Articles of the Day
AzoogleAds Eyes Global Ad Market, Rebrands As Epic Advertising — AzoogleAds is set to rebrand as Epic Advertising, a name that better reflects the agency’s roster of performance advertising services, including email, display and search marketing. Don Mathis, president of AzoogleAds, tells Online Media Daily that the impetus to rebrand began last October when AzoogleAds acquired Bazaar Advertising, a New York-based search firm. The rebrand is also aimed at growing international business, as the firm recently launched strategic partnerships with performance marketing agencies serving the European, Latin American and Asia-Pacific markets. New York-based AzoogleAds will officially begin using the name and the www.epicadvertising.com Web site on Wednesday.
Nielsen: Ad Spend In 2007 Up .6%, Trails Global Action — Nielsen reported that ad spending for the full year 2007 rose 0.6% compared to 2006. While television and newspapers outlets generally suffered in 2007 with declines, Nielsen said the Internet advertising business continues to buck the trend–up strongly at almost 19% over 2006, the most of any media category. Better advertising news was found in other parts of the world. The Asia-Pacific had a 12.1% gain, while the combined territories of Europe, Middle East, and Africa climbed nearly 5%.
Roo Group Reports 5% Gain In Revenue — Roo Group Reports on Monday reported fourth-quarter revenue of $3.9 million, up 4% year-over-year from $3.75 million. The company’s net loss grew to $12.5 million from $5 million year-over-year.The company has also been rechristened KIT Digital–the name of the investment group led by its recently appointed CEO, Kaleil Isaza Tuzman. Roo now plans to buy the remaining 49% of interactive ad agency Sputnik for $4 million. Sputnik is presently profitable, with revenue of $5.2 million and operating profit of $371,000.
Magazines Deploy Digital Tech To Lure Advertisers — Increasingly, publishers are scooping up technology firms to help them craft marketing services for advertisers–and we’re not talking about Yahoo, MSN and AOL getting into the ad network business (although they started the trend). Magazine publishers like Condé Nast and Meredith are using technologies they’ve acquired recently to design promotions that would help marketers sell ad space. For example, Condé Nast is preparing a promotion for the retailer Dillard’s that lets visitors to the Dillard’s site vote on merchandise that will be used later in ads. The promotion leverages the technology of the magazine publisher’s recently acquired social voting site, Reddit. It allows visitors to the Dillard’s site to rank products featured in a top 10 list selected by Condé Nast’s Lucy magazine and Style.com publications.
Vringo Launches Facebook Application — Vringo has launched a new Facebook application that lets users import friends’ profile photos to their mobile phones. The photos are then matched with friends’ phone numbers. So when they call each other, their friends’ photos will appear on their mobile screens as form of visual caller ID. Vringo for Facebook is initially being offered free and is available on BlackBerry smartphones and any Windows for Mobile device. It will eventually be offered on a wider selection of handsets.
Facebook And CareerBuilder Collaborate On Targeted Ads — Could be another blow to newspapers’ classified revenues: CareerBuilder and Facebook are working together to create campaigns for recruiters across the social net site’s user profile pages, Reuters reported. The two didn’t disclose the details of the arrangement, such as how much they expect to earn and share from the targeted ad program. They also didn’t reveal how much CareerBuilder will spend to promote it. While a CareerBuilder app was available for placement before on Facebook, this deal represents a more active partnership on the part of both to serve ads to Facebook members. Separately, Facebook declined to say whether it would strike a similar deal with CareerBuilder rival Monster.com.
