David Kaplan is a former Video/Publishing Platforms editor for AdExchanger.com. A New York City-based journalist for over 20 years, Kaplan has covered media, advertising and marketing. A former staff reporter at paidContent, Adweek and MediaPost, he has also written for Advertising Age, Broadcasting & Cable, Crain’s New York Business, The New York Post, Newsday and the Boston Globe; he has also covered financial issues for the Bond Buyer and Worth magazine.
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David Kaplan
Articles By David
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Whoa Nielsen! Twitter Tie-In, $1.3B Arbitron Deal Shake Up Ratings Game
Nielsen has for years sought ways to measure the interplay of social media activity and TV viewing. Its new “multi-year” deal with Twitter is a tacit acknowledgement that Nielsen can’t close the media measurement loop on its own. There’s a similar observation to made about this morning’s announcement that Nielsen is buying long-time audience measurement rival, Arbitron, […]
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For Belo's New Digital Marketing Unit, The Keyword Is 'Standalone'
Last month, local TV broadcast operator Belo Corp. launched its attempt at a pure play digital marketing unit, ScreenShot Digital. The move is similar to ones taken by Time Inc., Gannett, Meredith Corp. and others the last three years. Unlike some of those integrated digital marketing units, ScreenShot isn’t being positioned as a way to leverage […]
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E-Commerce Platform FiftyOne: A Bridge Between Payment Services And Merchants
Just before holiday season kickoff last month, MasterCard tapped FiftyOne Global Ecommerce to provide exclusive online shopping offers from major U.S. retailers to the credit card company’s international users. These non-U.S. MasterCard cardholders have been able to find and redeem discounts of up to 30% off on merchandise and complete orders using local currency – […]
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Turning Earned Media Into Paid, RadiumOne Debuts Real-Time Hashtag Targeting
While anyone can follow a social media conversation stream through hashtags, social media ad tech provider RadiumOne is now starting to sell targeted ads off of these signifiers in real-time. The idea is to become part of consumers’ conversations as they’re taking off, not after they’ve already “trended” on Twitter or other social platforms. RadiumOne’s […]
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Google Ramps Up ‘Guaranteed Programmatic’
Since buying supply side platform Admeld last year, Google has rolled out tools and features designed to appeal to publishers who want to make programmatic work for them, without sacrificing their core direct sales offerings. The company’s pitch is that RTB buyers and sellers don’t have to give up the all-too-human process of negotiating on […]
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CAST Refashions Ad Network Into Native Ad Platform As Alternative To Programmatic
In a sense, there’s nothing really new about “native advertising.” Advertorials have been around in some form since modern periodicals first began appearing over a century ago. And now, with Facebook and Twitter inserting “promotions” that are sometimes hard to distinguish from regular user posts, more traditional publishers are giving thought to going beyond sponsored posts […]
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Deutsch LA's Van Praet: Digital Creative Isn't What You Think
When ad industry discussions turn to data, it’s usually about how to target ads, not create them. But Douglas Van Praet, EVP/group planning director at Deutsch LA, speaking at Wednesday’s ANA Creativity conference, offered up some ideas of how science can influence the artistic side of advertising. Following a presentation Van Praet did with Justin […]
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PubMatic’s Goel: 'Multi-Bid' RTB Will Solve Lingering Frustrations
PubMatic is pushing a “multiple bid” process to spur more real-time bidding. In a white paper promoting the idea of multi-bid, the sell side platform outlines some of the frustrations that continue to hold back RTB usage by sellers. Those frustrations include volatile pricing, low CPMs, and weak liquidity. PubMatic argues the current programmatic bid process, […]
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AOL Bulks Up Ad.com By Acquiring Retargeter Buysight
AOL has been promising a bigger effort on the programmatic side of the business all year and the company is ending 2012 with an acquisition that’s intended to both reflect and build on that focus. The company being acquired is Buysight, a retargeting and retail lead gen specialist. The four-year-old company will be folded into […]
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Ad.com's Brody: There’s No Conflict Between ‘Premium’ And Programmatic
