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.
If your KPI is LTV, then you need to pay attention to more than just CPA. And now in English: If an advertiser is looking to acquire users with high lifetime value, quantity without quality is money down the drain. “Advertisers are willing to pay high prices to retain good users – it’s actually amazing […]
App-install ads are where the mobile cash is – at least for now – and Yahoo is starting to capitalize. The company said Tuesday that it’s making app-install ads available through Gemini, Yahoo’s self-serve marketplace for native and mobile search ads. Advertisers will be able to promote their apps to roughly 550 million monthly mobile users […]
The results are in – and they’re not pretty. “I’ve had my eyes opened and it’s frightening,” said Bob Liodice, president and CEO of the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), which released the fruits of its anti-fraud study on Tuesday. The work was conducted in conjunction with online ad security firm White Ops as part […]
When real estate franchise Coldwell Banker conducted a consumer satisfaction survey last year, the company was presented with a few home truths. The most jarring finding was that 87% of respondents felt like there was room for improvement in the home-buying and selling process. Add to that the fact that 64% of those surveyed said […]
Nexage is the cherry on top of Millennial Media’s multiscoop technology sundae. Millennial’s acquisition of Nexage, first announced in September, officially closed on Thursday evening. “Not to sound like Jerry Maguire, but the Nexage deal completes us,” said Matt Gillis, president of platforms at Millennial Media. Millennial has been actively acquiring tech since early last […]
App developers are engaged in an eternal struggle to acquire users, keep them, and understand what the heck they’re doing. But it’s the “who” and the “why” that are the most compelling questions. On Thursday, app analytics company App Annie released an expansion of its mobile intelligence product line designed to help advertisers and app publishers […]
The merits of deep-linking are clear – considering the numbers on smartphone penetration, mobile needs direct links as much as, if not more than, the web – but deep-linking is not just a matter of embedding app links into the mobile experience and calling it a day. Not only do app developers have to consider the […]
It’s become generally accepted wisdom that brands aren’t dedicating dollars to mobile at a rate commensurate with consumer time spent. That said, certain big brands like Walmart and Heineken are embracing mobile as a key part of their advertising initiatives. “Going forward, we will always view campaigns as mobile-first,” said Ron Amram, senior media director […]
Sub-Saharan Africa is a mobile market on the verge, and Opera Mediaworks is looking to take advantage. The global mobile ad platform acquired South African mobile ad network AdVine in an effort to expand its footprint into Africa, a region now home to more than 600 million mobile phone subscriptions. Ericsson predicts that number will push […]
Monetizing an app is never child’s play, but it becomes even more difficult if the app in question is aimed at children. Clark Stacey, CEO of game publisher WildWorks, knows about those challenges firsthand. Wildworks, which recently rebranded from Smart Bomb Interactive, has been working in close collaboration with the National Geographic Society since 2010 […]
While Apple arguably can do whatever it puts its hand to, its recent move to bring programmatic to iAd doesn’t have everyone impressed. JUICE Mobile president and CEO Neil Sweeney didn’t mince words: “They should have done this five years ago.” And that, Sweeney said, begs two related questions. One, Is Apple going to be […]
Following on the heels of its buy button announcement and its recent CardSpring acquisition, Twitter announced the introduction of what it’s calling Twitter Offers – another step by the social network to add more commerce functionality to its offering. Twitter bought CardSpring back in July. The platform enables the creation of payment applications, a clear complement […]
Mobile carrier data is rich data – it’s deterministic, it’s first-party and it has cross-screen potential. Berlin-based data company zeotap is looking to help mobile carriers capitalize on that richness. Founded earlier this year, zeotap has secured $1.3 million in seed funding from HitFox Group and several angel investors, which it plans to use to […]
PocketMath cofounder and CRO Casey Grooms just started making a salary in July. The Singapore-based mobile DSP, which began life as AdMunch back in 2011, had been completely bootstrapped until now. On Monday, PocketMath announced the close of its first funding round, $10 million in Series A cash from the VC arm of Japanese ecommerce […]
Apple CEO Tim Cook might have called iAd a “very small part” of the company’s business in the past, but Apple is starting to take programmatic seriously and the partners are piling up. Following Wednesday’s announcement of Rubicon partnering with iAd on the demand side, seven more names are officially on the list: Tapsense, The Trade Desk, […]
