Liz is a former Reporter for AdExchanger.com where she covered agencies and wrote the daily news roundup. Previously, she worked as a music journalist for BestNewBands.com, and has also worked as a freelance writer and editor for Elite Daily and L/A Mag. Fluent in French, Liz worked for a time at l’Alliance Française de Washington after earning her degrees in political economy and French from Bates College in Maine.
iProspect is best known for its heritage in search marketing. But the Dentsu Aegis-owned digital performance agency, which first opened its doors in 1996, is changing with the times. Today, content is where it’s at. “There’s a tendency in the industry at the moment to split down two different paths,” said iProspect global President Ben […]
Jayne Pimentel is high on marijuana marketing – in particular using ad tech to support a budding industry. Pimentel, currently Reddit’s ad ops chief and formerly demand-side platform Turn’s director of emerging media, is also founder of CanX – an app designed to connect cannabis growers, product producers, dispensaries and consumers. It uses anonymous registration […]
Programmatic audio advertising platform Jelli unveiled a $21 million Series B funding round Tuesday, led by Relay Ventures, Intel Capital, First Round Capital, iHeartMedia and Universal Music Group. The round brings Jelli’s total funding to $37.6 million. Jelli will use proceeds from the round to support two major partnerships forged this year, one of which […]
In the wake of Apple CEO Tim Cook’s fighting words about data collection and a major study finding consumer sentiment toward online tracking is at an exasperated tipping point, it seems clear that privacy is having another “moment.” What’s an industry to do? Sources approached by AdExchanger sound a familiar chorus: Advertisers should increase operational […]
Email advertising and marketing platform LiveIntent unveiled a $32.5 million growth equity investment on Wednesday, led by FTV Capital. Other investors include Battery Ventures, First Round Capital and Shasta Ventures. It will use the funds primarily to build out its platform and APIs for wider integration with other marketing tech companies like Salesforce, an effort […]
As of Tuesday, Pandora has made all its smartphone and tablet display inventory available for programmatic buying. The announcement expands on its programmatic display business, which has been generally available since January, and formally takes Pandora’s mobile programmatic solution out of beta. The solution first surfaced in March and has since been trialed by a […]
Digital advertisers often become enamored with ad tech at the expense of creative. “We are still miles from being able to generate great varieties of good creative to suit the various permutations of user brand environment,” said Chris Stark, SVP of product marketing for Grapeshot, a UK software company that does algorithmic ad optimization. Defining […]
In early August, Anthony Rhind, chief digital officer at Dentsu Aegis’ Carat Global, will leave his position and head to ad tech firm Adform as its chief strategy officer. It’s not the most obvious move for Rhind, who has dedicated the past two decades of his career to the agency worlds of Datorama, Havas Digital, […]
It’s difficult for health and pharma advertisers to navigate the FDA’s regulatory landscape. A few years ago, for instance, they were barred from using cookie-based targeting. That’s why PageScience, an ad network for the pharma industry, began working with AppNexus in 2011 to build a contextual targeting solution called PageMatch, which helps advertisers reach consumers […]
When “Serial” broke the record for the fastest series to reach 5 million downloads, it created new interest in podcasts as an advertising forum. Though podcasting still has measurement hurdles to clear, it’s attracting more attention from larger advertisers. “Early on with any kind of new advertising medium, there are going to be institutional advertisers […]
When WPP’s programmatic arm debuted Xaxis Audio last month, it did so with the intention that it would not be used in isolation. “For us it’s another arrow in the quiver when you’re doing programmatic media planning,” said Nicolas Bidon, managing director of Xaxis in the UK. “This is a new way to reach audiences […]
Marketron wants to help the 6,500 or so broadcast radio stations that use its revenue management software to transact spot radio in a programmatic fashion. The company has rolled out an offering, dubbed Mediascape, allowing stations to see their sell rates and inventory avails, and then select those avails and publish them to Marketron’s cloud-based […]
When French holding company Publicis Groupe decentralized the programmatic capabilities of its agency trading desk VivaKi in February, it did so to capitalize on the increasing performance of programmatic, said VivaKi CEO Stephan Beringer. While Beringer didn’t pinpoint the exact drivers for the restructuring, “It was the culmination of insights that led to the need […]
When Canadian messaging platform Kik, which aims to become the “WeChat of the West,” hired former Accuen CEO Josh Jacobs as its president of Kik Services, many wondered why someone who had been so ingrained in advertising would pivot to messaging. Or maybe it’s not such a pivot: After all, Jacobs will supervise the new […]
