Dec 15 2011
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Cross Pixel News

Cross Pixel Media Raises Strategic Round Led By KBS Ventures

First Outside Funding for Transparent Data Supplier

Reposted from Bloomberg Businessweek, December 15, 2011

NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Dec. 8, 2011– Cross Pixel Media, the first and only fully transparent audience marketplace that provides buyers with superior audience data, today announced the completion of its first round of funding, led by kbs+ Ventures, the venture arm of Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal + Partners (“kbs+”), a leading full-service advertising agency. Cross Pixel Media intends to use the funding to expand its analytics offering, develop new data partnerships, and enhance its technology. Terms of the investment were not disclosed.

“We have been using an increasing amount of data to make marketing decisions for our clients, across planning, buying, research, social, and CRM. With this in mind, we sought out an investment in a data management company who can help us enrich our insights and data access, which led us to Cross Pixel Media,” said Darren Herman, President of kbs+ Ventures and Chief Digital Media Officer of The Media Kitchen and kbs+. “Their unique data offering enables agencies like ours and our brand clients to identify and access high value audiences for insights and to serve them advertising based on their specific interests. Their approach provides a level of transparency, customization and creativity like none other we’ve encountered in the data ecosystem.”

Cross Pixel Media provides audience data for more than 50 FORTUNE 500® advertisers. Cross Pixel Media’s unique approach to data transparency enables these advertisers to increase the performance of their audience-based campaigns by as much as 500 percent while providing unique insights into the online behavior of each client’s audience. Their transparent way of doing business enables buyers to know the source of the data being utilized and align advertiser with beneficially situated audiences. Cross Pixel manages more than 90 million unique US profiles containing more than 300 million data points at any given time. No other online data provider offers as much exclusive data that is gleaned from exclusive relationships with online retailers and research web sites as Cross Pixel Media.

“Marketers are increasingly leveraging data to find new consumers and drive online ad performance, and they need better quality data to do that. Because we are fully transparent about our sources, advertisers can trust that there ads are being delivered to a mutually aligned, high value audience,” said Alan Pearlstein, CEO of Cross Pixel Media. “The support from kbs+ will help us identify new opportunities that are meaningful to the advertising community and with their guidance, continually improve our product and data offering. We are very excited about this partnership and the value it will bring to Cross Pixel.”

This story was first reported in Venture Wire: https://www.fis.dowjones.com/article.aspx?ProductIDFromApplication=32&aid=DJFVW00020111207e7c7asbv0&r=Rss&s=DJFVW

About KBS+ Ventures

kbs+ Ventures is a thematic investment arm of kirshenbaum bond senecal and partners which backs early stage entrepreneurs who have solid teams and great ideas. The main investment areas that kbs+ Ventures focuses on are: ad technologies, mobile, and design infusion. For more information, please visit: www.kbsp.vc

About Cross Pixel Media

Cross Pixel Media provides marketers, agencies, and their technology partners with superior data gathered exclusively from superior sources. The Company has relationships with more than 450 ecommerce sites and deep research sites that provide audience data to advertisers for use in their audience targeting campaigns. Cross Pixel is the only provider of this kind of data that enables buyers to see the data source and optimize campaigns against such data from these individual sources. For more information, please visit:http://www.crosspixel.net/

Read the article on Bloomberg Businessweek.

Dec 07 2011
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AdAge, Uncategorized Link

How Unbundling Media and Technology Will Nurture Innovation

In Ad Tech, Maybe Its Best to Fire Your Sales Force and Plug Into a Platform

Reposted from AdAge, December 7th, 2011

By: 

Ad technology companies want to prove the value of their offerings to advertisers, and more often than not they’ve turned to the media-selling business as a way to have their technology, algorithm or special sauce adopted by the market. But selling media distracts from the core goal, which is developing innovative technology that helps advertisers deliver on their campaign goals.

To better serve the advertiser, tech companies need to forget about media and start focusing on what matters most: innovative technology that drives results.

Media drives technology, but ask anyone in this space, and many will tell you that dealing with media delivery is a headache. If companies eliminate the distraction that comes with bundling technology with media, they can approach technology head on, pushing my team to develop our technology and adapt to market demand quicker. As a CEO, I can build more products around my data to generate tech driven revenue at greater scale, rather than worry about selling media to drive the top and bottom line.

Several companies moved in this direction this year, either pivoting or killing off their media-selling branches to focus on developing data solutions and technology that can better serve their clients. The tipping point in this evolution may have come earlier this month, with AppNexus’s recently launched ”app marketplace,” an open platform for both digital media buyers and sellers.

