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.
The technology landscape is a quickly evolving beast – and in some cases, that can feel quite literal. “The volume of vendors is expanding so fast, it’s a bit like the movie ‘Gremlins,’” said Rachel Pasqua, practice lead for mobile and emerging technology at MEC Global, North America, a GroupM agency. But while clients expect […]
As if cross-device wasn’t complicated enough, there’s another wrinkle to consider – shared apps. That’s one of the problems mobile analytics company Kochava is looking to tackle with Wednesday’s launch of Audience Attribution, a toolset aimed at identifying incremental attribution lift at the household level. Existing Kochava customer Priceline and others, including a well-known subscription […]
Advertisers are starting to wrap their minds around the wrist. Frankfurt, Germany-based ING-DiBa – a digital-only offshoot of ING bank targeted at millennial consumers – has been working with mobile supply-side platform PubNative to test custom formats for the Apple Watch, which the SSP made generally available Wednesday. But ING-DiBa is still squarely in the […]
Outdoor gear retailer Cabela’s has a fairly straightforward approach to content marketing: “If it doesn’t add value, then we don’t produce it,” said the brand’s SEO manager, Jesse Farley. But the content landscape itself is anything but simple, and one of the core challenges is figuring out what’s relevant and how it’s resonating before even […]
Data is everything, creative is dead. Creativity is paramount, data is a distraction. “You hear people say both things, but neither one is true,” said Michael Lebowitz, CEO and founder of Brooklyn-based digital agency Big Spaceship, whose client list is a who’s who of blue chip brands, including Nestlé Purina, Samsung, BMW, YouTube, Absolut Vodka, […]
Some bots are good, but most bots are not – and Distil Networks, which announced $21 million in Series B on Tuesday, has its eye on the latter. The round, led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with pinch hitting from Foundry, TechStars, ff Venture Capital, Idea Fund and Correlation Ventures, brings Distil’s total funding to $38 million. […]
Turn on ad blocking and in most cases you’ll have a better user experience, a fact readily acknowledged by Sourcepoint COO and co-founder Brian Kane. Sourcepoint focuses on circumventing ad-blocking software. But rather than the problem itself, Kane views ad blocking as the surface manifestation of a deeper issue: “The value exchange between publishers and […]
The No. 1 criticism leveled at mobile data-management platforms (mDMPs): Who needs another silo? But that’s not stopping a growing number of ad tech companies from unveiling mDMPs as they move to meet the demands of marketers looking to activate their mobile data. Although several players have been on the scene for a while now – both […]
Driving foot traffic is retail vet Julie Bernard’s passion. “That’s what converts the casual window shopper into a loyal customer,” said Bernard, who took the reins as CMO of location-based mobile ad platform Verve Mobile on Monday after more than seven years at Macy’s in several exec roles, most recently as SVP of customer strategy, […]
Location isn’t all that relevant without context. That’s the thinking at Sense360, a startup co-founded by Thinknear vet Eli Portnoy to help apps tap into sensor data derived from smartphones. Sense360, which landed $2.8 million in seed funding in January, opened up its platform to general availability on Tuesday after roughly six months in closed […]
What will be the fate of probabilistic data in a world populated by Facebook and Google? Steve Glanz, CEO of probabilistic cross-device data provider Crosswise, admits that deterministic data is superior to probabilistic connections – but his answer to that question is still yes because of one major factor: the need for scale. “Obviously, it would […]
Channels are so last season. “I don’t care what device you’re on – I care about reaching you at the right time,” said Robert Spratlen, Viacom’s VP of digital media, data and audience development at Viacom, at Tapad Unify Tech ’15 on Thursday in New York. “Our product is content, our currency is audiences.” These days, […]
Undertone is consolidating around creative. The programmatic ad network acquired Buenos Aires-based rich media startup Sparkflow on Thursday as part of a move to integrate data-driven creative capabilities into Undertone’s overall tech stack, which it calls Virtuoso. The deal was on the smaller side, clocking in at “less than $20 million,” said Corey Ferengul, CEO […]
Pinterest’s advertising business took its next step toward scale with the official launch of its ads API on Thursday. The ads API, which Pinterest introduced in beta in April, comes on the heels of a flurry of brand-focused products from the social platform, including an imminent buy button, a content API for businesses to manage […]
Are You a Human is looking to up its human headcount. The digital security and human traffic verification company plans to spend the majority of its $4.2 million in Series A cash, announced Thursday, to roughly double its current headcount from 25 to around 50 by the end of the year. The fresh injection, led […]
Cheetah Mobile is changing its spots. Known more as an app publisher than an ad tech player, the Beijing-based mobile media company launched its own global ad platform on Monday. It’s part of Cheetah’s grand plan to become “one of the top five mobile ad vendors in the world,” said Cheetah Mobile CTO and co-founder […]
Imagine a 1950s-era housewife hanging a crisp white sheet on a clothesline in her suburban backyard complete with picket fence as a gentle breeze blows. “We recognize that this woman doesn’t exist anymore, the happy woman with the billowing sheet,” said Erika Lamoreaux, associate director of digital media at The Clorox Company, speaking at the […]
The Economist is still mulling the particulars around how it’s going to monetize its just-launched video initiative, Economist Films, but one thing is sure – native advertising will have nothing to do with it. “There will never be a native element to our films because they have to stand alongside the newspaper as a purely […]
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 […]
