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.
When StickerRide talks about driving impressions, the word “driving” is literal. The Moscow-based startup, which launched in the US on Tuesday, offers a platform that enables the drivers of private cars to turn the sides of their vehicle into ad space. It’s a bit like outdoor on the go. US CEO Christian T. Lundgren describes […]
InMobi was the first mobile ad network to get whipped by the Federal Trade Commission under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) for tracking geolocation without parental consent – and it’s not going to be the last. “What happened here is a wake-up call for regulators,” said Allison Fitzpatrick, a partner in the advertising, […]
Mobile search has become a cornerstone of Reckitt Benckiser’s ecommerce strategy. “Mobile commerce is increasing exponentially, which is why it’s so important to reach people when they’re down the funnel and actually trying to buy a product,” said Shubhankar Goel, associate brand manager of ecommerce at Reckitt, which owns household brands like Lysol, Airwick, Mucinex, […]
Independent mobile supply-side platforms (SSPs) are going extinct, the result of commoditization and natural evolution. “It’s been really hard to be a single-point solution player in the ad tech space for a long time, but now it’s almost impossible,” said Christopher Hansen, chief product officer at IgnitionOne. “Just take a look at the Terry Kawaja […]
Social commerce sounds good on paper, but turning likes into purchases has proven difficult in practice. Project September, a social shopping app from the founders of Gilt, aims to change that. Named for the start of the fashion year, the Project September app, which launched in April, has “tens of thousands of users” so far, […]
Facebook, which recently took the wraps off a tool that lets advertisers link location-aware ads to store visits, may have more than 1.5 billion users, but scale isn’t the only prerequisite for cracking offline attribution. “My question for Facebook would be: Do they know the spatial outlines of every McDonald’s in America?” said Duncan McCall, […]
For the buy side, the only fair way to measure mobile ad impressions is when they’ve actually rendered on a device. Otherwise, advertisers might be getting taken for a ride by publishers using different methods of counting, said Richy Glassberg, CEO of Medialets, a mobile ad platform and mobile ad server that’s been under WPP […]
As of Wednesday, there’s a new lord of the manor at AOL Platforms. Tim Mahlman, formerly president of publisher platforms at AOL, has been promoted to president of AOL Platforms, effectively filling the shoes left empty upon Bob Lord’s departure to IBM in April – but with one big difference. “It’s the first time AOL appointed […]
Impact Radius is bringing fraud detection in-house with the acquisition of Forensiq. The deal, announced Tuesday, helps create what Impact Radius CEO Per Pettersen calls “a system of record with built-in fraud detection.” Forensiq and Impact Radius are keeping the terms of the transaction secret other than to note it was a mixture of cash […]
The current state of the advertising value exchange often leaves a little something to be desired, which sometimes leads to ad blocking and sometimes leads to total disengagement with advertising. “Most people block ads because they don’t feel like they’re getting value out of them,” said Matt Berriman, CEO and co-founder of Unlockd, an Australian […]
Programmatic wasn’t to Apple’s taste, but advertising isn’t so bad if you’re the one driving the bus. After killing off iAd in January, Apple on Wednesday shared its plans, notably in advance of its upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference, to completely change the way its App Store operates – namely with the introduction of paid search […]
Another day, another acquisition of a mobile company by a Chinese conglomerate. Publisher-focused mobile ad exchange Smaato will be snapped up by (this is a mouthful) Spearhead Integrated Marketing Communications Group, a Beijing-based offline marketing service provider. Spearhead will shell out $148 million on the deal, pending the usual approvals. Getting acquired by a Chinese […]
Creating real-time content is a challenge for any brand – but for brands operating in highly regulated industries, it’s a potential compliance risk. There isn’t a federal regulator out there that doesn’t have rules around misleading, deceptive or unfair practices, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission. And […]
Cross-channel marketing company Signal announced $30 million in fresh funding on Tuesday – seeming evidence that ad tech funding isn’t drying up for everyone. That brings Signal’s total funding to around $70 million since it was founded in 2009, including a $13.3 million round of venture capital in March. Raising funds hasn’t been a problem, […]
With additional reporting by Sarah Sluis. Mobile app marketing platform Fiksu was quietly acquired last Wednesday by an obscure holding company for an undisclosed sum. But it’s a fate that could have been avoided. Fiksu’s cautionary tale has multiple chapters. It’s the story of what happens when a company pegs its future to the dynamics […]
