Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

Flite lets publishers create custom advertisements that match the quality of their content, and give advertisers a reason to spend more money than they would by going through an ad network. Flite is trying to defeat the logic that ad campaigns through networks like Google Ads offers a comparable impact at a cheap price by giving a publisher tools to build their own highly specific tools to build clients a better kind of ad spot. [Disclosure: VentureBeat uses Flite's services for advertising.]

Advertisers are reshaping the media pie. Publicis Groupe's ZenithOptimedia expects the internet to surpass newspapers this year as the nation's second-largest advertising medium, behind TV. By ZenithOptimedia's tally, the internet was the fifth-largest ad medium until 2009, when it powered past magazines and radio into the No. 3 spot. Nearly three-fourths of Zenith-Optimedia's internet breakout comes from what Ad Age currently counts as unmeasured spending (including paid search, online video and mobile ads); the rest comes from measured disciplines (display advertising, including display ads on social-media sites).

The network also said Watch ESPN, the authenticated TV Everywhere app introduced last year, is now in 40 million homes. ESPN predicted that figure would double by 2013. "Whether we televise the game or not, there is an audience consuming it via ESPN platforms," said Sean Bratches, exec VP-sales and marketing. And this is just the tip of the iceberg, Mr. Bratches said. ESPN is working with companies including Facebook, YouTube, Amazon, Netflix and Microsoft to further expand the offerings. "Young males spend more time consuming media" on Xbox than playing video games," he said. ESPN is making content for these digital platforms, reviving the "30 to 30" franchise with "30 for 30 Shorts," which will roll out monthly on Grantland, the sports-plus-pop-culture site created by sports journalist Bill Simmons. To visualize just how advertisers can partner with its various digital platforms, ESPN presented three case studies from partners Gatorade, Goodyear and Diageo. Gatorade partnered with ESPN across multiple screens in an effort to embrace female athletes and moms, an audience that ESPN is making a concerted effort to tap into with espnW. This includes "Nine for IX," a series of nine documentary films about women in sports in celebration of Title IX's 40th anniversary.

Orbitz found Mac users on average spend $20 to $30 more a night on hotels than their PC counterparts, a significant margin given the site's average nightly hotel booking is around $100, chief scientist Wai Gen Yee said. Mac users are 40% more likely to book a four- or five-star hotel than PC users, Mr. Yee said, and when Mac and PC users book the same hotel, Mac users tend to stay in more expensive rooms. "We had the intuition, and we were able to confirm it based on the data," Orbitz Chief Technology Officer Roger Liew said. The sort of targeting undertaken by Orbitz is likely to become more commonplace as online retailers scramble to identify new ways in which people's browsing data can be used to boost online sales. Orbitz lost $37 million in 2011 and its stock has fallen by more than 74% since its 2007 IPO.