Twitter tried to avoid last quarter’s narrative, centered around flagging audience growth, in its Q1 call Tuesday; instead, the company emphasized a 28% quarterly increase in ad engagements (specifically retweets and favorites), driven by higher-quality ads and the use of rich media. Such was the overall theme: engagement over timeline views and audience growth. Yet, the fact remains the latter […]
Retargeting platform AdRoll announced a $70 million funding round, led by Foundation Capital. The San Francisco-based company, which had previously raised $19 million, has expanded rapidly since launching in 2007 and become a leader in the retargeting space. AdRoll plans to use the investment to beef up its existing platform for mobile, and expand hiring at […]
Google posted a solid quarter, as total revenues for Q1 2014 jumped to $15.42 billion, a 19% increase compared to this time last year. During its earnings call, Google emphasized its ambitions to extend its value as a brand builder and to close the price gap between mobile and desktop display advertising. Google also stated […]
Yahoo reported gross revenue of $1.13 billion and $1.07 billion in ex-TAC revenue for Q1 2014. GAAP revenue was down 1% from the same period last year, but ex-traffic acquisition revenue was up 1%. GAAP display revenue was $453 million for Q1 2014, flat compared to the same period last year. Yahoo increased the number […]
Supply-side platform (SSP) AdsNative received Thursday a $2 million injection of funding led by Interwest Partners, raising about $750K in convertible debt prior to this series. The company also released a mechanism called Mediation/SSP, designed to maximize publisher fill rates for in-stream native ads. AdsNative will devote the majority of the funds to getting more publishers […]
Are programmatic media companies about to hit the wall? Ken Sena, managing director and Internet analyst at investment banking analyst firm Evercore Partners, is wary. Despite the exuberant expectations around companies like Criteo and Rocket Fuel, Sena sees a possible multifront threat on the horizon. In an Evercore report called “Questioning Competitive Barriers In Programmatic,” […]
Lotame, known for its data management platform (DMP), has received a $15 million injection in Series D funding, led by Sozo Ventures and TrueBridge Capital Partners. This brings Lotame’s total funds raised to $44 million. These new funds, said CEO Andy Monfried, will be used to enhance the platform’s technology and expand globally, particularly in […]
Salesforce.com reported 37% revenue growth in Q4, to $1.15 billion, driven in part by the $2.5 billion July 2013 acquisition of ExactTarget. Its full year revenue was $4.07 billion, up 33% year-over-year. ExactTarget is the lynchpin of ExactTarget Marketing Cloud, which competes with analogous stacks fielded by Adobe and Oracle. Specifically, ExactTarget contributed $96 million in […]
Media-buying platform Rocket Fuel’s growth continued to shoot up in the fourth quarter, driven by – according to CEO George John during the quarterly call – a high customer-retention rate, increased sales productivity and reputation. The company reported gross revenue of $85.6 million in Q4 2013, a 113% increase from the same period last year. […]
Sizmek, the company formerly known as Digital Generation (DG), reported Tuesday a full-year revenue increase of 15%, to $161.1 million compared to $140.7 million in 2012, capped off by Q4 revenue of $47.6 million, a 16% compared to the same period last year. (Read the release.) These figures reflect only Sizmek’s online business, and not […]
French retargeting company Criteo closed Q4 with revenues of €135.9 million, up 57% from the €86.6 million recorded for the fourth quarter one year prior. The company, which has been rooted in retail and travel retargeting since its start, said last quarter exceeded expectations after it clocked €113.8 million in the third quarter, its first […]
As we first reported in November, digital marketing software firm Turn has reeled in a new Series E investment. The $80 million raise was distributed among eight venture capital firms and brings Turn’s total funding to about $138 million to date. (For comparison, direct competitor MediaMath has raised a mere $24.4 million, according to CrunchBase). […]
Although marketing industry deal activity was flat in 2013, the sector saw some eye-popping deal sizes, according to boutique investment bank Jordan, Edmiston Group Inc.’s (JEGI) annual review of mergers and acquisitions. In 2012, many of the biggest deals in 2012 tracked by JEGI involved consumer brands (Yahoo, Kayak), with only two marketing industry mergers coming in […]
Turn Inc. is seeking new funding at a valuation up to $700 million, ahead of a probable IPO in 2014. Sources say the demand-side (DSP) and data management platform (DMP) company has been calling on investors in recent months seeking a new strategic round. These investors have gotten a peek under the hood at Turn’s […]
French retargeter Criteo has officially gone public, and would seem to be riding the same wave of algorithmic enthusiasm that buoyed Rocket Fuel’s IPO last month. Within an hour of beginning trading on NASDAQ at $31 per share, CRTO jumped 33% to $41. The price puts its market cap is $2.26 billion — about on […]
