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.
GameStop isn’t playing around when it comes to omnichannel, and here’s why. Roughly 60% of GameStop’s customers first engage with the video game retailer online. Of that number, 26% show up at one of its more than 6,600 brick-and-mortar stores within 48 hours and make a purchase. About 40% of its traffic comes from mobile. […]
Twitter has a DM for brands: We care about DR. “We highly prize the ability to drive ROI,” said Richard Alfonsi, Twitter’s VP of global online sales. So do most of Twitter’s competitors, with Pinterest, Instagram, Google and Facebook all at various stages of buy button rollout. It makes sense. Social platforms are starting to […]
Mobile native isn’t just about look, it’s also about feel – and there’s nothing more native to the mobile experience than a tap. “Brands and users are looking for an alternative to web banners squished into mobile,” said James Cooper, head of creative at New York City-based digital ads startup Betaworks, which announced Tuesday that it […]
Apple’s stance on data collection: “We honestly just don’t want to know,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s SVP of software engineering, to roughly 5,000 app developers at the tech giant’s Worldwide Developer Conference on Monday. “We don’t mine your email, your photos or your contacts in the cloud to learn things,” Federighi said. “All of this is done […]
Most publisher sites are not oversubscribed – not by a long shot, said Amiad Solomon, chairman and co-founder of Komoona, a company that bills itself as an “RTB router.” Solomon put it bluntly: “Publishers are bleeding.” A lot of that has to do with the CPMs most publishers are able to attract for their non-direct programmatically […]
Travel is a tricky category. It’s generally one of the top things people want to spend their money on – but it’s also not something most people get to do on a regular basis, said Sam Shank, CEO and co-founder of last-minute hotel booking app HotelTonight. “In theory, people can use an app like GrubHub to […]
The fox can’t guard the chicken run. GroupM is not down with Facebook and Google’s reticence around third-party verification tags. “You can’t measure yourself,” said John Montgomery, COO of GroupM Interaction, North America, speaking at AdExchanger’s Clean Ads I/O conference in New York City on Wednesday. The fact that Facebook is working closely with the […]
Brands need to feel confident that their ads are being seen – and “because we said so” is not an acceptable answer. That’s why Yahoo is bringing third-party verification tags from comScore, DoubleVerify, Integral Ad Science, Moat and several others onto its owned-and-operated properties and onto third-party sites within the Yahoo network. Yahoo is slated to […]
Television has the GRP. Mobile deserves the same. That’s the thinking at comScore. Starting Wednesday, the measurement company will make mobile ad reporting for apps and mobile web generally available within its validated Campaign Essentials (vCE) product. ComScore had done custom delivery of mobile measurement in the past on a client-by-client basis. That same data […]
There’s something fishy going on in China. According to mobile attribution company Apsalar, for every valid in-app purchase (IAP) made in China, there are 273 fraudulent ones. But China isn’t the only place with IAP problems. Taiwan sees 54 fake in-app purchases for every valid one, while Saudi Arabia clocks in at 24.6 and Israel […]
App developers will inherit the Earth – and Google wants a piece of that. That’s why advertising was high on the agenda for the first time on day one of Google’s I/O developer conference in San Francisco on Thursday. Although Android’s market share is massive – according to IDC, Android has 78% of the market, versus Apple’s […]
App marketing platform AppLift has made a move to strengthen its stack with the acquisition of Singapore-based mobile DSP Bidstalk. Terms of the deal, revealed Thursday, were not disclosed. AppLift’s technology centers on user acquisition and lifetime value (LTV) optimization for its roughly 500 clients, among them Match.com, King, Zynga, Glu Mobile and Indian fashion […]
Hearst Magazines UK was looking for a way to take its mobile strategy from out of the box to outside the box. “We definitely had a history of 320 x 50 mobile banners,” admitted Rob Wilkin, head of commercial product at Hearst UK, which is home to 26 titles including Cosmopolitan, ELLE, Esquire, Good Housekeeping, […]
That might be the look on your face when you hear that emoji are a highly promising new advertising tool. But it’s true. As Andreessen Horowitz partner Benedict Evans recently mused in a blog post: “The potential to turn messaging into a platform is the Trojan horse that drives a lot of the excitement in […]
Over the last five years, the InterContinental Hotels Group went from $2 million in mobile booking revenue to just under $1 billion. But that doesn’t mean IHG has any plans to chuck its desktop experience, said Michael Menis, the company’s SVP of digital and voice channels, speaking at ad:tech San Francisco on Thursday in a […]
