David Kaplan is a former Video/Publishing Platforms editor for AdExchanger.com. A New York City-based journalist for over 20 years, Kaplan has covered media, advertising and marketing. A former staff reporter at paidContent, Adweek and MediaPost, he has also written for Advertising Age, Broadcasting & Cable, Crain’s New York Business, The New York Post, Newsday and the Boston Globe; he has also covered financial issues for the Bond Buyer and Worth magazine.
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David Kaplan
Articles By David
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MediaCrossing Assumes Inventory Risk For Ad Sales
MediaCrossing launched last summer as the latest ad sales automator and data manager looking to apply investment banking tools and philosophies to online advertising. But unlike its peers, the Stamford, Conn.-based startup says it also plans to offer to purchase publishers’ unsold inventory and then sell it on its own. “I would think exchanges will […]
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PopSugar Insights Keys In On Core Audience
While publishers have been getting deeper into the integrated marketing business, female-focused celebrity news and pop culture media platform PopSugar is trying to go one step further by starting an analytics business. PopSugar Insights’ ambition is to become a daily repository of data and trend analysis of women 18-40, the company’s core audience, said Rob […]
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Google Touts Measurement Tools, Concedes Advertisers' Need For Third-Party Metrics
Google turned in another reliably solid quarter at the end of 2013, as the only blemish on its Q4 performance was weaker-than-expected results for its Motorola unit. But with that problem largely rectified by the previous day’s news that Google was selling Motorola Mobility smartphone business to Lenovo for $2.91 billion, the earnings results were […]
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Precision Health Turns Over A New Leaf, Becomes PageScience To Expand Vertical Reach
Although vertical ad network Precision Health Media has frequently altered itself during its six years of operation, its rebrand into PageScience to expand its contextual ad targeting categories (like consumer electronics, finance and home improvement) is its most significant pivot to date. PageScience also hopes its new name better reflects the work the company has […]
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Federated Media Sells Content Marketing Biz, Spins Off Programmatic Unit Into Sovrn
As the publishing industry attempts to find a way to bring the brand-friendly values of native advertising together with the scalability and speed associated with programmatic, blog network Federated Media Publishing (FMP) has decided those two functions would be best handled under separate roofs. FMP whose network includes heavily trafficked sites like Boing Boing and […]
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Veteran NYT Ad Ops Director Keltz Joins Hearst Magazines
Hearst Magazines Digital Media has continued expanding its programmatic focus by hiring former New York Times ad ops director Heather Keltz to fill its newly created position of VP for ad operations. Keltz reports to Mike Smith, the erstwhile Forbes chief digital officer who joined Hearst Magazines Digital as VP of revenue platforms and operations […]
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AppNexus Streamlines Auditing Department
AppNexus has laid off half its 44 part-time auditors as the company looks to streamline its operations in that area. The auditing department is responsible for hundreds of thousands of creative executions and pieces of inventory that run through AppNexus’ system. The team was constructed of a mix of full- and part-time auditors and contractors […]
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Umbel Aims Publisher Data Services At Offline Media, Events
As publishers have become more comfortable with the idea of programmatic direct for their online sales, sell-side-focused analytics provider Umbel is trying to get sellers to expand that comfort zone to include audience targeting around offline media and live events. The 2-year-old Austin, Texas, startup’s pitch to publishers has rested on the idea that they […]
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TubeMogul Seeks To Erase Video Viewability Confusion
Video demand-side platform provider TubeMogul is adding a viewability-reporting feature within its dashboard today, promising to give marketers a record of where their video ads are seen and tools designed to improve ad avoidance. “By integrating viewability reporting into our ad-buying software, we can provide metrics at the site level,” said TubeMogul CEO Brett Wilson. […]
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Simulmedia Extended Partnership Is A Bet On Consumer Purchase Data Over Demos
An expanded partnership between Simulmedia and set-top box data company Fourth Wall is part of a larger effort to replace traditional demographic targeting as the basis for ad placement. Instead, Simulmedia is proposing to target TV audiences based on their purchase history, instead of using broad categories like gender and age to determine where and […]
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AOL's Lord: Less Talk Around Ad Units, More Around Brand Experiences
During a Q&A with AdExchanger’s Director of Research Joanna O’Connell at the Industry Preview 2014 conference, interactive agency veteran and AOL Networks CEO Bob Lord discussed AOL’s moves into programmatic, its emphasis on video through marketplace provider Adap.tv, the importance of cross-device advertising and the need to make ad tech in general less confusing and […]
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PulsePoint Partners With MediaMath On Custom Programmatic Targeting
Ad exchange operator PulsePoint is trying to find a middle ground between private exchanges, which often require more scale than smaller publishers can manage, and real-time bidding (RTB) platforms, which tend to attract more performance marketers than brand campaigns. In its quest, PulsePoint began its partnership late last year with demand-side platform (DSP) MediaMath to […]
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Vevo Still Working Out 'Programmatic Premium' Marketplace
It’s been more than a year since video music platform Vevo opened its private marketplace with Adap.tv. While the talks with brand advertisers about using programmatic direct are beyond the experimental stage, ad sales automation is still evolving, said Jonathan Carson, Vevo’s chief revenue officer. Carson joined Vevo in September after serving as CEO of […]
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Video Traffic Driver Jun Group Raises Venture Funding To Promote Mobile Business
Video ad platform Jun Group has raised its second venture debt round of $2.5 million as the company turns its focus to its growing mobile ad-serving business. When the New York-based company began offering mobile advertising services in 2009, mobile traffic constituted about 30% of its business. It roughly stayed at that level, rising to […]
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Cisco Expands Its Digital TV Focus With Second-Screen Effort
