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A round-up of essential programmatic and ad tech stories
The digital ecosystem
Digital forecasts are in: Zenith says $121B in 2014, eMarketer says $138B
According to ZenithOptimedia projections released yesterday, global spend on display, search and mobile will reach $121 billion by the end of the year, up 16.5% from 2013. The estimates put digital at 21% of total ad spend.
eMarketer digital spend forecast, 2012-2018
eMarketer also released its more optimistic projections for global digital spend last week. It pegs total digital spend at $137.5 billion in 2014, or 25% of total spend. But although eMarketer’s estimates are larger than Zenith’s, the former predicts slower growth in digital: 14.8% from 2013 to 2014. eMarketer also anticipates slower total ad spend growth this year: 5.2% compared to Zenith’s 5.5%.
AppNexus buffs up exec, adds ex-CEO of 24/7 Media
AppNexus has a new COO/CFO: Jonathan Hsu, who shepherded 24/7 Real Media through its $649-million purchase by WPP in 2007. Since Hsu was CEO while 24/7 was still a public company, some see it as a step towards an AppNexus IPO, though CEO Brian O’Kelley told AdWeek that won’t happen before next year.
AppNexus also brought on a new CTO, Geir Magnusson Jr., and two senior vice-presidents – Casey Birtwell for strategy and ops, and Michelle Dvorkin for people.
Shiny new ad solutions
Example of a Disqus native ad placement
Amazon gets into the set-top game with Fire TV
Amazon has announced a new $99 streaming media set-top box, Fire TV. The anticipated move puts Amazon in direct competition with digital set-top boxes like Apple TV and Google Chromecast as they try to eat into the digital cable and satellite market. Fire TV makes Amazon the first digital company to offer original content and a set-top box together in a single subscription package, though it’s unlikely to be alone for long.
Update: A recent report from The Verge claims Google is prepping its own (very similar) entry into the set-top box market, called Android TV.
Buy a top comment with Disqus
Attempting to follow the formula set by Twitter’s promoted tweets, social commenting engine Disqus is offering advertisers the ability to sponsor comments on sites selected from Disqus’ 3 million-large network. Like promoted tweets, sponsored comments are distinctly marked as sponsored content, but a lot depends on how publishers’ comment communities react to having their conversations topped with an ad.
Data, metrics, insight
Google onboards Nielsen OCR for DoubleClick inventory
In a show of confidence, Google has integrated Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings into its DoubleClick exchange and ad server. Following a deal to integrate comScore’s validated Campaign Essentials in February, clients now have access to OCR and vCE data for campaigns run on inventory sold through Google’s exchange, including YouTube video. Although Google initially held a monopoly on YouTube measurement with its ActiveView product, both comScore and Nielsen can now include YouTube views in campaign reports.
On May 1, Google will begin offering audience guarantees based on either OCR or vCE data, depending on which provider individual advertisers prefer to use. For Nielsen, integration with Google means access to a wider breadth of digital inventory, and the addition of all-important YouTube viewership to its cross-platform video measurement.
IAB finalizes display viewability standards, video still a work in progress
The IAB has published a revision of its viewability guidelines for online display and video advertising. The new guidelines set a tentative definition for a viewable video impression as being at least 50% on-screen for two seconds. As True[x] CEO Joe Marchese notes in a column for MediaPost, the new definition doesn’t include audio, even though many measurement providers consider a muted video to be non-viewable. It’s also not clear, he says, whether two seconds of a 30-second video is enough for any useful information to be conveyed by an ad.
