Rocket Fuel’s entry into Japan last year through a partnership with Dentsu subsidiary interactive unit cyber communications inc. (CCI) has helped the Japanese ad shop’s ability to expand its programmatic services, particularly its demand-side platform (DSP) business. Though its programmatic business was essentially nonexistent before teaming with Rocket Fuel, its DSP business has since risen […]
Impression fraud has been a major industry problem for a while, but it’s only lately that buyers, sellers and vendors have sought to quantify and arrest it. Even at a roundtable discussion of more than two dozen online ad executives held by Integral Ad Science on Thursday morning, participants seemed resigned to the idea that […]
After General Motors yanked all its paid media spend from Facebook in mid-2012, GM’s chief marketing officer at the time, Joel Ewanick, suggested in a Wall Street Journal interview that Facebook is simply not a great place to advertise cars. But GM eventually returned and Facebook has since doubled down on the auto category. In […]
Over the past year, MediaMath has just about doubled its staff to 306, as the company works to broaden its identity from being a demand-side platform to being viewed as an end-to-end enterprise solution. The company also created a new role—the “chief commercial officer”—in which it hired former McKinsey & Co. executive Michael Lamb. As […]
Google has agreed to pay $17 million to settle charges it dropped cookies on Safari Web browsers in defiance of the browser’s privacy settings. According to the settlement, from mid-2011 to early 2012, Google rejiggered DoubleClick coding to get around Apple’s default blocking of third-party cookies in Safari. When the charges were first publicized last […]
Real-time bidding has gained appeal with major brands, but the idea of using exchange buys for awareness campaigns often spurs the question: How do we measure this? Videocentric demand-side platform Dennoo is getting some attention for the guarantees it offers buyers for its time-based “cost-per-view” pricing model as an alternative to bidding on CPMs. “In […]
The Media Rating Council (MRC) is likely to lift its Viewable Impression Advisory early next year, giving marketers a green light to buy digital media on viewable metrics. This move has also caused vendors to scramble to position their solutions in anticipation of a demand spike for measurement tools. Assessing ad viewability has traditionally been […]
Long paramount to the performance marketing strategies of online display advertisers, retargeting is still subject of a great debate. From a user standpoint, the most obvious form of “abuse” is the all-too-familiar feeling of being followed by an ad or brand across the Web. And then there’s the question of how much spend is wasted […]
Online ad creativity – or the perceived lack thereof – is one area that brands, agencies and publishers frequently complain about. But the fixes tend to involve vague plans about working with Adobe or Google to develop cross-screen creative. Flite, the Condé Nast-backed ad platform developer, has released a free, browser-based software called Design Studio, […]
After years of handling programmatic with a light touch, Microsoft is making up for lost time. It has recently rolled out global programmatic direct options, agreements with other portals on automated ad serving standards, and last week, the addition of Window 8.1 apps and Outlook.com email-based placements. Esco Strong, director Microsoft’s of Display Marketplace, said […]
AudienceScience has been in business for more than a decade, starting out as an ad network and later adding demand-side and data-management abilities. Last year, the company took the relatively big step of closing its network business. Now, in its bid to be viewed as a one-stop shop for digital advertisers, AudienceScience, like many others, […]
Centro’s estimated $40 million purchase of demand-side platform SiteScout isn’t just intended to imbue the digital media workflow specialist with real-time bidding chops. Read the release. For Centro CEO Shawn Riegsecker, the point of this deal goes beyond wrenching the obvious efficiencies of having a DSP function in-house. Adding SiteScout will prepare Centro for the […]
AOL’s comeback story under CEO Tim Armstrong over the past four years has at times looked improbable, with highs and lows along the way. Its quarterly performance has often been mixed: As one area of its display advertising stream looked strong, other parts have lagged. Its usually strong third-party network business had been looking weaker […]
What could be coined Amazon’s original advertising product, the Amazon Associates affiliate marketing program, connects advertisers to more than a million products in its marketplace. As standard affiliate models go, publishers can run traditional text links or customized image links, widgets with Amazon functionality or banner promotions and ads in return for an advertising fee […]
There are plenty of reasons, mostly technological, why integrated desktop/smartphone/tablet campaigns are tough to pull off for brand advertisers. Throw in an exchange-based ad strategy and the complexity goes through the roof. Ryan Christensen, AppNexus’ VP of product, teamed up with Julienne Thompson, VP for programmatic business at mobile ad network (and AppNexus partner) Millennial […]
