analytics
drag2share: Flurry CEO Says IPO Is Inevitable As Its Mobile Ad Reach Overtakes Google’s
source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/businessinsider/~3/0L8Ch6ODo9k/flurry-ipo-and-ceo-simon-khalaf-2013-9
Simon Khalaf, the CEO of mobile adtech company Flurry, tells Business Insider that an IPO is inevitable in the company’s future because his business has grown so big.
There has been gossip about a possible Flurry IPO for months now. Large adtech companies are often aimed specifically at IPO “exits,” so that their venture capital funders can get a payback on their investments. Millennial Media, Tremor Video, YuMe, Criteo and Marin Software have all gone public recently. Yet when CEOs are asked directly if they want the rich rewards of floating their companies on the public markets, they usually demur or hedge.
When we asked Khalaf about an IPO exit, however, he was refreshingly direct: “I consider an IPO an entrance,” he tells us. “We don’t have a choice, our volume is too high and our scale is too big for anyone to absorb us.”
Flurry has a net revenue run-rate of about $100 million. It has 150 employees and has taken $50.5 million in funding from investors. And although that doesn’t make Flurry the biggest player in mobile adtech — InMobi and Velti still have more employees, and Millennial has greater revenues — it is one of the biggest players in big data analytics and mobile app ad reach.
Here’s a slide on the number of mobile devices — 1.1 billion — Flurry reaches with ad impressions inside apps from Khalaf’s pitch deck:
It’s an alarming slide, because everyone knows that Google has the largest share of mobile ad revenue on the planet, which is in the billions of dollars. But the Flurry slide refers to reach on devices via ads in apps. Google’s mobile ad business is largely search. And the bulk of consumer time spent on mobile devices is in apps, not on the web, Khalaf says. Here’s the slide he uses to illustrate that point:
Flurry offers the full mobile ad stack, including a “supply side platform” for mobile app publishers who want to offers ad space for sale, a “demand side platform” for buyers who want to place ads, an analytics suite to measure the whole thing, and most recently a “real-time bidding” platform so that buyers can place ads on a live auction basis. That RTB marketplace, launched in April, already has 30 DSPs buying in it, Khalaf says. The Guardian and The BBC both use Flurry as publishers.
There is one more thing Khalaf is unusually direct about. Flurry is not yet profitable, he says. Usually when adtech CEOs are asked whether their businesses make money, they launch into an explanation of how they’re investing for growth or scale (or they say something impenetrably complicated about EBITDA). When asked whether the company is profitable, Khalaf says, “No. In 2014 we’re profitable maybe.”
The reason: Flurry is spending $28 million a year on data centers. “The cost of analytics is huge,” Khalaf says. Flurry wants to create the largest HBase cluster in the business, he says, referring to the gigantic — and gigantically expensive — database serving devices that can handle millions of lines of tabled information.
In-House Agencies Becoming More Common; Tasked With Range of Services
source: http://www.marketingcharts.com/wp/interactive/in-house-agencies-becoming-more-common-tasked-with-range-of-services-36447/?utm_campaign=rssfeed&utm_source=mc&utm_medium=textlink
58% of client-side marketers report that their company has an in-house agency, a marked rise from 42% in 2008, according to new survey results from the Association of National Advertisers (ANA). In-house agencies are being asked to handle a wide range of creative, strategic, and media planning and buying services, per the report, with one-third or more also tasked with data/marketing analytics (42%) and content marketing (34%).
An in-house agency was defined as “a department, group, or person that has responsibilities typically performed by an external advertising or other marcomm agency.”
Among the various traditional and digital creative services listed, respondents with in-house agencies indicated that they were most commonly handling collateral and promotional materials for traditional media (91%), followed by email (77%), trade show and event materials (73%) and direct mail (72%).
Research of late has shown that agencies are being increasingly sought after for their strategic expertise, and the ANA data indicates that many in-house agencies are also handling strategic initiatives beyond just the creative (60%), extending to marketing and product strategy (56%) and brand or corporate platform strategy (48%).
Marketers Are Collecting Data – But Having Trouble Leveraging It

Tag Management Becomes a Key Component of Big Data Strategy – eMarketer
source: http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Tag-Management-Becomes-Key-Component-of-Big-Data-Strategy/1010052
Improved analytics is cited as No. 1 benefit of tag management system
As tag management systems gain popularity, the platforms offer a streamlined approach to tagging, giving marketers more control over tags and fostering tags’ role in the collection and interpretation of digital data. On behalf of Tealium, a tag management system provider, Forrester Consulting surveyed US digital marketing decision-makers in May 2013 and found that more than nine in 10 said data integration was the next step in the evolution of tag management.
