Apple actually mentioned the word “advertising” on its earnings call. Although hardware isn’t going anywhere, Apple’s services business, which includes search ads in the App Store, is becoming increasingly meaningful to the company’s bottom line. “Services are scaling quickly,” Apple CFO Luca Maestri told investors on Tuesday. Although iPhone sales were weak during the holiday […]
Facebook’s plan to integrate the backend infrastructure of its messaging platforms isn’t sitting well with privacy advocates, security experts, European regulators or US lawmakers. Alarm bells are ringing all over the place. The Irish Data Protection Authority says it’s going to be “very closely scrutinizing” the situation, particularly where it might involve the sharing and […]
Adobe Marketing Cloud’s top executive, Brad Rencher, is leaving the company after nearly a decade. Rencher, who as EVP and GM Digital Experience set the vision and strategy for the software giant’s digital marketing platform initiatives, first joined Adobe in 2009 through the acquisition of Omniture, which later became Adobe Analytics, a key component of […]
OpenX signed a five-year deal with Google Cloud Platform worth more than $110 million that will move its infrastructure completely to the cloud. OpenX is transitioning to the cloud within six months, and it expects the transition to be completed by Q2 of 2019. Once complete, OpenX expects its publishers and buyers will see several […]
LinkedIn launched interest-based targeting through its self-serve ad platform on Wednesday after more than three months in beta. B2C marketers are accustomed to targeting prospects based on their interests – “fast food lovers,” “coffee drinkers,” “gym goers” – but there is less interest data available for B2B marketers, said Abhishek Shrivastava, LinkedIn’s director of product. “A […]
Beeswax raised $15 million in Series B funding which it will use to support connected TV and win marketer clients. As it expands to achieve these initiatives, Beeswax will double its current headcount of 65 by the end of this year. The software-as-a-service DSP last raised funds in 2016. The new round brings total funding […]
After 14 years at Google and DoubleClick, ads vet Jonathan Bellack has joined Alphabet-owned Jigsaw as its first-ever director of product. Google created Jigsaw as a technology incubator with the mission of using technology to make the internet safer. Jigsaw’s projects have protected news organizations from toxic comments, gave readers uncensored access to sites and […]
Overcoming the banality of a standard banner ad in favor of a custom unit requires a lot of work. Buyers need to work with creative tech companies to build the units, and publishers need to adjust their ad setup to support the unusual formats. When header bidding became the norm, it cut off these companies’ […]
Facebook will distribute $300 million across multiple news projects over the next three years to support local newsrooms and help publishers create new business models, the platform announced Tuesday. Donations include a $5 million endowment gift to the Pulitzer Center, $6 million for the UK-based Community News Project and a $20 million expansion of Facebook’s […]
Amazon’s release Thursday at CES of a free, ad-supported streaming video channel called IMDB Freedive could provide an opportunity for the digital giant to exhibit its targeting capabilities and pose a real threat to the Facebook-Google duopoly. Freedive is currently available on Amazon Fire devices and through Amazon’s desktop site. With about 50 million Fire […]
Piano, whose tech and services gives digital publishers a way to supplement their ad revenue, raised $22 million in Series B funding Thursday to expand its offering and help it buy other companies in the space. “There’s all this ad tech out there, but nothing exists to help publishers treat their traffic as readers and […]
RTL Group is paying up to $33 million for Yospace, a UK-based server-side ad insertion company. The company will operate independently, but work closely with SpotX, which provides video ad serving and advertising demand to video publishers. “This acquisition will go a long way toward solving issues with programmatic and OTT,” said SpotX CEO Mike […]
Verizon Media – formerly Oath – said Tuesday it has increased the amount of native Microsoft inventory it can sell to include Xbox and Outlook, and other exclusive placements. Verizon declined to say exactly how much native inventory Microsoft lets it sell. Buyers can access the inventory via iOS or by using Oath Ad Platforms’ […]
Music Audience Exchange (MAX), a service/tech platform that uses data to pair up-and-coming musical artists with brands, reached into the publishing world to hire Michael Provus as its Chief Revenue Officer late last December. Provus previously held the same title at Wenner Media. MAX connects upstart musicians with brands whose customers listen to the artist’s […]
The EMX exchange, operated by the agency holding company Engine, is offering buyers the ability to transact on its exchange with a flat, transparent buy-side fee. The sliding scale model will allow clients, agencies and DSPs to pay more or less depending on volume commitments. So a buyer may decide to spend more on the […]