After a late start, AppNexus is continuing to double down on video. The company launched a closed beta for video viewability measurement and reporting across its platform on Tuesday. The plan is to move into open beta by the end of Q2. The announcement comes a little less than three months after AppNexus took the […]
Edmunds.com is revving up its audience data strategy through an exclusive hookup with Oracle Data Cloud. The partnership, announced Thursday, gives the car shopping info site the ability to scale its efforts around audience-based buys, said Jennifer Dodez, Edmund’s executive director of programmatic and data solutions. “We’ve had a lot of demand for our data […]
There would be far less of an ad-blocking brouhaha if publishers took a page out of the print playbook, said Mike McCue, CEO of Flipboard, one of the earliest entrants on the mobile newsreader app scene. “There’s a big opportunity rooted in the timeless principles of print, where people, generally speaking, actually enjoy the advertising,” […]
It’s common for marketing to do its thing on one side of the room while product toils away on the other. Often they just ignore each other. Sometimes they clash. “Everyone felt the tension,” said Jeff Bordogna, VP of product at Relay Foods, a Virginia-based healthy online grocery retailer serving 12 regional markets across the […]
If the comments submitted to the Federal Communications Commission in response to its broadband privacy proposal are any indication, consumers feel a deep mistrust of the online ad industry. As Rick from Arizona declared: “There’s already too much theft of my personal information from internet advertising, etc. and it must be STOPPED.” The public comment […]
Impressions don’t impress – “Attention is the key, not just being on the screen,” said Moat CEO and co-founder Jonah Goodhart at an event Wednesday about time-based metrics hosted by Parsec (formerly Sled Mobile). That’s part of why advertisers buy TV – it’s a viewable playground for branding. But viewability, after all, is just a baseline for just […]
The dander was up at AdExchanger’s Clean Ads IO in New York on Tuesday as the CEOs of two ad blockers engaged in a contentious debate with two prominent adversaries about the rock-and-hard-place situation publishers presently find themselves in. “It might be ironic that an ad blocker can really play a very important role in […]
TV or digital? Birchbox is still making up its mind. The two aren’t mutually exclusive, of course, but the online beauty retailer has decided to press pause on its TV advertising efforts while it tests out the effectiveness of a targeted social-first brand campaign. “We turned off TV in February to make sure that we […]
The Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) took the wraps off of its anti-fraud certification program on Monday, the culmination of more than a year and a half of foundation and coalition building. The program allows members of the digital supply chain – buyers, sellers and third parties – to earn a seal in exchange for proving […]
The web gets surfed and apps get downloaded. That’s the way it generally works. But Android Instant Apps – the ability to stream apps without having to install them – changes the math on that equation. Google trotted out its new app regime at its I/O developers conference on Wednesday amongst other flashier fare – everything from […]
Facebook and Google may hoover up 85% of incremental digital ad dollars, but that doesn’t mean it’s time for the LUMAscape companies to pack it in. Facebook is “not where the smart money is being spent,” said Jim Payne, co-founder and former CEO of MoPub, speaking at the Acceleration show hosted by mParticle in New York […]
Rachel Weiss, L’Oréal USA’s VP of innovation and entrepreneurship, has some advice for any startup that comes a knocking: If you can’t share results, the deal’s off. “We’ve had so many great pilots I’ve believed in, but then I had to pull my hair out to figure out whether it worked or not,” Weiss said at […]
Location data newbie Unacast is looking to help mature the still nascent beacon market. The Norwegian startup, which aggregates beacon and sensor data across proximity solution providers, announced its $5 million Series A on Tuesday led by Open Ocean Capital and Investinor, bringing the company’s total funding to $6.6 million. Unacast will double its headcount […]
Exploding smartphone growth makes Brazil more than just a mobile market to watch – which is why German mobile performance marketing firm glispa is putting down local roots. On Tuesday, glispa announced the acquisition of Mobils, a 10-person mobile-focused digital agency based in Sao Paulo. Glispa declined to share how much it spent on the […]
Andy Kauffman, Marriott’s VP of digital marketing, loves running tests. “We’re very comfortable failing as long as we learn from that and iterate going forward,” said Kauffman, who oversees product and digital brand strategy for Marriott.com. “It may be an overused term, but we really do embrace a test-and-learn approach.” There are dozens of multivariate […]
