IAR Bits and Bytes

Trafficmac to Handle Outsourced Operations for MSN.co.uk

New York-based Trafficmac has been tapped by MSN.co.uk to handle the portal’s ad trafficking, reporting, campaign management and automated workflow needs.

“Trafficmac supplements our own resources because of its expertise in ad operations and application integration in the ad serving arena,” said Chris Ward, sales director at MSN.co.uk. “Trafficmac was able to reduce our risk, while substantially increasing our speed to market.”

Trafficmac will be handling day-to-day ad operations, campaign management, and network management, and it will be providing reports for MSN.co.uk’s advertisers by integrating its Customized Proactive Reporting (CPR) product. CPR works with a client’s ad server — DoubleClick DART in this case — determining campaign metrics and making inventory forecasts.

Digital Advertising Consortium Partners with Eyeblaster

Japanese interactive agency Digital Advertising Consortium (DAC), a joint venture of some of the country’s largest ad agencies, has invested in and partnered with rich media firm Eyeblaster.

The deal, financial details of which were not disclosed, gives DAC the exclusive rights to sell and service Eyeblaster campaigns in Japan. Since January, DAC has been a reseller for Eyeblaster, and it has run over 30 campaigns, including efforts for Daihatsu, Oracle, Kirin, IBM, Mitsubishi Motors, Nissan, Pioneer and HP.

Eyeblaster stands to gain from DAC’s extensive relationships in the Japanese market. Besides being the largest media buying organization in the country, DAC also represents a network of Web sites and other publishers. DAC buys media for Hakuhodo, ASATSU-DK, YOMIKO Advertising, I&S/BBDO, Daiko Advertising, Nikkeisha and Tokyu Agency.

“Eyeblaster technology makes creating and delivering rich media ads incredibly easy for agencies and publishers alike,” said Mitsuo Omaru, managing director of DAC’s New York office. “DAC seeks to make the Eyeblaster platform the standard for online rich media ads in Japan.”

InfoSpace and ah-ha.com Team for Paid Inclusion

Cost-per-click ad player ah-ha.com has struck a deal with search provider InfoSpace, which calls for ah-ha.com search listings to be distributed to InfoSpace partners like Excite, MetaCrawler and Dogpile.

The deal gets InfoSpace into the hot area of paid inclusion listings, but allows it to avoid having to run its own program.

“Our relationship with ah-ha not only provides Web site owners with a compelling easy-to-use paid inclusion product and significantly new audience for exposure, but it creates a new revenue stream for InfoSpace,” said York Baur, InfoSpace executive vice president, wireline and broadband.