Allison Schiff is the managing editor 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.
Does seeing an ad lead to visiting a store? Location data company PlaceIQ wants to answer that ever-thorny question with the launch of Enterprise PVR, a metric designed to measure foot traffic at specific locations by tracking on-device consumer behavior in the physical world. PVR, which stands for “place visit rate,” is a metric PlaceIQ […]
When it comes to customer data, Alimama claims to have the mother lode. “Our data is bigger than Facebook plus Google plus eBay plus Amazon,” said Joanna Wang, CMO of Alimama, the marketing services and data arm of Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba. Beyond the bravado, Wang is referring to Alimama’s potent combination of identity data […]
The programmatic pipes have been laid, but programmatic creative is still ramping up. “There’s a disconnect between media and creative that prevents the industry from taking advantage of what’s possible,” said Adam Cahill, who left his post as EVP and chief digital officer at Hill Holliday in April to found Anagram, a consultancy/agency hybrid focused […]
The marketing cloud arms race has given birth to some truly massive acquisitions over the years. Oracle’s Thursday acquisition of Maxymiser is not one of them. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a smart move, said Rebecca Lieb, an independent analyst most recently at Altimeter Group before its acquisition by Prophet in June. “It’s a […]
The Twitter Publisher Network is now the Twitter Audience Platform – but the name change is more than aesthetic, said Ameet Ranadive, Twitter’s senior director of revenue products. “This is one step in the direction of reaching our total audience,” Ranadive said. Several enhancements were made to the rebranded Twitter Audience Platform (TAP), which came out […]
Even superfans need incentives. In the Pink, a regional Massachusetts-based retailer and the largest operator of Lilly Pulitzer affiliate stores in the US, wanted extra engagement during the busy summer season among “Lilly Lovers,” a term In The Pink founder Gordon Russell affectionately uses to describe his target demographic. “Lilly Pulitzer is to females what […]
Drawbridge has measurement on the mind. The probabilistic cross-device platform rolled out new reporting functionality Tuesday designed to peel away a few more layers of the attribution onion, including reporting around multitouch and cross-device path to conversion. Rather than giving each ad equal weight, Drawbridge is instituting time-weighted attribution on a sliding scale, in which […]
There’s CRM and then there’s MRM – mobile relationship management. In-app marketing company MobileBridge is looking to span the two with cloud-based tech that combines marketing automation and loyalty to boost app engagement. MobileBridge integrates both with a brand’s app and with its traditional CRM partners, including SAP, Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle, IBM, Marketo and Salesforce […]
The CEOs of Tapad, Drawbridge and 4INFO will appear at AdExchanger’s Omni.Digital conference on Sept. 10, an event designed to educate marketers on advanced solutions for building seamless cross-channel brand experiences. It would seem that Facebook, Google and a very short list of others with access to login data at scale have cross-device cinched. But […]
There are myriad reasons why location data can be defective – and fraud is just one small piece of that growing problem. Growing because the lack of industry standards around the collection and use of location data leads to a fair amount of misunderstanding, unintentional discrepancies and widespread inaccuracy. “Location fraud is the easy part,” said […]
“10 Reasons Why You Should…”-type content is usually 10 reasons why you shouldn’t – and don’t. “Content that works is content that enraptures an audience and that means being story-driven,” said Alex Gold, co-founder of Buzzstarter, a programmatic content distribution platform based out of Silicon Valley whose clients include Dove, Yahoo, Axe, Degree, Campbell’s, Absolut Vodka […]
Deep linking is handy if a user already has the app in question installed. If not, the conversion rate is far from impressive. It’s an issue deep-linking company Branch is looking to solve with the launch of Deepviews, a tool that automatically replicates in-app content in the form of a mobile web page, as opposed […]
Publishers Clearing House (PCH) and Liquid, its digital advertising arm, are on an ad tech tear. Less than a year after buying mobile programmatic company Plethora in December, PCH has snapped up marketing automation company CommandIQ. Liquid, then called Liquid Wireless, was itself acquired by PCH in 2012 as part of Publishers Clearing House’s efforts […]
As the ad industry girds for the mushrooming debate around privacy, consumer choice and ad blocking, it’s clear that existing opt-out mechanisms aren’t exactly cutting it, especially when it comes to cross-device. But although mobile adds another layer of complexity to the situation, online advertising is still reliant on a little .txt file called the […]
The Millennial Media train needs more steam. Revenue for Q2 was up just a smidgen from Q1, increasing from $63.2 million to $65.8 million quarter over quarter. But the same was not true for year over year revenue, which declined from $67.3 million. The majority of that revenue came courtesy of managed media, which represented […]