OpenX has laid off 100 staffers, a process that started weeks ago and included a massive round on Tuesday. It will also sunset its ad server by the end of the year. The departing staff includes engineering, product and tech employees, and OpenX will shift those roles to Krakow, Poland, which has strong engineering talent […]
After around a year of avoiding the spotlight, Google CEO Sundar Pichai spent nearly four hours fielding a grab bag of questions from members of the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, discussing everything from the scope of Google’s data collection practices to alleged political bias in search results. The problem, as is often the case […]
AppNexus has been wanting to make its fees transparent, even before it was acquired by AT&T’s ad unit Xandr, but it couldn’t because of how contracts are written and structured. But now, buyers can find out how much of their media budgets went to tech fees when they buy publisher inventory through AppNexus, a level […]
Forrester released a Wave last week examining the emergent location intelligence platform space and here’s your main takeaway: Companies want to apply location data to make decisions across all of their digital touchpoints – but the technology to do that is still in its early stages. Although location data vendors are a dime a dozen – you […]
What do advertisers outside of China need to know about Tencent? For one, it’s got much more going on than just WeChat – the Tencent app with the most name recognition outside of China. Second, WeChat is more than just a social platform: It’s embedded into the fabric of Chinese life. “Global brands have heard about […]
You may have received a news alert from The New York Times Wednesday morning about the latest Facebook data-related misstep as you sipped on your cup of joe. What’s Facebook accused of this time? Providing special pay-for-play access to user data for whitelisted advertisers, including Airbnb, Lyft and Netflix, while penalizing others by cutting them […]
Revcontent named Omar Nicola as its new CEO Wednesday, replacing co-founder John Lemp in the top role. One of his first orders of business has been making further layoffs at a company whose employee count is around 80, down from a reported peak of 150 when it appeared on the Inc. list of fastest-growing companies […]
Representatives from nine governments gathered in London on Tuesday with pointed questions for Mark Zuckerberg about fake news, misinformation, hate speech, election interference, privacy and data collection. Thing is, Zuckerberg wasn’t there, having declined repeated invitations to testify before the UK’s Digital Culture, Media and Sports Committee. The parliamentarians from Britain, Canada, France, Ireland, Belgium, […]
One year ago, Rubicon Project removed buyer fees from its platform, halving its take rate to 12.8%. The gutsy move occurred during a battle over take rates: Competitor AppNexus said its take rate stood at 8.5%, and its CEO called for a price war. Drastically cutting take rates forced Rubicon to use cash reserves to […]
Aside from dedicated fans, most people who show up to a concert never hear from the band again. That fleeting relationship poses a challenge for musicians. How can they get people to come to their next concert? Or buy merch? Hurdl is solving that problem with connected LED wristbands, which live event attendees activate using […]
Instagram is shopping for its share of holiday dollars. On Thursday, Facebook’s much-cooler sibling added three new features designed to help people browse, discover and save items more easily. A lot must happen before someone buys, and while shopping can be a by-product of spending time on Instagram, people aren’t there to fill their cart […]
Google Ad Manager is the dominant SSP, according to Advertiser Perceptions’ 2018 Programmatic Intelligence Report. But, the 154 publishers surveyed also valued platforms in areas like proactively shared insights and reporting – categories where Google didn’t perform as well as its competitors. “Google is the clear leader,” said Kevin Mannion, chief strategy officer at Advertiser […]
It’s been a tough year for Snap, as its stock tanks and its executive team flees the ship. Despite growing revenue 43% in Q3 to a record $298 million, Snap’s stock hit an all-time low in September of $10 per share. Snapchat is also bleeding daily active users after rolling out an unpopular redesign and facing increasing competition from Instagram. “Snap is struggling to […]
The news feed is still a money-printing machine for core Facebook. But people aren’t sharing like they used to – Pivotal Research analyst Brian Wieser used Nielsen data to detect that consumption on core Facebook, including Messenger, was down 13% in September – and now Facebook is putting its faith into what it hopes will […]
The B2B martech space is heating up as titans spend billions to build their stacks – and now it’s makeover time at LinkedIn. On Monday, LinkedIn opened the public beta for a revamped version of Campaign Manager, the self-service tool advertisers use to manage and measure campaigns on its platform. The idea is “to make it […]
