ADOTAS

• Lead-gen network NeverBlue has introduced a day-parting service to its affiliate interface, allowing clients to break down and optimize campaigns by hour of the day, day of the week, week of the month, and month of the year. In addition, reports can be filtered by country, region and even the time zone of an affiliate’s location.

• A new study by Casale Media suggests that digital video ad spend will increase by 25% over the next year to amount to about 23.8% of total online ad budgets. Just 23.8%? Well, Casale found that 40% of advertisers were holding back on the space because it’s too difficult to measure ROI, while 38% cited a lack of enough ROI to justify increasing spend. At the same time, 80% of respondents said video ads increased awareness of traditional and new brands, products and/or services — considering how much online and mobile video have exploded over the last year, perhaps ROI isn’t being defined correctly…

• Publisher Ad Network (PAN) has introduced the easily implemented Platinum Reel, which provides publishers with fully-licensed video content related to a site’s content focus (e.g., level guides for gaming sites, television episode recaps for entertainment sites) along with advertising, from which pubs get a cut of the revenue. Currently the program is in a phased rollout and only available for entertainment, fashion/beauty and gaming publishers — the latter appears to be the prime target as PAN boasts the high quality of its original gaming videos.

• Real-time brand lift measurement and optimization service Vizu Corporation has integrated its tools into Firefly Video, powered by Tribal Fusion’s E9 Audience Engagement Platform.

• DIDMO, the Swedish-based company behind cross-platform mobile app development tool Magmito, released version 3.0 of the platform, which allows developers to remove the main menu to build “one-page apps” and a “copy page” function. In addition, the company launched the Magmito Application Developer (MAD) Certification Program so developers can promote they know their way around the program — so, yes, they can call themselves MAD men (and women).

• Digitas has built a Mobile Retail Showcase in its Boston office to illustrate how cool mobile-related tech — such as QR codes, NFC and augmented reality — are transforming retail marketing. The room is pretty epic, resembling an exhibit at a museum — can Digitas clients bring their whole families to learn and be awed?

Rabbit Punches:

• Ad tech finance platform FastPay has officially launched, with $25 million already in the pockets of media companies.

• Cox Digital Solutions is giving its pubs access to real-time bidding through the new CDS Connect platform powered by AppNexus.

• Media Ventures Group and Blue Sky Media are teaming up.

• According to video platform YuMe’s third-quarter video ad metrics report, completion rates for 15-second pre-rolls are up to 79% from 72% last quarter, while their 30-second cousins are up to 68% from 64%.

• Blogging community YouSayToo has partnered with InfoLinks to offer bloggers contextually targeted in-text advertising.

• Since January, GSI Commerce’s PepperJam Exchange has added 275 affiliate programs, including retailers Toys ‘R’ Us, Aéropostale, Timberland and Anthropologie, who all named the PepperJam Exchange the exclusive tech platform for their affiliate marketing programs.

While listeners will be thrilled that Pandora has shelved the much-hared 40-hour listening cap, us marketing types will be more interested in the music streaming/discovery service’s HTML5 redesign, which opens a slew of new advertising options, including better cross-platform executions, bigger video ads and enhanced social features.

In addition to its Sneak Peak social analytics service and Engagement Bar, Visibli has launched Follower Intelligence, which enables social marketers to both segment and target their followers. Check out what Visibli’s earlier study questioning whether brands can be rock stars.

Media management system TRAFFIQ has partnered with Nielsen to integrate Nielsen @Plan market information to clients planning and optimizing display campaigns. Check out our July interview with TRAFFIQ Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing (and regular Adotas contributor) Chris O’Hara on the platform’s many recent additions.

MediaMind and Havas Digital have agreed to integrate MediaMind’s multichannel ad-serving tech with the attribution and analytics capabilities of Havas’ Artemis platform.

Following the summer  launch of GlamCreate, a content management and publishing platform for Glam Media’s 4,000 odd writers, the female-focused vertical content and ad network has acquired social website builder Ning.

Digital marketer Tribal Fusion announced a deeper integration of BlueKai Exchange audience data to enhance clients’ media planning and buying abilities.

Mobile entertainment firm Myxer, which runs ad-supported Myxer.com, introduced Myxer Social Radio, a music streaming service that is integrated into Facebook and selects which tunes to play based on a user’s social graph.

Digital marketing software-maker Kenshoo has upgraded its local marketing platform on the holistic Kenshoo Universal Platform. New features within Kenshoo Local 2.0 are not limited to onboarding and campaign creation tools; support for Facebook, Baidu, and Yandex; multiple conversion event optimization; dimension and category tagging; customizable online reporting dashboards, and flexible scheduled email reports. But wait, there’s more…

Following the big Epsilon breach, the Online Trust Alliance reported that 84% of the Internet retail 100 have adopted email authentication, meaning you can trust what’s sent to you.

