Allison Schiff contributed. The fat lady hasn’t sung, but it appears likely that a group of Chinese companies will acquire Opera and its lucrative mobile advertising business. Oslo-based Opera told investors Wednesday that it had received a buyout offer of $1.2 billion led by investment fund Golden Brick Silk Road, along with security software player […]
Say you’re an advertiser plunking down $5 million for 30 seconds of prime Super Bowl ad time. You’re going to want to make sure that campaign drives some sort of action online. But between Facebook, Google and Twitter, how do you choose what to use? According to a report released Monday, Google’s attribution engine, Adometry, […]
It may not be master over how its software is used, but that isn’t stopping Google from ruling its Play store with an iron first. It appears that some ad-blocking apps are not welcome. Taking a page out of Apple’s playbook, Samsung on Sunday rolled out support for content blocking within the default browser that […]
Location analytics company Placed announced Wednesday its attribution service would connect billboards to in-store traffic. It will do this via a mix of partnerships with holding company agencies and out-of-home (OOH) inventory suppliers like Clear Channel Media and cinema ad network NCM. “OOH is shifting,” said Michael Lieberman, COO of tenthavenue, an OOH agency within […]
Publishers are always on the hunt for new ways to monetize without killing the UX. It’s a continual challenge, said Matt Blake, chief product officer at FanSided, a Time Inc.-owned network of more than 300 sports, entertainment and lifestyle sites dedicated to fandom. FanSided sites generally only serve two banners – a leaderboard at the top […]
Twitter seems to be having a little trouble on the turnaround front – but that doesn’t mean it’s for the birds. “When I talk to agency and buy-side contacts, they recognize the value of Twitter and that the real-time nature of the platform is unique,” said Dan Salmon, managing director of BMO Capital Markets. “But the […]
[pullquote][/pullquote]Telcos continue to be big ad tech acquirers. Norwegian mobile carrier Telenor on Monday snapped up cross-device company Tapad for $360 million. Tapad is one of the two largest cross-device vendors in the space; Drawbridge is the other. It’s a move somewhat reminiscent of the AOL/Verizon deal, but with more global scale, said Tapad CEO […]
Remember 2008, when the App Store was full of fart apps? That’s not the sort of inauspicious start Apple has in mind for Apple TV. “Sure, you’ll get lots of weird stuff at the beginning – the Fireplace app was the most popular Apple TV app over the holidays – but we’re going to see […]
When many creative agencies failed to pivot into mobile, tech and media companies converged on their own solutions. “Creative agencies were disinterested in making experiences for mobile,” said James Chandler, mobile director for the GroupM agency Mindshare. After all, app-oriented mobile campaigns aren’t built around flashy art or high-production videos. While this mentality frustrated him […]
Why a user deletes an app is just as important as why that person decided to download in the first place. “Uninstalls are a huge issue and we’ve been trying to get an understanding of what’s really happening there,” said Sudarshan Gangrade, VP of marketing, analytics and partnerships at Ola Cabs, India’s answer to Uber. […]
Ad blocking isn’t the only route to revenue for telcos. Sprint-owned Boost Mobile announced Tuesday that it had inked a deal with Unlockd, a mobile platform that helps telcos reward subscribers for viewing ads on their lock screen. It’s a move that’s nearly the opposite of Caribbean carrier Digicel’s arrangement with Shine to block ads […]
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) wants to help advertisers manage their quality assurance testing for mobile rich media ads. On Monday, the IAB Tech Lab released the MRAID Ads SDK Tester app at its at Annual Leadership Meeting in Palm Desert, Calif. The app is a free open-source tool designed to validate the functionality of […]
AppNexus is hitting the market with its own version of mobile header bidding. Announced Monday, the tool – dubbed PriceCheck – aims to help app developers and publishers maximize their yield by accessing as many sources of demand as possible and revealing what each impression is worth. Then the impressions are routed to the advertisers willing […]
Programmatic native ads are now available on the BrightRoll Exchange, opening up access for advertisers beyond Yahoo’s owned-and-operated properties. “We’re offering all third-party RTB buyers access to native inventory,” said Tod Sacerdoti, Yahoo VP of display and video ad products, on stage at AdExchanger’s Industry Preview conference in New York City on Wednesday. The upshot: […]
Intent-targeting platform Qualia has merged with early cross-device shop BlueCava, AdExchanger has learned. The move will marry cross-screen data with purchase signals, which the two companies say will strengthen their collective offering. BlueCava’s technology – and 40 employees – will fold into the larger Qualia brand. BlueCava chairman and CEO Phil Myers will move into […]
