ADOTAS

DSP/DMP Turn has added support for in-stream and mobile video advertising capabilities into Turn Media Platform. Integrations with video inventory outlets such as Adap.tv, AdBrite, BrightRoll Exchange, DoubleClick, LiveRail and SpotXchange makes for a jolly supply of inventory for platform users to target through real-time bidding.

Aiming to set some standards in the ad verification space, the Interactive Advertising Bureau has opened up the public comment floodgates for its “Guidelines for the Conduct of Ad Verification,” developed alongside the Media Ratings Council. For the record, “Verfication sucks!” is not an acceptable comment, though probably a widely held one.

CEO Tim Armstrong says AOL is “heading toward an inflection point of revenue growth.” If I was an investor, that would make me feel so much better about the $2.6 million loss and 6% drop in revenue year over year in the third quarter. However, that is due to the steadily declining subscription service, which somehow still brings in $87 million in revenue a quarter (half of what it was hauling in last year). Display advertising, which is the horse Armstrong has bet the AOL farm on, was up 8% YOY on a global scale, bringing in $318 million.

When fivefold and tenfold aren’t good enough, you best head to Twelvefold Media, the new name taken by BuzzLogic following the launch of its Spectrum contextual targeting platform.

In addition to 17 partners announced last month, Kantar Video added four more companies to its Videolytics Preferred Partners program: Kultura, Panache, Tube Mogul and Vindico. The latter three will expand Videolytics capabilities regarding paid video advertising (the -rolls and in-stream overlays).

Rabbit Punches

At f8 a while back, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (actually, a far-too-charismatic impersonation by Andy Samberg) announced the Slow-Poke — a Facebook poke that took 24 hours to get to the recipient, allowing the poker the opportunity to change his/her mind about the gesture. Appropriately taking its time, Ifeelgoods, which we profiled the other day, has introduced an actual Slow-Poke Facebook app, along with a list of people you should think twice about poking (best friend’s sibling, hot coffee shop girl, guy who never called you back, etc.)

Social marketing agency Media Logic announced version 3.0 of its Zeigeist & Coffe real-time client collaboration platform.

Online and mobile ad signup platform Pontiflex has introduced its AppLeads Smart SDK , which includes support for universal applications iOS 5 and Android tablets like Amazon’s Kindle Fire, the Samsung Tab and the Motorola Xoom.

Video advertising platform BrightRoll is connecting digital video ad analytics with offline purchase behavior from Nielsen Catalina Solutions for it’s new Shopper Connect marketing and measurement tool.

Mobile shopping assistant ShopSavvy has partnered with mobile shopper ad network CheckPoints.

About three quarters of the respondents cited improving ROI on mobile campaigns as a top priority (54% also noted increasing email subscribers while 53% checked building social communities). Ninety-three percent of the marketers surveyed said they would increase their mobile ad spend if ROI was higher.

Interestingly, 56% of respondents said they were dissatisfied with or simply do not use click-based mobile marketing. Forty-one percent claimed the most effective form of mobile advertising was pay-per-signup, which Pontiflex specializes in with its cost-per-lead model.

The completely opt-in platform encourages consumers to sign up for ads through websites, social media and mobile apps as well as blogs; as you might have guessed, advertisers pay only when the leads come in. The upgraded AdLeads platform allows users to create ad categories based criteria ranging from type of site to time of day or year.

These groups can each be assigned different creative — 40-character headlines, 120 X 60 image and body text of 120 characters — which can be edited and updated on existing placements in near real-time. Advertisers can then use data from Pontiflex’s opt-in advertising to offer promotions or better engage targeted consumers.

In addition to a keynote speech by JP Morgan Analyst Imran Kahn, who detailed his predictions for 2010, particularly for display and social media, Pontiflex hosted a panel with marketing representatives from BabyCenter, The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), Tommy Hilfiger and Ferrara & Co., which represents Heinz. These four companies shared their impressive experiences using CPL in Pontiflex’s white paper.

In particular, a campaign with ASPCA produced email open rates for Pontiflex-generated leads were more than twice that of organically garnered signups and a third higher than other lead-generation channels. The click-through rate was close to 6%, also more than twice that of organic leads.

