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Google partners with ‘Russia’s Google’ Yandex in a reciprocal advertising deal

Feb26
by on February 26, 2014 at 9:01 am
Posted In: advertising, Around the Web, Google, Insider

yandex 520x245 Google partners with Russias Google Yandex in a reciprocal advertising deal

Yandex is typically known as ‘Russia’s Google’ but it has now teamed up with Google itself so their respective advertising clients will be able to access each other’s networks. The agreement is expected to “dramatically increase” advertising inventory available to the customers of both companies, Yandex says in a blog post.

Through its DoubleClick subsidiary, Google’s clients will have access to the advertising inventory offered by publishers in Yandex’s Advertising Network, while Yandex’s clients will be able to bid for ad displays in the global inventory of DoubleClick AdExchange partners. Both systems are powered by a real-time bidding technology, which helps to mediate ad marketing between buyers and sellers.

Yandex notes that the deal is aimed at giving their advertising clients more value when they carry out real-time bidding, which benefits from a larger number of bidders and sellers. This is because the more conditions taken into account by a system when matching ads to publishers, the more fine-tuned the ad targeting is and the better optimized the bids are.

Accessibility of Yandex’s inventories for Google’s advertising clients, and Google’s inventories for Yandex’s advertisers, supports the idea of and the principle behind real-time bidding – each auction participant has an equal chance to reach their goal.

The company also says that the deal is expected to give a “new kick” to competition and boost the quality of advertising space in the digital marketing world.

The current arrangement, however, only relates to display advertising and does not cover text-based contextual advertising. Yandex and Google are now at the technical stage of implementing this project, and it is expected to roll out to their clients soon.

Yandex has been inking partnerships with major tech firms including Facebook and Twitter — as it seeks to boost its search results with popular topics that are circulating on the social networks.

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Mobile push messaging expert Urban Airship unveils new marketing solution with iBeacon targeting

Feb26
by on February 26, 2014 at 8:00 am
Posted In: Around the Web, Insider, Mobile, mobile marketing, MWC, Product Launches

shutterstock 159337121 520x245 Mobile push messaging expert Urban Airship unveils new marketing solution with iBeacon targeting

Mobile push messaging specialist Urban Airship took the wraps off a new product today at the Mobile World Congress, which is squarely targeted at marketers.

Urban Airship has made a name for itself by providing push-messaging features for other companies’ apps. Its new solution, which is available this quarter, combines push messaging with real-time mobile marketing automation and iBeacon targeting. Urban Airship says:

For the first time in the industry, every swipe on a push message, tap on a landing page, or proximity to an iBeacon can build richer mobile audience segments for better targeting and deeper personalization over time. For example, a shopper might walk into a children’s clothing department triggering an iBeacon message with seasonal specials, and also become part of a children’s clothing audience segment for a back-to-school campaign later that year.

With this new solution, marketers and product teams can set up their own automated programs for real-time messaging, design and deep-link to landing pages anywhere in their apps or on the mobile Web, manage and analyze these campaigns through message response reports, and have the data connected into existing analytics systems including Google Analytics.

Urban Airship’s new solution intends to help marketers be less reliant on developers to deliver responsive experiences at scale. It means marketers can react more easily to campaign responses and other customer behavior with real-time triggers for push messages, in-app messages and deep-linked landing pages.

In a bid to avoid bombarding customers, Urban Airship’s new solution also features timing delays and frequency limits for subsequent messages beyond customers’ responses or non-responses. For example, a business may trigger a free shipping offer two days after a customer abandons his/her shopping cart, but avoid sending it more than once per month to each customer.

Urban Airship’s new focus on marketing comes after it eyed up Apple Passbook and Google Wallet as the next big growth market, launching a cross-platform digital wallet solution called Wallet Studio, which enables businesses to easily create, launch and manage campaigns that integrate with Passbook and Google Wallet.

By going into marketing, the company is no doubt hoping for a stickier ecosystem that gets customers spending their money at these businesses as well.

Headline image via Shutterstock

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DataPoint Top and Left for 2007 or earlier.

Feb26
by on February 26, 2014 at 7:54 am
Posted In: Around the Web

Over at Datalabel height and width for 2007 or earlier Andy Pope says:

Another couple of properties that are not available prior to 2010 are the Left and Top values of the data point. If you want to know the position of the data point you need to get creative. Having determined the width and height of the data label you can then position the label left/right and above/below and calculate the data point.

Then Jon Peltier says:

Don’t spoil your afternoon moving datalabels around. If it’s an XY chart, then a little algebra goes a long way:
Horiz Position = plotarea.insideleft + plotarea.insidewidth*(X – Xmin)/(Xmax-Xmin)
Vert Position = plotarea.insidetop + plotarea.insideheight*(Ymax-Y)/(Ymax-Ymin)
… with corrections for plotting an axis in reverse order.

If it’s a line chart, the vertical position is as above, the horizontal position uses category number, total number of categories, and a correction for whether the axis crosses on or between categories.

If it’s a bar or column chart, you can get the length of the bar using the above (vert or horiz for column or bar chart), and if it’s stacked you need to sum them up appropriately. The width needs to take into account gap width, and if it’s clustered, how many series there are across each category.

