ADOTAS –

• The resolution of the patent dispute between competing audience measurement firms comScore and Nielsen brings the two leviathans to a curious impasse, but reportedly Deutsche Bank securities analyst Matt Chesler has said the decision will be good for the online ad industry. “In reality, this may also create more of a two-horse race in digital measurement,” he claimed, “which could have ramifications for the balance of power across the [ad] industry and with customers.” What do you think? What are the implications for advertisers?

• Video content distribution start-up Contendo has been acquired by Akamai, a competing company, for $268 million. Before the deal, rumors pegged the going rate at $350 million, but hey, you take what you can.

• Check this out: Better than an infographic, it’s Unruly Media’s Viral Spiral, showing “the exponential growth of social video sharing” for ads between 2006 and 2011. Wow, four years go by fast… and 4.9 million shares for a Volkswagen ad is a ton of shares.

• We’ve been posting a lot about the cloud lately, but for a contrarian view, there’s a story on GigaOM today about how the cloud is over and collaboration is where it’s at.

The Advertising Decision Solutions are designed to help buyers and sellers of online advertising create attractive audience segments with the necessary scale to achieve better results from campaigns and investments, the company said. acerno’s powerful technology will complement the ability of Akamai’s Advertising Decision Solutions to seamlessly incorporate real-time anonymous Web browsing information with anonymous online purchasing data from advertisers’ Web sites to present the most relevant ad.

Mike Afergan, Akamai’s CTO and senior vice president of Advertising Decision Solutions, said, “We plan to leverage and grow acerno’s unique industry co-operative to enhance our new solution line. Our combined capabilities with acerno should benefit the eco-system of ad networks, online publishers and Internet advertisers by providing them with real-time, actionable data to serve more relevant marketing messages. Our Advertising Decision Solutions have already been adopted by several key stakeholders in the online advertising industry, resulting in higher revenues and better results.”

As part of the festivities, attached are photos of American Idol candidate Renaldo (“We’re Brothers Forever”) Lapuz crashing our packed NY celebration and giving the thumbs up to EyeWonder for powering his upcoming online video ad campaign as well as shots from the other locations.

Our friends at EyeWonder were kind enough to send along some snapshots of the fun!

Through its global network of servers, Akamai manages web traffic for many large and small brands including Yahoo, Google and Microsoft. Like Akamai’s indices for News, Music and Retail, the Net Usage Index for Advertising measures website traffic on-the-fly and updates itself about every five minutes with real time data.

“The Super Bowl presents an opportunity for companies to not only build brand awareness, but engage consumers in a variety of ways long after the advertisement airs,” said Akamai VP of marketing Brad Rinklin in a statement. The Advertising Index will reveal up-to-the-minute traffic reports for Akamai-powered sites from Super Bowl advertisers like Anheuser-Busch and GoDaddy.com.

With mainstream advertisers adding user-generated content and internet-distributed video to their campaigns, these kinds of stats are invaluable, said Rinklin. “Integrating an online component into the ad can significantly increase consumer interactivity and ongoing residual benefits, as well as offers the ability to measure the ad’s effectiveness.” Frito-Lay and General Motors are both running Super Bowl ads created with input from users.

During the game, the Akamai Index will show regularly updated traffic statistics for each quarter and during halftime.

“Not only has the Internet quickly evolved into a key distribution channel for music, it’s dramatically changing the way consumers learn about, share, and buy music online,” said Brad Rinklin, Akamai’s VP of marketing in a statement. “The Internet offers a platform to dramatically expand the global footprint artists and labels have to promote, distribute, and sell music, videos, and other rich media assets to millions of potential listeners and buyers. The Net Usage Index for Digital Music data will help the industry by providing empirical data on consumer behavior and online music.”

The Akamai Net Usage Index for Digital Music tracks more than 40 digital music sites including XM Satellite Radio, Clear Channel, Rediff.com and Napster, giving a comprehensive view of total visitors per minute. The system is updated every five minutes and serves as a benchmark for businesses and web publishers, also notifying readers if traffic is above or below the average for that time of year. Music usage over the last 24 hours can be viewed separately by continent.

According to the index, most music traffic comes from North America, Asia and Europe. Global peak traffic is more than a half million visitors per minute. Traffic peaks in Europe and North America during the middle of the week, while peak traffic from Asia tends to emerge towards the end. Sunday is a consistently slow traffic day.

To coincide with the launch of the index, Akamai conducted a customer survey about online music. Most respondents owned a portable player and spent $1-5 on music downloads each week. Most respondents also said they preferred a pay-per-download model rather than an ad-supported or subscription one. The survey also found that a slight majority listened to streaming music during the work day.

Akamai’s Net Usage Index also measures traffic for retail and news-related activity.

The service works with most types of servers, but until recently, those on Akamai’s EdgePlatform could only use the service in a stripped-down form. Now, the two companies have figured out how to combine Kiptronic’s ad platform with Akamai’s content caching system, which the company hopes will allow Akamai customers to use the Kiptronic ad system without impediment.

“By bringing the two together we’re we can offer the same level of advertising experience, and at the same time offer all Akamai’s benefits,” says CEO Jonathan Cobb. The partnership opens up podcast monetization services through Kiptronic to companies like American Express, AOL, Google, Apple, Yahoo, and Xeox, all of which use the Akamai platform.

Podcasts are inherently targeted since they usually reach niche consumers. And with the Akamai system’s 20,000 servers caching podcasted content, distribution downtime is virtually eliminated, and the peaks and valleys that naturally go with a podcast’s distribution pattern are largely mitigated.

Bronto’s research has indicated that email is a major peak-driven activity, meaning the bulk of users open mail at the same time each day. In the past, these activity peaks have slowed email marketing efforts and reduced their overall effectiveness. By utilizing Akaimai’s services, Bronto hopes to accelerate consumer interaction during peak hours and alleviate these problems.

“Successful online campaigns are increasingly leveraging a variety of interactive media,” said Robert Hughes, executive vice president of global sales, services and marketing at Akamai. “By leveraging Akamai’s global platform, Bronto offers its customers a solution with vastly improved reliability and scalability to handle any size and type of email marketing campaign.”