Mobile gives Google "long-term growth insurance." That's how iSuppli's research group IHS Screen Digest describes one of three pillars enabling the Mountain View, Calif. tech company to continually grow revenue. Search, the cash cow, and video/display, which generate short-term revenue growth, remain the other two pillars. When Google releases year-end and Q4 earnings Thursday it will report a 20.2% lift in search ad revenue to $25.4 billion compared with the prior year, according to IHS. Revenue from display advertising will rise by an estimated 61% for the year. But some believe it's mobile that could become the cash cow in the future. On mobile, Google benefits from revenue generated by the increasing popularity of the Android operating system and the company's acquisition of AdMob. But the tech company isn't the only one profiting from mobile. The Partnership at Drugfree.org, a nonprofit organization that helps parents prevent and find treatment for child drug and alcohol abuse, launched a mobile advertising campaign on ChaCha. The campaign, which ran during the last three weeks in December, yielded more than 9.8% engagement rates from the best-performing ads. The Partnership at Drugfree.org measured success by the percentage of consumers clicking through the text message to the non-profit's Web site. SMS text user response rates had an average of 4%, according to Hilary Baris, digital media and marketing director for The Partnership at Drugfree.org. The campaign ran during the last three weeks in December, supporting SMS text messaging and mobile video advertising (MMS). It provides answers when asking about drugs, medication, alcohol and related topics. The goal is to prevent teens and tweens from abusing medicines through messages sent to teens and parents based on age and topic, aimed at helping educate them about the health risks posed by teen medicine abuse. ChaCha users ask more than 20 million questions per year related to medicine, drugs, alcohol and treatment. They range from "What is the most addictive drug in the world?" to "What is one of the best drug rehab centers in the U.S.?" to "What does marijuana do to you?" to "Can you get high from cough medicine?" Baris wants to keep running the mobile campaign, but doesn't have a marketing budget. All campaign media for the organization is donated to the non-profit. Last year the team of three at The Partnership at Drugfree.org managed to scrape up $80 million in advertising support. "We worked last year with Hulu, ValueClick, Women's Health," she says. "Mobile is just one of those things we're all tethered to, so it makes sense to reach out to parents through this type of campaign." Traffic to ChaCha's Web site grew 116% in 2010, according to comScore. ChaCha also closed $3 million of additional funding including $900,000 of outstanding warrants from new investor Qualcomm Ventures. This extends the round led by Silicon Valley investors VantagePoint Venture Partners and Rho Ventures in October 2010. In December, ChaCha.com hit 28 million unique Web visitors and mobile users, according to Omniture reports. It is estimated that more than 32 million unique users will visit the site by the end of January. In December, the company announced that it answered the billionth question: How do you say friend in Elvish according to the Lord of the Rings? The response: "'Mellon' is the Elvish word for 'friend' in Lord of the Rings."
Adconion Media Group plans to announce Thursday the spinoff of the Joost Video Network into a stand-alone business unit. The newly launched digital media company will provide premium branded solutions for advertisers and brand marketers seeking to target audiences with in-stream and in-banner video advertising. Nick Higgins will lead the new unit as executive vice president. He previously held the position of head of global video at Adconion Media Group. Prior to joining Adconion, Higgins was at MSN, where he held several senior positions during the past 10 years. Adconion acquired the assets-digital rights management, video player, and content distribution of Joost from ex-Skype founders in November 2009, and then launched the Joost Video Network in February 2010 across North America, Europe and Australia. Since then, Tyler Moebius, CEO of Adconion Media Group, says the company quadrupled revenue to $30 million and expects to triple digital growth in 2011, making it the largest global video player operating in more than seven countries. Joost is not the top video destination site but was No. 2 early last year in terms of reach, Moebius says, citing comScore. The company serves display ads to more than 400 million viewers monthly. The opportunity to become aggressive and capitalize on the video market led Adconion to spin off the network into a separate business unit. Moebius believes the move will position the company to capture more of the video market. Unlike other pure-play video networks, he says this will allow Adconion to reach across a broader suite of products such as pre-roll, in-banner video, expandable ads, road blocks and custom skins and integrations. Joost also offers branded entertainment services through its partnership with RedLever, a global studio specializing in developing and producing brand-integrated content for the Web. The stand-alone business unit plans to leverage its core strengths in its owned-and-operated site, and non-exclusive and exclusive partnerships. Moebius says Adconion gives advertisers access to premium inventory through exclusive content deals. But the company still has a way to go. Video ads reached 49% of the total U.S. population an average of 36.8 times in November, according to comScore's latest stats. Americans viewed more than 5.4 billion video ads in November, with Hulu generating the highest number of video ad impressions at more than 1.1 billion. Tremor Media Video Network ranked second overall and highest among video advertising networks, with 477 million ad views, followed by adap.tv at 446 million, and Microsoft Sites at 427 million. The plan to hire about 30 employees to support the new division this year will increase the dedicated Joost sales staff to about 80 people. The company basically serves agencies such as Fortune 500 and 1000 companies, those buying video solutions from Hulu, ABC, Microsoft, and portals.
