You can still buy a ticket online at a 25% discount for the Venture Summit Mid-Atlantic 2010: Where Big Ideas Meet Big Money happening November 3rd-5th, 2010 at the George Mason Inn at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia
The Wall Street Journal was full of seemingly unrelated but actually interconnected news today, mostly good. You can save a few percentage points of iPad battery power and read it here:
U.S. Internet-advertising revenue increased 14% in the second quarter to a record $6.2 billion, according to an industry report issued by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers, fueled by rising demand for digital-video ads. The paper went on to report, maybe more significantly, that this rise easily outscoped the change in spending in other media. I’d look for big deals in the video advertising space. Brightroll, where friend Charlie runs sales, must be growing in value by the pre-roll second.
The founders and investors in ngmoco (including the improbably named Neil Young), will put $300 million dollars in its pockets plus up to $100 million more in earn out. A Japanese social-videogame developer DeNA Co. announced today that it plans to buy the San Francisco-based iPhone gaming applications developer. According to claims relayed to Mobile Apps Briefing ngcomo has 60 million downloads of games like Topple and Maze Finger and over 13.5 million registered users — proving the stunning current value of creating products that help you waste your time.
The Journal also reports that at the end of September, Verizon Wireless had some nine million Android subscribers (up from zero a year earlier. Not all that surprising, the ever geekier Androidius Humanus among us appear to consume more data bandwidth per user than even us greedy iPhone owners. Because of this scale, Verizon claims that it will experience no pressure on its network when it finally gets to sell the iPhone……..and btw, I have a big orange bridge with condos in the towers that I’d like to sell you (cash only). Reportedly AT&T was carrying a heavier load, (like you didn’t know that) of 16.5 million iPhone customers at the end of September. Since every breathing human of the 5.5 million of us in the San Francisco Bay area is flaunting their iPhone right NOW, this means that there are actually 11.5 million more AT&T bandwidth suckers combined in fly over country and in New York, (where the network will also drop your calls with military precision.)
So in conclusion:
60 million downloads of ngcomo games means every man, woman child and home-schooled iguana iPhone user has an average of almost four of these time wasting apps on their phone. Time wasting, whether watching video or playing Topple pays. Bigtime. More ads are coming your way. More pre-roll will prevent you from watching videos. Your cell network problems are either about to be magically resolved…. or not. Finally ngmoco sounded like a Japanese company to begin with. Do you think Neil Young planned it this way?
And, clearly nobody is doing any work at all. Including me.
Aspen, CO– at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech Conference, Jim Breyer, one of the deans of Sand Hill Road ( Accell Partners ) believes that large established media companies have exactly “zero” chance of diverging with their digital initiatives. He specifically mentions NewsCorp, Disney, Time Warner .
Everyone has their pet frustrations with the device they can't live without.
The failure of the iPhone browser to support Flash content has been pretty frustrating if only because everyone insists on putting Flash into their sites (never mind Google can't index it, but I digress). Along comes Rich Wong of Accel Partners, a Valley VC saying that Adobe blew it, Flash is toast, Fuggedaboudit.
Flash won't be supported on the iPad. Now I could this see this having a big affect on how publishers develop content. Since publishers both online and off are stumbling over each other to develop iPad-ready versions of their magazines and newspapers, it's not hard to see how Flash starts to lose its appeal for publishers. Why do things in Flash if readers can't see it on the iPad — because, as you know we will each own five iPads in about two years, not counting the kid's pads.
One possible benefit of the death of Flash (I'll believe it when I see it) is the demise of the classic advertising agency site built entirely.in Flash so as to satisfy some art director's vanity — sites where you can't copy content or download anything while you play cat and (ready?) mouse (har, har. Sorry had to do it) trying to find the precious hidden roll overs.
This is a very interesting concept on how to get funding for your business. You get funded. In exchange, the investor gets a cut of your life earnings. I don't know what happens if the investment fails.
Let's all stipulate as to Kjerstin Erickson's general brilliance for coming up with the concept and getting into Stanford GSB and her general goodness for starting up a non-profit to revitalize African refugee communities and all that.
But… did she really have to name this idea the "THRUST" fund and then offer up this pose for her "head"shot, possibly setting back the concept of taking women in business seriously by, oh, let's say three decades.
I'm just saying.
Don’t know how we missed this the first time around, but second time’s the charm. Right? It’s an interview with YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen by Wired Editor Chris Anderson, at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco.
It’s mildly interesting to hear issues like scalability & advertising models discussed now, in the wake of recent reports on the future of online video. And it’s more-than-mildly interesting to hear them field questions on copyright wars and how Google changed everything, in the wake of all this social media madness. And what about competition? Sure, we’ve now got a crop of Others (like MetaCafe and Joost) out there now, all trying to be the next YouTube? Maybe, but preferably without all the lawsuits.
Take Hulu, for example. Hyped up? Perhaps. But what a, what a, NAME!
From the Hulu Blog:
Why Hulu? Objectively, Hulu is short, easy to spell, easy to pronounce, and
rhymes with itself. Subjectively, Hulu strikes us as an inherently fun
name, one that captures the spirit of the service we’re building. Our
hope is that Hulu will embody our (admittedly ambitious) never-ending
mission, which is to help you find and enjoy the world’s premier
content when, where and how you want it.
Sounds scary. But YouTube’s not going to roll over and die. After all, they’ve just signed Oprah. And we’re forgetting that TV and video are, in fact, two different things. YouTube is, and always will be, video. Leave the challenge of putting television online to everyone else; Chad and Steve can then retire in peace.