AOL’s display performance is in comeback mode, but growth is lopsided. The company’s Q3 earnings presented a clear demonstration of the strength of third party network, which includes the flagship ad unit Advertising.com, as revenues jumped 18 percent over the same period in 2011. At the same time, revenue from AOL’s owned & operated sites […]
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AdSafe Rebrands As Integral Ad Science, Concluding 'Effectiveness' Is Bigger Than 'Verification'
It’s been less than two years since former Aperture executive Scott Knoll was brought in as AdSafe’s CEO. Knoll has just introduced his biggest change to date: After today, the brand “AdSafe” is no more. Instead, the company will now be known as Integral Ad Science. In a sense, the move codifies a shift that […]
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Techmeme Finds Algorithms Are Good For Content Aggregation, Not So Good For Ads
For the past seven years, Techmeme, the technology news aggregator, has relied heavily on algorithms to help it organize hundreds of breaking reports every day. While it has employed a growing team of editors to sift through and monitor the tweets, emails and other news items that come in from around the tech sector to […]
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Man Vs. Machine: Programmatic Doesn't Have To Mean Doing 'More With Less'
Among the many concerns ad sellers and ad agency staffers harbor about the rise of automated audience buying is that all these advancements will ultimately put people out of a job. The ethos of doing “more with less” is a general worry that happens anytime an industry finds itself in the throes of technological change. […]
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E-Commerce Dollars Are Driven More By 'The How,' Not 'The What'
When it comes to e-commerce, there’s Amazon and then there’s everybody else. Whether a retailer specializes in flash sales or in subscription-based, curated “boxes of merchandise,” all companies in the space are defining themselves against what Amazon has achieved and what it, as general go-to for everything from books to music to household items, can […]
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Digital Vet Batson Departs Mediaocean To Run Revenue Strategy For Radio Network Cumulus
J.T. Batson is leaving his post at media buying workflow systems provider Mediaocean to become chief revenue officer at Cumulus Media, which is primarily known for running the former ABC Radio Network. Meanwhile, Mediaocean, which was the resulting brand from last year’s merger between Mediabank and Donovan Data Systems, will not be replacing Batson directly, […]
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Holiday E-Commerce Activity Off To A Fast Start
The three days following Thanksgiving delivered a strong beginning to the online Christmas shopping season, several reports suggest. While sales figures will have to wait for Cyber Monday (Nov 26), Monday (Dec 3) and Green Monday (Dec 10) – the 3 heaviest online shopping days for 2011, according to Jefferies analyst Brian Pitz – all […]
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Subscription E-Commerce Player Cravebox Counts Impressions For Retail ROI
“Discovery” and “curation” have become big buzzwords for e-commerce start-ups, as flash sales and daily deals-based social shopping reach the saturation point for many consumers. Brands like Birchbox, PopSugar and the year-old Cravebox are trying to entice consumers with a subscription-based model that sends consumers sample products in the hopes of connecting brands and shoppers […]
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Trade Groups Release Some Viewability Data; IAB Says Metric Not Ready for Primetime
The Interactive Advertising Bureau, Media Ratings Council, and other associations recently completed a study of viewable impressions conducted with 17 advertisers across 12 agencies that encompassed roughly 3 billion impressions. The MRC aggregated and analyzed the data, and released a handful of nuggets publicly. Jessica Sanfilippo, Group Media Director with participating agency 360i, discussed some details of the […]
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Glam Taps Rubicon For Private Exchange As Automated Buys Move From 'Auctions' To 'Orders'
Female-leaning lifestyle content network Glam Media is the latest publisher to adopt the private exchange model, as more companies look to buttress and protect their guaranteed, direct sales with the increasing demands for more real-time offerings for advertisers. Rubicon Project will power the exchange for GlamAdapt, the publisher’s ad serving unit. The move comes at […]
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IAB Ad Ops: Programmatic Inventory Has A 'Yellow Pages Problem'
