» Nice post by Martin Kelly, who will be speaking at AdSummit 2010, over on the Infectious Media blog about the emergence of Facebook as the third channel for online advertisers - he counts search and RTB-enabled display as the other two. Martin talks about Facebook's growth as an online advertising channel, and notes that UK agencies are now doing Facebook specific pitches to their clients. The social graph that Facebook has access to allows for incredible microtargetting, and the company has introduced a conversion tracking tool for media buyers. All these things, says Kelly, are making Facebook, a powerful buying channel. But there are problems for media buyers. The biggest headache for ad traders is the continued lack of interoperability between the search, display and FB channels. The walled gardens will also restrict data portability. While there are ad tech companies working on tying these platforms together, it is likely that Facebook will continue the walled garden route. And this strategy is likely to reap the company significant financial rewards going forward.

» The Orange Ad Market is now live and open for business. The new partnership between OpenX and Orange will offer ad traders another source to buy inventory in the European market. Orange will be putting its inventory through the platform along with a number of publishers. The technology that underpins the new exchange comes from OpenX. The new platform is RTB enabled and has API's for automated trading. The OpenX technology gives publishers control over pricing and the type of ads running on their site. It's another welcome addition to the market as the nascent exchange space here gathers momentum. Orange is one of the biggest ad networks in Europe - and owns Unanimis in the UK - and it will offer traders the ability to buy inventory across the continent. There is no word yet on the volumes or the publisher inventory that will be made available on the exchange - but you would suspect that some, if not all, of that ad net inventory would go through the new platform. From a pan-European media buying perspective this is an interesting development as it offers a real opportunity to buy across multiple markets using the automated channel. The arrival of the Orange Ad market is welcome, and should give publishers and ad traders more choice in the display space.