Berlin-based mobile ad platform Fyber wants to help developers get a better handle on pre-caching, the practice of pre-loading video ad content to reduce load times and ad-serving latency. The company announced Monday that it’ll be releasing a tool within the next few weeks that enables developers to exercise more control over the pre-caching process. App developers […]
Mobile-first doesn’t mean mobile-only. That’s the thinking at mobile marketing automation company Leanplum. “You want to design a journey for customers that they find useful,” said Momchil Kyurkchiev, CEO and co-founder of Leanplum. The company announced $11.6 million in Series B on Wednesday, led by Kleiner Perkins and with participation from Shasta Ventures, bringing the company’s […]
Accuen has a new chief exec in the form of Megan Pagliuca, who comes to Omnicom Group’s trading desk after five years as general manager of digital media at Merkle. Pagliuca replaces Josh Jacobs, who helmed Accuen for nearly four years before leaving in March. Jacobs later turned up as president of Kik Services, where […]
There’s nothing wrong with an 80% or 90% fill rate, unless you’re a cash-strapped medium-sized app developer. “That 10% or 20% can be a killer if you need the revenue,” said Anton Losman, chief product officer at DigitalClick, an indie dev studio with about 10 million downloads. Losman, who handles monetization for DigitalClick’s handful of apps, […]
Carriers are looking for additional sources of cash (see the AOL/Verizon merger), and zeotap, a Berlin-based platform that helps mobile network operators monetize their data, is angling to capitalize on that need. To do that, the company will use the majority of its $6 million in Series A, announced Tuesday, to fund international expansion into […]
Best practice No. 1: A tiny burger on a tiny screen isn’t going to convince anyone of anything. When Opera House, the creative strategy arm and ad lab under mobile ad platform Opera Mediaworks, consults with a brand or an agency on a mobile campaign, developing the right creative is the big thing – especially when […]
Experian Marketing Services has paid media on the mind. The data and analytics provider announced Thursday that it’s beefing up its media partner networks with a series of hookups designed to diminish its dependence on third-party cookies. Mobile-centric companies like 4INFO, Millennial Media and NinthDecimal have all been added to Experian’s list of partners, and […]
Twitter finally appears to be catching the worm. Or at least its Q2 isn’t a can of worms à la last quarter’s earnings leak. The company reported a solid Q2, beating Wall Street’s expectations with a 61% year-over-year increase in revenue to $502 million for the quarter, 25% of which came from direct-response – the “fastest-growing […]
In the words of Andreessen Horowitz partner Benedict Evans, “Mobile is eating the world.” While the investor community grows dubious about the viability of ad tech, mobile startups still seem to be able to bring in the cash. Two such companies, app data and analytics firm PushSpring and deep-linking outfit Yozio, both announced Series A […]
While a new piece of mobile tech seems nifty, will it irritate consumers? It’s a deceptively simple question and one that Warren Zenna often has to ask himself. As EVP and managing director of Mobext US, the mobile arm of Havas Media Group, Zenna and his team are constantly presented with a steady and constant […]
Twitter is looking to capitalize on the when and the where by connecting advertisers with audiences interested in specific events. The rather prosaically dubbed “event targeting” tool, announced Thursday, is separate from Project Lighting, Twitter’s reported upcoming dive into live event curation. But clearly the two are philosophically linked. With event targeting, advertisers will be […]
What leads users to install an app is important, but what happens after the install is critical. That’s one of the main reasons behind attribution company TUNE’s purchase of real-time analytics and messaging startup Artisan Mobile, announced Thursday. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Rumors about the buyout were first circulated by VentureBeat on July […]
In-app fraud is turning into another expensive headache for advertisers. According to research released Thursday by fraud detection firm Forensiq, programmatic in-app ad fraud was responsible for roughly $776 million worth of wasted budget in 2014, a number Forensiq projects will crack the $1 billion mark this year. That might seem like a relative drop […]
It’s high time for publishers to start transacting on time. That’s the idea behind Parsec, a time-based advertising platform that was released in beta by mobile ad company Sled Mobile on Wednesday. Rather than selling on a cost-per-impression basis, Sled will start to charge by CPS – cost per second. For the moment, Parsec deals will […]
Kinetic Social is choosing growth over profitability. The social ads company, which announced $17.5 million in venture cash from Multiplier Capital and Bridge Bank on Tuesday, will use the bulk of its funding to ramp up its content management and creative services through an internal outfit the company is calling Creative Studio. The infusion brings […]