MediaBank has partnered with TRA to enable clients to match TV planning data to purchase data.

Undertone has introduced the PageSkin ad unit, which transforms the borders around web content into space for advertising creative.

The real secret to Facebook ads? It’s all about the image. (All Facebook)

Digital agency Tribal Fusion has opened offices in Jeddah and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

After introducing free phone support for advertisers in April, Google apparently is “testing additional phone support” for AdSense publishers. (Search Engine Land)

Google has also enabled AdWords to allow five My Client Centers to manage a single AdWords account, simplifying networking between clients, agencies, SEM companies, AdWords API developers and/or other third-party services.

The ads operate differently for each type of unit. The standard IAB display ad plays the video in the banner, but increases to the browser size when rolled over. When a user clicks on the interstitial format, the video plays before navigating to the new page. And for mobile, the videos load after a user clicks on an app or a game.

These cost-per-play ad types are also available on a run-of-network basis. Tribal Fusion claims Full Engagement is an accurate descriptor because the ads get 100% user engagement…. The user can’t see nothing else!

Smart phones are likely high on many a wish list this holiday season, so for digital marketers a wise New Year’s resolution would be to get mobile campaigns going. The metrics keep speaking to their advantages.

Greystripe partnered with Tribal Fusion to extend 500 campaigns to mobile by converting their Flash creative to an iPhone compatible format. The results have been pretty impressive: mobile ads have been outperforming their online brethren by 10 to 20 times, with click-through rates pole-vaulting above 1%.

No surprise, Greystripe is introducing web-to-mobile solutions for brands and agencies nationwide. Ring in the New Year by heading to the new frontier.

The Rubicon Project, an online advertising infrastructure company, has added $9 million in venture funding bringing total financial investments to $42 million. The Series C funding round was lead by GE/NBCU’s Peacock Equity Fund with a $6 million investment and additional funding from existing investors Clearstone Venture Partners and Mayfield Fund. To date, the Rubicon Project has experienced 400% year over year revenue growth and the additional capital will fuel ongoing business growth initiatives including additional strategic acquisitions and international expansion.

Tribal Fusion, a digital marketing solutions company, announced its membership in the Premier Partner Program for BlueKai, and intent-focused data exchange. As a BlueKai Premier Partner, Tribal Fusion will integrate extensive data from BlueKai’s exchange with the data it collects from its own proprietary technology platform to provide clients with an unprecedented level of granularity in audience targeting.

BIA Advisory Services will now be known as BIA/Kelsey, representing the culmination of BIA’s acquisition of The Kelsey Group last October and the complete expanse of services the combined company now offers to multi-delivery platforms, including traditional and interactive media, the online local marketplace, and mobile advertising.

Digitas has hired Josh Miller in Atlanta as a media supervisor. He previously worked at Response Mine Interactive and Moxie Interactive.

Nymag.com, the online sibling of New York magazine, has launched two new blogs – sports commentary and analysis at “The Sports Section” and, going live Sept. 14, television musings at “Surf.”

Tremor Media, an online video advertising network and provider of the market-leading Acudeo video monetization platform, has promoted Rich Knopke to Vice President, East Coast Advertising. Mr. Knopke joined Tremor Media in November 2008 as Director, East Coast Sales and he will take on expanded responsibilities in his new role. Tremor Media also announced they have opened a search for VP, West Coast Advertising. The newly created position is to be based in their Los Angeles office and filled by a senior sales executive with experience from both the TV and digital worlds and with senior-level television buyer relationships.

Bizo, a B2B audience targeting platform and advertising network, has launched new industry and job classifications to its core targeting platform. Bizo, which uses anonymous bizographic data — such as job function, company size, and industry sector — to target online ads, expands its industry classifications from 26 to more than 110 industries and expands its targetable job functions from 13 to more than 50. Expanding these classifications allows for even more granular targeting for B2B marketers, which in turn leads to more effective and efficient online advertising.

eXelate, an open marketplace for online targeting data, has launched its Access+ Partner Program by inking deals with leading video ad networks BrightRoll and TidalTV as the first of its Access+ Video Partners. Via eXelate’s unique data infrastructure, buyers ranging from ad networks and agencies to publishers and media buying platforms can now gain easy access to demographic, interest and intent targeting data on over 150M US UV.

Tribal Fusion, a digital marketing solutions company, has partnered with Media Contacts, the global interactive media network of Havas Digital, to provide the company with dedicated account and strategy teams, technology access, and customized solutions on a client by client basis.

Goodway Group, a marketing services company, has hired Michael Steele has joined the agency as Account Director of the South Central Region. Prior to joining Goodway Group, Steele worked with Forbes niche start-up ForbesTraveler.com and CBS Interactive.

