Marketers—do you know where and how your online video ads are being displayed? TubeMogul reports that you may not be getting what you think you’re paying for when you buy pre-roll video ads.
Join us on July 31 for our Social Curation Summit in New York, where you'll learn new strategies to connect and engage with your audience using visual communities such as Pinterest, BO.LT, and Tumblr. Speakers include Scott Belsky (Behance), Shane Rahmani (Thrillist), and Elias Roman (Songza Media). Register by June 7 and save. 
This week TubeMogul published an infographic with some impressive figures showing that they are officially the world’s largest buyer of real-time video advertising.
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Facebook Acquires AOL Patents From Microsoft (paidContent)
Facebook announced today that it will pay $550 million to Microsoft for the right to 650 patents and patent applications. Microsoft acquired those patents and hundreds of others in a deal with AOL earlier this month. The New York Times / Bits The deal allows Facebook to bulk up its intellectual property portfolio ahead of the social networking company’s initial public offering, expected next month, and it is a further sign of the growing importance of stockpiling patents in the arsenal of any big technology company. AllFacebook Facebook is currently embroiled in a controversial patent-infringement lawsuit filed by Yahoo in March. Meanwhile, last September, AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft joined forces to challenge Facebook on the online display advertising revenue front. PandoDaily Another thing is astounding about this story: The ever-bumbling AOL has actually done something smarter than Yahoo, the purple dinosaur. AOL sold and licensed its patents for a cash injection of more than $1 billion. Yahoo wanted money too, but it chose to use its patents to extort that kind of cash out of Facebook via a conveniently timed lawsuit — with zero attempt at negotiations before hand. Read more
YouTube is making a major push to attract advertisers to the site and, to that end, are launching some new initiatives designed to help businesses get into the world of advertising on YouTube.
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In Facebook Deal, Board Was All But Out of Picture (The Wall Street Journal)
On the morning of Sunday, April 8, Facebook Inc.’s youthful chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, alerted his board of directors that he intended to buy Instagram, the hot photo-sharing service. It was the first the board heard of what, later that day, would become Facebook’s largest acquisition ever, according to several people familiar with the matter. AllFacebook Zuckerberg negotiated with his Instagram counterpart down from an original $2 billion offer, asking Systrom whether he thought Facebook could one day be worth more than $200 billion, roughly the size of Google. Systrom agreed to the one percent or roughly $1 billion in stock. SocialTimes Normally a deal like this takes several days, if not weeks, to complete, and usually involves more lawyers and bankers than were present during the negotiations. Gizmodo It was a bold strategy, and one that smacks of the kind of approach a small start-up might take. It’s not, however, the way most people might expect a multi-million dollar public organization to conduct business. TechCrunch This just in: According to multiple sources close to the company, Facebook is eying an IPO on May 17th — depending on whether the SEC agrees that all the reams of paperwork (including those concerning its recent acquisition of Instagram) are in order. PRNewser The Ad Age Digital Conference continued Wednesday with a presentation from David Fischer, Facebook’s VP of business and marketing partnerships, whose presentation could be boiled down to this: “Your brand needs an always-on strategy.” Read more
Pundits from all sides of the beltway have stepped into their raucous agendas in the last few weeks, and it’s just going to continue as the elections heat up. But one strange winner of the upcoming election will definitely be social media. While in 2008 it was a turning point to help Obama appeal to younger voters, social media has come a long way and is a major part of many of our lives. A new infographic from 140proof shows that in this coming election, both parties are going to be using social media, and in some cases taking those dollars out of traditional advertising.
Today at Socialize Toronto, there was a great discussion discussing the role of Facebook ads in business, with a panel of experts on the subject. The panel included Hussein Fazal, CEO of Facebook Ad platform AdParlor, Seth Lieberman, CEO of Pangea Media, Nikhil Sethi, the Co-founder of Adaptly, Veronica Stecker, the media manager for Gordmans, Mario Zelaya, the Managing Director for Majestic Media and it was moderated by Brian Carter, the CEO of FanReach.
According to comScore’s November 2011 U.S. Online Video Rankings, video ads accounted for 15 percent of all videos viewed in November and 1.3 percent of all the minutes spent viewing online videos.
Online video advertising saw massive growth in the third quarter of 2011. Video technology company Freewheel reported that we are watching more Web videos than ever and, as a result, we’re watching more video ads too.
Just as online video is becoming more like TV, online video ad metrics just got a whole lot closer to TV ad metrics. Nielsen and Tremor video have partnered up to bring Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings gross rating point (GRP) data to Tremor’s VideoHub for Advertisers.
