The Rumour Mill Is In Full Drive, As Rubicon And FAN Merger Allegedly Reaches The Boil; Afternoon Meet-Up At Ad Tech New York

» I don't usually engage in conjecture and rumour - well not all the time. But the story of FAN's sale to Rubicon seems to be getting frothier by the minute. All the major tech gossip channels - AllThingsDigital, TechCrunch and Paidcontent - are all trumpeting that a deal is imminent. Some of the reporting has been terrible - evidence surely that ad tech remains a mystery to even seasoned tech hacks. This deal is interesting to me for one reason. Never mind the rubbish about the tech. It's the remnant MySpace and indeed NewsCorp inventory that will make this a game changer. If NewsCorp does take a minority stake in Rubicon, as the talking heads suggest, I'm guessing that Rubicon will become the preferred partner for optimising NewsCorp’s entire unsold inventory. And there should be a truckload of decent unsold ad impressions. In the UK, Murdoch has decided to put everything behind a paywall, but there are a lot of ad impressions waiting at Sky to be optimised. I'm sure that NewsCorp has a lot of inventory worldwide. Some say Rubicon is weak on tech, and that a deal with FAN will bolster its offering. From a buyer's perspective I would say the attraction of this deal would be the available inventory. I'll say this again: one player dominating supply is not healthy for our industry as a whole. Of course the "imminent" deal could fall apart - but if it does go through it could well be an significant development for the automated display space.

» ExchangeWire is planning to have some afternoon drinks on Wednesday, November 3, at Ad Tech New York. The gathering – if you can call it that – will take place at the Landmark Tavern, which is located on 626 11th Ave (between 45th St & 46th St). The informal event will take place at 4pm. It will be a good chance to meet and greet some of the New York and US contingent – and finally put a face to some of the tweets and editorials I’ve been following over the past 18 months. I’m also hoping that some of ExchangeWire’s European readership will come along. If you are going to attend, send me an email on info@exchangewire.com – or I’ll just see you there on the day.