ADOTAS

The buttons are featured in a static space below a 300×250 ad unit to keep the click-to actions from invading the campaign messaging space. The unit also keeps a 300×100 image — presumably a brand logo — steady at the top of the screen.

Greystripe is also offering several templates based on campaign objectives and targeting. There’s straight social for advertisers seeking to drive consumer engagement on social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and YouTube. But there’s also a series of vertical specific bundles aimed at retail, consumer packaged goods, automotive, travel, technology, health and restaurant advertisers. For example, Greystripe’s retail booster unit features button templates for store location, couponing and instant purchase.

Of course, the Boosters are completely customizable. No doubt this straightforward format will be handy for mobile advertisers testing creative and click-to action combinations at scale in order to find that golden setup for engaging consumer interaction.

ValueClick announced the opening of their newest office location in Atlanta, Georgia. The new office will be led by David Braswell, formerly of BlueLithium and Undertone Networks, and Andrew Davis, formerly of NetWorld Alliance andThe New Yorker.

Kenshoo announced its newly appointed account directors, Simon Cooper and Timila Boukhtouche, at Kenshoo’s European headquarters in London. Cooper will be heading up European client services for the travel vertical, while Boukhtouche will be leading client services for France. Bridget Shea has been promoted to vice president of global client services, where she will oversee Kenshoo account management and professional services teams worldwide.

Kourosh Karimkhany, former Vice President of Corporate Development at Conde Nast Digital, and David Richter, former Executive Vice President of Corporate Development of Sonic Solutions, have both  joined SAY Media’s executive team. Richter is now chief strategy officer and Karimkhany has come on board as head of integration.

Epsilon Targeting has named Timothy Prunk as executive vice president of sales. A seasoned marketing executive, Prunk has been the CEO of National Demographics and Lifestyles, COO of ChoicePoint Precision Marketing and President of MatchLogic.

SocialTwist has appointed Sanjeev Agrawal, former head of Google product marketing, as president of the company. Subsequent to Google, Sanjeev was VP Products at TellMe Networks (acquired by Microsoft) and CEO of Aloqa (acquired by Motorola).

Twenty-year ad industry veteran Bob Lonigro has joined the Live Gamer team, heading up their new Live Gamer Media advertising unit. Lonigro most recently served as vice president of media sales at NeoEdge Networks, where he was responsible for leading advertising sales efforts and formed a new casual games business model for the company.

With the launch of its new office in Australia, SpotXchange has appointed Vicki Lyon as managing director of SpotXchange Asia Pacific. Before launching Tribal Fusion, the third largest display ad network in Australia, Lyon helped commercialize Tiscali.co.za, Africa’s second largest portal.

Velti welcomed two new members to their board of directors: Mari Baker and Phokion Potamianos. Baker, the CEO of PlayFirst, brings a strategic view to the board while Potamianos, a former partner at Francisco Partners, bolsters the board technology experience.

Amanda Van Nuys has been appointed by Mozes, Inc. to vice president of marketing. Prior to joining Mozes, Van Nuys was the executive director of marketing communications and enterprise marketing at Linden Lab/Second Life.

Myxer expanded their leadership team with the appointment of William J. Brown as vice president of marketing. Brown most recently was with the Interactive Servicing Unit at American Express, where he implemented a worldwide social media response team.

Neolane announced that former Unica senior executive Eric Schnadig has joined Neolane’s Board of Directors. Prior to Unica, Schnadig was a senior sales and marketing executive at Kenan Systems Corporation, where he helped grow revenue from $10 million to more than $300 million, leading to a $1.5 billion acquisition by Lucent Technologies.

Media Ventures Group has hired David L. Cohen as vice president of digital strategy and business development. Cohen came to Media Ventures Group from Major League Baseball Advanced Media (MLBAM), where he was director of the partner solutions group.

MEC North America announced the appointment of Jitka Petrickova as managing director of digital West. Petrickova has over 18 years of media and advertising experience across the US, Hungary, the UK and the Czech Republic and has won top industry awards such as Louskacek and iReklama during her tenure in Europe.

Travel Ad Network has named Ali Kellerman to the newly-created position of senior manager of custom media solutions. Before joining TAN, Kellerman was at Glam Media, where as Product Marketing Manager, Social Media, she helped drive social and content programs for Glam’s multiple content verticals.

On Thursday, the NASDAQ composite dropped 136.68 points yesterday for a falloff of 5%. At press time, the index is down around 200 points or 7% for the week, though Friday was hovering around breaking even.

