Traditional video metrics aren’t really cutting it for advertisers, especially on mobile. Moat is making the attempt with its Video Score metric released in late November. Predicated on the notion that not every viewable impression is created equal, the metric aims to help properly measure digital video exposures across platforms by looking at how much […]
Beacons started out as a solution in search of a problem. And now some beacon providers are companies in search of a home. On Monday, mobile ad platform The Mobile Majority acquired geolocation beacon company Gimbal, a spinoff of Qualcomm. In June, location data company Verve Mobile bought beacon provider Roximity almost exactly one year […]
Mobile apps need revenue but have limited screen space on ads. Enter Button, which lets consumers click on an icon to move easily from app to app. It collects fractional fees from its partners, like a toll road connecting different apps. “We continue to see these transactional models embraced in mobile compared to traditional advertising […]
With mobile marketing automation sizzling and VC cash flowing, Apsalar is looking to capitalize. On Wednesday, the mobile attribution platform added an audience distribution layer to its stack, effectively enabling its clients to combine the data with the doing. “We’re finding that CMOs want to have everything in one place, not a bunch of point solutions,” […]
Ad networks catch a lot of flak as conduits of bad traffic from shady publishers. “It is true that some bad players intentionally sell fraudulent traffic and that other players are just turning a blind eye,” said Asaf Greiner, CEO and founder of fraud detection company Protected Media. “But there are also others working very […]
App publishers expect their inventory to fetch a pretty penny during the holiday season as marketers furiously funnel their remaining budget into hardcore user-acquisition efforts. “There’s an enormous amount of volatility during Q4, more than anything because of a desire to get up the charts,” said James Peng, head of mobile and social acquisition at […]
Snapchat is credited with jumpstarting the vertical video trend earlier this year, but now the format is really starting to hit its stride. That’s out of necessity, said Ari Brandt, CEO and co-founder of mobile ad platform MediaBrix, which on Thursday rolled out a new version of its SDK that supports vertically shot in-app video […]
Weather data is hot right now. Location-based mobile ad network xAd has acquired WeatherBug, the companies said Tuesday. WeatherBug operates a live weather website and app with more than 20 million unique users, as well as a network of more than 10,000 private automated weather stations across the country. It’s a page out of IBM’s […]
Mobile web notifications are blurring the line between apps and the mobile browser. For publishers without apps, mobile web push is a way to interact with people in an app-like fashion. And publishers with an app can use web push to communicate with users even if they haven’t downloaded it. According to numbers released by […]
Convenience store chain QuickChek is placing location at the center of its digital strategy. It wants to prove that digital spend leads to foot traffic, said Eric Rush, digital marketing manager at QuickChek, which operates 140 retail locations across New Jersey and New York state. QuickChek only started to seriously invest in digital channels roughly […]
LatAm is a region on the rise. Nine out of 10 people with an internet connection in Latin America also own a smartphone, per a report released Monday. And people who own a smartphone spend more than 37 hours a week connected to the internet and only a little more than seven hours a week […]
Snaplytics, a third-party Snapchat measurement vendor, came out of beta Wednesday after spending more than a year developing the hardware and software needed to pull marketing insights from Snapchat accounts. “It’s not similar to fairly straightforward API analytics like with Twitter and Facebook,” Snaplytics co-founder and CEO Thomas Cilius told AdExchanger. “You need some custom […]
LaMusica knows its largely millennial audience likes to snack. “It’s very hard to get their attention,” said Jesus Lara, EVP of digital media at Spanish Broadcasting System, one of the largest Spanish-language radio broadcasters in the United States and owner of LaMusica, a free streaming music app aimed at Hispanic millennials. “Our strategy is to […]
Drivers and passengers buy about $225 billion a year in consumables at gas station convenience stores. That’s a lot of candy bars and potato chips. But targeting that on-the-go audience with specific offers and connecting sales to specific ads is far from convenient for marketers and retail operators, which comprise a highly fragmented landscape of […]
Apps are looking for marketing cloud-like capabilities. But they’re not going, or can’t afford, to spend the kind of money marketers have historically dropped on a traditional marketing cloud integration. Leanplum, which on Tuesday announced its $29 million Series C led by Canaan Partners with participation from Kleiner Perkins and Shasta Ventures, is positioning itself […]
