Allison Schiff is the editor-in-chief of AdExchanger, where she covers mobile, Facebook (sorry, Meta), measurement, privacy and the app economy. Allison received her M.A. in journalism from the Dublin Institute of Technology in Ireland (her favorite place), and a B.A. in history and English from Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass.
Chances are you haven’t heard of Hylink Digital Solutions. But it’s the largest independent agency in China, has been around for 22 years, employs 2,200 and just opened its first US office in Santa Monica in late September. Think of Hylink as a sort of hybrid between Merkle, Hill Holliday and Wieden+Kennedy. “Hylink isn’t really a […]
Cross-device recognition is often the difference between a sale and a fail for Land of Nod, a national retailer of high-end, trendy children’s furniture, bedding and toys. “The question I always ask my team is, ‘Would we really want to show a bunk bed to a new mom?’” said Joe Orlando, Land of Nod’s marketing […]
Accenture Interactive exec Matt Gay’s 14-year-old son has a strict policy – he doesn’t look at ads, period. “He will actively avoid watching content if it’s got ads,” said Gay, a senior director and digital advertising lead at Accenture. But that’s not because Gay’s son hates advertising, per se. He just doesn’t have time to waste […]
LeEco, the Chinese electronics company that shelled out $2 billion for smart TV manufacturer Vizio in July, held a splashy event Wednesday in San Francisco to mark its entry into the US, where it could one day give Apple a run for its money. Beyond making a selection of its smart devices available in the […]
Drivers and passengers buy about $225 billion a year in consumables at gas station convenience stores. That’s a lot of candy bars and potato chips. But targeting that on-the-go audience with specific offers and connecting sales to specific ads is far from convenient for marketers and retail operators, which comprise a highly fragmented landscape of […]
Apps are looking for marketing cloud-like capabilities. But they’re not going, or can’t afford, to spend the kind of money marketers have historically dropped on a traditional marketing cloud integration. Leanplum, which on Tuesday announced its $29 million Series C led by Canaan Partners with participation from Kleiner Perkins and Shasta Ventures, is positioning itself […]
There’s no point in being a me-too solution. That notion is what prompted ConvertMedia to evolve itself from a display network to a supply-side platform focused on outstream video about two years ago. It was also a main driver behind ConvertMedia’s decision to sell to content rec engine Taboola this summer. Once the ink was […]
Youssef Squali will speak at AdExchanger’s PROGRAMMATIC I/O Conference in New York on October 27. All eyes are on The Trade Desk as a much hoped-for bellwether of the revivification of ad tech IPOs. There’s a lot of goodwill coming from all directions, even from competitors. A rising tide will raise all ships. That’s the […]
MParticle is in growth mode. The mobile data platform, which helps collect and connect mobile data across platforms, has added $17.5 million in new funding, just nine months after its $15 million Series A in January. The round was led by Bain Capital Ventures, a new investor, with participation from existing investor Social Capital, bringing […]
People-based marketing is the natural evolution of data onboarding, according to LiveRamp, the data onboarder owned by Acxiom. On Wednesday, LiveRamp launched IdentityLink, which aims to resolve a single identity across different online and offline touch points. It’s an extension of what LiveRamp already does, said CEO Travis May. LiveRamp’s bread and butter has always been […]
In a bid to capitalize on digital ad growth in China, AdRoll has recruited a new adviser with lots of experience in the country and is developing a go-to-market strategy. Peter Cheng is Tencent’s former GM for ad platforms and products, as well as the former COO of AdChina (which sold to Alibaba in January […]
Virtual reality may have a way to go before it hits mass scale, but it’s just had a big week. Last Tuesday, Google unveiled Daydream View, its lightweight, low-cost answer to Oculus Rift, and announced its Daydream View-compatible Pixel smartphone. And on Thursday, Facebook followed with its own series of announcements at the Oculus Connect […]
App distribution platform ironSource launched a solution Tuesday to give mobile carriers, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and developers an alternative to pre-installed apps – sometimes called “bloatware” by consumers. Dubbed Aura, the platform aims to revamp the onboarding process for users when they buy a new Android or Windows phone by presenting recommended content to […]
Segmentation for retargeting is often a very manual process that relies heavily on what someone’s done in the past. App marketing platform Jampp wants to help advertisers craft predictive segments that anticipate what someone will likely do in the future. Jampp’s predictive segments technology, which exited beta on Thursday, uses machine learning to analyze around […]
