Acxiom Rebrands AOS; Foursquare Still Growing

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Acxiom Reshuffles AOS

Acxiom is ditching its Audience Operating System title and rolling the ad data tool and LiveRamp’s tech into a single offering. The new system, dubbed LiveRamp Connect, debuts on Thursday and will offer tools to onboard offline data into programmatic exchanges, media platforms and mobile and addressable TV targeting channels. “We have merged the lines of code into a single offering,” explained Acxiom CEO Scott Howe. “In some respects the LiveRamp brand is more descriptive and more powerful than AOS.” Acxiom has also restructured its sales division, merging the former AOS sales group with LiveRamp’s team. Acxiom bought LiveRamp last May to the tune of $310 million. Ad Age has more.

Foursquare Revenue Growth

Speaking at VentureBeat’s Mobile Summit in California on Tuesday, Foursquare CRO Steven Rosenblatt shed some light on the location sharing and business discovery app’s growth. “I can share that we’ve had triple-digit revenue growth each year for the last three years,” he said, adding that Foursquare’s revenue comes from ads, data licensing and subscription fees from merchant partners. Foursquare has been racking up user data since it first emerged five years ago, and now boasts a user base of 55 million. “We are monetizing this incredible amount of data,” Rosenblatt said. “I think what marketers see is we’re able to give them insights that no one else can give them.” More.

Facebook’s Advertiser Milestone

Facebook’s active advertisers hit 2 million on Tuesday, a 33% jump from the 1.5 million active advertisers it counted in July. Facebook counts active advertisers as those that have placed an ad on the platform within the last 30 days. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg told Reuters that the majority of its advertisers are SMBs, and that those marketers spend $5 to $50 per day on average. In tandem with the client milestone, Facebook released an Ads Manager app that aims to help businesses manage their Facebook ads via a mobile device. The app offers performance tracking tools, ad editing and creation tools, push notification opt-in and controls to adjust budgeting and scheduling. Read the blog post.

Promoted Pinwheel

Pinterest may be developing a “multi-pin carousel,” the next evolution of its spin on native ads, Promoted Pins. The format would let marketers rotate out the images within one promoted pin. Details are still forthcoming, but Pinterest spokesman Mike Mayzel told Digiday, “We are always exploring ways to make pins more useful, including promoted pins. A multi-pin format is one example of the many things we are testing.” Pinterest’s monetization push comes as the social scrapbooking site aims to raise $500 million in VC funding at a $11 billion market cap, The Wall Street Journal reported last week. Separately, eMarketer released a report that dissects Pinterest’s usage, marketing, advertising and ecommerce potential, and questions whether or not the platform can stack up to Facebook, Instagram and Twitter over time.

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