iAd's Potential; British Channel 4 Going Programmatic

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.

Is iAd Apple’s Sleeping Giant?

With headlines percolating about Apple’s plans for a subscription TV streaming service, Business Insider’s global advertising editor, Lara O’Reilly, says the offering could revive Apple’s dormant ad business, iAd. “[iAd] may just make up an estimated 0.3% of Apple’s total revenue now, but it could become a far bigger division were it to be paired with Apple TV. And that could become a pain point when it comes to Apple abiding by its core values,” O’Reilly writes. “Nevertheless, Apple TV shows what could be possible: Linking the targeted, measurable world of online with the reach and scale of television. For advertisers, that’s a very exciting prospect indeed.” But first, Apple will need to spur adoption in an increasingly crowded OTT environment. Read on and see AdExchanger’s most recent iAd coverage.

Automated VOD

British public broadcaster Channel 4 is starting programmatic VOD sales through a partnership with Dentsu Aegis. Denstu media agencies Carat and Vizeum will buy targeted on-demand TV inventory from the publishers, which will run on Samsung TV, YouView and Xbox later this year. For now, direct deals are the only option. “At the moment we are not offering agencies the ability to buy in real time, though that is something we are investigating,” Channel 4’s head of digital innovation, Jonathan Lewis, told The Drum. “It’s very technically complex to deliver RTB on a programmatic basis but it’s something we’re looking at. … We’re giving access to our first-party data, in a way which we have never done before – agencies and DSPs can access our data and use it alongside their own buy-side data.”

Bitly Runs Deep

Bitly is going beyond short links to deep links. There are quite a lot of deep-linking technologies already on the market, but Bitly’s new deep-linking feature is targeted at marketers rather than developers – a key differentiator, according to Bitly’s new chief product officer, Matt Thomson. “Deep links from Bitly puts marketers in control,” Thomson told AdExchanger. “It’s enabling them to drive users to specific in-app locations, invite them to download an app or open content in a desktop browser, depending on the user and the device – all with nothing more than an app ID.” More from MarketingLand.

Cardlytics Check-In

Mobile Payment startup Cardlytics is on a mission to change the way banks, businesses and consumers interact, and to help advertisers ride that wave. “We have true partnerships with more than four hundred banks, access to consumer transaction streams and spend data for up to about seventy percent,” Cardlytics CMO Kasey Byrne told Payment Week. “And that means seventy percent of US households, which means that we can see transactions, past purchase histories, of millions and millions of consumers. We use that to help retailers and restaurants reach those consumers through their online mobile banking channels.” Back in October, Cardlytics President and COO Lynne Laube told AdExchanger the firm wanted to take advantage of a potential IPO within 12 to 18 months.

Oracle’s Marketing Cloud Update

During a combative Q3 earnings call, in which Oracle fired shots at cloud competitors like Salesforce and ERP competitors like SAP, CEO Mark Hurd provided a brief, laudatory update on the company’s Marketing Cloud. He said the acquisitions of Responsys and Eloqua made Oracle “leaders” in B2C and B2B marketing, respectively. He also said the acquisitions of data companies BlueKai and Datalogix “differentiate us not just in the marketing automation process, but also in the underpinning datasets CMOs get access to.” As a result, Hurd said, Oracle’s marketing software grew more than 200% quarter over quarter. “When you look at our competitors, whether Adobe or Salesforce.com, you see we’re simply growing faster and taking market share in market SaaS,” Hurd claimed. Read the release.