“Focused,
brand-driven” ad network Adify has received
$19 million in Series B financing, led by US Venture Partners (USVP) and joined
by OI (Original Investor, not quite as cool as Original Posse) Venrock
Associates. With a partner list that includes The Washington Post Company,
Comcast, NBC Universal and Time Warner, and being recently named to the Business
2.0 Next Net 25, these guys are flying high.
Let’s figure out why. Take a project like their recent
partnership with Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive to create a Sponsored Blogroll program, which allows the publisher and selected
high-quality blogger – much like this one 
– to share ad space and
thus reach a broader audience in a single media buy. Vertical advertising
networks, you do realize, is already the norm in the offline world, and it’s
about time it was brought to ours. You accomplish much more and with less
effort – and isn’t that what modern man is all about?
Aggregation. Niche Marketing. High-Quality Content. Customized
Vertical Networks.
If that doesn’t turn you on, I don’t know what will. How
about this term: Build Your Own Network™ which is fortunate enough to be acronymed as B-Y-O-N. Just the sound of it is
rousing fond memories of B-Y-O-B nights back at school. Jugs of Gallo, cases of Corona. Now, gross, but back then, such a good idea!
Speaking of things that seemed
like a good idea 8 years ago, let’s go back to the matter at hand: VC funding.
Some peeps are getting a little nervous and starting to whisper the word, "bubble" under their breath. Maybe this is because funding hit $411 million in online advertising and marketing business alone, up from
$164 million two years ago (according to Dow Jones VentureOne and Ernst & Young). So
it seems that the money is once again streaming in. This time around, however, Madison
Avenue is not going to stand by and watch it happen right under their noses. Publicis,
as we all know, has joined in the game and buying/funding digital start-ups as
a protectionist measure “against
their own obsolescence.” Tim
Hanlon, the SVP of Denuo, their ‘futures practice’ consulting unit, even admitted
that most of the industry’s innovation is coming from
entrepreneurs in garages who ‘may not have the appreciation or nostalgia for
how media and advertising has been done historically.’
Translation: “Let’s not leave it
to the chumps.”
Mediapost
reports that those venture capital sharks are still eyeing media companies like
a hungry frat guy checking out a hot chick at a party (or a philly cheesesteak)
at
Now
imagine it’s a hot chick – and her sister. (Or extra special sauce on the
cheesesteak.) That’s how sweet the deals look to aggressive venture-capital and
private equity investors when they factor all the M&A action that will
continue on in 2007.
But
who will benefit? The traditional media companies who claim they are adopting
“transformational strategies” to stay on top of new trends and technology, or
new online companies who are already there? Oh wait, haven’t they merged into one big conglomerate yet?
Admittedly, the days of Wayans-brothers style free flowing
cash money are over, and the VC boys are being more picky about who they pump
money into. They’re deliberately seeking out companies that are “extremely efficient in the way they
spend their money,” in other words, who more or less have their act together, and just need small
investments to deal with a few problems.
What? Mo’ money, mo’ problems? We’re with Notorious on this one:
Stay humble stay low, blow like
Hootie / True pimp niggaz spend no dough on the booty.
AKQA has sold a stake to private equity firm, General Atlantic. First off the folks at AKQA deserve tremendous credit. Seeing a ray of hope deep in the hole that was 2002 was not an easy thing to do (believe me I was there in the abyss). AKQA, with a cash cushion from Francisco, dug themselves out and thrived.
I always questioned why Francisco Partners had pumped in $40 million dollars (Adweek says $70M) into creating AKQA (from SF-based Citron, Haligman & Bedecarre, London-based AKQA, DC-based AKQA and a shop in Singapore, name long forgotten) at the bottom of the market just months after their larger, ill-fated investment in US Web (or MarchFirst or whatever it was before it crashed and burned). (BTW, I talked to Kirk Citron this morning — do you know how to say "happy guy"?)
But don’t hire me as your investment adviser. According to published reports, General Atlantic, a Greenwich based private equity firm, valued the company at somewhere around $250 million on revenues of $75 million. For those of you without your calculators handy that represents a super sweet 3.3x revenue deal. Folks, thems are 1999 boom time valuations. WPP was in the bidding but, as much as I’m sure Sir Martin would have loved to acquire our friends on Townsend Street, the holding companies can’t pay that kind of multiple because they are, to paraphrase Madonna, "living in a 1X world."
This is terrific news for anyone trying to build some value in the digital world. Granted, AKQA has a high creative profile, a very strong growth track record, big name clients and a global footprint, all factors that surely played into this lofty valuation. Nonetheless, there are really huge implications here.
This deal is a direct threat to the hegemony of the agency holding companies like WPP, Interpublic, Omnicom et. al.. Here’s why: 1. The holding companies can no longer afford to acquire assets in the fastest growth segment of the industry. 2. With private equity willing to invest in service businesses like this, you have to wonder if suddenly they have become a far more attractive buyer than holding companies offering the same old, same old earn out deals. 3. The dirty little secret at AKQA and at Digitas for that matter is that they both do a fair amount of business doing print and TV. 4. Because of this and the longer view offered by Private Equity (meaning, say three years instead of three months) a company like AKQA is much more able to invest for the long term while the McCann’s and Ogilvy’s of the world are stuck shipping 20% of their revenue off to New York or London every quarter.
So, hats off! It’s a good day for everyone (except Martin, of course.)
Double Fusion just hired Yahoo!’s former GM of Games – Geoff Graber – to be their new CEO. And Mediapost is reporting that Double Fusion just received $10 million VC round as well. Gaming is big business folks!
On a related note, Yahoo! is reporting that a new Nielsen/Double Fusion study found that in-game advertising is a new, red hot brand advertising segment.