Developing game apps is a hard knock life – because once the development is done, the monetization work begins. “Game developers have specific needs,” said Chung-Man Tam, chief product officer at mobile game discovery platform Chartboost, which launched a collection of tools on Thursday aimed at helping devs take better advantage of their first-party data. Two […]
ComScore has added mobile ad network rankings to Media Metrix. The new reporting will be called Mobile Metrix and become part of the overall Media Metrix product suite. Until now, Media Metrix was focused on the desktop side of things, providing info on website audiences, including consumption habits, demographics and cross-site visitation for more than […]
Collective CEO Joe Apprendi would rather not describe his company’s shift toward self-service as a “pivot.” “We use the word ‘diversification,’” Apprendi told AdExchanger. “We realize that there are clients out there who want to engage with our capabilities in a variety of different ways.” Historically, Collective didn’t offer that variety. Like a lot of […]
The year of mobile, the decade of mobile, the year of data – none of the monikers matter if the right measurement isn’t in place. “Clients are still looking for ROI and to connect the dots,” said Jeff Hinz, managing partner and US digital director at Mediacom, speaking at the Mobile Media Summit on Monday during […]
Most commerce players are going omnichannel. Myntra is going only channel. The Indian fashion e-tailer became an “app-tailer” on May 15, when it officially pulled the plug on its desktop site. Myntra, which is owned by Flipkart – India’s answer to Amazon – had already shut down its m.dot site in February. For Myntra’s customers, browser-based […]
It’s time for the next can of worms: mobile viewability. And the mobile ad vendors are already on the scene. Less than two weeks after the Media Rating Council (MRC) issued its long-awaited interim guidance on mobile viewability measurement, three separate mobile media sellers – Millennial Media, 33Across and JUICE Mobile – have announced their intention to offer a 100% […]
Acquisitions and earnings – Sizmek likes to multitask. On Thursday, the company announced its Q1 2015 results and its intention to buy mobile DSP StrikeAd for $11.7 million. Excluding StrikeAd, revenue from mobile formats, in other words HTML5-related revenue, was up 103% YoY in Q1 2015, while in-stream video revenue increased 10% in the same timeframe. […]
Verizon has access to deterministic data – and now it ostensibly owns the programmatic tech to put that data to work via AOL, which the telecom bought for $4.4 billion on Monday. This isn’t Verizon’s first stab at ad tech. Precision Market Insights, the company’s addressable advertising division, has been groping about, with various degrees of […]
Mediabong has designs on the US. The Paris-based video platform, which revealed a $5 million Series B round on Wednesday, plans to use the bulk of its funding to beef up operations out of its nascent New York office, where the headcount is slated to increase from two to around 10 sales and business development people […]
John Montgomery, COO of GroupM Interaction, North America will appear at AdExchanger’s upcoming CleanAds I/O conference on June 3, an event addressing inventory quality and supply chain issues in the digital advertising ecosystem. GroupM’s stance on viewability is clear: “If an ad can’t be seen, then we can’t expect clients to pay for it,” said […]
App store discovery isn’t like finding a needle in a haystack. It’s more like finding a needle in a mountain of other needles. “It’s a challenge that’s always existed in the mobile space,” said Dave Bell, founder of Gummicube, a mobile analytics company that specializes in app store optimization (ASO). “It’s frustrating for developers, obviously, […]
An attention economy solves for viewability. That’s the thinking at real-time analytics firm Chartbeat, which announced $15.5 million in Series C cash on Wednesday, bringing the company’s total funding to $31 million. The bulk of the round, led by Harmony Partners, with participation from DFJ, Index Ventures and Digital Garage, will go toward building products […]
Mobile app analytics company App Annie is beefing up its Usage Intelligence product with the acquisition of mobile measurement firm Mobidia. Although terms of the deal, unveiled Wednesday, were not disclosed, App Annie CEO Bertrand Schmitt told AdExchanger it was a mixture of cash and equity. Mobidia will help App Annie developer and publishers “build a […]
Despite a revenue dip in Q1 2015, it appears that Millennial Media is beginning to make good on its turnaround story. Although Millennial saw its year-over-year revenues fall off from $72.6 million to $63.2 million in Q1 – revenue was also down quarter over quarter, from $86.4 in Q4 – the mobile ad tech platform beat […]
Analytics giant comScore is looking to bolster the bid. The company announced Tuesday that it has acquired Proximic, a company whose pre-bid solution comScore plans to use to support its validated Campaign Essentials and Media Metrix products. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Proximic’s technology is centered on real-time contextual, rather than semantic, analysis at […]
