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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Tremor, AOL Take Closer Aim At TV Media Buyers
While online video continues to grow, it’s becoming less certain that media buyers are ready to shift their focus demonstrably away from primetime TV. That’s not to say companies in the video space aren’t trying to make the movement between PC, mobile and TV screens more seamless. “We’re seeing single-digit ad dollars starting to move […]
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Rocket Fuel IPO Explodes, Share Price Doubles In Early Trading
Rocket Fuel is living up to its name in its first hours as a public company. After going public at $29, the high end of its range, the share price more than doubled to $62 by late morning. Since then it has fallen back to $55.50, as of noon EST, a 91% gain. The running […]
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Motel6 Lowers Acquisition Costs Through Display Ad Forecasting
In January, lodging chain Motel 6 began beta testing a new display-ad product from IgnitionOne. Called Spot, the tool offers predictive analysis of real-time bidded media placements. While IgnitionOne was primarily known for its remarketing abilities related to search, its general abilities had enough appeal to Motel 6 to put it to work on its wider […]
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Criteo Joins The Ad-Tech IPO Club, Aims To Raise $190 Million
French retargeting specialist Criteo has been planning its IPO filing for the better part of a year and it’s finally taking the plunge. The company filed an F-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission that details its financial performance and other particulars about its business. The company hopes to raise $190 million from the stock sale, though […]
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Questions For Todd Haskell, Hearst Digital's New Chief Revenue Officer
Todd Haskell began his new job as Hearst Magazine Digital’s chief revenue officer less than a month ago, joining the publisher of magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Elle and Good Housekeeping to manage the business side of the 28 related websites and 14 mobile properties. He previously served six years as the group VP of […]
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NYT's Homepage Ad Experiments Continue, With Video In Focus
In recent months, NYTimes.com has sought to refine its homepage ad strategy with the promise of something “unique” for large advertisers in consumer packaged goods, automotive, electronics and finance. The latest effort is on behalf of Bank of America and builds on the publisher’s evolving video strategy. The twist in this case is an “interactive” […]
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Mindshare Data Chief Ivins Wants To Tear Down Walls Around First Party Analytics
Earlier this month, WPP Group media agency Mindshare created the post of “chief data officer” and hired analytics veteran Bob Ivins to fill it. Ivins arrives from Comcast where he worked on addressable TV efforts as VP of the Comcast Business Intelligence Group and the Comcast 360 sales unit. Before that he held executive posts […]
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Adap.tv's Tech Stack Overhaul Attempts To Mirror The 'iTunes Path'
Video marketplace operator Adap.tv, fresh from the closing of its $405 million sale to AOL, is revamping its products to appeal more directly to buyers and sellers. A large part of what Adap.tv is doing is for basic marketing purposes, conceded Teg Grenager, the company’s co-founder and chief product officer. But he hastened to add […]
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MSN's Withdrawal From 'Original Content' Could Be Bing's (Marginal) Gain
The major reorg that retiring Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer engineered two months ago is resulting in the end of its portal MSN producing original content. As detailed by Romenesko, MSN freelancers were told in a mass email that their services would no longer be needed and that the budget for original content was “zero” for […]
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After Twitter-MoPub, The Mobile SSP Landscape Shifts
Twitter’s acquisition of mobile supply-side platform MoPub this week could pave the way for more activity and something close to standard business models in the nascent mobile exchange space. Established desktop exchange players like the Rubicon Project and PubMatic, which have expansive networks on the sell side, have struggled to retrofit their existing platforms to […]
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Pandora Names Former Microsoft, aQuantive Exec McAndrews CEO
Digital ad veteran Brian McAndrews has been named chairman, president and CEO of streaming music service Pandora. He replaced Joe Kennedy, who announced his intention to retire in March. (Read the release.) McAndrews built one of the first digital agency networks at aQuantive, where beginning in 1999 he began rolling up firms including Razorfish, Avenue […]
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Videology Adds Context With TriVu Partnership
Videology is working with video analytics provider TriVu Media to weave in additional layers of contextual targeting that will appeal to TV media buyers. “In TV, everyone has always used context to approximate audience,” CEO Scott Ferber said. “We’re dealing with five decades of that mentality and it’s a hard one to break. Plus, everyone’s always […]
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'Smart TV' Ad Strategies Are Smarter For Online Video Publishers, Marketers, YuMe Says
More than half of connected TV consumers use the apps on their set to view free, online videos and browse the web, a survey by electronics maker and video ad tech firm YuMe finds. To a lesser degree, these consumers — half of them, to be precise — are using their so-called smart TV apps […]
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Real-Time Ad Network Rocket Fuel IPO Nears $1 Billion Valuation
Real-time ad platform Rocket Fuel amended its S-1 Registration statement (see it) to go public and revealed how much it will raise and how much it will be worth should all go according to plan. The answer according to NASDAQ: “$102 million by offering 4.0 million shares at a price range of $24 to $27. […]
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As TV And Digital Screens Blur, Audience-Buying Metrics, Not GRPs, Will Dominate
While audience measurement giants Nielsen and comScore have scrambled to meet online ad industry demands around TV’s gross ratings points, WPP Group’s Kantar Media has concentrated more narrowly on “return path data” – metrics derived from pay TV boxes. While talk of addressable TV (aka advanced or “targeted TV”) has floated around for over a […]