Updated: Criteo went public Wednesday morning at $31, and is now trading at $41. On Monday we noted that Criteo’s underwriters had increased the target price for its upcoming IPO to $27-$29, exactly the range where Rocket Fuel debuted last month. Now comes word that the price has gone up again, this time to $31 […]
The second big “ad-tech IPO” in as many months is upon us. French retargeting firm Criteo is now expected to price its public offering tonight, a couple of days earlier than previously planned. And the deal’s underwriters have bumped the target price from $23-$26 to $27-$29, suggesting strong demand in the wake of senior management’s […]
Location-based startups that allow advertisers to personalize their offers and provide other customized services are quickly becoming a highly lucrative space. Google recently bought Waze, the geography-based navigation application, for approximately $1 billion and Foursquare is exploring an IPO. Panelists Matt Turck, managing director of First Mark Capital, and Ben Siscovick, a former partner of […]
Depending on who you ask, Rocket Fuel’s stunning IPO is either a new dawn for programmatic media investment or a scary bubble indicator. In either case, it clearly went better than the company and investors planned. For comparison, we looked at how its nearly $2 billion market cap stacks up against other big companies in […]
The first quarter of 2013 was marked by some notable acquisitions—Google acquired Channel Intelligence; Twitter snapped up Bluefin Labs and Facebook agreed to buy Microsoft’s Atlas DMT. Merger and acquisition activities for marketing and other sectors have generally cooled down, however, according to a new report from The Jordan, Edmiston Group, Inc. (JEGI), an investment bank […]
The Weather Channel’s acquisition of meteorological data company The Weather Underground (see release) may not provide the cable network and app operator with any immediate abilities to better predict rain or shine, but it does give it access to a well-regarded tech company that can help it lay the groundwork for new products and a […]
Taboola, a video recommendation app platform that publishers can put on their sites in an attempt to boost traffic and views, has raised a $10 million third round that reflects the continuing rise of online video ad dollars and the intense competition for them. In an interview, Adam Singolda, the founder and CEO of Israeli/New […]
Tolman Geffs is co-President of Jordan Edmiston Group, which offers independent investment banking services to companies within the media and information industries. AdExchanger.com: Do you think the ad tech ecosystem is too crowded? TG: Is it crowded? Absolutely. Will every company that gets funded give a decent return to its VCs? No way. In fact, […]
Sanjay Chadda is Partner & Managing Director at Petsky Prunier, which advised FetchBack on its sale to GSI Commerce Inc. Read the release. AdExchanger.com: Some think that Fetchback sold before the market collapsed for their services due to factors such as Google opening up self-serve retargeting. How do you respond? SC: Fetchback was approached by […]
Trevor Wright is CEO of DogTime Media. AdExchanger.com: Does Adify still provide the technology “backbone” of Dogtime? How has that relationship evolved? DogTime leveraged Adify’s technology backbone to launch our vertical community, but quickly evolved beyond their capabilities and have been independent of Adify for more than a year. Are advertisers buying from DogTime Media […]
Nay-sayers: ready to admit that online display advertising is not dead – it’s just getting started? In its latest Q1 earnings report, Valueclick sheds light on the growing opportunity in display as display ad revenues increased from the prior year according to PaidContent after VLCK’s earnings conference call: “Display beat expectations, gaining 2 percent to […]
Yesterday, online ad exchange contender and Redwood City, California-based, Turn Inc., announced a new round of investment totaling $15 million. Led by Focus Ventures and joined by Norwest Venture Partners (NVP), Trident Capital, and Shasta Venture, Turn has now received more than $37 million in equity investment since its inception – yet another signal that […]
ContextWeb, makers of the contextual online ad exchange, ADSDAQ, announced today a Series D round of financing. Their fourth round was led by an investment from Investor Growth Capital and additional funding came from all current investors: DFJ (Draper, Fisher and Jurvetson), DFJ Gotham Ventures, Updata Partners, DFJ New England, plus Gold Hill Capital. With […]
Feeling it couldn’t be left out of the advertising exchange party, Microsoft, acquired tiny AdECN for what some suggest is in the $50-75 million range. In the wake of previous advertising exchange platform purchases such as Google’s $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick which included its exchange and Yahoo!’s $700 million purchase of RightMedia and RMX, […]
It’s happy times on the Right Media Exchange as employees and shareholders took in another $680 million from Yahoo! to be fully-acquired by the struggling web search/entertainment/whatever monolith. With Google’s purchase of DoubleClick and its developing AdX Exchange, Yahoo! felt it needed to answer and it did. Will Microsoft now step up to the plate? […]