The program, called AppNexus Apps, makes it possible for data providers and other tech vendors to simply plug into the AppNexus exchange through an open API, and buyers can select the vendors and technologies they want to work with on a campaign-by-campaign basis.

Ari Paparo, AppNexus’ SVP of Product, said this move was designed to help ad tech providers develop their business and focus on creating new technology, rather than burden themselves trying to distribute their offering. This is exactly the kind of thinking the industry needs to produce better results for advertisers.

I hope this format is the beginning of a big change across the entirety of the tech landscape, for a number of reasons. It’s going to encourage technology creators to get more creative, it will help innovation flourish and, more important, concepts like this will free technology companies to do what they do best, which is build technology.

That focus on technology pushes innovation forward. Platforms like AppNexus may not be the end-all solution, but APIs will undoubtedly become a key part of ad technology as interoperability becomes a focal point. The use of APIs encourages technology creators to get more creative with their offerings, and the more they learn about the API and its capabilities, and the more the platform expands these capabilities, the more innovative the offerings will get. Removing the burden of working on media means tech companies can diversify their offerings and develop more creative products that will help advertisers drive better results.

Another benefit to this approach in general is that it simplifies the process of accessing and utilizing technology for advertisers and their agencies. Working with and coordinating multiple tech partners for an individual campaign is time consuming, highly inefficient and a pain in the neck. If an advertiser buys media through all the partners, it needs to look at all the results separately. Technology partnerships without a media offering streamline the process for advertisers, giving them access to greater capabilities and bringing more advertising dollars to the online space.

The API methodology is a no brainer for this RTB-driven advertising category, and I hope all of the other players in this market adopt the same approach. Relieving the pressures of selling media is going to speed up innovation in this space, so much so that technology companies with a dual focus will likely get left behind. Plug-in platforms democratize the ad tech landscape, but the goal is easier ad operations and better technology. Only then will we drive more advertisers into the siloed world of real-time advertising, which is beneficial for everyone.

Click here to visit AdAge.com.

Nov 28 2011
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AdAge

Online Advertisers: Do You Know Where Your Data Has Been?

Reposted from AdAge, July 27th, 2011

Online Advertisers: Do You Know Where Your Data Has Been?

Published: August 08, 2011

As children, our mothers would often admonish us for picking things up off the street by saying, “Put that down, you don’t know where it’s been!” We listen to our mothers at that age because they’re the authority in our lives.

Online, data providers are trying to exert the same kind of authority. The problem is that they’re doing the exact opposite — they’re giving marketers and publishers data and telling them that “it doesn’t matter where the data came from. Just write us a check.”

When Google purchased AdMeld last month, it showed that major companies are taking data and the supply-side very seriously. Everyone’s looking to drive consumers down the funnel, from display to search to purchase. The problem is, data providers run all of their display business through a black box. This means the companies holding murky information are the ones who determine how we measure success, and they expect all of their partners to keep cutting checks without any transparency.

Third-party data providers talk themselves up a great deal, promising social data, intender data, influencer data, or more intent-level search data than anyone else online. Forrester predicts that more than 50% of all consumer purchases will be influenced by the web by 2014, and that will happen largely because consumers turn to search as the first step in their process. This means search intent data has a lot of value for marketing, especially if you can connect it to display. Any company able to do this would have the power to determine market value for display ads because it can follow consumers along the sales funnel.

The problem with the black box, however, is that the provider doesn’t have to share its data with anyone. Everyone pays the same, and publishers and advertisers never really know if they’re actually buying the audiences they want. We know that the consumers most likely to click display ads are also not the customers brands are looking for. Is everyone going to shell out for bad data? Premium publishers aren’t going to play this game, and they’re going to move toward transparent data models.

Publishers know that the first-party data they generate is the most valuable resource they have. But they’re also learning that supplementing that with third-party data gives them a better view of who is coming to their site, where these consumers have been before, and what kind of products they might be shopping for. The more insight a publisher has into its audience, the more it can charge advertisers.

But the most important factor in this is that publishers and advertisers want to know where this data came from. Advertisers aren’t going to pay when they don’t know where consumers have been. Publishers aren’t going to pay for data unless it’s transparent — there’s absolutely no point in just blindly buying data, whether it comes from an established company or a new player in the third-party data space.

Display is enjoying a renaissance right now, but the channel is quickly splitting into multiple parts. Advertisers now understand the difference between using cheap, dirty data and spending a little more for transparent premium data. It’s never been more important for advertisers to work with top-tier publishers to get their message across, and these publishers are not going to work with black box clandestine data providers to sell their inventory.