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Video Ad Server Vindico Preps Programmatic Build Out, 'But Don't Call It A Pivot'
Buy-side video ad server Vindico has in recent months sought to position as a viewability specialist. This fall the company is broadening that profile further to include a fuller set of programmatic tools, as it offers workflow and measurement services to publishers. Vindico President Matt Timothy hastens to add: Don’t call it a pivot. Vindico […]
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AOL Moves On, Allows Brody To Join Yahoo As Americas' Head
Ned Brody can officially join Yahoo as SVP for the Americas, five months after resigning his post as CEO of AOL Networks, the unit that houses the company’s ad-tech properties. Brody had been constrained from heading to Yahoo by a noncompete clause, which could have kept him from starting the job until April 2014. But […]
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VC Money In Hand, Inadco Builds Out Lead Gen Tools For Video Ads
Over the summer, lead generation company Inadco raised an $11 million second round funding, giving it a total of $17 million worth of venture capital since opening its doors five years ago. Much of that time, the Palo Alto company was in stealth mode. That changed roughly two years ago when it sought to position […]
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Milwaukee JSOnline Preps For 'Total Programmatic' By Year's End
Like a lot of midsize independent newspapers, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is starting to see some thaw in the economic downturn that hurt the print business at large. While the climate is better, the challenge of declining print ad revenues has been replaced by the challenge of developing a more mature online ad strategy. The […]
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With GetOnboard, LiveRamp Blurs The Lines Between CRM And Advertising
LiveRamp, a company that takes offline marketing data and matches it with online advertising, continues to find ways to blend in customer relationship management into the digital mix. The company is releasing a CRM data onboarding software product, called GetOnboard, that helps tie online and offline, as well as CRM and advertising, more closely together. […]
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Brand Networks Teams With 'Business Weather Intelligence' To Make It Rain For Social Marketers
Taking a page from the Weather Company, which has been trying to convince brand advertisers that meteorology is about lifestyles, not umbrellas, Brand Networks is partnering with Planalytics to build out its “social marketing stack” around connecting local and national retailers with data about weather patterns and consumer behavior. The deal comes a few weeks […]
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As Newspaper Sale Talks Hover, Tribune Presses Ahead With Ad Reinvention
Lori Tavoularis, managing director for Revenue Partnerships at Tribune Digital, said she is ignoring the uncertainty around a possible sale of some or all of the newspaper division that houses her unit. Last week, according to The Daily Caller, Koch Industries decided to give up its pursuit of the newspaper chain, which was split from […]
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How Appssavvy Is Trying To Fuse 'Native' With Scale
“Native advertising” is a projection of publisher desires to revamp traditional print advertorials. Advertisers, too, like the idea of doing something unique that dovetails with editorial content and looks good across devices without requiring three creative versions. But scalability remains an issue. Ad-tech provider Appssavvy is one of several players looking for ways to combine the […]
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News Corp Works To Replace Ad Nets' 'Undercutting' With Global Private Exchange
A year after unveiling the Wall St. Journal’s private exchange, WSJ Audex, its parent company News Corp has expanded that model to cover the rest of its global publications. The News Corp Global Exchange, as its known, won’t replace WSJ Audex, but will instead serve as an umbrella over that offering and will include inventory […]
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Blinkx And You Won't Miss It: Video Firm Still Hiring And Acquiring
Earlier this month, online video distributor Blinkx bought video ad platform Grab Media, which had been viewed as a Yahoo acquisition target.It was the company’s second ad-related acquisition, following the purchase of Burst Media two years ago. Suranga Chandratillake, Blinkx’s chief strategy officer who co-founded the company in 2004, says both acquisition’s were driven by […]
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Forrester Sizes Up DMP Vendors With New Wave Report
Today’s DMPs clearly stand out from each other and from other parts of the digital marketing landscape, according to the Forrester Wave DMP Q3 2013 report. Forrester Principal Analyst Joanna O’Connell profiled seven players that are pushing the envelope. More than as a result of competition from each other, the increasing use of mobile devices – and […]
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Inc. Revenue Survey: BlueKai Sees $26.8M in 2012, DataXu $87M
Given the recent IPO and M&A frenzy, it should come as no surprise that some ad-tech players saw strong revenue growth in 2012, as reported today in the Inc. 500/5000 list. But even keen observers might be impressed by the surges at some data-management providers, in particular DataXu (ranked No. 5 among the entire list with […]
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Rocket Fuel's S-1: A Closer Look At IPO-Bound Ad Network's Financials
It’s a frenzied IPO season in the ad tech space. Despite the tepid reaction of investors to public offerings by Tremor and YuMe, companies like Rocket Fuel aren’t showing signs of cold feet. True, it helps to have a set of impressive financials, which Rocket Fuel submitted to the SEC last week. The Redwood City, […]
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Aiming For High Scores On Viewabillity, Google Brings TrueView Ad Skipping To Gamers
Google is ramping up its focus on online gaming by bringing its video ad-skipping tool TrueView to the space. In doing so, Google is making good on a promise Susan Wojcicki, SVP of advertising, made back in February at the IAB Annual Meeting to expand the use of TrueView, which the company sees as a […]
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DG's Challenge: Can Digital Alone Make It A $400M Company Again?
DG’s decision to sell its linear TV ad delivery business to video ad management company Extreme Reach for $485 million (with a possible $40 million equity investment in ER by DG) reflects a view that the real opportunity in video convergence comes from the digital side, not the traditional one. It’s a pretty big gamble. […]