Digital Ad Revenue Continues Jumping Up; Reimagining Profitability On The Internet

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Moar!

Internet ad revenue in the first quarter jumped 21% to $15.9 billion, according to the IAB and PwC’s latest data. And the growth rate is still climbing after all these years (take that, fraud and ad block alarmists). The report leaves a few things to be desired. For one, it doesn’t break out formats like search and video. Nor does it distinguish desktop from mobile. David Silverman, a partner at PwC US, says the numbers “speak to the vitality of the interactive marketplace and the power of digital to attract consumers.”

Take Two

“Ad revenue is the only model for too many people on the web now,” says Tim Berners-Lee, the man generally credited with inventing the internet, in an interview with The New York Times. Berners-Lee and a host of other top computer scientists are exploring ways to reconstruct the web to be free of government surveillance and advertising. “People assume today’s consumer has to make a deal with a marketing machine to get stuff for ‘free,’ even if they’re horrified by what happens with their data.” More.

Be The Change…

Israeli mobile app platform IronSource is worth north of $1 billion, but is still “waiting for more favorable conditions before considering a stock market listing,” reports Reuters. In Israel, private tech firms typically go public before reaching that market value. IronSource CMO Omer Kaplan says, “We are waiting for one of the giants, such as Uber, to put life in the markets.” This is partially a comms play from IronSource – hardly the first to float itself as “IPO-ready” – but it does speak to a very real concern among industry leaders that tech startups are ill-equipped to weather the harsh scrutiny of public markets. More.

In Case You Hadn’t Heard…

Programmatic advertising is in hospice. At least according to AppNexus’ marketing department, which has been hammering this message for going on six weeks. It all started in April, when CEO Brian O’Kelley declared “Programmatic Is Dead” in a column for Forbes. In May, sponsored posts in Campaign and Ad Age blared “Programmatic Is Extinct” and “Programmatic Advertising Is Dead.” The company is all-in with “programmable” ads these days, as marketing SVP Pat McCarthy sums up in a sponsored Digiday post on “programmable news.”

But Wait, There’s More!