Our president, David Schatsky, pointed me to a Wall Street Journal article this morning that highlights one of the themes from my recent Ad Networks report. While the online conglomerates are busy tying all of their acquisitions together, big media companies are fighting back with network plays of their own. The WSJ reported that Disney is creating their own premium ad network by coordinating ad spending with other content sites. Much the way Adify works with sites like the Washington Post, Disney is using a branded vertical network approach to increase relevant impressions for its SOAP site and hopefully command higher CPMs and more premium advertisers than a traditional network. (Adify may well be behind this announcement, but it wasn't mentioned.)
At the same time, ComScore announced the top ad networks for last month. Not surprisingly, AOL's new Platform-A is the largest. About 98 percent of the volume comes from Advertising.com. That makes it obvious that other acquisitions like Tacoda and Quigo did nothing to increase reach, but hopefully added new clients and new technologies to the offerings.