GroupM Interaction, the media agency of WPP, is hoping to overcome the problem of misplaced ads online with a new monitoring technology. Advertising networks which place aggregate banned adverts for clients across a range of sites may create clashes between the ad and editorial content placed elsewhere on the site – an oil company’s ad next to a news story on climate change, for example, the FT reports.

GroupM Interaction (…) is hoping to prevent such incidents by using “ad verification” technology, which reports back on which sites client messages are being shown, and in some cases even prevents them from appearing if the site is considered unsuitable.

Full story at this link…

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News and features:

• ‘I’m an ethicist get me out of here!’: Conference will question global media obsession with celebrity
• Big Issue mulling digital editions with Yudu launch
• Smart moves: Paul McNamara becomes News Of the World defence correspondent

Ed’s picks:

• Adam Westbrook: 6×6 how to make things happen as a freelancer
• MediaGuardian: Independent News & Media falls into the red
• Fitz & Jen: US Print Council defends newspapers with environmental campaign
• Advertising Age: Why ad networks are surviving
• paidContent:UK: Italian Competition Authority searches Google’s Milan offices in newspaper dispute
• Stars and Stripes: US to screen journalists for ‘positive coverage’ before embedding

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On the Editor’s Blog:

• The Baltimore Hoax: newspapers and bloggers fall for Wire comments spoof
• Johnston Press’ ad revenues feel effects of recession
• Game, set and… hack – Bulgaria prepares for journalists’ tennis championships
• Twitter tops BBC for monthly traffic, while BBC Online click-throughs exceed 10m

• Guardian.co.uk: Subbing own Guardian blog is not the norm, says Janine Gibson
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – audio editing with Audacity
• Journalism Daily: FT.com’s innovations, plinth reporter plans a party and the need for media blackouts
• #FollowJourn: @marshall9093/copy editor
• Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – audio editing with Audacity

Venture capitalist Warren Lee discusses last year’s prediction of an ‘apocalyptic shakeout’ of US advertising networks.

Instead, despite the economic downturn, ad networks are surviving, he says.

The impact of increasing online usage has changed relationships between advertising networks and publishers – but not all for the bad, he explains.

“Fundamentally, I would argue that the ad-network model still makes a lot of sense today and can be quite resilient. In particular, those ad networks that develop proprietary technologies and offer truly differentiated solutions are the ones most likely to be successful,” he writes.

Full story at this link…

• Outside.in: Aggregate, curate and network for a new model of news
• AdAge.com: Could these local start-ups replace newspapers?
• WashingtonPost.com: True/Slant – mapping a new relationship
• Martin Moore: #futureofnews is ‘not so bleak, but not so rosy either’
• Facebook useful to local news? If it opened up the networks

Publishers are building internal sales teams to replace ad network deals, as part of cost-cutting, according to this report.

Full story at this link…

• Globe and Mail: Canadian National Post staff offered buyouts
• Mediaweek: Current TV cuts 80 staff across global offices
• DutchNews.nl: RBI to grow online income by 50 per cent in three years
• InPublishing survey: ‘Behind the turnover figures, the industry is essentially still in profit’
• AP to serve local ads on mobile?

Yahoo! has released more details of its forthcoming online advertising system, which will make use of behavioural targeting.

The AMP! system – formerly known as Project Apex – aims to help online publishers in buying and selling advertising across search, display, local, mobile, and video platforms, and will offer partners tools to target ads according to the location, age and interests of consumers.

According to a press release from the company, the system will give publishers and advertisers access to Yahoo!’s own portfolio of websites in addition to more than 600 US newspapers, which are part of the Newspaper Consortium.
The first stage of Amp! will be rolled out to members of the Newspaper Consortium in the third quarter of this year, with plans to extend the service to additional publishers, advertisers, agencies, and ad networks into 2009.

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