Among respondents who had actually implemented a tag management system, Forrester found that the greatest number, nearly three-quarters, said improved analytics implementations—making digital data more digestible—was a benefit of the system. Another 69% cited better marketing agility, pointing to marketers’ ability to assert more control over tagging, rather than needing to work through the IT department. Slightly fewer, 63%, cited better website performance, speaking to the potential to improve load times with streamlined tagging.
The Tracking Solutions That Could Lead An Explosion In Mobile Marketing
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/explosion-tracking-mobile-marketing-2013-6
The effectiveness of any advertising campaign rests on a brand’s ability to effectively deliver their message to a target audience.
As advertisers look to follow consumers across screen, brands need to know how and on what devices target audiences are consuming content. They need to track and measure a single individual’s responses to ads across multiple screens and attribute any results — such as conversions — to the appropriate ad placement.
The technical hurdles are formidable.
In a recent report from BI Intelligence, we take stock of cross-screen marketing, digging into the measurement and analytics problem, and offer a side-by-side comparison of the different mobile tracking technologies. We also analyze how audiences are becoming increasingly screen agnostic and examine how cross-screen advertising can be made effective.
Access the Full Report By Signing Up For A Free Trial Today >>>
Below are some of the leading mobile tracking solutions (click to expand):
Cookies enable advertisers and publishers to track user activity as they move across the desktop Internet and target them with relevant ads, but they are the most contested area of cross-screen tracking and don’t migrate to model. Algorithmic models can be used in conjunction with cookies, or without them. Powerful algorithms might profile specific users based solely on their actions and digital profile as they move across certain apps or mobile website, and give them with a unique device fingerprint on the server side. However, since the method is statistical, it can make errors. The various Mobile device ID schemes create a device-specific number that will identify your phone wherever i! t goes, across apps, mobile browsers, etc.
It’s clear that intermediaries and solutions providers are in a race to provide the technical solutions that will allow marketers to integrate mobile seamlessly into cross-screen campaigns and properly attribute the results achieved. As these solutions develop and improve, they will fuel the already rapid growth of cross-screen marketing.
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drag2share: Twitter Ads Will Target TV Tweeters
source: undefined
Twitter Ads Will Target TV Tweeters
May 23, 2013
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Twitter’s New Ad Tools Are All About The Second Screen (Twitter)
Twitter is pitching its new ad product to brands as a way to continue the stories they tell on TV commercials, and do so online and mobile. Thanks to new analytics, Twitter will automatically know what ads aired on which shows, pair that data with users who tweeted about those same shows or events, and serve those user! s ads th at tie in with the TV commercials that aired during the programming. This strategy is all about leveraging Twitter’s mobile usage as a “second screen” companion app to TV. As Twitter itself highlighted in its announcement, “64 percent of mobile-centric Twitter users use it infront of TV at the home.
Your Instagram Data Is Now Officially Facebook Data
Source: http://gizmodo.com/5969001/your-instagram-data-is-now-officially-facebook-data
A new Instagram privacy policy goes into effect on January 16th, 2013. The service will now be sharing your data with its new owner Facebook. Get used to it.
Basically, Instagram has updated a few of the subhead sections of its policy to reflect the fact that it is a part of Facebook now. Instagram can now share information like cookies, log files, device identifiers, location data, and usage data,with “with businesses that are legally part of the same group of companies that Instagram is part of.” According to the Instagram blog, it’s a wonderful thing for you:
Our updated privacy policy helps Instagram function more easily as part of Facebook by being able to share info between the two groups. This means we can do things like fight spam more effectively, detect system and reliability problems more quickly, and build better features for everyone by understanding how Instagram is used.
Less spam? Great! Of course, this also means that Instagram is heaping its data over with the privacy nightmare that’s Facebook. The data will definitely be used to target better advertising at you on Facebook, and to serve you advertisements on Instagram whenever that starts happening. Here is the relevant section from the new policy:
Affiliates may use this information to help provide, understand, and improve the Service (including by providing analytics) and Affiliates’ own services (including by providing you with better and more relevant experiences).
This was inevitable, but at least now it’s official. [Instagram via TechCrunch]
Analytics Show Facebook Curbs The Reach Of Big Brands’ Posts
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-curbs-the-reach-of-big-brands-2012-11
Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban and “Star Trek” actor George Takei both complained recently that Facebook reduced the “reach” of their posts, limiting the number of fans likely to see any given post.
More seriously, two executives at major social media agencies owned by WPP group claimed the same thing — only with data.
In response, Facebook formally denied that it is “gaming” its Edgerank post algorithm to reduce the reach of posts (and thus force advertisers to pay to promote posts to reach all their fans).
