AppNexus, an ad-buying “platform,” has raised $5 million in round led by Kodiak Venture Partners, along with Venrock and First Round Capital. The company is one of many trying to take advantage of “real-time” bidding for Web display ad inventory.
The man who helped shape CBS’s standalone Web video strategy explains himself, for the record.
Microsoft bought ad exchange company AdECN more than two years ago. And unless you’ve been paying very close attention, that’s the last you ever heard of it.
This should finally change next year. People familiar with Microsoft’s plans say the company intends to open the exchange for business in January, which will allow online ad buyers and sellers to match up in real time. That will put it several months behind Google, which opened up its ad exchange in September.
I’ve been reporting a steady drip of cautiously optimistic forecasts for the ad business, but this one is less sunny: A JP Morgan survey of ad buyers says they’re unlikely to boost spending until next year.
Ad exchanges–giant, automated markets for online advertising buyers and sellers–are supposed to be a huge deal. So why doesn’t anyone want to run them anymore?
Last month, Google lost Michael Rubenstein, the head of its ad exchange, shortly before the ad giant formally rolled out the service to the public. Now Jeff Green, the top guy at Microsoft’s AdECN exchange, is out as well.
Web advertisers are trying hard to create ads you can’t look away from. But they can get a little too disruptive.
CEO Tim Armstrong says he’s still overhauling the Internet company in advance of its spinoff from Time Warner, but he has hopeful noises to make about ad sales. He has nothing, however, to say about chats with Microsoft.
Even when the M&A market was shut down, Wall Street couldn’t stop speculating about GE’s intentions for its NBC Universal unit. And now that it’s deal-making time again, the chatter is getting very noisy.
Hence the flurry of coverage over yesterday’s remarks by Vivendi CEO Jean-Bernard Levy, in which he said…not very much.
Google is about to flip the switch on its long-awaited Ad Exchange.
The search giant will reportedly open up its AdX service, which is supposed to bring together ad buyers and sellers the same way a stock market does, within the next two weeks. AdX isn’t a surprise, but it is a big deal.
The cash-strapped New York Times, which has put the Boston Globe and its other New England properties up for sale, wants you to know that it’s in no way having a fire sale. Boston Globe employees appeared to have taken that message at face value.
Google employs about 20,000 people, and I don’t expect to write a story every time one leaves. That said, here’s another one: Michael Rubenstein, who ran DoubleClick’s Ad Exchange unit and who was overseeing the same project after Google bought his old employer, has left “to pursue another opportunity.”
Get used to headlines like this: Disney is buying up comic powerhouse Marvel for $4 billion. The cash and stock deal values Marvel at $50 a share, up almost 30 percent from its Friday close.
We’ll get more details during a conference call later this morning, but if you want to kill time until then, you can play amateur M&A guy and draw up your own list of big media companies that will be buying or selling in the next year or so.
Stressed about making tomorrow morning’s deadline to submit a bid for the Boston Globe? No worries! The New York Times, which is selling the paper it bought in 1993, is telling prospective buyers to take their time. Goldman Sachs, which is running the auction for the Times, had originally told bidders to submit their offer by July 8. But as of last night, that deadline has been pushed back, with no new deadline to replace it.
Google has already shut down its radio and print advertising programs–because “they didn’t work well enough,” in CEO Eric Schmidt’s words. But the company is still hoping that its foray into TV pans out. Latest (small) milestone: The search giant is boasting that it has gotten marketers to commit “upwards of seven figures to buy ads” through its automated system.
The traditional publishing business is grim, but if you broaden your perspective and look at the rest of the media business, things are starting to look… not horrible.
Granted, “not horrible” doesn’t equal “good times are here again.” But I keep hearing that the sickening decline in advertising spending has stopped, at least, and that some marketers are actually spending money again.
Peter Kafka has been covering media and technology since 1997, when he joined the staff of Forbes magazine. Most recently, he has been the managing editor of the tech and media Web site, Silicon Alley Insider. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
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