Bonnier made a splash last April when it unveiled an iPad edition of Popular Science, built with its Mag+ digital magazine platform. Since then the publisher has turned out iPad versions of 10 other titles including Popular Photography, Flying and Babytalk. Now Bonnier is turning its attention to advertising on the iPad and rival devices -- teaming with storied creative agency CP+B to develop new ad formats for tablet magazines. "In developing Mag+, we were first focusing on the needs of editors and designers and did a lot of work to make the reading experience terrific for users," said Megan Miller, Bonnier's R&D program director, who is leading the tablet ad project. "The next natural phase is to focus on advertising." With nearly 100 new tablets launching earlier this month at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, she noted that the category is poised to expand rapidly in 2011 with new Android-based and other devices. "The tablet market is about to explode and when many more consumers have devices in their hands it's important that we're dialed in on the monetization side as well as on the editorial side," she said. Technology research firm IDC projects the tablet market will nearly triple to 44.6 million units shipped this year, with the U.S. representing nearly 40% of the total. By next year, worldwide shipments are expected to grow to 70.8 million. While Motorola, Research in Motion, Samsung and other manufacturers are launching new tablets, as of the third quarter 2010 the iPad was still dominant, with 90% market share, according to IDC. The initial stage of Bonnier's ad effort, already underway, involves research focused on how consumers use print and iPad versions of magazines as well as getting feedback from advertisers and individual publishers within the media corporation. By mid-February, the company expects to have research results to publish, followed by a series of ad concepts created by CP+B for the Mag+ platform across Bonnier titles, starting with Popular Science in late spring. Until now, the publisher has created customized iPad ads using Mag+ for advertisers including American Express, Sprint, and GE. The two features that marketers have been most focused on in iPad ads are video and embedded links back to their sites or for information on products, according to Miller. "But we don't think just adding a TV spot is going to be as good as adding features native to the platform," she said. That means creating units that take full advantage of digital interactivity, social media and APIs for online services from Google or other companies. Bonnier selected CP+B to partner with on the tablet project because of its track record for innovative digital work. That includes its Whopper Sacrifice campaign on Facebook for Burger King, its crowd sourcing of another client's logo and redesigning its own home page to be fully socially integrated. "[CP+B] always seems to push the boundaries with their campaigns. For every client they work with, they really go outside the box for new solutions," said Miller. Bonnier is hoping the agency does the same in inventing tablet ad formats. "Tablets have enabled publishers to re-imagine the magazine, and over the last year there have been newsworthy advancements in the space, but advertising has not kept up," says Winston Binch, partner/ managing director at CP+B, in a statement. Bonnier and other publishers including Conde Nast and Hearst are still trying to figure out pricing for iPad versions of magazines and how to balance up-front charges with advertising. A Knowledge Networks study released this week showed that 86% of iPad users preferred receiving magazine and other content free in exchange for viewing advertising. Only 13% said they were willing to pay. Bonnier's flagship Popular Science app for the iPad has averaged about 10,000 to 15,000 downloads a month -- only a fraction of its print circulation. After initially charging $4.99 per issue, the company in December lowered the price to $2.99 as part of its experimentation with publishing on the Apple tablet. Bonnier is also looking forward to when Apple will allow publishers to offer subscriptions more widely on the iPad instead of having to sell each issue separately -- a limitation that has frustrated magazine publishers for whom subscriptions are a crucial part of their business. "The subscription model, pricing and figuring out how best to serve ads is all part of the strategy," said Miller.