Advertisers don’t want to buy into a black box, and publishers don’t want to sell that way. With a new emphasis on transparency, how long before the less reputable data providers start losing their entire publisher partners to other outlets? Everyone wants to be the authority on display, and the big providers want to tell everyone where to get their data and what defines success. Except, unlike our mothers, these companies don’t always know best.

http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/online-advertisers-data/229156/

Aug 11 2011
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Uncategorized

Hey, Yahoo, Microsoft, Google Is About to Eat Your Lunch in Display

Reposted from AdAge, July 27th, 2011

With Admeld Deal, Google Has Assembled a Formidable Platform for Ads. Is Anyone Going to Respond?

Published: July 27, 2011

The Google-Admeld deal was announced a little more than a month ago, and it was the hot conversation topic in our industry for a while. Now the buzz has died down considerably, and most mentions of the deal center on how closely the Department of Justice will examine it.

Google’s Admeld purchase wasn’t exactly surprising, and it’s probably a smart move for a company with billions of dollars in cash at its disposal. But the dying buzz reflects a much larger problem in our industry. The other advertising and technology players are letting Google make big purchases, and they’re failing to respond in any meaningful way that will help them compete with Google in the long run.

By purchasing Admeld, Google is one step closer to putting together a full end-to-end advertising stack that helps advertisers buy impressions in far more efficient fashion. Where are Yahoo, Microsoft, Adobe, IBM, Axciom, and Experian in all of this? The other powerful digital technology companies need to consider getting involved in data, because if they don’t, Google will be the only player with a stack that can scale display. Google dominates search practically without rival. You can argue that Yahoo and Microsoft have their toes in the game, but second place in the search game with less than half the market share of the leader is like a baseball team being 25 games out of first place in mid-July. In other words, there’s no chance of catching up.

Display is a different affair than search, and with strong growth forecasts, Google has shown an increased interest in this space. It invested heavily in DoubleClick, and last year bought Invite Media to facilitate real-time buying. Admeld gives Google a chance to appeal directly to premium publishers, giving Google access to even more display media, and a lot of branded display at that. If the other big players don’t act now, they’re going to get pushed aside sooner than they know it.

If any company knows what it feels like to get passed by Google, it’s Yahoo. That company made display its top priority, and Yahoo looked ready to lead when it bought Right Media in 2007. Since then, Yahoo has sat and watched Google run right by, even though so much of the inventory bought by Google’s Invite Media is on Yahoo’s Right Media Exchange. Yahoo has been the slowest of the display superpowers in integrating real-time bidding, which seems absurd when you consider display is its only hope at a future.

Earlier this year, Adobe seemed to take a step in the right direction when it bought Demdex. By folding Demdex’s audience management technology into its SiteCatalyst metrics suite, Adobe gives publishers a stack of tools that can measure and monetize site visitors. Purchasing one company that complemented its existing technology essentially turned Adobe into a player in display, not just in back- end or content creation/creativity. The purchase may slow the development of Demdex’s technology offerings, but it’s a great move from Adobe. However, Google’s purchase gives it technology offerings on both the supply and demand sides. Anyone hoping to keep up will need to do both.

At the same time, if Google is making purchases to get closer to advertisers, a big agency like Acxiom needs to follow suit to maintain brand relationships. Even IBM, a major tech company that mostly has stayed outside the digital advertising realm, could become a factor in display by combining a demand-side platform with a few other technology providers.

Offline companies are MIA as well. InfoUSA and Experian have loads of data for direct mail and lead-generation, but they aren’t fully invested in digital marketing data, where the data market is just heating up. Google may not be a threat to their businesses now, but there’s no reason to think Big G won’t explore new revenue opportunities once it has a tight grip on display.

There are whispers throughout the industry about Admeld clients getting ready to jump ship and find new partners, or that Microsoft will take a renewed interest in the space. I sure hope so — the time is right for any other major display company or technology giant to take on Google. If all the other players in the game sit back and let Google assemble a stack without competition, then they’re going to be wiped out. They might not have the pockets, but even Google can’t afford every company. Some companies even bristle at the thought of a Google buyout. If someone is going to take Google on, they had better do it soon.

http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/hey-yahoo-microsoft-google-eat-lunch-display/228947/

Feb 23 2011
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Online Marketing

Goodbye Cookies!

