engineer working on open-source projects. Providing insight into the direction of Twitter search, Wang explains his interest in real-time and semi-structured search systems, with a specialty in full text search, semi-structured, vertical and faceted. He believes the Web is heading into real-time information, similar to real-time bidding on display advertisements that process data to target ads on the fly based on consumer clicks and preferences. Ruslan Belkin also joined Twitter from LinkedIn in March, as director of engineering, search and relevance. While Twitter can process real-time searches, the challenge becomes building the technology to turn search keywords and phrases into actionable data that serves the most useful information and target ads in real-time. Twitter began making search improvements since its acquisition of Summize in 2008. About a year ago, the company began talking up changes to its search infrastructure. At the time, Twitter began providing personalized search, which offers more relevant results along with images and videos related to the query. When users search for a name, they see tweets alongside that person's @username in the search results. For example, previously, searching for "Justin Bieber" might only serve up tweets that included the phrase "Justin Bieber," without @justinbieber. Now, Twitter shows tweets with @justinbieber in the search results. This happens when Twitter's technology becomes confident that the real name and user name match. Twitter also made improvements to its search widget, adding relevance and duplicate filters. Now those widgets provide more relevant search results. Aside from search improvements, Twitter's Web site lists close to 100 job openings, from systems development to advertising and sales. The company is looking for an ad quality product manager to identify and implement quality signals, predictive models and data analysis to serve up the perfect ads to the correct site visitors. Twitter also wants to hire an Android mobile product manager responsible for Twitter’s offerings across various Android devices, including mobile phones, tablets and televisions.
Viewstream, a San Francisco-based digital agency, took home two awards at the 33rd Annual Telly Awards. The awards were given for Viewstream's work on two different "minidocumentary-style videos" for its clients. Viewstream won a Bronze Award in the “Creative Video” category for a video created for Autodesk software. A second Bronze Award was received in the “Editing” category for a video produced for Microsoft. “Being awarded for this work by the Telly Council is an honor for us, and serves as encouragement to continue developing an authentic approach to storytelling,” said Viewstream CEO John Assalian in a statement.
Kenshoo, a digital marketing software company with North American headquarters in San Francisco, Tuesday launched the Kenshoo Socialites program. Kenshoo describes the program as “an advanced training and certification initiative that helps clients learn how to more effectively build and optimize social marketing campaigns.” Sivan Metzger, Kenshoo Social’s general manager, said in a statement, “The Kenshoo Socialites program provides our clients with an extensive tool set and proven approach to ramping up social media.”
San Mateo-based Adap.tv Thursday announced its Campaign Optimizer for video, a "first-of-its-kind technology" that predicts the results of a campaign before running a single impression. The Campaign Optimizer will utilize historical data to analyze the impressions and predict results, which Adap.tv says will be accurate. Media buyers will be able to use Campaign Optimizer to predict the effects of specific changes to a campaign. For example, buyers can adjust their goals for a specific ad and see the projected trade-off between price and performance, as well as the impact on available inventory. "[Our] Campaign Optimizer takes the mystery out of video advertising performance by providing media buyers with the information and tools they need to create the results they want," said Toby Gabriner, president of Adap.tv in a statement. Capaign Optimizer will be available to platform and marketplace buyers in July 2012.
Roaring Pajamas, a San Carlos-based digital marketing agency, is providing new SEO audits for its clients. Google’s recent algorithm updates – “Panda” and “Penguin” – caused search performance to decrease for many companies, making audits desireable. “We’re addressing the needs of our customers by helping them to see and repair the factors affecting their search engine performance,” Roaring Pajamas president Melanie Yunk said in a statement. The audits are only being conducted for clients in the United States and Canada.