MParticle is in growth mode. The mobile data platform, which helps collect and connect mobile data across platforms, has added $17.5 million in new funding, just nine months after its $15 million Series A in January. The round was led by Bain Capital Ventures, a new investor, with participation from existing investor Social Capital, bringing […]
App distribution platform ironSource launched a solution Tuesday to give mobile carriers, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and developers an alternative to pre-installed apps – sometimes called “bloatware” by consumers. Dubbed Aura, the platform aims to revamp the onboarding process for users when they buy a new Android or Windows phone by presenting recommended content to […]
Casie Attardi will speak at AdExchanger’s PROGRAMMATIC I/O Conference in New York on October 26. Native inventory became a significant part of the digital marketing mix before industry stakeholders had the time to develop a sense of comfort and familiarity with native advertising. “Native, especially for in-app programmatic, evolved over a very short period of time,” said […]
Segmentation for retargeting is often a very manual process that relies heavily on what someone’s done in the past. App marketing platform Jampp wants to help advertisers craft predictive segments that anticipate what someone will likely do in the future. Jampp’s predictive segments technology, which exited beta on Thursday, uses machine learning to analyze around […]
Cheetah Mobile’s been on the prowl for ad tech since 2015, when it paid $58 million for French mobile performance marketing company MobPartner. The MobPartner acquisition is the cornerstone of Cheetah’s plan to transform itself from utility app publisher into a mobile ad vendor with global chops. Cheetah’s vision became clearer when it took the […]
The on-demand economy gets flack for being a bubble – after massages, meal, tasks and taxis, what’s left to be Uberized? – but on-demand laundry startup Cleanly isn’t concerned. “Our feeling is that if you create a good product, then your marketing will fit in with the value you’re trying to provide,” said Tom Harari, CEO and […]
TapFwd, a mobile data marketplace founded by two LiveRamp vets, raised a $3 million seed round led by Partech Ventures. TapFwd matches online and offline data sets to mobile device IDs and then sells these data sets to help advertisers target campaigns. The rough analogy is “a BlueKai built from the ground up for mobile,” […]
At Allstate, the experience comes before the advertising. “You need to create value before you can market against that value – you can’t go out of sequence,” said Allstate CMO Sanjay Gupta. That’s especially true on mobile, which now accounts for 30-40% of Allstate’s online traffic. Allstate is responding to consumer behavior in kind with a […]
The numbers are still being tallied, but Monday night’s presidential debate is likely Twitter’s largest live stream ever, according to Adam Bain, the company’s chief operating officer. Not that Bain wants to be braggadocious. It’s still early days for measurement, but Twitter is seeing audience growth. Twitter’s deal with the NFL to stream Thursday night […]
Another unicorn rides off into the eastern sunset. App marketing company AppLovin has agreed to be acquired by a Chinese private equity firm for $1.42 billion. “AppLovin” could also be used to describe the scene in China right now, where consortia of institutional investors have mobile fever. This acquisition, which was confirmed on Monday after […]
Brands are starting to get more comfortable with performance-based app marketing – but they’re still transitioning. “Even just a year and a half ago when you talked to brand people, things like yield or breaking out ROI numbers by ad partner were like foreign concepts,” said Deniz Gezgin, director of digital marketing at Topps, which has […]
Investors are bullish on location. “We think there is a lot of promise in location,” said Anders Richardson, managing director of Palisades Growth and an xAd board member, speaking at an xAd event in New York City on Thursday. “It’s amazing to me what it allows marketers to do.” In other words, providing a conduit […]
While consumer interest in augmented reality (AR) has risen and fallen like a tide, retailers and tech vendors see it as more than just a passing fad. Hybris Labs, the retail tech R&D division of SAP, began working on AR products in 2013 after Google Glass debuted, said Hybris Labs team lead Christian Neeb. “There […]
News Republic users read about 200 pages of news stories per month. “That’s like reading a big book of news every 30 days,” said CEO Gilles Raymond, who founded the news aggregator app in 2008, the same year the App Store launched. It’s that level of time spent that attracted Cheetah Mobile. In August, the […]
Glispa keeps scooping up companies. On Tuesday, the Berlin-based mobile ad platform plunked down an undisclosed sum to buy native mobile ad exchange Avocarrot, its third acquisition in less than two years. Glispa bought MoneyTap, a Russian mobile mediation platform, in March, followed by the acquisition of Brazilian mobile performance agency Mobils a couple of […]