The industry has made striking advanced in tracking the value and attributes of biddable online ad inventory, but the road ahead is long. That much was clear at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Ad Operations summit in New York. In a discussion of inventory packaging and pricing, Neal Richter, chief scientist at Rubicon Project, and Art Schram, VP of Glam […]
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OneScreen's Patel On Video RTB Success Dependencies
Digital video, like mobile, remains something of a paradox: the growth continues to be absolutely phenomenal — eMarketer says it will grow 46 percent to $2.9 billion this year, with an additional 41 percent gain to $4.1 billion next year — but no one company in the space is viewed as really “crushing” everyone else. […]
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Facebook Opens Up Its Gift Box Wide To Major Retailers -- And, It Hopes, Members
Just ahead of Black Friday — the day after Thanksgiving and the official start of the holiday shopping season — Facebook is broadening its e-commerce platform, Facebook Gifts, to include a wide range of big name retailers and digital content companies. The social network presented the announcement at a press conference at FAO Schwarz, the […]
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Exiting Beta, Drawbridge Aims To Connect Ad Targeting Across Devices
Among the questions mobile marketers are grappling with is whether the channel is an extension of the PC-web or something entirely distinct. Is it better to emphasize some form of behavioral targeting or contextual? Is focusing on location the best way to target mobile users? While the industry sorts through those issues, mobile ad startup […]
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Quantcast Adds Self-Serve Targeting Tools For Publishers And Ad Buyers
Online analytics provider Quantcast is unveiling a new self-service tool for its brand targeting solution, Quantcast Advertise for Branding. After months of beta, starting today publishers and advertisers can better manage deals directly based on specified audiences. Quantcast CEO Konrad Feldman told AdExchanger the goal is to be viewed as the company that makes real-time bidding and […]
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Complex’s Antoniello: Publishers Can’t Have Premium Cake And Eat RTB Too
Small and large publishers alike are grappling with what it means to support and distribute content in the face of increasing audience and ad dollar fragmentation. One of the more obvious solutions being considered is for the publisher to become a niche player. Offering an audience a distinct diet of sports or fashion or parenting […]
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Direct Sale Fail: Display Share Slips Away As Publishers Wrestle With Programmatic
Last month’s ad spending tally from the Interactive Advertising Bureau was another “record-breaker,” as marketers lavished $17 billion on web ads between January and the end of June 2012. Display revenues in the first half totaled almost $5.6 billion, up 4 percent from $5.3 billion in the first half of 2011. So everything should be […]
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J2 Global Buys Serial Acquirer Ziff Davis Inc; Don't Expect Synergy
Over the past two years, Ziff Davis has transformed itself from a digital-only tech publisher primarily known for PCMag.com to a broader content/digital marketing play by adding audience ad targeting, e-commerce and enterprise IT functions. Now, after roughly five acquisitions since CEO Vivek Shah took over the media property with investment assistance from Great Hill Partners, […]
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User-Gen Content Aggregator Wikia Turns To Krux To Find Audience 'Motivators'
Over the past few months, “collaborative” publisher Wikia has been working with data management platform Krux Digital on streamlining and segmenting the company’s audience. The company claims the combined use of its first party data and third party data have led to 93 percent lift in eCPMs compared to what it was able to charge […]
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Adhesive’s Little: Direct Response Led Online Ad Breakthroughs Before, It’ll Do It Again
Chad Little is on to his fourth act in the digital ad space with a company he launched this fall called adhesive. Online advertising has always been about stickiness, and with adhesive, Little is working on solving the problems with display and direct response advertising he began addressing with his last company FetchBack. That company […]
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Publicis Digital Hub VivaKi Becomes Standalone Unit, As CEO Klues Retires
In the summer of 2008, Paris-based ad holding Publicis Groupe had started working on CEO Maurice Lévy’s pledge to derive at least 25 percent of the agency’s revenues from digital. The problem was that digital was still a sideline to the main business of creating and buying ads for TV, print and out-of-home. With those […]