Auto-Update: Mondelez takes trading halfway in-house

The week in programmatic buying and ad tech at a glance

Mondelez takes control of trading with TubeMogul, SMG deal
Global CPG Mondelez has formed a partnership with digital video company TubeMogul, and plans to establish a dedicated media buying team at its AOR, Starcom MediaVest, to work with the platform. According to Media Post, Mondelez will retain ownership of all campaign data and make decisions about technology platforms that SMG will use for trading. In other words, Mondelez will be pursuing a halfway point between outsourcing trading and bringing it in-house, which should help them get a handle on issues surrounding pricing and transparency, without putting in the heavy investment to build an in-house trading desk.
Read more at Media Post

Xaxis launches data management platform
Xaxis, the agency trading desk for GroupM, has invested $25MM to build a proprietary DMP. The platform, called Turbine, will be an “always-on” system that profiles audiences in real-time using data from clients, campaigns, publishers and third party providers. Xaxis CEO Brian Lesser told Media Post that Turbine will make Xaxis targeting more predictive, rather than relying on historical data. The trading desk will continue to use its current proprietary DMP, Zeus, for analytics.
Read more at Ad Exchanger

Facebook amps up ad targeting, drives fears of data leakage
In a controversial move, Facebook has decided to begin using data from partner websites for audience targeting. The social network collects data on users visiting thousands of websites, through its many partnerships with publishers and advertisers. Until now, it has not made that data available to advertisers. With the new targeting features, Facebook will be able to patch together each user’s activity across the web, and build better audience profiles for advertisers to use on its site. Ad Exchanger noted that Facebook may draw criticism for sharing partners’ data with their competitors. Although Facebook won’t be directly sharing the data with anyone, it could still benefit competitors indirectly — for example, information about Target’s online visitors could be used to build audience profiles that Wal Mart uses in its Facebook campaigns. Adweek, meanwhile, speculated that Facebook’s data sharing move is a sign it plans to step into the ring with Google as a full-on display ad network, and will soon be selling ad inventory on behalf its partner publishers. Media Post focused on implications for consumer privacy.

Singapore telecom company goes on $385MM ad tech shopping spree
Amobee, a mobile-focused ad tech platform that was bought two years ago by Singaporean telecom company SingTel, has acquired two major ad tech companies, Adconion and Kontera, for $235MM and $150MM respectively. Adconion brings a large ad network and supply-side technology, while Kontera focuses on content marketing, social, and analytics. Amobee CEO Mark Strecker says the move is intended to expand Amobee’s offering from mobile to the larger digital space. Although SingTel has 500 million mobile subscribers in Southeast Asia and likely has some designs on getting better access to them, Amobee’s business is global, and the Adconion buy primarily expands its reach in North America and Australia.
Read more at Tech Crunch

Horizon Media and True[x] develop engagement-based currency
New York media agency Horizon Media, together with True[x], a demand-side ad tech company, says it has developed a way to buy media based on engagement — meaning advertisers will only pay for ads that a consumer interacted with. Horizon says its new pay-per-interaction model is “fraud-proof,” since bots find it much harder to simulate true engagement than clicks or pageviews. The new currency builds on a wider movement in the industry to move away from clicks and clickthroughs as the yardstick of ad performance, and focus instead on richer forms of user interaction.
Read more at Adweek

Media Post debuts “RTB 500” exchange tracker
Fully buying into the stock exchange/ad exchange analogy, Media Post has developed a composite index of the top 500 digital media properties, including AOL, CBS and the New York Times. Using public data, the index tracks the value of impressions trading on the exchanges, to give industry insiders a general idea of how the RTB market is performing. It also breaks out indices for various publisher sectors like entertainment, news and health. On Monday, the RTB 500 was down four points.
Read about the index at Media Post