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.
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 […]
Pinterest would not exist without brands. So said Eva Papoutsakis Smith, head of marketing communications and insights at Pinterest, at eMarketer’s State of Mobile breakfast on Wednesday. “Two-thirds of all pins come from brands or business websites,” Smith said. “If you removed all of that, there wouldn’t be a Pinterest.” That said, advertising on Pinterest […]
Facebook ad partner Nanigans is lining its coffers with $24 million in fresh funding. The Series B round, announced Wednesday, is being led by Chinese software company Cheetah Mobile, with participation from Avalon Ventures and Wellington Management Company LLP. Nanigans’ total funding now stands at just under $33 million. A good portion of the money, […]
Mobile carriers don’t lack for data. Consumption habits, location, usage, email address, physical address, behavior – it’s all there in deterministic black and white. But the mobile ads business hasn’t turned out to be all that friendly a place for the telcos, especially in the United States, where privacy advocates are keeping a wary eye. […]
You don’t need a physical store location to try beacons on for size – but not everyone thinks that’s such a great idea. In December, fashion e-retailer Dafiti – Latin America’s answer to Zappos – started placing little Bluetooth-enabled devices in public places around São Paulo, Brazil, as part of an experiment in location-based contextual targeting. Think […]
“Premium” can be a slippery term, but Opera Mediaworks defines it thusly: the ads publishers actually want to appear near their content and the content advertisers actually want to show up near their ads. That need was the instigator behind Opera Select, the mobile ad company’s new private mobile marketplace offering, unveiled Thursday. Publishers that contract […]
When it comes to ad spend, Cidewalk is more interested in Main Street than multinational brands. The app-based service, which was spun off Wednesday into a separate business unit from its parent company, mobile ad network Chitika, allows SMBs to create and target local ads across roughly 10,000 well-known apps, including MLB, The Weather Channel, […]
Competition in the various app stores is fierce, and app publishers like Indonesia-based gaming developer Alegrium are feeling the burn. Contending for traffic volume with big developers and brand advertisers, tracking the quality of users by channel and coping with ever-increasing cost-per-install (CPI) rates are what keep Alegrium CMO and GREE vet Jennifer Lin up […]
The average tech stack runneth over, but that’s not exactly a good thing. According to joint IAB/Winterberry Group research, more than half of marketers use between five and 10 point solutions and roughly 27% of marketers use between 11 and 20 different technologies to manage their programmatic campaigns. One industry insider quoted in the report, a […]
The next billion weigh heavily on the mind of agencies and the brands they represent. “There are roughly 1 billion people online on planet Earth. By 2017, the next billion will be there – and mobile phones are the primary means of making this happen,” said Mike Parker, McCann Worldgroup’s global chief digital officer. He was […]
Location data platform AdNear is going off-road with its data collection. The Singapore-based company is in the midst of completing a series of tests using drones to collect wireless data, a key ingredient in AdNear’s audience profiles. AdNear has been conducting its drone experiments in several key markets, including Los Angeles, since January. The […]
Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress didn’t always have a “Hall 8.” Today, that’s where they keep all the mobile ad tech – and it’s huge. An entire pavillion packed with vendors and bustling with brands and agency reps looking to get serious about mobile innovation. “The first year I came here, it was very much about the […]
Creativity on mobile – or the lack thereof – was top of mind at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Monday. “The notion that creativity hasn’t been cracked on mobile – I find that depressing,” said Lindsay Pattison, CEO of Maxus Worldwide, speaking at an IAB event sponsored by Facebook and NASDAQ during the big show. “Most clients […]
On Monday, more than 90,000 tech vendors, manufacturers, marketers, agency reps, carriers, analysts, reporters and sundry members of the C-suite from more than 200 countries descend on Barcelona for Mobile World Congress with a single acronym on their lips: IoT — The Internet of Things. But connected cars, smart washers, chatty fridges, intelligent garage doors and the […]
