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.
AUTHOR ARCHIVE FOR:
David Kaplan
Articles By David
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'Affluent' Ad Net Martini Media Shifts To Programmatic
Martini Media, the online ad network focused on targeting young “affluent” audiences for the past four years, is broadening its offerings to the programmatic side. Martini’s move reflects a number of factors reshaping the online ad landscape, but the shift is not without pitfalls. For one thing, the ad network model in general is under […]
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Time Out: Lang To Step Down As Time Warner Preps Magazine Unit Spinoff
For the past decade, it had become a matter of when, not if. Time Warner, the entertainment conglomerate that took the first part of its name from the publishing empire that grew in the early 20th century, is spinning off its magazine division into a separate, publicly-traded entity. As a result, Laura Lang, the interactive […]
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House Ads - What Are They Good For?
There’s not much debate about the value of house ads. Maybe there never was. The house ad, like the TV promo, is just a way to fill some unsold inventory and promote the brand of a newspaper, magazine, or website. Or it could be an Ad Council placement. At a time when sites can fill […]
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Cox Digital Solutions Shutters Platform Services, Former Adify Business
Cox Digital Solutions, which houses the white label vertical ad network and ad serving business formerly known as Adify, will no longer offer platform services to outside media companies, the company has told clients. In a letter sent last month to customers, obtained by AdExchanger, Andy Levi director, Publisher Operations at CDS, as part of […]
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In Work For Acela, Draftfcb Emphasizes Data To Influence Business Travelers
If there’s anyone still debating the role of data in ad creative, as opposed to media buying, they don’t work at Draftfcb. Last week, the Interpublic Group shop unveiled an integrated campaign on behalf of Amtrak’s express eastern seaboard rail service, Acela, that aimed to get business travelers to reconsider the value of air travel. […]
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HP Aims To Prove The Value Of Its 1 Million Followers On LinkedIn
This week computer hardware and software marketer HP became the first company on LinkedIn to attract a million followers. HP believes the service can work as an advertising medium, as much as it can a customer relationship management or public relationship channel. “Our one million followers are connected to over 42 million people on LinkedIn, […]
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Federated Media Founder Battelle Returns To CEO Seat; Brown Is Out
Just two years after Federated Media Publishing founder John Battelle handed the reigns over to then president Deanna Brown so he could step back as executive chairman, Battelle is taking back the CEO position. In an official blog post, Battelle said that Brown told him that she planned to do something “smaller” and directly involving […]
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IAB ALM: Forget 'Big,' We Just Want Data We Can Use
Maybe the Interactive Advertising Bureau should have titled its Annual Leadership Meeting, “Data, Data Everywhere And Not A Terabyte To Think.” This year’s theme was how Big Data can complement or conflict with big advertising – i.e., creative ideas. The general takeaway was that yes, the two sides can inform and influence each other, but […]
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De Castro On The 'New Yahoo': This Time, It's Personalized
In his first high profile appearance since jumping from Google to Yahoo, Henrique De Castro, the portal’s COO, took the stage on the second and final day of the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Annual Leadership Meeting to showcase the company’s vision under his fellow ex-Googler, CEO Marissa Mayer. The content vision, as demonstrated by the new […]
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If 'Native' Is The New Advertising, Facebook And Twitter Are The New Networks
Both major publishers like Forbes and startups like Buzzfeed have found there’s little point in trying to replicate the traditional ad model when it comes to digital. And even programmatic has its limits, in their view. In what was billed as a “debate” on the value or hype of native advertising at the Interactive Advertising […]
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At IAB Leadership Conference, The Push Is On For 'Big Ideas' To Match Big Data
It has become de rigueur at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s annual conferences for executives to take to the stage for sessions that were half encouraging and half lecturing industry professionals for getting the science of digital marketing right, while not quite nailing down the art side of the equation. This year’s IAB Annual Leadership Meeting […]
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TripAdvisor Turns To 'Meta Display' For Less Annoying, And Possibly, Higher Priced Placements
One of the vestiges of cheap, low-quality ads has been the “pop under” format often employed by travel search engines which would produce multiple mini-browser windows for airfares and hotel rates. In the last quarter, TripAdvisor began moving away from pop-unders in favor of Google-like “meta search” results for its display ad partners in the […]
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AOL Hires A Sales Veteran From MediaMath
AOL Advertising has hired former MediaMath marketing executive Marta Martinez to the newly-created position of Head of Sales Strategy & Operations. With AOL’s mixed display results the past few quarters — third party network dollars continue to surge, while spending on “premium” owned & operated properties strive to be better than flat — the company […]
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QuadrantONE, Programmatic Joint Venture Of Newspaper Companies, Pulls The Plug
QuadrantONE, a joint venture of newspaper companies that sought to pool inventory resources and capitalize on the programatic selling opportunity, has shut down. In a note posted to its website today, the company said its joint owners — The New York Times Co., Tribune Company, Hearst and Gannett – will pursue “different paths” for U.S. display […]
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Quote: Rubicon Project's Chief Scientist On Defining 'Programmatic'
“I don’t think the industry has settled on a definition. Programmatic is partially about RTB, partly about doing more automation around the process of buying and selling advertising. Programmatic is a Rorschach test – what does it meant to you? Everyone has a different take based on their business and what their particular technology does. […]
