Topic: Advertisers

Published: September 05, 2007

Yahoo! lands BlueLithium for $300M

By Michael Estrin

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Building on its acquisition of Right Media, Yahoo increases its investment in areas that fortify the portal's long-term success.

Late Tuesday, Yahoo! announced that it had acquired BlueLithium for $300 million dollars in an all cash deal, giving the struggling portal a boost in terms of offering advertisers enhanced media opportunities.

"BlueLithium's products, technology and team will be an integral part of our drive to build the industry's leading advertising and publishing network," said Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang. "This acquisition will extend our ability to deliver powerful data analytics, advanced targeting and innovative media buying strategies to our customers, who are increasingly looking for these insights. By leveraging BlueLithium's complementary expertise and tools, we will be able to better address the needs of our performance-based display advertisers and enhance the value of our publishers' inventory."

Kendall Allen, managing director of Incognito Digital, said the deal presents a boon to interactive agencies because it allows Yahoo to offer a broad and deep pool of users.

"I think [BlueLithium and Yahoo] can put together some really interesting packages," Allen said. "This is an impressive acquisition as far as advertisers go because Blue Lithium seems to have crafted its formula with consumer content interests in mind. Ad network acquisitions are certainly rampant, but Yahoo seems to have set itself apart with this one."

According to Allen, the acquisition will yield both a wide-reaching and well-targeted audience pool for advertisers.

In a statement released by Yahoo, the company said BlueLithium, which will operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary, will be an active participant in the Right Media Exchange, which Yahoo bought in April for $680 million.

"The combination of BlueLithium's network and Yahoo's engaged audience will provide an unprecedented buying opportunity across what we believe will be one of the world's leading online display ad networks," said Susan Decker, president, Yahoo. "And BlueLithium's expertise in network management will better enable Yahoo to manage supply and demand across our network, by balancing advertiser goals with publisher value. Building on our acquisition of Right Media, this transaction demonstrates our commitment to increasing our investments in areas which can most contribute to Yahoo's long-term success."

BlueLithium CEO Gurbaksh Chahal will remain with the company on an interim basis to oversee the transition.

Topic: Advertising

New Online Ad Technology Mimics TV

Double Fusion will show developers its new software that supports dynamic ads in games.

Monday, September 03, 2007 6:00 AM PDT

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By N. Evan Van Zelfden

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - Double Fusion, a private company that connects advertisers and video game publishers, rolls out new technology on Tuesday to allow advertisers to mount last-minute ad campaigns in games the same way they use spot TV ads.

The technology will be shown to developers at the Austin Game Developers Conference starting on Wednesday.

Game designers now designate and hard-code locations for in-game advertising during the development process. After the coding is completed, advertising content can be changed via an Internet connection, but locations for ads cannot be changed or added.

Double Fusion's new program, called fusion.runtime, separates in-game advertising from the development process, allowing developers to create new placements in completed games, including back catalog titles.

"With the fusion.runtime, you can get the code in the game, and figure out the ad-spaces later," Jonathan Epstein, Double Fusion's president and chief executive, told Reuters.

The new program adds almost unlimited flexibility to what was once a fixed constellation of advertising slots within a game, Epstein said.

"This allows advertisers to dynamically run campaigns," he said.

The potential for new advertising inventory may also fund a re-release of back catalog titles -- completely free of charge to gamers, in some cases -- and longer lives for hit titles.

Games typically have a short window at retail. Once they sell out, they remain out-of-print, or transition into a cheaper digital download form.

"There has been no long tail of gaming," Epstein said. "No one wants to open up those games, get into code, and make extensive tests."

Michael Cai, director of broadband and gaming at Parks Associates, said the new program "is going to open up a lot of potential inventory for advertisers who are interested in the gaming medium."

Cai said gamers are likely to protest a noticeable rise in in-game ads, but he added that major publishers are smart enough to guard their main revenue source -- retail sales.

"It's in their every incentive to make sure the way they integrate advertisements will not turn off the consumers who buy their games for fifty bucks, or sixty bucks, at retail," he said

Double Fusion shares the marketplace with Microsoft Corp.'s Massive, Google Inc-owned Adscape and other smaller, independent companies.

In-game advertising is now a $514 million market and in-game dynamic advertising, which advertisers can renew or change at will, is expected to reach $675 million by 2012 in the United States, according to Parks Associates, a consumer and technology research and forecasting company.

The first companies to incorporate fusion.runtime are the French game publisher Ubisoft Entertainment, Korean online game publisher NCsoft Corp, and American casual game publisher Oberon Media.