Watch the Cookie Crumble

The industry is up in arms about cookies and regulations.  They shouldn’t be.  Cookies are a big part of the online problem and it time for cookies to go away.  The problem is that we rely on cookies to “track” activity, but most of us agree that the last click/last impression attribution model that is supported by cookies is broken and inaccurate.  If tracking cookies were to go away it would force the industry to find better, more holistic methods to track attribution and results.  Cookies track events and events never tell the whole attribution story.   Remove cookies from the equation and we will stop analyzing events and we will start looking at the whole sphere of influence that drives successful advertising campaigns.

I will post more on this subject as I flesh out my thoughts but I welcome the death of the cookie.  They are a bad crutch that we need to stop using because we have “nothing else” to lean on.  When cookies are gone,  it will help the industry grow up.

Feb 22 2011
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Online Marketing

A Question for the RTB Pros:

Q:  I have a  pool of 2 million cookies that I want to target on the exchanges and deliver X million impressions to that audience.  Why will I benefit as a marketer if I target those 2 million people using RTB vs Non-RTB?  What impact does RTB have on my ability to deliver an ad to the right target?  Is it all about the price I pay because it is a fluid market or does RTB offer other benefits to the advertiser?

I look forward to your insights.

Feb 15 2011
2 Comments
Online Marketing

Kill the Click – It’s Time for Engagement

Its time for engagement

Let's Get Engaged!

We need a paradigm shift in how we price and trade digital media.  We need to value interactive media based on a model that is aligned with advertisers need. We need to stop using impression and click metrics and move to engagement metrics and Facebook is the company that can make this happen right now.

Brands want engagement to create a connection with their customers.  The current impression driven model incentivizes publishers to maximize page views, impressions and clicks for sale to the advertiser.  It motivates publishers to manipulate the consumer experience to increase impression counts (i.e. unnecessary slideshows that could be one page lists) and it forces advertisers to rely on metrics that don’t reflect their goals (I don’t know many marketer’s whose goal is to deliver impressions). Engagement marketing would synch publishers advertising services with advertisers marketing needs by pricing engagements and connections, not impressions.

Engagement can take on countless forms, from user generated activities to simply interacting with content, the ways to engage are limitless.  Once we shift to an engagement model, creative will follow with more inventive and effective advertising formats than ever before. Digital advertising will shift from disruptive to constructive. Once we move to engagement metrics, companies like Adkeeper  make sense.

Facebook is uniquely positioned to introduce engagement pricing.  The average person spends more time with Facebook that any other web site providing the company with ample opportunity to create connections for their advertisers.  When you add in their offsite reach (Like, FB connect, gaming), the company has dominant share of voice and reach on the internet.  They also have massive amounts of valuable 1st party data that can be harvested to target the right audience at the right time and drive engagement efficiently.  They should create a cost per engagement pricing now.  Facebook has little risk from adding this new model and a lot to gain. Facebook has the time, information and functionality needed to deliver engagements for a wide array of brand advertisers at scale.

Cost per engagement pricing will also enable publishers to monetize their audiences at a higher rate than the current impression model and it should usher in a new wave of brand advertising dollars to the digital space.  Facebook – make your move and all publishers boats will rise with the Facebook tide.

Jan 12 2011
1 Comment
Uncategorized

The Winklevii Could Learn From Groupon

Blowhards?

Give it up already!

Guy Kawasaki was the first person I heard make the comment “its not about the idea, it’s about execution”.  Groupon is about as good of an example of this as you can find.  Their big idea? – Offer discounts to email subscribers.  Earth shattering huh?  Nothing defensible, no proprietary technology, just a very basic idea that turned into the fastest growing startup in history because of execution.  Of course other factors helped in their success – good timing being a key one, but when we look back on how Groupon became a powerhouse, we will be focusing on execution.

The Winklevii could learn a lot from Groupon.  Connect U’s lack of success had nothing to do with Zuckerberg “stealing” their idea (which wasn’t even their idea  – friendster anyone?).  They didn’t succeed because they didn’t execute.  Mark Zuckerberg is executing on his vision, Andrew Mason is executing on his vision, the Wiklevii?.  Did they even try and make Connect U work after Facebook was started or did they just give up because they felt wronged?

Entrepreneurship is about executing not coming up with good ideas – they are a dime dozen.   As an entrepreneur I find the Winklevii’s pursuit of Facebook really distasteful.  I don’t doubt that Zuckerberg pulled a fast one on them.  So what.  It is clear to me that Connect U would have never succeeded because its twin leadership would have never executed.  Entrepreneurship is about making it happen, not blaming the rest of the world for the obstacles that will always arise  If the Winklevii had what it takes to build the right social network, we would all be using Connect U right now, not Facebook. They could have learned a lot from Mr. Kawasaki.