Adchemy has sold its lead-generation and performance-marketing business, Actions, to erstwhile partner XL Marketing. With the divestiture, Adchemy will focus exclusively on its software geared to the search marketing needs of large retail and ecommerce marketers. With the sale, all employees working on the Actions business – which specializes in the financial and education verticals […]
Delivering ads to consumers across multiple screens has become critical for advertisers as more people divide their attention between various devices such as smartphones, tablets and laptops, in addition to watching TV. Marketers are taking note and ramping up multiscreen budgets, according to a new report from the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and Nielsen. […]
Google and Publicis Groupe’s MediaVest have signed an upfront agreement, with the media agency committing to spend a “significant amount” of ad dollars on YouTube and Google’s other display and mobile properties, including its ad networks. The deal is “open-ended” and simply involves the promise of spending a set amount in advance, perhaps up to […]
After a slowdown last year, the Asia Pacific ad market began to heat up again in 2013 and ad-tech services provider Komli has raised a $30 million equity financing designed to help it take better advantage. The Mumbai-based company, which began life as an ad network seven years ago and helped give birth to supply-side […]
Supply-side platform AdSlot’s pitch to help sell publishers’ guaranteed inventory via programmatic methods begins with avoiding anything that acts like a private marketplace. The company, which acquired ad agency workflow provider Facilitate Digital more than a month ago, has launched its Guaranteed Marketplace for direct online display sales this week. And, as AdSlot CEO Ian Lowe […]
It’s been a busy third quarter on the mergers and acquisitions front. Yahoo has been the most active acquirer of online and mobile companies in 2013, closing seven deals in the third quarter alone. A vast majority of its recent deals were in the mobile and social space, including AdMovate, Hitpost and Rockmelt. Other notable […]
More than a year after Facebook opened its exchange, Google is finally being integrated into the retargeting service through its demand side platform, DoubleClick Bid Manager (fka Invite Media), the company said in a blog post. The integration comes a day after Google posted Q3 earnings that demonstrated the slowing of its paid click growth […]
Google turned in another reliably strong quarter in Q3, as revenues were up 12% over the previous year. But despite its status as a display ad leader battling it out with Facebook for dominance of the space, network revenues made up a smaller share of the search giant’s total sales. Read the earnings release. The […]
For all the talk of “programmatic direct” and bringing more automation to display ad sales, the future is bleak for the human element of ad sales, said IDC analyst Karsten Weide, who predicted that 80% of total US display sales will be sold via real-time bidding by 2022. Read the report [pdf]. In a presentation […]
A year after Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said there was more potential “upside” for the portal’s revenues in search than display, its Q3 performance suggests it will not reverse its declines soon. Among the topline results in Yahoo’s Q3 (read the earnings release): GAAP display revenues fell 7% to $470 million. Last year, this percentage […]
As part of Microsoft’s entry into the world of online “offers” with a product known as Bing Offers, Microsoft recently announced a new enhancement called “Bing Offers Card-Linked” (see the Microsoft blog post). The product brings together transaction processors such as First Data with payment networks like MasterCard to address consumer audiences with offers fueled by […]
In the past week, Integral Ad Science and DoubleVerify – two companies whose aim is to ensure that brand advertisers get the kind of exposure and inventory they expect – unveiled their respective tools designed to limit, if not eliminate, the waste caused by fraudulent traffic – namely “bots.” The new tools, as outlined by […]
Last month Media6degrees rebranded itself as Dstillery. Why? For years, Media6 had sought to position itself as a finder of consumer prospects for brands. From the beginning, it created audience segments based in part on social characteristics. But over the years that led to confusion: Was Media6 just another “social graph targeter?” No, that was never […]
The retargeted advertising space is becoming highly lucrative, finds retargeting platform AdRoll, which announced today that it had passed a $100 million run rate, up from $50 million last year. The 6-year-old company claims to have more than 10,000 customers across 100 countries and was one of the first platforms to become a Facebook Exchange […]
The “Ad Tech Industry” is maturing. For the past five years, AdExchanger has observed, engaged and, hopefully, enlightened about this budding sector. But! Today this sector has expanded its horizons and global appeal to the point where the “ad tech” label no longer easily fits. It has become a “Digital Marketing Technology Industry,” steadily embraced […]