Some of the key benefits of CPL, the panelists noted, included transparency in the source of the leads, the opportunity to immediately follow up with acquired leads and transforming impressions into actual people.

It was an impressive year of growth for Pontiflex, which Krishnan partially credited to the explosion of social media, that validated CPL as a complementary channel to search and a way to build ROI while focusing on brand campaigns. I caught up with Krishnan and chatted about Pontiflex’s success as well as the advantages of CPL as a channel.

And here is an excerpt on the display channel from Khan’s keynote speech.

Pontiflex found that 48% of leads were used to push social media and community sites in the fourth quarter, an increase from 43% in the third. E-newsletters also saw a greater percentage of leads, rising to 26% in the fourth quarter from 23% in the third.

Free trials and subscriber acquisition both lost share in the fourth quarter, with 11% of leads going to the former (compared to 14% the previous quarter) and 6% headed to the latter (a 9 point drop from 15% in the third).

The overall cost of basic marketing leads increased by 31%, which Pontiflex attributed to an increased number of publishers with CPL offerings. Average CPL in premium fields dropped quarter over quarter, from $3.36 to in the third to $2.72 in the fourth. CPL actually increased between third and fourth quarter for basic fields, from $0.62 to $0.81.

The highest CPL in premium could be found in the entertainment vertical at $3.00, followed by health leads at $2.70. The lowest CPL was in market research at $0.52.

Onet, the largest Polish social network, launched, an exclusive version of social web browser Flock that includes Onet’s social network Ludzie and includes webmail, blog and photo-sharing services

According to an SEC filing Scout Labs, which manages a web-based platform that companies use to monitor online chatter about their products, has raised $4 million in a round of funding.

One day after the finalization of the Razorfish acquisition from Microsoft, digital media guru and chief of venture capital Tim Hanlon will leave Publicis Groupe at the end of the month.

eMarketer noted that impression-based media buys are giving way, in some cases, to cost-per-lead advertising. According to the “Cost-per-Lead Advertising Data Report” from Pontiflex, marketers in North America were most likely to engage those leads via brand or community sites (51%). E-newsletters (31%) and free trial offers (9%) were also popular engagement vehicles.

“As is true for landing pages deployed in banner and search campaigns, collecting more information increases drop-off and reduces lead volume,” according to the report. For that reason, cost-per-lead advertising best practices recommend “capturing basic information during the first contact with the end consumer, and capturing additional information over time as the brand builds a relationship with the consumer.”

Leave alone advertisements for the powerful BMW M3, even the environmentally friendly BMW Mini Cooper (44.2 mpg) takes great pains to proclaim its speed (0-60 in 8.5 seconds) for fear of losing out in this performance driven age. The spirit of the Olympics is no longer a torch that we light every four years – the quest for better performance is an aspiration that we lug around in our backpacks all the time.

Why should it be different in the world of online advertising? Why can’t our executive teams and clients expect better performance from our branding campaigns? Why should branding campaigns be insulated from the demand for better performance and higher ROI?

Luckily for online marketers, the Internet has recast the relationship between branding and ROI campaigns. No longer are they at odds with each other. With the emergence of performance advertising and engagement marketing, they can converge at a junction of symbiosis. Brand marketers can enhance important metrics like awareness, recall and recognition and be able to achieve ROI at the same time.

For this to occur, there needs to a fundamental shift in online marketing strategies. Brand marketers need to ring out the old and ring in the new. No longer can branding campaigns rely on the traditional “broadcasting” approach, where the advertiser message is sent out to an audience – be it through TV, radio, or an online banner.

Instead, branding needs to take on a more active approach, where brand marketers connect with interested consumers cost-effectively and engage them in relevant ways. This calls for a three phased approach:

Acquire consumers cost-effectively: Advertisers can grow their in-house databases by using advertising purchased through CPM, CPC and CPL pricing models.

The industry is already moving away from CPM advertising. The most recent IAB PWC advertising report showed that performance advertising accounted for as much as 57% of the overall online advertising spend. This is consistent with the overall evolution of online advertising, which can be narrated as a tale of a quest for higher ROI.