Sep 24 2010
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Uncategorized

What Marketers Need to Know About Conversion Attribution

As posted on Adexchanger.com

I believe that retargeting has flaws and any active participant should be aware of them before engaging in the tactic.  The key flaw that concerns me is conversion attribution; retargeters are consistently taking credit for sales that should be credited to other marketing tactics and advertisers are not getting an accurate understanding of what advertising is working for them and what is not. In my opinion, aggressive retargeting is undermining our ability to track the effectiveness of online ads.

The problem all stems from the idea that the last ad shown to a user(or clicked on by a user) deserves full credit for a sale or conversion.  This concept implies that all ads deserve an equal weighting when measuring effectiveness but I think we all know that this is a ridiculous concept.  And in the case of retargeting, a significant portion of the ads that are being credited for a sale deserve no credit at all (or limited credit) because the consumers were going to come back to the site even if a retargeting ad was never shown to them.

I don’t think you have to be an online media pro to easily grasp this concept – most people don’t buy on the first visit to a site.   Shoppers will research a product before buying it and visit a site multiple times before making the purchase.  Since retargeters start dropping their cookies (view or click-based) the moment after a person visits a site, it is inevitable that a portion of the cookies will be placed on users that were going to come back anyway. When this occurs, the retargeting effort ends up getting credit for a sale that was initiated by another marketing activity, completely screwing up conversion attribution. Does that mean we should not use retargeting?  Absolutely not – there are some people that might not have come back to purchase unless they were exposed to a retargeting ad that lured them back.  But the question is how many?

Under the current model retargeters take credit for every single person with their cookie that that comes back to the site and makes a purchase. And while the problem is exacerbated by view conversion spamming/cookie stuffing, it is still relevant to click-based cookies – just because I click on the ad it doesn’t mean I wasn’t coming back to the site anyway to make my purchase.

Another concern is that a significant portion of the sales that are generated by retargeting come from repeat customers vs. new customers. Obviously repeat business is critical for a company, but many ad campaigns are focused on new customer acquisition.  Is retargeting an acquisition tool or a retention tool, or both?  I would highly recommend that advertisers track these conversions separately to understand the types of sales that are generated by retargeting efforts.

One tactic that marketers are using to understand this issue is running PSA ads (public service announcements) alongside their retargeting campaigns to use as a baseline to determine how many people returned and purchased without being retargeted.

Advertisers are measuring the conversion rates that occur from people who saw PSA’s vs. the conversion rates of people who saw a retargeting ad and the results show that the difference between the conversion rates is nowhere near as high as retargeters would lead us to believe – a lot of the shoppers were coming back to the site regardless of whether or not they saw are targeting ad.  And when smart marketers identify the number of retargeting conversion that are new customers vs. old customers, retargeting campaigns ROI is further diminished.

It is my opinion that retargeting should be a part of almost every online advertising campaign because it is highly effective.   But we need to be realistic about its effectiveness and think we would all benefit if retargeters adjusted their pitch to focus on the incremental customers they deliver and not offer distorted numbers that don’t reflect its true value.

Sep 24 2010
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Uncategorized

Angelgate? Really? Who Cares.

Wow.   All this hubbub because a bunch of angel investors got together to try and fix the terms under which they do business.  Honestly – I don’t give a shit and neither should you – even if you are trying to raise money from angels for your business.  Let them collude – they will collude themselves out of deals.  Collusion only works when you get all of the players  to participate.  How much of the available angel capital that exists in the marketplace do you really think these guys control?  It’s a lot less than you think.  I have raised angel investments several times in my life and have yet to work with any of the gang that decided to get together to try and call the shots.  There is a significant source of angel money available and the vast majority of it was not sitting in that room.

As for Ron Conway’s reaction -

a) why do you care – it just made your life easier because now you will have better terms to offer than the “colluders” that are competing with you for the deals and;

b) “I have stated consistently for year that I invest because I love helping entrepreneurs and watching them learn and succeed”.  Give me a break.  I am sure you do like teaching and helping entrepreneurs but let’s be real – who invests in businesses and doesn’t do it to make money?  Seems a bit disingenuous to me.  You shouldn’t get mad at your colleagues because they are trying to figure out how to make the most money possible.

If you have a good idea and you need to raise seed money there are lots of places to turn.  A few players (albeit important, well connected ones) are not going to set the terms of the seed capital  marketplace.   While Angelgate is great fodder for Techcrunch and Twitter – it won’t impact anything in the real world.

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