Spotify is preparing to play in a very big pool – the world of original video content. The digital audio firm revealed the development during a New York City partner event it hosted Wednesday. Spotify plans to work with producers and artists to offer its exclusive original content. It will also host non-exclusive content from […]
Adam Cahill is taking his 20 years of digital media experience – during which he has worked at Dentsu Aegis Network agency Carat and, most recently, as chief digital officer at IPG’s Hill Holliday – and launching his own programmatic firm: Anagram. The agency, which opened its doors Wednesday and will work exclusively with MediaMath’s […]
As consumers increase time spent on social channels, the data on those platforms is becoming increasingly valuable to advertisers. In its 2014 year-end report, Pew Research found that 52% of adults in the US use two or more social media sites, up from 42% in 2013. And though user growth on the leading social platform, […]
Fatemeh Khatibloo, principal analyst at Forrester, will appear at AdExchanger’s CleanAds I/O conference on June 3, an event addressing inventory quality and supply chain issues in the digital advertising ecosystem. As adland moves to clean up the supply chain and weed out fraud, the consumer perspective on data safety risks is becoming an afterthought. Fatemeh […]
Interactive audio ad firm XAPPmedia closed a $3.8 million round of Series A-1 funding on Thursday, which it will use to crank up its offerings for Internet radio publishers. With its latest funding, XAPPmedia will add staff and develop new interactive capabilities, many of which are being designed at the request of customers such as […]
Mobile is big and video is big – and putting the two together presents a gargantuan advertising opportunity that Verizon will be primed to capture if it closes on AOL. “Verizon has been trying to figure out how to grab a bigger share of the ad tech pie, so the move makes sense strategically on […]
Nestlé found its sweet spot through a recently executed branding campaign for its Nescafé Dolce Gusto brand. For its first-ever wholly programmatic ad campaign, the European java vendor tapped UK-based online marketing firm Jellyfish to drive sales of its coffee machines. The goal was to maximize the efficiency of its display advertising, without compromising on […]
Viewability and fraud will be addressed at AdExchanger’s upcoming CleanAds I/O conference on June 3, along with a host of other inventory quality and supply chain issues in the digital advertising ecosystem. Screening out fraudulent and non-viewable ads has never been easier or more popular. Last summer AdExchanger reported that the number of marketers running viewability […]
LinkedIn’s display business deteriorated during Q1 2015 and will continue to tumble, the company said during its quarterly earnings call on Thursday. While LinkedIn reported Q1 revenues of $638 million, up 35% YoY, its disappointing Q2 and full-year guidance ($670-$675 million and $2.9 billion respectively) sent shares plummeting more than 25%. During the call, CFO […]
Compared to other digital audio content, podcast advertising has unique measurement challenges. But the medium is growing quickly. Edison Research claims nearly 46 million Americans, or 15-17% of the US population, listen to a podcast every month. It’s roughly double the size of podcast listeners in 2008. AdsWizz, which provides radio listening metrics for broadcasters and […]
Adobe is shoring up its support for display ads with the acquisition of dynamic creative optimization (DCO) tech from Collective, called Ensemble. The small technology pick-up, announced at the firm’s European summit in London on Wednesday, will give Adobe’s advertiser clients self-serve tools to build, customize and deploy ads through Adobe Media Optimizer in real […]
When the IAB set out to craft a set of standards for digital audio advertising seven months ago, it wanted to address the challenge of consumers shifting to mobile and to organize the fragmented digital audio landscape. The effort resulted in the Digital Audio Ad Serving Template (DAAST), and many in the industry welcomed the […]
Agency rebates were a common theme during holding company earnings calls this week, with both Publicis and Omnicom fielding kickback questions from investors earlier in the week. On Friday during IPG’s Q1 call, CEO Michael Roth found himself under the interrogation lights. “This whole issue is not new to IPG,” Roth said, adding that IPG began […]
Pandora CEO Brian McAndrews said during the digital radio company’s Q1 earnings call that its mobile programmatic solution, currently in beta, will be generally available in Q3. “During beta, we are open to a handful of customers to ensure we are set up to operationally scale the program similarly to what we’ve done in web,” […]
Merkle|RKG’s Digital Marketing Report, released this week, notes strong disparities between the display ad effectiveness and cost of rivals Google and Facebook. In short, Facebook drives conversion rates, but Google is among the cheapest on a CPC basis. Though Google click growth dipped to 0.2% YoY, the Google Display Network (GDN) pulled 11% of all […]
When holding companies Publicis Groupe and Omnicom reported their respective 2015 first quarter earnings on Tuesday, each had to field investor inquiries about agency rebates and kickbacks. Omnicom outwardly denied participating in the controversial activity, at least in the US. “Our media agencies in the US don’t seek rebates,” Daryl Simm, CEO of Omnicom Media […]
