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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Amobee: Mobile RTB Has Momentum, But Is Not For Everyone
Last March, Singapore-based telecom SingTel acquired mobile ad platform Amobee for $321 million. Since then Amobee has been developing its mobile real-time bidding capabilities as a way to broaden it’s service offerings across Asia and Latin America. We spoke with Trevor Healy, Amobee’s CEO, about how the Redwood City, CA-based company has updated its focus. […]
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AOL Posts Gains In Q3, Armstrong & Co Emphasize Programmatic Momentum
While AOL’s Q3 growth was surely a welcome sign to patient investors, the fact that it has continued to come from its third party network and search ad deal with Google could be a long term problem. During a call with analysts, CEO Tim Armstrong acknowledged several times that the “traditional” display model of ad […]
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Birchbox: ‘Discovery,’ Not Deals, Is The Way To Scale E-Commerce
When niche retail e-commerce gained steam about three years ago, deals, the focus was on flash sales and discounts on upscale items for fashion and restaurants. But the ground has slowly shifted as local deals site Groupon filed its IPO and a slew of like-minded sites started to crowd the space. Two years ago, two […]
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Analysts Positive on ValueClick, All Eyes On Dotomi
ValueClick’s Q3 results were largely positive, as the company demonstrated in its earnings release and subsequent investors call on Thursday. But it just goes to show, that managing expectations is more than half the game when it comes to quarterly results. In part, the results were impacted by the exclusion of revenues from Search123, which […]
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Star Trib’s Programmatic Formula Relies On ‘Active Management,’ Not ‘Set And Forget’
As of the fall of 2012, the newspaper industry had limped through 20 straight quarters of decline, according to figures collected by the Newspaper Association of America. The consecutive decreases began in the third quarter of 2006, when combined print and online ad dollars fell 1.5 percent to $11.7 billion. Since that point, newspaper ad […]
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OpenX And JumpTime Combine To Bring Ad Tech Methods To Content Optimization
If war is too important to leave to generals, then content optimization is too crucial to leave to editorial teams. That’s the animating idea behind this week’s acquisition of digital content analyzer JumpTime by display ad server and publisher-facing exchange OpenX. OpenX has been steadily building its supply-side platform. But the concept of determining how […]
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Jun Group's Reichgut: For ‘Premium’ Video Ads, Don’t Interrupt -- Offer Incentives Instead
The burning issues affecting digital advertising these days can be boiled down to handful of recurring themes: ad effectiveness and verification; “Do Not Track” and relevance; and whether social media extends a publisher’s content distribution — or merely fragments it. Given that video is a highly engaging form of media and easily trackable (via completion […]
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The Weather Company Sees 'Record-Breaking' Programmatic Revenue Related To Hurricane Coverage
The fearsome and punishing effects from Hurricane Sandy along the east coast the past few days has contributed to a series of record-breaking events across The Weather Company’s cable and digital properties. In particular, The Weather Channel’s parent company tells AdExchanger that on Friday, the amount of ad dollars coming in from programmatic channels exceeded […]
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Vevo Launches Private Exchange Powered By Adap.tv
Video music site Vevo is ready to try real-time bidding as an option to augment its direct sales. The three-year-old company, a joint venture managed by record labels Sony Music and Universal Music Group along with Abu Dhabi Media, is working with digital video sales platform Adap.tv on setting up the private exchange. In part, […]
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Vox Media: Until Programmatic Shows Brand Value, We’ll Stick With Direct Sales
Publishers are under pressure to embrace programmatic buying, but Vox Media is resisting the call. The company publishes sports blog network SB Nation, tech news provider The Verge, and video gaming info site Polygon, which made its debut this week. The introduction of Polygon represents what Vox CEO Jim Bankoff and sales director Joe Purzycki call a […]
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NYTCo Pins Display Troubles On Programmatic Buying
For the past year, the New York Times Co. has been faced with declining digital ad revenues at its flagship newspaper and ancillary properties. For much of that time, the company has pointed to the weak economy and to the problems at the About Group. With About, which had been unable to reverse falling revenue […]
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Reading the Tea Leaves on Yahoo's Future M&A
In addressing Yahoo analysts and investors publicly for the first time during Monday’s Q3 earnings call, CEO Marissa Mayer indicated she would continue a strategy employed during her years at Google: primarily purchases in the “double-digit millions,” rarely exceeding $100 million. Mayer didn’t mention companies that have been the subject of recent rumor, namely mobile […]
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Industry React: Does 'Ad Verification' Equal 'Ad Effectiveness?'
