The Web ad industry has gotten crazily complicated . But advertisers’ goals remain as simple as ever: Put their messages in front of people who will care about them. Ad tech firm Resonate has a simple pitch along those lines: It says it can figure out what different groups of Internet users care about, and where to find them on the Web. The Reston, Virgina-based startup has been at it for four years, and just raised a big series B round led by Revolution Growth, the new fund led by former AOLers Steve Case, Ted Leonsis and Donn Davis . Resonate won’t announce the total amount of the raise, but a person familiar with the company says it’s $22 million. Earlier investors like Greycroft Partners, LLC and iNovia Capital put another $7 million into the company, and some of them have reupped as well. Lots of ad tech companies promise to target Web surfers based on their online behavior, and some are now saying they can do they can tie-in offline behavior, like voting records (!), as well. For now, at least, Resonate is avoiding that kind of targeting. Instead it recruits panels of Internet users, asks them to complete comprehensive surveys on their likes, values, etc., and tracks their surfing patterns. Then it uses that data to figure out where to find people who will be most receptive to particular pitches. The idea: While marketers might want to advertise a new light salad dressing on a food site that caters to women, Resonate might figure out that sports site with a big male audience would be a better bet. Resonate started out selling itself to political advertisers, and CEO Bryan Gernert says he’ll be doing a bunch of that this year. But he says the company is primarily focused on brand advertising, and counts McDonalds, Verizon and Toyota as clients. Last year Resonate did “north of $10 million” in revenue, he says.
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First there was the Super Bowl slam, where drivers of Chevy Silverado trucks lament the loss of their buddy Dave, who doesn't survive an apocalypse because he drove a Ford. Now Chrysler runs a national spot from Doner that poses the question: What if you were to take away horsepower, torque and warranty coverage from a Ram? "Well," says the grizzled voice-over, "you'd end up with a Ford F-150." A dogfight has raged for decades in the truck category, where sniping at the competition has been a puerile pastime. But the jabs seem to be coming faster and harder of late, as rivals
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It's the winter that never came. Across most of the country, a lack of snow and frigid air has left marketers in the lurch. Winter boots and snow shovels are languishing on store shelves while a brisk business is done in live plants and lightweight jackets. It was the fourth-warmest December-through-January period on record, with snowfall 91% below normal last month. "It's been an amazing winter, with virtually no snow," said Paul Walsh, VP-weather analytics at The Weather Channel. "That follows last year's winter, when we had some areas that had the coldest winter in 100 years. There are big implications from
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Most marketers would love to be McDonald's. It's the world's largest fast feeder by sales. Global same-store sales rose 5.6% last year over 2010 -- its eighth consecutive year of positive same-store sales. It's rated the world's No. 6 brand by Interbrand, with a value of $35.6 billion. It's the 26th-largest advertiser in the country, with a budget of nearly $888 million for U.S. measured media, according to Kantar Media. Indeed, the GoldenArches are a global beacon of success, and the company's 33,000-plus locations in 119 countries serve 68 million people a day. But something strange is happening on McDonald's soaring arches: Its
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Twitter is expanding its self-service advertising platform to include more U.S. small businesses through an exclusive deal with American Express. The new ad program, set to launch at the end of March, will be the latest step by the San Francisco micro-blogging service to broaden its base of advertising revenue. Twitter has set up this website inviting American Express card holders and merchants to register for the program. Companies that jump on it early could get a bonus. The site invites small businesses "to try our new advertising solution for small businesses. American Express will give $100 in free Twitter advertising to the
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In poll after poll, Americans say they don't like negative campaigning. Yet in the final week of the Florida primary, more than 90% of the ads broadcast were attack ads. That's not likely to change in the run-up to Super Tuesday. So why do candidates rely so heavily on a kind of advertising voters say they abhor? Because it works. To understand why, you have to consider what we know about how emotions work — and the different ways our conscious and unconscious minds and brains process "negativity" during elections. In 2008, my colleague Joel Weinberger and I tested voters' conscious and unconscious
Read MoreBravo has conducted a study on ad receptivity (and no, its findings were not “OMG Bravo is the gr8est”) in tandem with market research company Neuro-Insight, and the report contains a surprising conclusion: It doesn’t actually matter that much if an ad’s product is endemic to the program a consumer is watching (meaning that it matches the show’s content). Or rather, it does matter, but a match between an ad’s theme and the program matters more. For example, a marketer can run a makeup ad during a fashion makeover show and get the expected category bump. But Acura, say, can also run an ad focusing on the car’s beauty and luxury (as opposed to horsepower or mileage or vampire-killing headlights) and get even better retention with the viewer, who perks back up when something that looks thematically similar to the show he was already watching comes on. Yes, you read that right. Marketers get better retention if the category doesn’t match, and the theme does. The study calls these ads “neo-contextual,” and their advantages are considerable.
Read MoreThree congressmen on Friday called on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Google Inc., after The Wall Street Journal reported that the Internet giant was bypassing privacy settings of people who used Apple Inc.’s Web browser on phones and computers. The lawmakers—Edward J. Markey (D., Mass.), Joe Barton (R., Texas) and Cliff Stearns (R., Fla.)—want to know if Google’s behavior “constitutes a violation” of a privacy settlement Google and the Federal Trade Commission signed last year. Breaches of the settlement could bring fines of as much as $16,000 per violation per day. Read the rest of this post on the original site »
Read MoreIt’s difficult for users to stop Web trackers that take advantage of a loophole in Apple’s Safari browser — at least for now. Apple says it is working to put a stop to the practice. And Google, which had been tracking users after exploiting this loophole to put Google +1 buttons in ads, stopped the practice after being contacted by The Wall Street Journal. But in the meantime, to stop such tracking by other advertising companies, the only options available to Safari users are problematic. Read the rest of this post on the original site »
Read MoreGoogle Inc. and other advertising companies have been bypassing the privacy settings of millions of people using Apple Inc.’s Web browser on their iPhones and computers — tracking the Web-browsing habits of people who intended for that kind of monitoring to be blocked. The companies used special computer code that tricks Apple’s Safari Web-browsing software into letting them monitor many users. Safari, the most widely used browser on mobile devices, is designed to block such tracking by default. Google disabled its code after being contacted by The Wall Street Journal. Read the rest of this post on the original site »
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