Some people might describe Foursquare’s shift from location-based social network to a purveyor of location data as a pivot. But Steven Rosenblatt, newly appointed president of Foursquare, prefers the term “evolution.” “We’ve been building the world’s largest location intelligence data company for some time,” said Rosenblatt, who came to Foursquare in 2012 after several years […]
Some say the ad tech venture capital funding well may be running dry, but mobile-centric companies still seem to be doing all right. “Over the past couple of years, mobile’s been somewhat insulated from the general sentiment around ad tech, at least on the private side,” said Michael Katz, CEO and co-founder of mParticle. “Clearly […]
M&C Saatchi Mobile may be a mobile agency, as its name clearly denotes, but it’s got more than mobile on the brain. “We’re focused on leveraging our client data and adding first-party data to programmatic capabilities to target users with mobile at the center,” said Eric Mugnier, SVP for North America at M&C Saatchi Mobile. “The […]
Berlin-based Fyber is on a tear. On Friday, Fyber, an SSP for mobile app developers, and its parent company RNTS Media announced that they’ve acquired mobile ad network Heyzap for as much as $45 million. RNTS Media will pay $20 million in cash upfront, with an additional $25 million in cash and shares available down the […]
Snapchat is said to be rolling up its sleeves on an ads API, and agencies, advertisers and tech vendors alike are happy to hear it. “There’s a great deal of interest in Snapchat as a platform,” said Noah Mallin, head of social at MEC North America. “The intersection of video, mobile and messaging, combined with […]
Prospecting is one of the biggest challenges facing British carrier O2, especially in apps. “Pretty much every app acts as its own ecosystem – they’re cookieless environments, so actually being able to track someone using traditional methods is nigh impossible,” said Dan Michelson, innovation and capability lead at the Telefónica-owned telecom. O2 is concerned with two […]
When Taco Bell launched its breakfast option last year, the brand had two main challenges on its plate: driving awareness among millennials and translating that heightened awareness into repeat foot traffic. It was a tall order considering that Taco Bell isn’t known for breakfast and that competition in the quick-service restaurant space is fierce. (See the […]
It’s not easy monetizing kids. Even the words “monetizing kids” are unfortunate. But the developers of kid-focused games still “need to eat,” said Yuri Shilin, owner of KidGames, an Israel-based game developer with a portfolio of dozens of apps for kids, with around 30 million downloads overall. “It’s for sure very hard to make money,” […]
Smartwatches will outpace fitness trackers next year while smart things gain traction in the home. Oh yes, and 2016 is the year that mobile browsing will finally surpass desktop, at least on the weekends, according to Adobe’s most recent Digital Trends Index, released Thursday. Weekdays will follow in 2017. “Mobile is what started all of […]
David R. Bell is a professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. He will present his research at the upcoming Industry Preview 2016 conference in January at a session on the confluence of digital marketing and the real world. By day, David R. Bell is a professor of marketing at […]
Advertisers in India have become addicted to cheap clicks. “But it shouldn’t just about installs. It should be someone actually converting inside an app,” said Deepak Abbot, head of mobile growth at Times Internet, the digital product arm of Indian media titan Times India Group. Times Internet houses a host of apps that run the […]
Buenos Aires-based game studio Etermax is a rare creature in the app development world. “We don’t focus on user acquisition,” said CEO and founder Maximo Cavazzani. It’s quite a statement considering that Etermax is the developer responsible for quiz app Trivia Crack, which was the most downloaded app in the App Store in late 2014. […]
When it comes to mobile ad fraud, everything old is new again. “All the bad stuff we saw happen in web 1.0 in terms of trying to trick users is coming back with mobile,” said Alex Calic, CRO of The Media Trust, a company focused on ad verification and malware detection. That’s certainly the case […]
Is carrierwide ad blocking coming to the States? That really depends on who you ask. “Absolutely,” said Roi Carthy, CMO of ad-blocking company Shine. “Simply no way,” said Mike Zaneis, EVP of public policy at the Interactive Advertising Bureau. But there’s a reason for Carthy’s swagger. At the end of September, Jamaica-based telco Digicel revealed […]
Globetrotting business travelers are a tough target to pin down, but they do all have one thing in common – their phones. They also spend a lot of time waiting around airports connected to Wi-Fi. Emirates Airlines took advantage of the confluence with a mobile campaign designed to drive awareness and booking intent around its NYC/Dubai […]