As marketers push for greater ROI and accountability, demand naturally rises for tools that can ascertain whether a campaign reached its audience. This is driving a boom in the ad verification sub-sector, and some turf wars as well. Witness last week’s counter-suit by analytics provider Moat against comScore over patent violations, which was a reaction […]
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Facebook: Inability To Drive Mobile Revenue Is A 'Myth'
An hour after producing a Q3 earnings report that exceeded Wall St. analysts’ expectations, Facebook CEO and chairman Mark Zuckerberg came out swinging against doubts about the social network’s mobile footing. “I want to dispel this myth we can’t make money on mobile,” Zuckerberg said in prepared remarks. “The reason is, we haven’t really tried […]
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Travora Emphasizes ‘Premium’ Placements, But Ad Net Roots Remain
A year after the Travel Ad Network rebranded itself as Travora Media, the company is attempting to cement its new image as a content company with the launch of a guide to major cities and destinations around the globe. The guide, which operates separately under the Travora.com domain, features staff writers producing original work, and blogging […]
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Home E-Commerce Player One Kings Lane Uses TV To Complement Retargeting
This past week, home furnishings shopping site One Kings Lane kicked off its first national brand advertising under the tag, “Design is Never Done.” The ads, which were created by Wieden+Kennedy, are intended to complement the San Francisco company’s extensive use of internet advertising, which includes a heavy dose of display, search, retargeting and social […]
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Google's Bad Day: Accidental Early Earnings Release Shows Falling CPCs
For the past few years, Google’s quarterly earnings have tended to be a day of celebration for the search giant. But its Q3 report, which was released a few hours before the company intended, contained some slight signs of weakness as profits and revenues missed analysts’ bullish forecasts. Read the earnings release. The misfired earnings […]
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Rocket Fuel Partners With Dentsu's CCI For Japanese Expansion
Compared to the U.S., Japan’s programmatic buying space is in its infancy. But to Rocket Fuel, this is the perfect time to stake a claim for its demand-side platform in that country, as the ad tech firm has been working on building a bigger global presence this year. But instead of just opening up its […]
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With Pharma's Ability To Target Limited, Precision Health Prescribes Regimen Of Context And Geography
Precision Health Media is one of a large number of ad tech companies that began life as a vertical ad network and have been trying to evolve into a broader “platform.” The New York-based company still has many of the attributes of an ad network — it was initially known as Good Health Media when […]
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Visible Measures’ Shin: ‘Choice-Based’ Video Ads Trump Pre-Rolls
There’s a lot of talk about the need for online advertising to be less “obtrusive.” (Okay, that view is mostly coming from Microsoft with regard to the default “Do Not Track” feature in its latest Internet Explorer web browser. But still.) When it comes to video, the notion of user control has been a big […]
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‘Placed Panels’ Look To Replace Demo Data With Location-Based ‘Opt-Ins’
Targeting consumers according to their demographic profile is one area where online and offline media buying methods still closely resemble each other. While many ad tech companies have pitched alternatives, such as relying on the social graph to segment consumers, that approach is hindered by guesswork when it comes to drawing on offline behaviors. When […]
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Most Online Ad Spending Is ‘Guaranteed,' But Efficiency Tools Still Too Tilted Toward Remnant
James Beriker has led two companies that ultimately became big acquisitions in the digital ad space. The first was Efficient Frontier, which was one of the pioneers of search and social media marketing. It was sold to Adobe in a deal completed this past January. About two years prior to that sale, Beriker had already […]
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Poised For Mobile Revenue Growth, LinkedIn Looks To Sharpen Ad Targeting
While the media and tech press watch Facebook and Twitter minutely for their respective ad strategies to emerge in a more defined way, professional social network LinkedIn has been slowly growing its ad business through its Marketing Solutions unit. As the company pointed out in a research note released Friday, 72 percent of LinkedIn’s revenues […]
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WSJ Digital Network Opens Private Exchange to Build Advertiser Relationships
In yet another sign that major publishers are embracing real-time bidding, The Wall Street Journal Digital Network has teamed up with The Rubicon Project to launch its first branded private ad exchange called “WSJ AUDEX.” The invitation-only exchange will allow select advertisers and marketers access to the WSJ Digital Network’s first-party data across its flagship […]
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For Turner Digital, Audience Buying Risk Outweighs Reward
Late last month, Time Warner’s Turner Broadcasting System unveiled the Turner Branded Entertainment group within its Turner Digital Ad Sales division. At the heart of it is an integrated marketing solutions partnership with Will Ferrell-backed comedy site FunnyOrDie.com. In a sign of how close Turner and FOD will be on this venture, TBS is bringing […]
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AdTheorent’s Iacovone: For Mobile RTB, Apple Devices Produce Higher Conversion Rates
When it comes to reaching consumers with mobile advertising, is there really a difference between an Apple iOS user and Android users? A poll commissioned a few weeks ago by mobile real-time bidding operator AdTheorent suggests that there is. Conducted by Quinnipiac University, the survey found that while Android-based smartphones were the most widely used […]
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Spotify’s Levick: Brand Partnerships First, Programmatic Later (Or Never?)
Jeff Levick, chief marketing solutions officer at streaming music app Spotify, sat out most of Advertising Week this year. Instead, the former AOL global ad sales chief has been working on longer term plans that involve branded playlists and building out the mobile ad offerings, while leaving the conference-going and client meetings this week to […]
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Videology's Acquisition Of LucidMedia Is About Closing The Loop Between Buyers And Sellers
Video ad platform Videology’s purchase of demand side player LucidMedia is part of a continuing strategy to break down the walls between serving buyers and sellers across all devices and platforms. Even though this is its second recent deal, following the acquisition of Collider in August, the company says that it’s not about to embark on […]
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IAB Aims To Shape Programmatic's Growth With 'Quality Assurance' Standards
With real-time bidding inventory expanding at an accelerated clip, the idea of coming up with “standard practices” for programmatic buyers and sellers could seem a bit late. But the Interactive Advertising Bureau, through its Network and Exchange Committee, has been trying to do just that since it formed in April 2011. This week, at the […]
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AOL Unveils 'Project Devil 2,' Doubling Down On Entertainment, Retail
AOL opened up its presence for this year’s Advertising Week by giving its “premium, brand-focused” Project Devil ads something of an upgrade. Although not greeted with the same kind of anticipation that is associated with the latest iPhone version, Project Devil is as crucial to AOL’s revenue generation as the smartphone is to Apple’s. For […]