Ad Tech Founders Set Sights On Other Industries; WaPo Has A New Ad Network

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Programmatic Everything

Tapad co-founders Are Traasdahl and Dag Liodden are the latest ad tech entrepreneurs to bring programmatic principles to adjacent industries. The two have raised $14 million for their new startup Crisp, which will use big data to reduce food waste, VentureBeat reports. Crisp is the latest in a string of non-ad tech startups to be launched by ad tech veterans. Former AppNexus CEO Brian O’Kelley has launched CMDTY, bringing exchange-like technology to real-world supply chains. And Jason Kelly – formerly of Admeld, Dunnhumby and Millennial – has founded Kambr, an airline industry revenue management system. “This revolution happened with media and advertising technology and with retail with ecommerce, and there are principles of that to be applied in the airline industry,” Kelly told AdExchanger.

Network To Get Work

The Washington Post introduced an ad network competing with Google’s real-time publisher exchange and the Facebook Audience Network. The software costs half a million dollars per year at the low end to participate, and costs millions for larger publishing partners, the Post’s VP of commercial technology, Jarrod Dicker, tells Axios. Publishers need to license the entire Zeus product suite, the news company’s data and ad-targeting tech, to participate in the joint ad network. Achieving scale and national penetration will be a challenge for the Post, however. Practically every site is plugged into Google and Facebook, and the value of their networks is derived in large part from their scale. Dicker is optimistic since WaPo’s tech allows publishers to trim third-party vendors that soak up margins. “Zeus gives publishers the opportunity to license a shared technology stack, and have full control over their revenue and the technology powering it,” he said. “It empowers them to become less dependent on revenue platforms like Google and Facebook.” More.

Channel Surfing

Amazon has been trying to secure exclusive content by licensing TV shows and movies for the free, ad-supported streaming service IMDb TV, as well as by opening up TV-like channels within the app. But some TV programmers are turned off by Amazon’s terms, Digiday reports. Specifically, they don’t like Amazon’s insistence on controlling 100% of IMDb TV inventory. Most TV distribution deals grant a certain percent of ad inventory or revenue to the distributor (which could be audience portals like Amazon, Roku, Pluto TV or AT&T’s DirecTV). But Amazon insists on 100% control and instead offers a 55% cut of ad sales. More.

But Wait, There’s More