As further evidence of social media's rising currency, email service provider Emailvision on Wednesday announced the acquisition of social media marketing firm ObjectiveMarketer. Indeed, as social media is moving from a novelty to a mainstream form of communication for brands, Emailvision CEO Nick Heys believes it has created a disruptive force in online marketing. "Social media has rapidly evolved from becoming a personal habit to a business-critical form of communication and revenue generation for brands," said Heys. "Online marketers need to manage marketing programs across all of the major social media channels." Founded back in 1999, Emailvision's clients are expressing a growing interest in social media, and more sophisticated campaign measurement. "It's also evident that many email marketers are increasingly required to be community managers," Heys added. "They need the tools that can rapidly help them to adapt to this new role." ObjectiveMarketer's software presently uses Cisco WebEx, Answers.com, BMW Motorrad, and MINI Colombia. According to Heys, ObjectiveMarketer's social capabilities will complement Emailvision's flagship product, Campaign Commander, which is used by online marketing managers to manage their email and mobile campaigns. Going forward, Heys said he was committed to making immediate investments in ObjectiveMarketer's research and development so as not to let its edge dull. Today, Emailvision claims to deliver over 4 billion email messages per month on behalf of roughly 3,000 clients.
The ad industry's self-regulatory privacy initiative is advancing this week, with additional marketers and compliance companies set to start deploying new icons that aim to inform Web users about online ad targeting. TRUSTe is expected to announce Thursday that it has been approved by the Digital Advertising Alliance to provide the behavioral advertising icons indicating that ads are being served based on data collected from consumers as they surf the Web. With the move, TRUSTe will join Evidon (formerly Better Advertising) as well as DoubleVerify in providing icons. TRUSTe, which recently abandoned an attempt to launch its own behavioral-targeting icons, expects to start powering the new icons by March. (TRUSTe continues to offer its own seal of approval for e-commerce sites and other publishers.) Among the targeting companies expected to receive icons from TRUSTe is Media6Degrees. DoubleVerify, which was itself recently approved by the DAA as a compliance provider, plans to soon start providing the icons to advertisers including Verizon, Qantas, Toyota, Hyundai and Kia. In addition, Collective also plans to announce today that it has partnered with Evidon for the icons and will use those provided by that company in ads placed through Collective's network. Collective also will enable the 28 publishers that use its technology platform -- including EverydayHealth.com, AARP, and Internet Broadcasting -- to easily serve ads with icons powered by Evidon. Exactly when Collective will start offering the icons remains unknown, but Justin Evans, senior vice president of audience insights, says he expects it to happen soon. "It's a high priority for us and we will have it up in the very short term," he says. The icon -- a lower-case i inside a triangle -- is aimed at notifying consumers about behavioral advertising, or tracking users and sending them ads based on sites visited, and allowing them to opt out. Industry self-regulatory principles call for such notifications when behaviorally targeted ads appear, but actually deploying the icons is proving technologically complex. One of the many technical issues stems from the fact that publishers, advertisers and agencies might be working with separate compliance companies. For instance, a Web publisher that uses Collective's technology platform might display an ad from a marketer that obtains icons from DoubleVerify. In that case, the companies are expected to use a process dubbed "collision resolution" to determine which provider will supply the icon, Evans says. He says the collision-resolution standards call for the icon to be provided by the company working with the advertiser or agency, in case of a conflict with the publisher. The recent developments come as policymakers are increasingly calling for new privacy regulations. The Federal Trade Commission recently suggested that Web companies should create a do-not-track mechanism enabling users to opt out of all online data collection. Also, the Commerce Department recently urged ad industry groups and consumer advocates to work together to develop enforceable self-regulatory privacy policies based on Fair Information Practices principles.
Marin Software will announce Thursday support for global advertisers and agencies operating in Asia Pacific and Japan. The company plans to open offices in Singapore and Shanghai to partner with Baidu, China's No. 1 Internet search provider, to deliver reporting, management, and optimization of campaigns in the search software company's platform. The partnership agreement means Marin can now support global search engines, as well as Asian languages and currencies. Most requests for the integration came from agencies such as Razorfish, Salesforce, Neo@Olgivy, Ayudante, and RedBricksMedia running large-scale multinational paid search programs, according to Matt Lawson, vice president of marketing at Marin. "We're seeing growth, not just domestically, but worldwide," he says. "We need to serve clients across the world." The integration gives Marin clients access to more than 60% of Chinese searches, enabling them to expand marketing reach to the world's fastest growing online population. Research firm iSuppli pegs the local Chinese search market at about $1.6 billion in 2010, up about 60%.