Two of the companies in ad tech hit hardest are ValueClick (VCLK) and Interclick (ICLK), which were down 13.83% and 12.97% for the week, respectively. Until recently, both companies were having terrific runs. In July, ValueClick hit its highest price in three years while Interclick’s stock reached its highest mark in its less-than-two-year lifespan.

ValueClick’s stock actually took a 13% tumble on Wednesday alone, a day after the company announced it had acquired retargeting operation Dotomi and announced second quarter earnings — revenue up 26% to $125.1 million and earnings per share at $0.21. Both those numbers beat estimates, so you might be wondering  what was up with the major selloff — looks like investors weren’t happy with the Dotomi acquisition, particularly because the deal was 55% cash and 45% stock

Closing Aug. 3 at $16.52, VLCK fell further to $16.09 on opening on Thursday before tumbling another 6.66% to close at $15.42. Opening on Friday at $15.12, the stock was up 0.91% to $15.56 as of press time (1:21 PM EST). Better, but a bit of a drag considering that the company started the week around $18.50.

Source: Google Finance

In July, VCLK reached $18.78, its highest price since June 2008. The stock peaked at $32.68 back in May 2007.

Interclick isn’t announcing second quarter results until next Wednesday (after the market closes), but its stock began to slide late Tuesday and carried on into Wednesday, falling to $6.40 before an afternoon recovery that lifted ICLK to above $7 (actually gaining 1% for the day). However, the stock fell 9% on Thursday to close at $6.38. Opening at $6.44 on Friday, ICLK was down 2.12%to $6.24 as of press time (1:21 PM EST).

Following the company’s first quarter earnings report, which generally met analyst expectations, the stock dipped 5.7% over 18 days. Hopefully that’s not an omen for next week — even if it is, the stock ramped mightily during June and July.

Source: Google Finance

Over the last six months (between February and June), Interclick’s stock had risen about 42%, accelerating from $5.50 to a peak of $8.90 in early July — the highest the stock had reached since Interclick’s IPO in November 2009. However, the stock fell close to 9% in July, with serious dips coming after Piper Jaffray initiated the stock with a neutral rating and the launch of Genome, Interclick’s self-service audience recommendation and planning platform.

Other kinds of advertising companies are taking a bath too. Interpublic has witnessed a 13.66% Omnicom Group has fallen 6.71% over the week to around $42.25 as of press time, while DG FastChannel (which bought rich media ad server MediaMind in mid-June) has slumped around 17.5% to 23.65 as of press time.

The price tag was $295 million — 55% cash and 45% ValueClick stock. Dotomi CEO John Guiliani will continue to lead the wholly owned subsidiary and has been nominated to a seat on ValueClick’s board. Dotomi is reportedly on course to bring in $80 million in revenue in 2011.

“Dotomi’s end-to-end offering attracts large brands because of its ‘simple sophistication.’ John and his team have built a great business integrating the technical and consultative points in the display value chain,” said ValueClick CEO Jim Zarley. “Together with ValueClick’s portfolio of products, we will be in a position to meet the needs of marketers with a single relationship that will create marketing and analytic consistency.”

“As ValueClick expands its own media strategy – i.e. sites like Investopedia – Dotomi tech and services will be increasingly important as they’re layered on top,” added AdExchanger. “It will also be interesting to see if Dotomi is inserted into the Commission Junction business somehow. Lots of bottom-of-the-funnel data there.”

The acquisition is also interesting on a macro level as retargeting services are considered ”add-on” marketing features by some industry players rather than a standalone business. At the same time, although the technology has been around for more than 10 years, executing retargeting campaigns well — – e.g., not creeping out or thoroughly annoying consumers – is an art, one that seemingly has yet to be fully finessed. Retargeting companies could be seen as apprenticeships where skills are mastered.

As we’ve seen the dynamic creative companies get picked up one-by-one, perhaps Dotomi’s acquisition is a sign that the apprenticeships are over, and the over retargeting masses are next in line to be swallowed by bigger companies next. What do you guys think?

Advertisers need only deliver a 30-second or shorter clip and Greystripe will do the reformatting work — optimizing the ads as full-screen interstitials for iPhone and Android apps or within content for mobile websites and tablet apps. The ads will also feature social media integrations, the ability to show maps and links to mobile websites.

Even more interesting, it appears users will have the ability to close the ads as soon as they appear. During the three-month beta testing, Greystripe reported a 57% completion rate compared to a 42% completion rate for similar mobile video ads. In addition, Greystripe offers analytics that show how many users completed 25%, 50% and 75% of the video ads.

