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.
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 […]
The viewability standard may be better served by saying what it isn’t, rather than what it is. “Viewability does not guarantee that an ad will be looked at, or that an ad will be appealing, or have an impact or generate awareness or change brand perception,” said Sherrill Mane, SVP of research, analytics and measurement at […]
Utility, clarity and simplicity are the three main ingredients in the new Epicurious Smart Timer app for the Apple Watch, announced Monday. Apple is scheduled to release the Apple Watch on April 24. The Epicurious Smart Timer was designed to be paired with the Condé Nast-owned food site’s existing iOS app. Users can activate the […]
On April 21, Google will begin instituting a change to its mobile search algorithm that will take a site’s mobile-friendliness into account when ranking results. Indexed apps will also start showing up among organic search results. The update applies to mobile search only. In somewhat un-Google-like fashion, Google, which normally makes its search algorithm changes […]
The ad tech funding scene is getting a little unfriendly – but that doesn’t seem to be a problem for the video guys. On Thursday, Altitude Digital announced a $30 million cash injection from financial tech firm FastPay, bringing the video SSP’s total funding to $45 million. The Denver-based company has direct relationships with 500 […]
Partner, build or buy? WPP Group has decided on the last in the case of Medialets. The global holding company said Wednesday it will acquire the mobile ad platform as a wholly owned subsidiary. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Clients across the breadth of WPP’s holdings will have the option to use Medialets’ tech. Medialets CEO […]
Banners weren’t cutting it for Vaibhav Gupta, CEO and founder of Bidstalk, a Singapore-based company that provides a white-label mobile and video DSP platform for advertisers and publishers. But the alternative – native – presented its own attendant complications. “Marketers are ready to experiment with newer mobile-focused ad formats, but such traffic is still limited,” Gupta said. […]
“im really upset that I have not yet gotten any Girl Scout cookies because I can’t find those freaking Girl Scouts anywhere” Tweets like that make it pretty clear that Girl Scout cookies don’t have an awareness problem. Tweets like that also make it clear that cookie lovers often have trouble finding the Thin Mints, […]
Spanish-language TV network Univisión sees more than 70% of its digital audiences come in through mobile. “That’s more than some social platforms out there. We’re quickly experiencing a mobile evolution,” said the company’s SVP of digital sales, Josh Cella. “Our clients are asking for additional targeting, and we know where we need to be.” That’s […]
MoPub was helping app developers monetize before it was cool. That’s part of what gives Twitter’s mobile exchange its street cred, said Janae McDonough, senior director of exchange at Twitter, who joined MoPub the year before Twitter acquired it in 2013. “We created this opportunity for app developers four years before anybody was thinking about […]
Data is part of the foundation at L’Oreal Canada – but that wasn’t always the case. “L’Oreal is a marketing company, not an IT company – yet,” said Khoi Truong, director of media and data optimization at L’Oreal Canada. “But for the last year, we’ve been setting up our CRM and thinking about what we could do […]
As the cookie weakens, brands and agencies are looking for an alternative. Cross-device seems to be the answer – but questions remain. AdExchanger examines the state-of-play around cross-device IDs. Consumers are media multitaskers – and cookies are not. As users migrate to mobile at record speeds – according to comScore, apps already account for more than 50% […]
Oil changes are not slushies. Even the most passionate car enthusiast isn’t going to buy motor oil more than two or three times a year – and that’s a challenge for a motor oil brand like Shell-owned Pennzoil, especially on the mobile front. It’s a matter of figuring out what your consumers are looking for and […]
Boom and pop. One is the sound of VC money pouring into the ad tech industry. The other is the sound a bubble makes when it bursts. Ad tech has been notorious for heavyweight funding rounds and even larger, some might say bloated, valuations. And companies that were flying high before they went public – Rocket […]
Papa Murphy’s isn’t biting off more than it can chew when it comes to mobile. The Washington state-based pizza company, which operates 1,400 franchises and corporate-owned stores across the central and western United States, is starting to ramp up its mobile experimentation through a new relationship with mobile messaging and CRM platform Waterfall, announced Thursday. […]
Kids – they love apps, they’re highly engaged, they’ve got no money and you’re not allowed to collect their data. But targeting and mobile monetization aren’t an impossible dream for kid content developers and publishers, said Dylan Collins, CEO of SuperAwesome, a UK-based ad network specifically designed with COPPA compliance in mind. On Wednesday, the 2-year-old […]
“Limited opportunities for creativity” – 44% of marketers surveyed by the IAB and research firm Ovum cite it as one of the key challenges they face when it comes to mobile advertising. That may be the perception, but it’s not the reality, as Showtime demonstrated at the IAB’s Mobile Marketplace conference in New York City on Monday. […]
Publicis Groupe media shop ZenithOptimedia revealed Monday it’s hooking up with mobile data platform NinthDecimal to try and get a handle on offline attribution. Connecting online spend, mobile in particular, to offline purchases, is what keeps agencies up at night. It’s also what keeps advertisers from spending as much as they should on mobile, said […]
Retargeting and mobile. They’re not exactly peanut butter and jelly just yet, but AdRoll has plans. For the last 18 months, AdRoll, which began in 2008 focused exclusively on desktop retargeting, has been working to make its tech more relevant to advertisers looking for cross-screen opportunities. Case in point: the mobile app developer community. “[They’re] interested […]
