While AOL’s absorption of Microsoft’s display, search and video ads business is indicative of Verizon’s digital media interests, industry insiders aren’t quite convinced the flagship publications it inherited through the AOL acquisition will stick around for the long haul. An early Huffington Post exec said Verizon will need to treat the media group like “a […]
The music streaming space got a bit more crowded on Tuesday with the launch of Apple Music, rivaling streaming services like Spotify, Pandora and Google Play. But as the war to win audiences escalates, questions about Apple’s model linger. After a three-month free trial, Apple Music will become a subscription-based platform for a monthly fee […]
Outdoor gear retailer Cabela’s has a fairly straightforward approach to content marketing: “If it doesn’t add value, then we don’t produce it,” said the brand’s SEO manager, Jesse Farley. But the content landscape itself is anything but simple, and one of the core challenges is figuring out what’s relevant and how it’s resonating before even […]
Data is everything, creative is dead. Creativity is paramount, data is a distraction. “You hear people say both things, but neither one is true,” said Michael Lebowitz, CEO and founder of Brooklyn-based digital agency Big Spaceship, whose client list is a who’s who of blue chip brands, including Nestlé Purina, Samsung, BMW, YouTube, Absolut Vodka, […]
Imagine native advertising with a buy button. Or, a stunning travel story that ends with the option for the reader to go on the same trip. Switzerland Tourism sought to turn these scenarios into realities when it teamed with travel publication Afar Magazine to create the custom native program Afar Journeys, running from June to […]
Some bots are good, but most bots are not – and Distil Networks, which announced $21 million in Series B on Tuesday, has its eye on the latter. The round, led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with pinch hitting from Foundry, TechStars, ff Venture Capital, Idea Fund and Correlation Ventures, brings Distil’s total funding to $38 million. […]
“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Erik Weiss, chief revenue officer at Datacratic. One of the biggest benefits of digital advertising is the ability to use performance metrics. Attribution may be disputable but some campaign conversion […]
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here. Programmatic Across The Pond Programmatic ad spend now takes nearly half (45%) of all display ad budgets in the UK, according to a study by the IAB and research consultancy MTM. The data shows programmatic display and video mobile ads doubled from 2013 to […]
In a new 10-year search-and-advertising alliance, Microsoft will transfer the lion’s share of its display ad business to Verizon-owned AOL. Under the deal, approximately 1,200 Microsoft employees will get offer letters from AOL, most of them in ad sales. Additionally, AOL will end its search distribution relationship with Google in order to accept Bing search and ads on […]
Video content management and distribution platform Ooyala revealed on Monday it had acquired Nativ, a London-based interactive video ad platform that helps brands and media companies manage TV and video content and ad creative. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The purchase comes after Ooyala’s acquisition of European video supply-side platform Videoplaza and the […]
Turn on ad blocking and in most cases you’ll have a better user experience, a fact readily acknowledged by Sourcepoint COO and co-founder Brian Kane. Sourcepoint focuses on circumventing ad-blocking software. But rather than the problem itself, Kane views ad blocking as the surface manifestation of a deeper issue: “The value exchange between publishers and […]
Updated with comments from CEO Bill Wise. Continuing the trend of private equity investment in ad tech, Vista Equity Partners revealed Monday it had acquired a majority stake in Mediaocean, a company most commonly known for automating trafficking and billing software for ad agencies. The deal values Mediaocean at about $720 million, the company confirmed. Mediaocean was the result of […]
iProspect is best known for its heritage in search marketing. But the Dentsu Aegis-owned digital performance agency, which first opened its doors in 1996, is changing with the times. Today, content is where it’s at. “There’s a tendency in the industry at the moment to split down two different paths,” said iProspect global President Ben […]
“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Mike Sands, CEO at Signal. For two decades, ad tech has heavily depended on third-party data, collected and aggregated by vendors across multiple websites or offline sources. It’s plentiful, but […]
