Ad Industry Roundup: Pubmatic; TVGuide/Showtime; Honda
This story was written by David Kaplan.
Remnant ad prices down dramatically in Q4 (PDF): No surprise there, given the perilous state of the economy and previous trends outlined by Pubmatic, which sells software optimization to ad nets. In its latest survey, Pubmatic found that small, medium, and large sites saw prices drop by 52 percent, 23 percent, and 54 percent, respectively, from the previous year. Still, it wasn't all bad, as technology, sports, entertainment, gaming, and music verticals all had higher ad price averages in Q4.
Showtime takeover TVGuide ad inventory: Looking to make certain that curious TV viewers are aware of its new series about a woman with multiple personalities, United States of Tara, Showtime has taken over multiple ad space on TVGuide.com. It bought up all the site's ad inventory for the special promotion. The cable net has also bought all the inventory on TVGuide.com's Online Video Guide, which has been streaming Tara since last week. The show debuts this Sunday.
Honda's "dreamy" webisodes: Honda is launching a Webisode-focused branding campaign called "Dream the Impossible." The ads are composed of short films that are tied to Honda's "power of dreams" campaign from 2007not any specific vehicle launch. The shorts are hosted at a dreams.honda.com, with trailers slated to appear on video sites including Hulu and ABC.com; and tech/news sites like CNN.com and Wired.
By David Kaplan