Vitrue, a social marketing company, has rolled out the Vitrue SRM (Social Relationship Manager), a web-based application suite that allows brands to more efficiently and effectively manage, schedule and automatically publish across Facebook and Twitter. Vitrue SRM is comprised of three components: Social Publisher, Social Planner and Social Insights. The Vitrue SRM is now available to a limited set of marketers by invitation only with a full public release slated for September. To request an invite, please visit http://srm.vitrue.com

Tribal Fusion, a digital marketing solutions company, has hired Sean Crawford as Senior Director of International Strategy & Operations. Crawford is joining Tribal Fusion to lead the company’s international business including the roll-out of new services and expansion. He joins Tribal Fusion with over ten years experience in the online, mobile and image technology businesses. He was most recently CEO of Design About Town, a graphic design and internet services specialist. Previously, he was Director of Business Development at Adzilla where he was responsible for building international partnerships. Prior to that, he was Director of Consumer Product Development at Orange in San Francisco, where he worked with the company’s international teams to develop several micro-content, social media, video, advertising and search services.

LookSmart, the search advertising network and management company, today announced the launch of Optimal Pricing: a new initiative to deliver better performance to search advertisers by segmenting and pricing traffic according to that traffic’s value. Optimal Pricing aggregates keyword search traffic on the LookSmart Advertiser Network, and classifies performance data so that the full spectrum of that traffic is priced appropriately according to traffic type, quality, and volume. The model relies on information about advertiser campaign objectives and network structure to provide each advertiser a chance to bid on the most valuable traffic at all price points.

Click Forensics unveiled a new traffic quality dashboard that helps ad networks and publishers more easily pinpoint good and bad online advertising traffic sources. A feature of the Click Forensics traffic quality management platform, the new Click Forensics dashboard is accessible via web browser and can be used to identify, filter and block traffic that shouldn’t be billed or paid for. Ad networks use the tool to determine which publishers are reliable traffic sources. Publishers can leverage the dashboard to monitor traffic quality from affiliates and sub-publisher sites so they can deliver better results for advertisers.

NearbyNow, a digital personal shopping service, has added another channel for retailers and brands to reach consumers with the launch of the NearbyNow iPhone platform. Following on the heels of its “Lucky at your Service” iPhone application built for Lucky magazine, NearbyNow developed a platform that allows retailers, brands, and media companies to tap into the exponentially growing number of consumers who are using iPhone apps for online and local shopping. Runner’s World and Seventeen, both leading magazine titles in their categories, are the first two titles to launch iPhone applications using the platform, with more titles to be announced in the coming months.

BT has hired ex-Google executive Kevin Marks as Vice President of Web Services. Marks will be based in Mountain View at Ribbit – Silicon Valley’s First Phone Company. Before joining BT, Kevin Marks was Developer Advocate for OpenSocial at Google.

GameStop, a video game and entertainment software retailer, hired Chris Petrovic as General Manager, Digital Media, a newly created position within the company. As a member of the company’s senior management team, Petrovic will serve as the principal leader of GameStop’s digital strategy.

WebMetro, an Internet marketing agency, has named Karen Helweg as its Vice President of Interactive Strategy. Helweg is accountable for overseeing the strategic development and integration of clients’ interactive marketing campaigns for maximum effectiveness. Prior to WebMetro, Helweg was the Director of Interactive Services at Hamon & Associates.

Tribal Fusion, the digital marketing solutions company owned by Exponential Interactive, has created an advisory board dedicated to the CPG market. The board, led by industry veterans Carol Kruse, Vice President of Global Interactive Marketing for The Coca-Cola Company, and Stuart Bogaty, Former EVP and Global Managing Partner at Universal McCann, aims to provide informed and strategic counsel for implementing successful programs for CPG clients.

Turn, the smart platform for digital advertising, has hired Masroor Malik to fill the newly created role of vice president of business operations. In this capacity, Malik will oversee client services, ad operations, product operations, campaign management, analytics, and optimization. He was previously at Efficient Frontier, where he created and led the strategy, analytics, product operations and services organizations. Malik also has held senior and executive management positions at Yahoo! in the Advertising Marketplaces Group. At Yahoo, he led strategy and operations in display advertising for key projects including the Newspaper Consortium and the Yahoo! Publisher Network.

Babelgum’s CEO Michael O’Callaghan is leaving the company, PaidContent is reporting. O’Callaghan’s departure is part of a general trend at the online video platform: it’s seen new CEOs, CTOs and COOs in 13 months. No word yet on where O’Callaghan is headed.

Tribal Fusion has welcomed Toby Gabriner, the former CEO of Adzilla, as its president.