Northern & Shell Invests In Programmatic; IBM Integrates Twitter Data

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.

Publishers For Programmatic

Publisher Northern & Shell is investing heavily in programmatic, digital channels and its CRM systems, The Drum reported. “Everyone’s completely behind digital and programmatic within the business. There are a lot of new skill sets needed from traditional media, so there’s been a bit of a shift,” said Ben Hancock, Northern & Shell’s head of programmatic. “We’re making a huge investment in our own CRM platforms here – one of the most valuable things we have around is data, and it’s something we need to be careful with, a key strategy around our monetisation.” Though Hancock refrained from detailing exactly how much of its advertising is happening programmatically, he said the percentage is “significant.”

Enterprise-Grade Twitter Data

IBM will integrate Twitter’s social data into its analytics and cloud systems, and will build new enterprise-grade apps that leverage the fire hose for customer engagement and other uses. “While companies have long listened to what their customers are saying on Twitter, complex enterprise decisions often require input from a lot of different systems,” Twitter said in a blog post. And Twitter thinks IBM’s cloud-analytics platform is the system for the job. According to Chris Moody, Twitter’s VP of bizdev, this partnership “had been years in the making.” Business Insider has more.

AppNexus On Defense

“We do not knowingly ever pay sellers for invalid traffic,” AppNexus CTO Geir Magnusso said in an interview with Ad-Exchange.fr that was syndicated on ExchangeWire. “A difference between AppNexus and some other companies is that as a technology platform, many ad networks use us to power their businesses. These ad networks have direct relationships with publishers who are sellers in their networks. Some of these sellers the networks may know extremely well, and some of those sellers may be new to the networks or sign up through a self-service offering.” Magnusson added, “When we find a client who is having issues with invalid traffic from their sellers, we immediately ban those sellers and work with our client to clean up how they vet new publishers for their network.” Read AdExchanger’s interview with CEO Brian O’Kelley.

MDC Partners Reports

MDC Partners reported Q3 earnings on Wednesday, with revenue increasing 13.2% to $326.9 million. CEO Miles Nadal pointed to programmatic as a core part of MDC’s media business. He also highlighted Gale43, a startup that marries technology, consulting, and creative services. Gale43 could grow to be a $50 million firm in the next five years, Nadal said. Read the earnings release.

Mobile Wallet Hack

Well this is awkward. Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) confirmed on Wednesday that its rival app to Apple Pay, CurrentC, has been hacked. The coalition of more than 50 retailers has learned that in the span of 36 hours, unauthorized third parties obtained email addresses tied to CurrentC’s pilot program. In an email to early partners, MCX wrote, “Based on investigations conducted by MCX security personnel, only these email addresses were involved and no other information.” Considering that security remains a key concern as users adopt mobile wallets, this does not bode well for CurrentC. Read on via TechCrunch.