Clearspring - Your Content. Everywhere.

(Originally posted on iMedia Connection.)

1. Data is the New Black

2010 was the year of real-time bidding. As spend shifted from networks to real-time bidding platforms, agencies and advertisers explored the use of data to improve audience-buying. In 2011, this interest will give way to large scale investment. This increased investment will fuel the shift to Data 2.0 predicted by Gil Beyda along with continued infrastructure innovation in the growing data management space.

2. Math Men vs. Mad Men Round II – Creative Goes Geek

Just as they’re quickly changing the face of media buying with their data-driven approach, the Math Men will also begin to rock the creative world. Not only will agencies and advertisers leverage data to deliver more effective dynamic display programs, but they will also use data and analytics to drive the design, execution, and iterative design of creative across their web and mobile applications.

3. Trading Desks Take Flight

In 2010, holding company trading desks like MIG, Vivaki, Cadreon, and Accuen partnered with DSPs, Data Providers, Exchanges, and other vendors to create the capability to execute massive campaigns using real-time bidding platforms. In 2011, this investment will pay off. Budgets managed by trading desks will increase by 2-3X, as their total spend managed skyrockets to north of $1B.

4. Big Publishers Start to Look Like Trading Desks

As audiences spend an increasing amount of time online, large publishers have expanded their offerings to capture greater share of ad dollars. In 2011, publishers like NBC, Hachette, Conde Nast and others will begin to aggressively buy from exchanges – much as trading desks do today – to extend the reach of their offerings to advertisers. Along those lines, look for publishers to increasingly compete for audience data.

5. Facebook Goes After Google with AdSense Competitor

Facebook has become increasingly important to marketers as it has continued its meteoric rise in the world of display – growing from 10% of online display impressions in 2008 to 25% of impressions in 2010. In 2010, Facebook will take their ad program to the next level and begin to roll Social Ads out to publishers. This move will be the first major threat to Google’s AdSense, as Facebook will be able to not only leverage page context, but also social targeting mechanisms to deliver increased yield to publishers.

6. Web-Wide Social Targeting War Begins

While Facebook continues to demonstrate the value of social targeting inside of their walled garden, companies like Media6Degrees, 33 Across, Radium One will rapidly scale social targeting programs on the remaining 75% of inventory online. As Social Targeting becomes increasingly important, agencies, advertisers and platforms will race to acquire social data to fuel competing targeting initiatives.

7. Google Makes a Splash in Social

In 2011, Google will strike back at Facebook. In the first web boom, Microsoft launched Internet Explorer on the back of Windows to combat the rising threat of Netscape and the web. Just as Microsoft did during the first boom, Google will leverage their existing scale to launch social capabilities and send a message to the online ecosystem – we’re here to stay. Look for this social data to make its way to the Google Display side of the house to help them play in the Social Targeting War.

8. The World Prepares for Mobile Page View Boom

In just a few short years, the number of mobile page views will outnumber the number of page views on desktop computers. Mobile advertising spend is still hovering around $1B, but in 2011 agencies will begin to test strategies to prepare for 2012 and the mobile ad spend boom. Look for players in traditional online advertising to make large investments to get ready to capitalize on this massive opportunity. Given Android’s trajectory, bet on the winners in this space to innovate around this platform.

9. Small Business Becomes Big Business

GroupOn and LivingSocial have demonstrated the awesome power of local advertising, creating multi-billion dollar businesses in just a few short years. This is just the tip of the iceberg. As the deal-space continues to drive local spend online, there will be a wave of innovations to leverage online behavior to drive offline activity. Look for this to be particularly disruptive to the online display market, as locally targeted display offerings start to drive more spend.

10. TV Buyers Move Big Budgets Online

It’s the movie we’ve all been waiting to watch – television buyers, understanding that their empires are moving online, will begin aggressively launching seven-figure campaigns online. Companies like TidalTV, Tremor Media, and BrightRoll will begin to strike more significant up-front deals with traditional advertisers for 2012, promising to deliver the scale of television with the accountability of online. We will start to see rumblings in 2011, but this will set the stage for an all-out land grab in 2011 as media buyers prepare for the TV/Online Video convergence in 2013.

11. Terry Kawaja’s Life Get’s Easier – M&A Consolidation Begins

LUMA Partners attempts to explain the unexplainable with their famous online advertising landscape diagram. In 2011 the author of that chart – Terry Kawaja – may just get a much deserved break. In preparation for the IPO boom led by Facebook, maturing players such as MediaMath and AppNexus, along with existing incumbents such as Google and Microsoft, will start consolidate the highly-fragmented ecosystem. Look for a massive exit in 2011 to spark this next wave of consolidation.

(Originally posted on the AddThis blog.)