Just like in the last recession saw the growth of CPC advertising at the expense of CPM advertising, the current downturn is seeing the emergence of CPL advertising. Advertisers from a diverse spectrum of industry sectors like Kimberly Clark, UNICEF, Gold’s Gym and Coldwater Creek are using transparent CPL advertising to acquire consumers that are interested in their brand.

“The industry is moving towards CPL advertising,” says Daniel Taylor, senior analyst in Yankee Group’s Consumer Research group. “CPC pricing models are placeholders for CPL advertising,” he says. “Advertisers only want to pay for very specific consumer interactions, and not for wasted clicks or impressions.”

Engage by email: After acquiring qualified consumers in a cost-effective way, the next step is to engage consumers by email to keep the conversation going.

Through email, advertisers can communicate with consumers relevantly. This in turn makes a positive impact on branding metrics. What’s more, email is also good for ROI. Noted direct marketing expert Stan Rapp estimated that the average lifetime value of an email address to a marketer is as much as $118. Re-affirming this estimate, in a recent study released by Datran Media, 80.4% of executives said that email marketing (to an in-house list) was the best performing vehicle in terms of delivering the highest ROI.

Brand in meaningful and relevant ways: The last step is to drive people to relevant destinations. The 2008 Obama Presidential campaign directed users to a variety of information rich assets: Podcasts, Youtube videos, donation pages mobile websites and many others. Other successful engagement vehicles include the Dell Ideastorm community site, the JetBlue Twitter forum or the Kimberly-Clark pregnancy countdown widget.

Through these forums, the advertiser stays in control of the branding message. What’s more they enable more relevant communications between the advertiser and consumer – which helps drive branding metrics like awareness, recognition and recall.

In the age of performance, branding campaigns have just joined the party. By deriving ROI from their branding campaigns, advertisers will clearly be able to demonstrate to their executive teams how marketing moves the business needle.

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Pontiflex said existing investors New Atlantic Ventures and Greenhill SAVP also participated in the round. The new capital will be used to strengthen the ‘cost-per-lead market’ company’s flagship Pontiflex AdLeads product that makes online lead generation simple, effective and transparent.

Pontiflex has signed up advertisers such as Kimberly-Clark, Gold’s Gym, eFax and ad agencies such as Universal McCann, Carat, Leapfrog Interactive and RUF are leveraging Pontiflex to generate guaranteed returns on their branding and direct campaigns. Pontiflex’s growth is consistent with the emergence of performance advertising as the fastest growing segment of online advertising. According to the recently-released 2008 IAB PWC Internet advertising report, performance-based advertising accounted for 57% of the total online advertising spend of $23.4 billion, up from 51% in 2007.

With Pontiflex AdLeads, advertisers can connect to the entire lead generation market through a single point of connection. They can select premium publishers for their campaigns and run display and direct response creative on a CPL pricing model. Both brand and direct response advertisers use these leads to build customer acquisition programs, community sites, e-newsletter lists, social networking groups and loyalty programs.

The company raised $2.5 million in its first round a year ago.

The Pontiflex CPL Summit will be held at the historic Explorer’s Club from 4:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Pontiflex will bring together industry analysts and Fortune 500 marketers for a conversation about the rise of performance marketing and its role in providing better returns for advertisers, greater revenue for publishers and a more relevant online experience for users.

“The Internet is more and more a performance-driven model,” Imran Khan, Managing Director, J.P. Morgan, said in a release. “As such, we believe the shift to performance-based models is only going to accelerate.”

The speakers and agenda for the Pontiflex CPL Summit include:

Imran Khan, Managing Director, J.P. Morgan – “State of the Online Advertising Market”

Caroline Dangson, Research Analyst, IDC – “Consumer Attitudes About Internet Advertising and the Implications for Performance Marketing”

Panel Discussion – “Successful Performance Advertising and Consumer Engagement Strategies”

Kate Johnson, Personal Care Consumer Relationship Marketing Manager at Kimberly-Clark

Ross Geisel, Interactive Marketing Director, UNICEF

Brian Costello, General Manager & VP, The RedPlum Network

Michael Wunsch, Director of Interactive Marketing, LeapFrog Interactive

To learn more about the summit and request an invite, go here.