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Tribune Digital Looks To Programmatic To Build Mobile Ad Attraction
Tribune Digital, the interactive arm of the newspaper and broadcasting company, expects mobile traffic on its 36 WAP sites and 60 apps to exceed the PC-based usage it gets this year across its 50 websites. But the question facing it and other publishers looking to nudge ad spending to more closely match users’ smartphone and […]
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Shopzilla Formalizes Display Ad Business With Launch Of 'Aisle A' Division
Comparison shopping service Shopzilla has unveiled a business unit called Aisle A that will focus on display ad sales and retargeting. Shopzilla, which has been around since the practical dawn of the consumer internet in 1996, says it now has the capabilities to better leverage purchase intent data aroundwide range of retail products to create a […]
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IDG Calls On 'Hero' Display Ad Units To Save The Banner
In the two months since tech publisher IDG finished a major redesign of its PCWorld, Macworld and TechHive sites, the company is ready to expand the centerpiece of that effort: the “Homepage Hero” box. The box is intended to serve as a front door for each site, displaying a large slot called the “Content Hero,” […]
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Ads Go Native: Traction CEO Adam Kleinberg Dissects The Hype
Publishers, marketers and agency executives are still talking about native advertising, whether it’s to say it’s hype, hope, old wine in a new bottle, or some combination. We spoke with interactive shop veteran Adam Kleinberg, CEO of San Francisco’s Traction, about the headaches and opportunities associated with native ads and whether this model can stand […]
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Virool Raises $6 Million With Ambitions Of Being 'AdWords' For Video
Video promoter startup Virool has raised a $6 million first round to help it quickly expand internationally and fulfill co-founder and CEO Alex Debelov’s plan to become the “Google AdWords” of video. “We grew from 200 to over 30,000 advertisers in 8 months ,and are going to release our own viral video that 1 million […]
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Visual Revenue Lets Editors Use Audience Data Like Publishers
Add “holistic yield management” to the list of buzzy terms content companies are sorting through in trying to determine what’s real and what’s hype when it comes to building audiences and ad revenue. Over the past few weeks, Visual Revenue, which bills itself as the operator of a “Bloomberg terminal” for editors, has expanded into […]
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ValueClick Customers Regard Facebook Exchange As Interesting, But Only 'Sporadically'
ValueClick CEO John Giuliani was harder on the company’s Q4 2012 performance than the analysts on the company’s earnings call. Though revenues rose a decent 14 percent to nearly $200 million for the period, it was quite a difference from Q4 2011’s 42% gains, which were largely driven by the addition of Giuliani’s previous company, […]
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Weather Channel Mobile App Finds Sunshine From Brands On Cloudy Days
The Weather Channel may have taken some heat from meteorologists for naming this past weekend’s East Coast snowstorm “Nemo,” but doing so was certainly good for ratings and web/mobile traffic. The storm also highlights an issue that its owner The Weather Company has been trying to address since bringing on several digital ad heavy hitters […]
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Messaging Platform Sailthru Raises $19 Million To Build 'Smart Data'
Investment in all corners of ad tech shows no sign of slowing, but email marketing firms tend to be overshadowed by “big data.” So it’s fitting that as part of Sailthru’s new $19 million second round, the email marketing platform company hopes to generate attention for its set of offerings being marketed as “Smart Data.” […]
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AOL's Armstrong: 'Barbell' Of Marketing And Programmatic Will Lift U.S. Display
AOL’s mix of challenges and improvements to its ad business was clearly represented in its Q4 earnings last Friday. U.S. display revenues slipped 3%, dampening AOL’s triumphal announcement that companywide revenues returned to the plus side after eight long years. AOL CEO Tim Armstrong surveyed the company’s Q4 earnings in an interview on Friday, conceding […]
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AOL Returns To Revenue Growth, But Display Looks Dismal
AOL’s Q4 results had a number of positives, not least of which was a return to overall revenue growth for the first time in eight long years. And yet, Q4 saw the company’s display ad dollars slip further, with numbers in that segment flat globally and down 3% in the U.S. Read the release. For […]
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Google To Publishers: Programmatic And Direct Sales Can Cohabitate
Google executives have been banging the drum on “premium programmatic” for months now, calling out the false dichotomy between automated media buys and traditional direct selling. In a discussion with Steve Sullivan, the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s VP of Ad Technology, Scott Spencer, director of Product Management at Google, offered outlines for the company’s approach, including assurances […]
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Google Buys Its Shopping Partner, Channel Intelligence
Since last fall, Google has shown a more aggressive stance in challenging Amazon’s dominance in e-commerce, particularly as Facebook has also been making its own significant maneuvers in the space. Google’s $125 million acquisition of Channel Intelligence, one of its four Google Shopping launch partners, is designed in part to develop more in-house capabilities to […]
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Partners Drive Video RTB Growth At SpotXchange, Headcount and Bid Volume Spike
Over the last year, video ad marketplace SpotXchange has increased real-time bidding to roughly one-third of its inventory, up from 5% in 2011. This year, SpotXchange CEO Mike Shehan says nearly half its inventory is expected to be traded programmatically. While Shehan won’t offer specific dollar amounts, the company says that its video RTB marketplace generated […]
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Advertising.com Group Rebrands As 'AOL Networks,' Emphasizing Shift To Programmatic
Just days before AOL reports its heavily scrutinized Q4 earnings, the company has rebranded the unit housing its Advertising.com flagship as AOL Networks. The purpose is to streamline AOL’s message to agencies, advertisers, marketers, publishers and investors and convey that the company is a programmatic player, not a vestigial ad network with a farrago of […]