Philips Will Show Ads On Its Home Screen Menu; Snap Is Partnering With Nielsen

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Getting Smarter

Smart-TV maker Philips will start showing video ads on its home screen menu. Ads will also eventually be shown before apps are opened. These ads will be limited to geo and daypart targeting for now but will become more relevant to individual viewers in the future, said Paulo Lopes, spokesman for TP Vision, the company that manufactures smart TVs for Philips. “We know a lot about the viewing behavior such as the channels that are watched and the apps that are used,” he said. “This allows us to make the advertisements more relevant. Advertisements have to be relevant to be less annoying.” Myce has more.

Snap-style GRP

With an IPO in sight, Snap is spinning all the wheels it has to gain momentum. The platform inked a partnership with Nielsen to let advertisers buy audiences on an age and gender basis, a la TV. Meanwhile, Snap is seeking ad commitments from holding companies in the $100 million to $200 million range. That’s double or even triple what it requested last year. Snap sales head Jeff Lucas is promising top buyers discounts on ads, first looks on new products and help with tailored content. But some agencies demand better metrics before Snap commands media buys on the scale of Google or Facebook. Others plan to meet Snap’s ask purely in the hopes of weakening the much-discussed duopoly.

Cisco Bets On Software

Cisco is shelling out $3.7 billion for AppDynamics, the app measurement and management software firm that was expected to IPO this week. On Tuesday, AppDynamics’ bankers pegged the company’s expected value at just shy of $2 billion. In other words, Cisco paid a pretty hefty fee in “plucking the startup from IPO registration,” as The Wall Street Journal puts it. Cisco has been an AppDynamics client for more than two years, so leaders there know the service – and are apparently confident enough the technology will apply across their networking, security, analytics and IoT groups that they’ll pay through the nose to own it. More.

Margins, Not Marginal

PubMatic said its full-year 2016 earnings were at the “highest levels of revenue, profit and free cash-flow performance in its 10-year history,” but didn’t disclose hard numbers. Read the release. There is some crowing here about header bidding uptake, as well as mobile yield, which PubMatic claims grew by 30% (mobile web impressions) and 16% (for app impressions) year over year. Seventy-five percent of PubMatic’s impressions were generated via mobile. More.

But Wait, There’s More!