Mike On Ads

Microsoft has bought adECN. Still sitting in your chair? Yup, the ‘exchange’, which in reality is just the network ExperClick, was acquired by Microsoft today. I’m really at a loss as to what to say. AdECN isn’t really an exchange, more a loose consortium of ad-networks, and loose in the sense that they’re primarily based around one single ad-network. Why buy a crappy exchange instead of building on top of DrivePM, one of the top ad networks in the US?

Introduction

Back in March I wrote a post titled “Battle over the Cookie. I’m going to quote myself real quick — (I know, kind of tacky)

So why the title “Battle over the Cookie”? Well, people are starting to catch on that if they own the cookie, they own the market. Think about it, if one exchange succeeds in capturing a massive percentage of the market, the barriers to entry will be practically insurmountable. What value is your exchange if you can’t provide services like global frequency caps, cross publisher behavioral targeting, etc. etc.

So who’s fighting? Well, my employer (Right Media) for one. Doubleclick is said to be launching a marketplace, AdECN is another. I’d expect others to start soon — as long as someone hasn’t won, there’s still a chance.

Well, as we all know, Right Media has been bought by Yahoo (if you hadn’t heard yet, the deal closed today), Google is buying DoubleClick, etc. etc. etc. So how are these developments changing the battle over the cookie?

There won’t be a single cookie

That’s right. It ain’t happening. At the minimum there are going to be three different marketplaces, three different adservers and hence three different cookie domains. Think about it — Google/Yahoo/Microsoft are arch-rivals and even though some may build more open solutions than others they are most definitely not going to be fully integrated, and they most definitely won’t be sharing a single cookie space. Add on to that the remaining independent adservers (e.g. AdECN, Zedo, OpenAds) and I don’t see any way in which there will be one unified marketplace.

To be honest, this saddens me quite a bit. One single marketplace would have been extremely beneficial to both publishers and advertisers, but of course there are simply too many people fighting to control the means by which ads are transacted. Ok, so now what?

What’s next?

To be honest — it’s too soon to really tell how this new battle is going to unfold. I don’t think it’s very clear what Microsoft, Yahoo or Google (how about we call them MYG) are going to be doing with their new acquisitions. One thing is clear, it’s going to be difficult to get access to inventory without working with MYG. Advertisers should benefit from consolidated buying. I imagine that networks not working with MYG will find it difficult to survive without a really compelling story and publishers should benefit from increases in both innovation and competition.

In the next couple posts I will be digging into how companies should prepare for this new online advertising landscape — How will ad-networks continue to grow over the next couple years? How can large publishers increase rates by leveraging the new marketplaces? How will behavior work without a single cookie? CAN behavior work cross-platform?

I don’t get it… the internet is full with rumors about Microsoft buying 24/7 for up to a billion dollars. If you do a Google News search for microsoft to buy 24/7 you get over four hundred posts! Do you know what the ’source’ of this rumor is? The NEW YORK POST. You can find the article here.

COME ON GUYS. You are going to trust news from a publication where on the homepage the first two headlines are:

and

The best part of it all is this:

Sources said the software giant is considering a price in the $1 billion range for 24/7 Media - a giant leap from the $600 million valuation analysts placed on the firm.

So… please… don’t post something as ‘news’ until you have a reliable source.