“On TV And Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in programmatic TV and video. Today’s column is written by Aden Forshaw, co-founder and chief technology officer at Coull. Programmatic video advertising is growing at an acceptable rate, but unfortunately it won’t pick up the pace until the industry solves its transparency problem. Issues […]
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here. Sorrell Has Spoken Late last week, WPP chief Martin Sorrell shared a dim view on the global ad market as a result of weak markets abroad. “Business is tough; it’s not easy,” Sorrell said during an interview at Cannes. “GDP forecasts have been taken […]
Change or die. The smart brands acknowledge this. It’s one of the reasons why ad tech cabanas and beach houses have taken over the sandbars surrounding the Cannes Lions festival, and why ad tech yachts almost exclusively line the port. “It’s important to us to understand what will change in the future and what will […]
As video views shift from desktop and linear to mobile and over-the-top – Hulu, for instance, just revealed more than 58% of streams now happen on OTT devices – programmers like ESPN are using data to track total audience viewing and satiate advertiser demands. ESPN hired its first global data officer last week, The Weather Company’s […]
Since Yahoo’s maligned acquisition of Tumblr, many insiders have questioned its value as a marketing tool. Yahoo has made some overtures toward answering that. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said during the company’s Q3 2014 call last October that she expected Tumblr to drive $100 million in 2015 revenue, and that users increased 40% in 15 […]
“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Kathy Leake, CEO at Qualia. Buyers and sellers agree that ad impression fraud is a huge issue. Yet no one has agreed on how to define, identify and counter fraud, […]
The No. 1 criticism leveled at mobile data-management platforms (mDMPs): Who needs another silo? But that’s not stopping a growing number of ad tech companies from unveiling mDMPs as they move to meet the demands of marketers looking to activate their mobile data. Although several players have been on the scene for a while now – both […]
B2B vendors have a wealth of white papers and other content marketing materials, but often struggle to find the right readers. Distributing B2B content usually requires direct deals with individual publishers, which can limit scale for advertisers when those publishers have small footprints. To address this issue, B2B content marketing company NetLine created a marketplace […]
Messaging apps now attract just as many users as social media platforms. The combined users of Viber, WeChat, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger now outrank Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram, according to recent BI Intelligence research. But marketers have struggled to tap into that audience. Emojis might be a brand’s way in. “Emojis have become for […]
“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by James Murphy, vice president of programmatic at RhythmOne. The only way programmatic will ever truly take off is if premium publishers come to the table with their entire video media inventory available for monetization. […]
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Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here. The Rush On Facebook Facebook’s latest ad offering, Lead Ads, aims to simplify the mobile signup process. The function populates data like email addresses from Facebook user profiles to increase registrations for newsletters, price estimates and follow-up calls. According to a blog post, “Advertisers […]
Yieldify is trying to solve what CEO and co-founder Jay Radia calls “a trillion-dollar problem” – which is part of why the company has been able to attract such big-name investors. The London-based startup announced an $11.5 million Series A funding round on Thursday led by Google Ventures and SoftBank Capital. At the moment, conversions on […]
When Alison Lewis joined Johnson & Johnson as its first-ever consumer marketing chief in 2013, the purveyor of popular baby-care products like No More Tears and the ubiquitous Band-Aid, was at a crossroads as a company. “We had really great marketers and agency partners, but we realized we needed a unified approach to brand-building for […]
This week at the Cannes Lions festival, Rubicon Project hosted its annual discussion of some of the world’s most powerful digital media buyers. This panel has historically comprised the leaders of the four largest holding company trading desks, but this year was different – with senior buyers from IPG, Publicis, Dentsu and Bank of America. […]
Like all programmatic buyers, Xaxis faces a challenge – and that’s securing the best and most inventory for its clients. In a publisher waterfall, ad servers generally prioritize programmatic below direct-sold campaigns, prompting other buyers and exchanges to start asking publishers to implement a practice known as header bidding. But Xaxis, WPP’s trading desk (or, […]
