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.
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 […]
As app is only as successful as its monetization strategy. And an app’s monetization strategy is only as successful as a developer’s cash flow. But sometimes it takes Apple and Google 30 or even 60 days to compensate their developers for paid downloads and in-app purchases. “That money’s just sitting there in the bank of […]
The industry appears to be inching slowly but surely toward advertising metrics and pricing models that better reflect reality. Twitter, for example, recently nixed timeline views – the number of times users refresh their feed – as a measure of engagement on its platform. Peter Stabler, senior analyst at Wells Fargo Securities, commended the decision […]
Advertisers only want to pay for viewable impressions. But publishers feel they should have the right to charge more for that type of inventory, said Jeff Bander, president and CRO of biometric online eye-tracking firm Sticky. Sticky announced a $5 million Series A round on Wednesday led by London-based VC firm Dawn Capital, with participation […]
Twitter is taking cross-device retargeting under its wing with the acquisition of digital ad platform TellApart. “Direct response advertising has been a major growth engine for our ads business over the last several quarters. … TellApart will accelerate that trajectory further,” said Kevin Weill, Twitter’s SVP of product, in a blog post Tuesday. According to […]
Personalization was a problem for Malltip. The app, which aggregates publicly available information on coupons, sales, maps and directories from more than 1,800 malls and national retailers across the US, quickly realized that “a lot of our users were dropping off because the content we were delivering just wasn’t particularly relevant to them,” said Wai […]
Sometimes Mihkel Jäätma has to break some hearts. Jäätma is CEO of Realeyes, a London-based company that uses so-called “emotional analytics” to measure subconscious responses via webcam to video content based on four key metrics: attention, retention, engagement and impact. The process is conducted with opted-in panels, and videos are scored on a scale from […]
True or false: Social data is the largest and least biased set of observational data that ever existed. The answer depends on whom you ask. Twitter sees its platform as a sort of public playground of contextual social conversations. All you need to do is have the right tools to mine the insights. LinkedIn views […]
Boston-based in-store beacon company Swirl revealed its $18 million Series C round on Thursday. Led by Twitter Ventures, Hearst Ventures and SoftBank Capital, with participation from Longworth Venture Partners, this latest capital injection brings Swirl’s total funding to $32 million. It’s evidence that beacon technology is reaching maturity, said Hilmi Ozguc, CEO and founder of […]
Pangia Games doesn’t have money to waste. What app developer does? Monetization and user acquisition are tricky for anyone – although it certainly helps to have extra cash to throw at the problem. But the smaller devs out there, like Pangia, need to get creative. “We’re a team of two,” said Nick Barbato, managing partner at […]
Berlin-based mobile ad platform Fyber (formerly SponsorPay) wants to become what it calls a full-stack “specialized supply-side platform.” “Specialized” refers to its focus on the world of freemium apps, said Janis Zech, CRO and co-founder of Fyber, which announced its acquisition of German ad tech company Falk Realtime on Wednesday for €10.75 million, which translates to […]
Devs: Yahoo is looking at you. On the heels of arguably lackluster Q1 2015 earnings and the week before is NewFront event in New York City, Yahoo revealed two video ad units on Wednesday. Native in-feed video and video app install ads will now appear in Yahoo’s digital magazines and apps, as well as on desktop and […]
Although Yahoo continues to plow ahead on mobile, the company’s Q1 2015 disappointed. Yahoo’s revenue clocked in at $1.04 billion, missing analysts’ estimate of $1.06 billion. During the company’s investor call with analysts, CEO Marissa Mayer suggested programmatic has lowered the prices that Yahoo can command for its inventory. “We see a lot of advertising […]
Acxiom vet Nada Stirratt is looking to spread the good word about location-based advertising in her new role as CEO of Verve Mobile, announced Monday. “The last few years have been about Angry Birds and app downloads, but now the market is finally talking about reaching consumers in particular locations,” said Stirratt, who comes to […]
Placed “isn’t looking for one-off deals – we’re looking for scale,” company CEO David Shim told AdExchanger. The location analytics player, which uses an opt-in mobile panel to track offline behavior, announced a flurry of partnerships on Tuesday, including with cross-device solution provider Drawbridge, app monetization platform TapJoy, digital out-of-home company Vistar Media and demand-side platforms […]
