Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.
Opening The Books
Amazon is acquiescing to an audit by the Media Rating Council of the online retailer’s ad tech. Amazon’s demand-side platform saw tremendous growth in Q1 as ad revenue soared nearly 90% year over year. Sponsored Products – Amazon’s cost-per-click product listing ads – make up 79% of total spend on the platform. Digiday reports that Amazon agreed to submit to an MRC audit in early 2020, though the company may have been wary of providing the transparent data required for a third-party audit. Still, after a flood tide of new business in the past couple of years (Amazon eclipsed 10% of US digital advertising in 2020), an audit could open a floodgate of new advertisers and extend that growth streak. The MRC audit will examine how Amazon measures its Sponsored Product campaigns and how the Amazon DSP is used to buy programmatic ads across a network of sites and publishers. [Related in AdExchanger: Amazon DSP, Ad Console Report Strong Growth in Q1]
Growth Mode
VideoAmp has raised $75 million, bringing its total funding to $175 million. Read the release. VideoAmp, which launched in 2014 to help brands plan and measure campaigns across digital media and television, has also tapped former Trade Desk financial chief Paul Ross as its new CFO. VideoAmp said it has seen 700% growth in the last five years, and is on track to approximately double year-over-year growth in 2021. The startup said the funding will go towards new hires in sales, client success and engineering. The Wall Street Journal reports that VideoAmp expects to reach $80 million in revenue this year. Though VideoAmp spans both sides of the programmatic exchange, buyers represent 80% of its revenue. VideoAmp hopes its expansion will lead to an even revenue split from buyers and sellers. VideoAmp works with large ad agencies, such as Omnicom and Dentsu, and broadcasters including A+E Networks, AMC Networks and NBCUniversal (VideoAmp will be the first measurement partner to integrate with NBCU’s Audience Insights Hub later this year, a proprietary data clean room, so that marketers can bring their own data to One Platform).
Identity Push
PubMatic is leaning hard into new identity solutions as publishers face the prospect of a cookieless future. On Tuesday, the SSP expanded its partnership with customer intelligence platform Zeotap for publishers in Europe. Read the release. Zeotap’s Universal ID solution, ID+, will now be available in Identity Hub, PubMatic’s Prebid-based identity management solution. Zeotap’s taxonomy will also be available within Audience Encore, PubMatic’s audience data platform. Publishers in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain will now be able to use Identity Hub to connect their inventory with Zeotap’s ID+ across the open web. Mobile and connected TV campaigns are on the road map. The partnership allows publishers to use authenticated first-party data,primarily emails, that advertisers can match with instead of relying on third-party cookies. For advertisers and DSPs using PubMatic, the deal with Zeotap means increased scale and audience addressability in Europe. [Related in AdExchanger: Zeotap Hopes To Become The LiveRamp Of Europe]
But Wait, There’s More!
The E.W. Scripps Company has selected Magnite as its preferred sell-side platform across its connected TV inventory. [release]
Amazon is in talks to buy MGM for $9 billion. [The Information]
How Google’s $150 billion advertising business works. [CNBC]
Omnichannel ad platform Verve Group has acquired data platform Beemray. [release]
Quintesse has launched its Curated Brand Marketplaces tool for contextual pre-bid targeting at scale. [release]
Piano raises $88 million for analytics, subscription and personalization tools for publishers – and adds LinkedIn as an investor. [TechCrunch]
Vevo has launched a new contextual product called Vevo Rewind that allows advertisers to tap into nostalgic music videos. [release]
Social media advertising platform Smartly.io has acquired Viralspace.ai, an artificial intelligence startup focused on creative optimization. [release]
You’re Hired!
Sourcepoint has appointed Jason Canney to chief technology officer, Julie Rubash to chief privacy counsel, and Jared Hand to managing director, North America, and has promoted Nial Ferguson to managing director, UK and Ireland. [release]
Digilant has hired Sandra Abi-Rashed as vice president of client services. [release]