Cheetah Mobile’s been on the prowl for ad tech since 2015, when it paid $58 million for French mobile performance marketing company MobPartner. The MobPartner acquisition is the cornerstone of Cheetah’s plan to transform itself from utility app publisher into a mobile ad vendor with global chops. Cheetah’s vision became clearer when it took the […]
The on-demand economy gets flack for being a bubble – after massages, meal, tasks and taxis, what’s left to be Uberized? – but on-demand laundry startup Cleanly isn’t concerned. “Our feeling is that if you create a good product, then your marketing will fit in with the value you’re trying to provide,” said Tom Harari, CEO and […]
Private ad tech companies are going public, public ad tech companies are coming off the market, private equity is getting acquisitive – and it’s all part of the natural order and an overdue market correction. Time to put a fork in the now timeworn “ad tech is dead” narrative. “We’ve always been bullish on this space […]
At Allstate, the experience comes before the advertising. “You need to create value before you can market against that value – you can’t go out of sequence,” said Allstate CMO Sanjay Gupta. That’s especially true on mobile, which now accounts for 30-40% of Allstate’s online traffic. Allstate is responding to consumer behavior in kind with a […]
There’s nothing sexier than measurement. Well, that’s not true. But it was certainly a hot topic during Advertising Week. Google made cross-device announcements, Nielsen waxed poetic about the future of measurement, Facebook got reprimanded by the industry for mistakenly exaggerating its average view times for video and Tapad rolled out a new time-based metric. The […]
Facebook is being raked over the coals about measurement at Advertising Week in New York City. For the last two years, Facebook was only counting videos that were seen for three seconds or more, resulting in exaggerated reported average view times. The heat was so great that Carolyn Everson, Facebook’s VP for global marketing solutions, […]
The numbers are still being tallied, but Monday night’s presidential debate is likely Twitter’s largest live stream ever, according to Adam Bain, the company’s chief operating officer. Not that Bain wants to be braggadocious. It’s still early days for measurement, but Twitter is seeing audience growth. Twitter’s deal with the NFL to stream Thursday night […]
Another unicorn rides off into the eastern sunset. App marketing company AppLovin has agreed to be acquired by a Chinese private equity firm for $1.42 billion. “AppLovin” could also be used to describe the scene in China right now, where consortia of institutional investors have mobile fever. This acquisition, which was confirmed on Monday after […]
Brands are starting to get more comfortable with performance-based app marketing – but they’re still transitioning. “Even just a year and a half ago when you talked to brand people, things like yield or breaking out ROI numbers by ad partner were like foreign concepts,” said Deniz Gezgin, director of digital marketing at Topps, which has […]
Investors are bullish on location. “We think there is a lot of promise in location,” said Anders Richardson, managing director of Palisades Growth and an xAd board member, speaking at an xAd event in New York City on Thursday. “It’s amazing to me what it allows marketers to do.” In other words, providing a conduit […]
Push is generally the purview of mobile apps, but Vizury wants to give ecommerce players the ability to take advantage of browser-based notifications. The Bangalore, India-based digital CRM company released a tool out of beta on Thursday that segments and retargets users with messages informed by a blend of in-app behavior and website visit data. […]
Business intel and anomaly detection tool Anodot is looking for what doesn’t make sense. “Traditional BI and visualization only gives you answers to the questions you think to ask, but when you’ve got a lot of data, doing that manually becomes almost mission impossible,” said Anodot CEO and co-founder David Drai. The company raised an […]
News Republic users read about 200 pages of news stories per month. “That’s like reading a big book of news every 30 days,” said CEO Gilles Raymond, who founded the news aggregator app in 2008, the same year the App Store launched. It’s that level of time spent that attracted Cheetah Mobile. In August, the […]
Knorr is developing a taste for native. The Unilever-owned seasoning and sauce brand has been experimenting with interactive sponsored content and plans to make it a stock part of its media plan. That’s because it’s the kind of thing that engages millennials, an audience Knorr is particularly interested in courting. Awareness isn’t an issue for […]
“We generally may share information we collect on the site with certain service providers, some of whom may use the information for their own purposes as necessary.” That’s a nearly verbatim quote from a real privacy policy. (Emphases added.) “Vagueness impacts the consumer’s understanding of risk and their willingness to share information,” said Fordham University […]
Fans are passionate about their fandoms – and Movie Pilot is capitalizing on that passion. “We’re a pop culture magazine for a mobile and digital age,” said Movie Pilot CEO and co-founder Tobi Bauckhage. Movie Pilot started in 2012 with a fairly traditional publishing model – reporters reporting and editors editing. Now the vast majority of its […]