Jumptap has been on a mad expansion drive this year with 35 new employees — some of the notable names are Todd Anderman, chief media and revenue officer; AudienceScience vet Regina Sebring, the new vice president of publisher partnerships; and former Gorilla Nation exec Jared Hand, now vice president of sales.

The network currently boasts a reach of 83 million uniques, a 30% increase from the previous year, and partnerships with 10,000 mobile websites and apps. In April, Jumptap received 10 billion ad requests.

“Our focus on leading mobile innovation through technology and services underscores our long-term vision and commitment to delivering the best solutions for advertisers and publishers,” said CEO George Bell, who took over in September 2010. “We are well positioned to capitalize on the momentum in the mobile marketplace and continue to see impressive growth across all measures.”

Last week ValueClick snatched up rival indie mobile network GreyStripe — could JumpTap be looking for an exit too?

Greystripe boasts a reach of 30 million uniques mobile users and serves display and rich media mobile ads for 3,500 apps and mobile websites. After Apple introduced the iAd, Greystripe was quick to the market with a similar solution — featuring Flash, wonderful Flash capabilities — that was not only multiplatform but also cheaper. Check out a case study regarding Buick’s use of Immersion Ads.

“Greystripe accelerates ValueClick’s move ‘up the marketing funnel’ with brand advertisers and gives ValueClick Media immediate scale and expertise in the large and fast-growing mobile ad market,” commented ValueClick CEO Jim Zarley.

What does he mean by “move up the funnel”? ValueClick — which tends to garner performance advertising budgets from big companies rather than brand budgets — hopes to cross-sell Greystripe in-app and mobile website campaigns to its advertiser base in a gambit to break into those brand budgets. In addition, the ValueClick Media division will open its expansive network publishers to add boatloads of inventory to Greystripe’s network.

On a side note, in what was certainly a shot at Google and its mobile ad network AdMob, last summer Apple changed its mobile ad policy to only allow independent mobile ad networks to serve in-app ads. Indie players like Millennial Media, Jumptap and Greystripe seemed to have one-upped the AdMob-Google Goliath, but the ValueClick acquisition would appear to take Greystripe out of contention. The Federal Trade Commission was reportedly looking into Apple’s mobile ad policy, but there’s been not a peep since last summer.

ValueClick promised more details on the Greystripe acquisition during its May 3 conference call with investors. We’ve already noticed online display ad networks taking an interest in online video ad networks, but will we see more mobile ad networks get scooped up as display ad networks respond to encroachment by players such as DSPs, revenue optimizers, private ad exchanges, etc.?

Bonus — ValueClick Vice President of Corporate Development and Investor Relations Gary Fuges chats with AdExchanger’s John Ebbert about potential future acquisitions, but doesn’t outright say a video play is on the company’s agenda.

“In today’s results-focused online advertising environment, it is important that we provide our advertisers with access to powerful and precise targeting tools and technologies,” said ValueClick CTO Peter Wolfert. “We believe LucidMedia’s contextual technology will help our advertiser clients achieve their specific audience and targeting goals, while helping our publisher partners improve their monetization.”

The partnership comes after ValueClick recently introduced its Platform Services for display advertisers, which integrates the company’s data, audience targeting and technology assets all within a single package.

In addition to introducing preemptive brand safety capabilities to its DSP, LucidMedia brought home $4.5 million in venture capital funding earlier this summer, which it said would be used to expand its recently launched self-service DSP.

However, retail is only a taste of what’s to come: the full-service Platform Services within ValueClick Media — boasts direct relationships with 8,000 publishers
– integrates the company’s data, audience targeting and technology assets all within a single package. According to the company, ValueClick networks reach more than 80% of U.S. Internet users, as well as additional inventory from exchanges and moile networks.

Through the audience platform, marketers can target their audiences en masse using real-time bidding. ValueClick’s proprietary data can also be buoyed with client and third-party data. Analytics, reporting and strategy services are also included within Platform Services, which aid ValueClick’s ad-serving technology in optimizing value on an impression level.

Nancy Hall, a seven-year veteran of the company, has been named president of Platform Services. ValueClick, which also operates affiliate network Commission Junction, recently brought CEO James Zarley back to the captain’s seat after a three-year absence.

– Ad network and semantic targeting provider ad pepper has bumped Jonathan L. Slavin up to managing director and president of North America operations. The Photobucket veteran joined the company last year as senior vice president of sales for North America and helped triple U.S. revenue in 2009.

– Former DoubleClick exec Stephen Collins has joined the edo Interactive team, taking on the roles of both chief strategy office and chief financial officer.