Networking technology provider Cisco’s direct movements into the marketing tech space have been relatively deliberate. In recent weeks, Cisco has sharpened its focus on digital video ad delivery and analytics as highlighted by two deals it unveiled at CES. The main focus right now, as part of an arrangement with interactive video ad-serving company Innovid, […]
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The Guardian's Programmatic Plans Extend To Private Video Marketplace
UK-based news outlet The Guardian is accelerating its programmatic ad offerings with the creation of a private video marketplace powered by Adap.tv. For the most part, The Guardian plans to aim the video marketplace to best capture incremental value around content such as tent-pole events like the World Cup and the upcoming Olympics. “When experiencing […]
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Discovery Pricing System AdFin Expands Beyond RTB Inventory To Include Direct-Sold Analytics
Digital analytics operator AdFin was officially launched this September with the promise of serving as neutral provider of real-time online ad prices across the entire ad exchange marketplace. The company is now moving to cover direct sold inventory as part of its broader expansion plans. The company raised $6 million out of the gate and […]
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For Direct Response TV Ads, PrecisionDemand Promotes Set-Box Data Over Demos
Set-top boxes enable television advertisers to select more narrow audience segments than traditional demographic targeting. “[Demographic targeting] is no better than statistically random when trying to hit actual consumers/potential consumers for most brands,” said PrecisionDemand CEO Jon Mandel, when asked about the limitations of demo targeting. “That is why we use first party data, target […]
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MediaMath Co-Founder Wasserman Expands International Portfolio As Global CRO
When discussing the advances of programmatic media buying outside the US, the stock answer the past few years has been, “It’s catching up.” But at some point in 2013, the investment that marketers, agencies and ad-tech companies have made in Europe and Asia began to appear more concrete and significant. Some companies, like New York-based […]
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Yahoo Retires Genome And Right Media Brands, Simplifies Around 'Yahoo Ad Exchange'
Yahoo is mothballing some of the most prominent and widely known parts of its ad tech system, including pioneering real-time bidding platform Right Media and its data management software Genome, executives announced at the company’s CES presentation. And in their place, Yahoo Advertising will serve as the umbrella for a variety of capabilities, with the […]
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Video Player Brightcove Buys Unicorn Media To Build A Bigger Cloud
Given the advanced stage of cloud technology and the race for digital video ad dollars, constantly retooling an existing cloud system, or building a new one from scratch, can be prohibitively expensive and time-consuming. That’s the reasoning behind this week’s $49 million acquisition of digital ad insertion provider Unicorn Media by online video player and […]
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IDG Focuses On Digital Ad Properties While Building Out Reach
Within IDG’s $3.55 billion global revenue across all businesses last year, its share of US online revenues remained stable at 66% in fiscal year 2013 from 2012. By contrast, the company’s US print share of revenues slipped to 19% last fiscal year, from 21%. Consequently, IDG intends to concentrate on its Web strength even more […]
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Paying Rapt Attention To Online Video’s True Power
Most of the advancements that have fueled online video’s recent growth over the last few years tend to revolve around the technical aspects of targeting and placement. But Rapt Media CEO and co-founder Erika Trautman finds placing online video’s value in “sight, sound and motion” overlooks the true power of new media. “What surprised us […]
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ComScore Seeks To Crack Publisher Viewability Resistance
While publishers generally concede that brand advertisers will pay higher CPMs for “in-view” ads, there’s less acceptance around the different tools, like Nielsen’s Online Campaign Ratings or comScore’s Validated Campaign Ratings (vCE), designed to determine viewability. The big problem is that the viewability solutions have so far tended to focus on the advertisers, leaving publishers […]
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Dentsu Continues Programmatic Catch-up, Unveils Its Own Trading Desk
Years after the major ad holding companies like Publicis, IPG, WPP, Havas and others created trading desks for accessing ad exchanges, Japan’s largest advertising company, Dentsu, finally launched on Dec. 19 its own real-time bidding (RTB) platform, called Dentsu Audience Network. Read the release. Dentsu has been active in developing a programmatic business since 2010, […]
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Viewability Is Just A Beginning, Not An End
Last summer, analysts and industry players predicted viewability would become the standard metric for display branding performance. But for Jonah Goodhart, CEO of analytics services provider Moat, viewability is a starting point to determine the value of a display placement instead of the tool that will kill the clickthrough. “Two-thirds of all the world’s ad […]
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French RTB Provider AlephD Counts On AppNexus To Help With Expansion
Over the past few months, French real-time bidding (RTB) services provider AlephD has expanded work with AppNexus with particular focus on French publishers. Maxime Agostini, AlephD’s CEO, said that despite greater adoption of programmatic methods by advertisers there aren’t many services aimed at the sell side. Although AlephD is already integrated with AppNexus, Agostini said […]
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Publishers' Programmatic Plea: Where's The Transparency?
As major publishers adopt programmatic methods to boost efficiency and cost-savings, one thing keeps them from putting more valuable inventory up for bid: The perceived lack of transparency in pricing. Consequently, an Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) task force made up of publishers has been working on guidelines to clear up the fees and better define […]
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Yahoo Strikes DSP Deals For Guaranteed Inventory – But Right Media's Value Remains A Mystery
Yahoo is making an unspecified portion of its reserved inventory available to demand-side platforms (DSPs), months after display rivals like AOL pledged to put its guaranteed placements on exchanges. Read the release. When Yahoo acquired ad exchange pioneer Right Media six years ago for $680 million, the portal was seen as taking steps far beyond […]
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Print And Digital Share The Same Ad Problems: Making 'Targeted Scale' Work
Dan Lagani, the print ad sales veteran who joined lifestyle content network Glam Media as its chief revenue officer and president late last month (read the release), doesn’t feel there is a print vs. digital way of doing business anymore. “Digital has reached maturity, though it’s still early,” he said. “So I don’t even categorize […]