Ancient Buying Method
or Fertility Rite?

Robot Invasion, Social Media Battle:

• Marketwatch blames the cratering of Facebook stock for the Street's putting too much stock in whispered figures of vastly increased ad loads once Facebook put mobile ads into their sales channel in a serious way. What the analysts hadn't expected was what anyone who's done mobile advertising in the past knew: the value of mobile impressions are a fraction of other impressions for most advertising purposes. That, combined with a supply glut, meant that there was not a direct relationship to revenue growth.
• Meanwhile, down the street, Google - after having realized that tablet ads behave much more like non-mobile avails, and, rescued that pool of media from the "mobile" gutter - is basking in the reflected glow of the market's anticipation of another $5 billion in tablet (not "mobile," mind you) ad inventory sales.
• ValueClick's CEO's response to how big a deal it's been to be a favored Facebook Exchange player: Meh. "It's more of curiosity than anything else at this point."
• Meanwhile, over at Facebook, They are upping their demands on would be preferred partners for their media exchange, asking that they not be selective in which bits of Facebook's media network they plug into, and that they demonstrate an positive change in behavior among their customers of pushing additional ad share toward Facebook. If potential preferred partners seeking the "badge" have a problem with that, perhaps they can call ValueClick's CEO (see above) and ask him for his badge.

Publishing:

• Again proving that there is no bad idea from traditional media that won't be given a go in online media, the IAB is promoting the online version of "upfront" buying, which is essentially the in-one-place-at-one-time meatspace equivalent of an electronic marketplace, except with very beautiful people instead of computers, and no relation between efficacy and pricing.