Now comes PageLever, a Facebook analytics company, which gave Mashable some data that shows that the bigger fanbase your Facebook page has, the lower reach any individual post has. Brands with small fanbases of fewer than 10,000 people can get nearly 20 percent of them to see any individual post. But brands like Coca-Cola and Walmart, who have more than 1 million fans, can only get about 6 percent of them to see any given post — unless they pay:
The data suggest Facebook’s algorithm discriminates against bigger brands. It encourages smaller brands by offering them triple the reach of their larger competitors. But the more successful a brand becomes on Facebook, the more its organic average reach dwindles.! p>
By the time any company has more than 100,000 fans, of course, they’re pretty dependent on Facebook as a marketing medium — and thus may be more likely to pay to promote posts.
Related: Facebook Denies It Is ‘Gaming’ Its News Feed To Force Companies To Buy Ads
See Also: Facebook Accused Of Changing A Key Algorithm To Hurt Advertisers
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Analytics Show Facebook Curbs The Reach Of Big Brands’ Posts
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-curbs-the-reach-of-big-brands-2012-11
Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban and “Star Trek” actor George Takei both complained recently that Facebook reduced the “reach” of their posts, limiting the number of fans likely to see any given post.
More seriously, two executives at major social media agencies owned by WPP group claimed the same thing — only with data.
In response, Facebook formally denied that it is “gaming” its Edgerank post algorithm to reduce the reach of posts (and thus force advertisers to pay to promote posts to reach all their fans).
Now comes PageLever, a Facebook analytics company, which gave Mashable some data that shows that the bigger fanbase your Facebook page has, the lower reach any individual post has. Brands with small fanbases of fewer than 10,000 people can get nearly 20 percent of them to see any individual post. But brands like Coca-Cola and Walmart, who have more than 1 million fans, can only get about 6 percent of them to see any given post — unless they pay:
The data suggest Facebook’s algorithm discriminates against bigger brands. It encourages smaller brands by offering them triple the reach of their larger competitors. But the more successful a brand becomes on Facebook, the more its organic average reach dwindles.! p>
By the time any company has more than 100,000 fans, of course, they’re pretty dependent on Facebook as a marketing medium — and thus may be more likely to pay to promote posts.
Related: Facebook Denies It Is ‘Gaming’ Its News Feed To Force Companies To Buy Ads
See Also: Facebook Accused Of Changing A Key Algorithm To Hurt Advertisers
Please follow Advertising on Twitter and Facebook.
Join the conversation about this story »
What Facebook’s Biggest Advertisers Say About ‘Invalid Clicks’ (FB)
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/what-facebooks-biggest-advertisers-say-about-invalid-clicks-2012-11
Facebook’s larger advertisers, unsurprisingly, aren’t willing to say much — on the record, at least — about the proposed class action lawsuit which claims up to 20 percent of pay-per-click advertising on the site comes from “invalid” clicks.
Facebook says the suit is bogus, and is fighting an appeal in the case.
One key issue in the case is Facebook’s refusal to allow its clicks to be audited by a third party like the IAB, the Media Ratings Council or Ernst & Young.
Speaking privately, the company’s clients and competitors tell us they are aware that Facebook is non-transparent when it came to its advertising business.
None of them believed Facebook was acting improperly. And none sympathized with the suit. One said, “We trust Facebook and know that they are always working to refine their filters and to identify invalid clicks.”
Another added, “I don’t think they’re ripping people off.”
However, they also said that because Facebook is so big it is able to play by its own rules in a way that might not be healthy .
“They don’t let you audit,” said one client. “It’s a little bit suspect. A bit of a conflict of interest. … You have to trust Facebook’s numbers.”
Another added, “They’re not playing by the rules everyone else is playing by. It’s definitely an issue that there’s this 800 pound gorilla out there that isn’t playing by the rules.”
One major issue for advertisers is that they can only observe Facebook’s clicks independently if they send traffic off the site! to thei r own web sites. As most campaigns are designed to send traffic to the advertisers’ Facebook page, those clicks remain inside Facebook – and thus invisible to outside analytics.
“A lot of campaigns are not sending traffic off site so there’s no way to check,” one client told us.
Another said, “If we are driving users to a Facebook page — then we rely on Facebook metrics (impressions, clicks, conversions, engagement …) as the click goes directly to the Facebook page and not through a redirect AND we can’t fire pixels on Facebook pages like we can on external sites.”
Shuman Ghosemajumder, Google’s former click fraud czar who is now vp/strategy at Shape Security, told us that he knows many of the team members at Facebook who are working on click validation. “They are investing heavily in this area,” he says. A third-party audit of clicks, however is a “non-trivial” event at a company, he says. It requires time and resources, and an outside company must come in and perform experiments with the internal engineers. Nonetheless, “they need to take this very seriously,” he says.
Related:
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