Drawbridge sees itself as the democratizer of cross-device identity. “We’re the folks that provide cross-device connectivity for inventory that isn’t on Facebook and we do it without PII,” said Nimeshh Patel, Drawbridge’s VP of Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Headquartered in San Mateo, Calif., Drawbridge – whose technology analyzes various non-personally identifiable data points, […]
When it comes to performance metrics, AIG’s online marketing chief Daniel Loebl isn’t joking around. “In my work, we don’t have soft metrics,” said Loebl, whose official title is assistant VP of the digital center of excellence at AIG in the US. “I don’t allow them in my spend. Something either gets conversions or not.” […]
The 50% viewability standard might fly (sort of) in the US, but it’s not yet considered to be a viable currency in the UK. But UK-based media auditing body ABC – think of it as the equivalent of the Alliance for Audited Media in the US – released a report and related vendor certification Wednesday […]
App developers are test-obsessed. They don’t spend a dime without knowing how it’ll turn out. That could be part of the reason why they haven’t done much spending on in-app mobile YouTube pre-roll. Until recently, Google Analytics provided developers with feedback on things like rate of install, AdWords performance, how often an app is opened, […]
When it comes to digital media, Allstate is in good hands: its own. Starting in Q1 2015, the insurance giant will bring its digital media-buying function fully in-house. Although Allstate will now take care of all of its own programmatic buying, its media agency, Starcom, will continue to take the reins on traditional planning and […]
Adobe’s having a good couple of months. Following Forrester’s high ranking of Adobe’s enterprise marketing suite last month, the software company unveiled a series of mobile enhancements to the Adobe Marketing Cloud on Tuesday. Adobe customers can now tap into in-app messaging capabilities and send personalized follow-up emails and other messages based on a consumer’s […]
At Pandora, the watchword is “engagement.” “At a certain point, it’s not how many people you bring to your product, it’s about how much engagement you see, and for us, engagement means time spent,” said Heidi Browning, SVP of strategic solutions at Pandora. The same sentiment was expressed by Pandora CEO Brian McAndrews during the […]
Engagement metrics are all well and good, but before someone can be engaged by an ad, that person has to be able to see it. And with more time and money shifting over to mobile, the viewability debate is heating up there. “Viewability is the first step towards engagement, and we’re starting at the front […]
There’s nothing more cliché in the ad world than the phrase “right message, right time.” But as the cross-device game heats up, it’s a platitude that’s gaining a new lease on life. Kahuna, a Sequoia Capital-backed mobile marketing startup which raised $11 million in Series A funding in February, aims to tackle the cross-device messaging […]
Online sales during China’s annual discount event topped $9 billion this year, once again thrusting the country into the spotlight as a commerce powerhouse, and not by a little bit. Singles Day, which was originally created in the late ’90s by a group of Chinese college students celebrating their singleton status, falls on Nov. 11 […]
The mobile value proposition of a company like Facebook or Google is fairly straightforward: Download the free app and it’ll let you converse with your friends or give you directions to help you get where you’re going. In return, you allow yourself to be tracked for advertising purposes. “For carriers, the story is not as […]
Twitter analytics and targeting platform StatSocial isn’t CEO Michael Hussey’s first trip to the customer data rodeo. Back in 2006, Hussey founded PeekYou, a people-based search engine that aggregates publicly available information – Twitter handles, Facebook URLs, blogs, physical address, phone number, interests, schools attended – into customer profiles that are then available for purchase. […]
Like last quarter, Millennial Media’s revenue is up – and profits are down. The mobile ad tech platform, which has been vocal about it’s desire to expand its programmatic capabilities, is clearly still in a period of transition. Though Millennial Media clocked a 24.4% YoY increase in revenue in Q3 2014 to $69.8 million, the […]
Jiffy Lube CMO Jeffrey Lack admits the company had no more than a standard digital strategy back in 2011. “Our digital presence was basically isolated to a national website, a mobile site and a very small pay-per-click program,” Lack said. And as a national oil change chain with thousands of franchisees, that wasn’t doing the trick, […]
However one feels about the merits of FarmVille, it’s undeniable that the game’s creators know a thing or two about app monetization. To that end, Red Hot Labs – a game dev startup founded by the team that created back-in-the-day blockbusters FarmVille and CityVille – released Toro on Wednesday, a new tool aimed at helping […]