Today, I have the pleasure of unveiling the completely redesigned AddThis Analytics, now with audience interests. This new suite of tools not only tells you what users have shared and how many clicks those shares have driven, but also shows you the topics that interest your sharers, influencers and clickers the most. Interests are displayed by levels of intensity versus a binary, “like” or don’t like.

Having a window into the interests of the people who share on a site is invaluable. By better understanding what influencers care about, you can optimize content to drive more sharing and – ultimately – traffic back to your site from social media properties. Everything is available immediately and can be viewed within your AddThis Analytics.

The technology underlying these new features is called the Implicit Interest Graph. Utilizing our reach of 1 billion unique users monthly and a powerful real-time data processing engine, we’ve created a digital map of the connection between people and the things they care about most.

The new AddThis Analytics is the first of many products we plan to release, leveraging our scale and this new technology, to give more value back to our publisher network. We’re excited about this release and the possibilities ahead.

As always, let us know what you think. We’d LOVE your feedback. Drop a comment on this post, start a thread in the forum, or e-mail us – justin@addthis.com

At the recent iMedia Agency Summit, a prestigious digital advertising conference, during the agency only session Clearspring was named one of top “new companies/offerings you find particularly intriguing at the moment and are seriously considering for use in 2011”, according to a blog post by Catalyst:SF Partner Jim Nichols….

Many of us are already familiar with Clearspring as they have been around for a while. Their message for advertisers today is as an “Audience Platform” that enables advertisers to reach the right users at the times they are ready to act. They focus on two kinds of audience aggregation: intent-based segments at various points in the purchase cycle, and influence segments composed of people likely to share messages to social media. These super sharers help brands generate a greater virality in social media. Clearspring segments/data are available through the leading demand side platforms. The basis of their data collection and segmentation is gathered from their “Add This” button network that makes content sharing easier. By collecting data at the point of share, Clearspring gets a strong picture of people’s interests, intents, and passions.

We’re thrilled that this prestigious group of agency executives recognizes the value that Clearspring brings to the real-time bidding marketplace and the importance of this new space to the online display space.

Clearspring is really one big gigantic family. While we spend most of the day with headphones on and heads down working on AddThis and the Audience Platform, we like to have a lot of fun too.

The fun has recently manifested itself in how we celebrate birthdays…

For our Senior Engineer Charlie Reverte‘s birthday, his desk was transformed into his very own magical kingdom, which included his own balloon cape and crown.

For our SVP of Social Products Will Meyer‘s birthday, we built him his very own private office (aka big sheets of plastic around his desk in the pit.)

So… what should we do for the next birthday? We’re open to suggestions.

Wanna join in the fun? Join the team.

Earlier this year, a class action law suit was filed against Clearspring and others alleging violations of privacy statutes involving the use of Adobe Flash local storage. The lawsuit contained a number of factual inaccuracies with respect to the Company’s technologies and practices, most importantly around the collection of Personally Identifiable Information (PII).* As we said in a blog post at the time, Clearspring does not and never did collect, store, or sell PII* and has always respected the need for user privacy in the quickly changing world of the social web.

To avoid protracted and costly defense and to allow us to maintain our focus on helping to connect publishers, services and advertisers to audiences on the social web, we have chosen to settle the lawsuit. This puts the issue to rest, and with it, we affirm our commitment to user privacy.

We are very pleased that the settlement funds will be used to support groups that focus on strengthening privacy for all users online, and we hope to work with these groups in that effort.

Since many of the media articles surrounding this lawsuit inaccurately reported that our AddThis sharing platform uses the Adobe Flash technology, we also want to clarify again that AddThis, an HTML-centric platform, does not use Adobe Flash.

The team at Clearspring believes that delivering targeted and relevant advertising enhances user’s internet experience. Through the collection of non-personally identifiable information we help publishers and advertisers to deliver targeted advertising and content. As always, we allow users to opt out of our service and we continually look at ways to increase user control over this information.

We welcome your feedback and help as we work with others in the industry and government to set acceptable, universal privacy standards for all.

*Email addresses are transmitted only when required to share content to some destinations.  Email addresses and their content are not collected, stored, or sold.

We were super pumped to be featured in today’s “10 DC Start-Ups You Need to Know About” article by The Next Web!

Congratulations to the hardworking Clearspring team, and of course many thanks to our supporters, especially the users of the AddThis platform.

And also a big congratulations to the other companies featured on the list! Being in such good company makes these sorts of milestones that much sweeter.

Today ends the year-long transition from our Launchpad widget sharing platform to the AddThis sharing platform. As of noon today, Launchpad widget placements are no longer being served.

If you haven’t already, please check out the support for widget sharing within AddThis. If you have any questions about how to install AddThis into your Flash or HTML widgets, drop a note on our forum. We’d love to help ya.

Thanks to all of you that used the Launchpad platform. We wouldn’t be where we are today without you. And… thanks to all of you that have made the transition to AddThis. We’re always working hard at making AddThis the best solution for all your content sharing and analytics needs.