All those potential Select Case statements that Jon will have to use give me the heebie-jeebies. So while I keenly await his forthcoming blog post on how to do things properly, I spent my afternoon being quick and dirty:

Function Pre2010_Position(dl As DataLabel) As String
Dim ptTop As Long
Dim ptLeft As Long
Dim dlLeft As Long
Dim dlTop As Long
Dim dlHeight As Long
Dim dlWidth As Long
Const lngPadding = 7

With dl
    dlTop = .Top
    dlLeft = .Left
   
    ‘Determine DL width and height
    dl.Left = ActiveChart.ChartArea.Width
    dlWidth = ActiveChart.ChartArea.Width – dl.Left
    dl.Top = ActiveChart.ChartArea.Height
    dlHeight = ActiveChart.ChartArea.Height – dl.Top
   
    dl.Position = xlLabelPositionRight
    If dl.Left + dlWidth = ActiveChart.ChartArea.Left + ActiveChart.ChartArea.Width Then
        ‘Datalabel is too wide to fit between point and plot edge
        dl.Position = xlLabelPositionLeft
        ptLeft = dl.Left + dlWidth + lngPadding
    Else:
        ptLeft = dl.Left – lngPadding
    End If
   
    dl.Position = xlLabelPositionBelow
    ptTop = dl.Top – lngPadding
    DoEvents
    dl.Position = xlLabelPositionAbove
    DoEvents
    If dl.Top + dlHeight + lngPadding > ptTop Then ptTop = dl.Top + dlHeight + lngPadding
   
    ‘Return DataLabel to original position
    .Top = dlTop
    .Left = dlLeft
End With
Pre2010_Position = dlWidth & "|" & dlHeight & "|" & ptLeft & "|" & ptTop

End Function

To test this, just select a DataLabel and run this:

Sub test()
Dim strPosition As String
Dim dl As DataLabel
Set dl = Selection

strPosition = Pre2010_Position(dl)

Debug.Print "dlWidth: " & Split(strPosition, "|")(0)
Debug.Print "dlHeight: " & Split(strPosition, "|")(1)
Debug.Print "ptLeft: " & Split(strPosition, "|")(2)
Debug.Print "ptTop: " & Split(strPosition, "|")(3)

End Sub

Note that I’ve got a couple of DoEvents in the Pre2010_Position routine. Without them, on my 2013 install it just doesn’t seem to work properly unless you step through the code one line at a time. Tedious, and annoying because you can see everything moving on the graph. But unavoidable, it seems. And tracking this down was what took the most time. Very frustrating.

For instance, without the DoEvents I get this:
dlWidth: 102
dlHeight: 51
ptLeft: 83
ptTop: 97

…whereas with them, I get this:
dlWidth: 102
dlHeight: 51
ptLeft: 83
ptTop: 64

Here’s my revamped LeaderLines file. Anyone with 2007 or earlier fancy taking this for a spin, and advising if it works?
Leader-lines_20140225-v10

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Chat app Line will soon let you sell your own stickers, unveils plans for cheap call service

Feb26
by on February 26, 2014 at 7:23 am
Posted In: Apps, Around the Web, Asia, chat app, Japan, Product Updates, stickers

line android 1 520x245 Chat app Line will soon let you sell your own stickers, unveils plans for cheap call service

Stickers have been all the rage on messaging services for some time — and now Japanese chat app Line is taking the sticker craze to a new level by letting all of its 360 million registered users sell their original stickers on its Web store.

Screen shot 2014 02 26 at PM 02.33.05 730x554 Chat app Line will soon let you sell your own stickers, unveils plans for cheap call service

The Line Creators Market, a brand new platform launched today, will only start accepting submissions from April onwards. It is free for all users to register on the Line Creators Market. Creators can sell sets of 40 stickers at 100 yen (about $1) per set once the graphics are approved by Line, and they will receive 50 percent of the proceeds.

Other than engaging its users further and adding another revenue stream, another impetus for the sticker market is global expansion. In a press statement, the company says it “looks forward to accelerating Line’s global expansion with the further localization of stickers through this effort.”

Line previously noted in an earnings report that rolling out stickers is the first step it takes to introduce itself in new markets. The chat app brought in 34.3 billion yen ($338 million) of revenue for its parent company throughout the whole year of 2013, mainly due to in-game purchases — which made up about 60 percent of revenue. That’s followed by sticker purchases, which accounted for 20 percent of revenue.

Engadget also reports that Line announced a new data-based call service today, due to launch next month in Japan, US, Mexico, Spain, Thailand and the Philippines. This service, which will let Line users call people who don’t use the chat app, is essentially taking on Skype, with prices lower than those offered on land-lines and mobile carriers.

Line has recently benefited outside of the markets where it’s strongest in, following WhatsApp’s outage. Line says it netted two million new users and saw “record-breaking” growth outside of Asia within the 24 hours that followed WhatsApp’s downtime. 

Line, however, goes way beyond a basic messaging app. It has long offered voice/video chat, Vine-like short video capture, stickers and more. Aside from those chat features, it also provides a games platform, an opt-in to get messages from brands, and is dabbling in e-commerce. The latest announcements make it clear that Line is well on its way to evolving into a social platform.

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