BlackArrow, a 13-year-old provider of live and video-on-demand ad products to TV operators, was acquired Monday by Cross MediaWorks, the owner of a national media network called Cadent and the full-service Cross Agency. Although BlackArrow, which has 100 employees, will remain as an independent entity, it will partner with Cross MediaWorks’ other business divisions to […]
The director of ad technology for Netflix, Tony Ralph, and director of marketing for Abe’s Market, Michelle Goldstein, will appear at AdExchanger’s Omni.Digital conference on Sept. 10, an event designed to educate marketers on advanced solutions for building seamless cross-channel brand experiences. Cross-channel attribution will be one topic discussed at the conference. As Netflix’s director of […]
LifeZette, a lifestyle site created by conservative pundit Laura Ingraham, launched in April and is quickly scaling up its video production. Moving fast will allow the fledgling site to grab some of the projected $1 billion in digital ad spend for the 2016 election. Ten percent of that spend will go to online video, according […]
Sarah Sluis and Ryan Joe contributed. NBCUniversal’s $200 million investment in Vox Media and its expected (though unconfirmed) $200 million investment in BuzzFeed isn’t the big broadcaster’s first date with a digital publisher. It had a disastrous marriage with top women’s lifestyle publisher iVillage, which it acquired for $600 million in 2006 and eventually merged into […]
Cox Media Group’s sell-side platform Videa is sinking more hooks into buy- and sell-side systems. Released earlier this year, Videa has since drummed up strategic partnerships with Gannett, Raycom and Media General on the local broadcaster side. That’s in addition to agency alliances with Carat and Amplifi and demand-side deals with Mediaocean and Videology. Now […]
Video demand-side platform TubeMogul reported that more than 20% of global spend running through its platform in the second quarter came from mobile, programmatic TV and display ad formats. Mobile ad spend drove 10-15% of spend, programmatic TV constituted between 5-10% and less than 5% came from display. “We think this is significant, given our […]
Though video ad company YuMe held to last quarter’s promise that it would release a programmatic ad stack, it did little to improve its Q2 2015 financial performance. “We had a disappointing quarter,” said Jayant Kadambi, co-founder and CEO during a Monday earnings call. YuMe’s Q2 2015 revenue was flat – $40.4 million in Q2 2015, […]
TV ad delivery will become more addressable as more viewers stream video from set-top boxes and consume IP-based content. Although the addressable TV ad market is still only worth $300 million compared to linear TV’s $70 billion, cable operators and agencies agree that growing the addressable TV footprint will introduce more flexibility into the cross-platform […]
Nielsen’s acquisition in March of data-management platform and exchange eXelate is already proving its value, the measurement company said during its Q2 earnings call Tuesday. EXelate is part of Nielsen’s marketing effectiveness suite and has been instrumental in securing client buy-in of marketing analytics. Recent wins include Walmart and major consumer packaged-goods companies, said Nielsen CEO Mitch Barns. “An increasingly programmatic […]
Digital advertising is a budget behemoth, but television advertising is still a nearly $70 billion business – a fact that informs the planning process at WWP-owned media agency MediaCom. Because although digital video and streaming is starting to take a big bite out of linear’s lunch, TV is still the dominant consumption source, according to […]
The Programmatic TV Standards Group is drafting a standard designed to set baseline parameters for national and locally distributed inventory. The organization is championed by a few industry vets, agencies (Magna Global, Starcom MediaVest), one third-party measurer (Management Science Associates, or MSA) and vendors (AudienceXpress). “The first standard we’ll be defining is [what constitutes] national […]
Consumer packaged-goods startup Hello Products is combining TV with offline activations to create a competitive edge for its oral care products. As a challenger to household names like Crest and Colgate, Hello aims to differentiate its ethos through natural formulas and bright and alluring packaging. The brand is now activating digital video and TV with […]
As video views shift from desktop and linear to mobile and over-the-top – Hulu, for instance, just revealed more than 58% of streams now happen on OTT devices – programmers like ESPN are using data to track total audience viewing and satiate advertiser demands. ESPN hired its first global data officer last week, The Weather Company’s […]
The TV ad makeover is gaining steam, judging by comments on the ground this week in Cannes. Cablevision and NBCUniversal/Comcast are talking up the data granularity and addressability of their millions of set-top boxes, and agency buyers are crowing about results they’re seeing from programmatic TV activities. For example, Modi Media, GroupM’s addressable TV agency, […]
Channels are so last season. “I don’t care what device you’re on – I care about reaching you at the right time,” said Robert Spratlen, Viacom’s VP of digital media, data and audience development at Viacom, at Tapad Unify Tech ’15 on Thursday in New York. “Our product is content, our currency is audiences.” These days, […]
Once measurement is fully in place, experts predict demand for mobile programmatic video and connected TV apps to reach a tipping point. Some programmatic platforms, such as mobile DSP Adelphic, are already seeing the shift. Mobile video accounts for 7.3% of all Adelphic campaigns, representing 18.2% of total spend through its platform. Sixty percent of […]
ABC, A+E Networks, Comcast and Canoe have initiated a pilot with broadcaster ad server FreeWheel to manage dynamic ad insertion in VOD and set-top box inventory alongside digital ads. Video-on-demand advertising has been relatively slow to take off, namely because of greater need for back-end integration in the underlying TV tech infrastructure. “The benefit for […]
Comcast’s plan to acquire Visible World, announced late Thursday, will deepen its addressable TV prowess, but the real target might be Visible World subsidiary AudienceXpress and its burgeoning buy-side dealings. Comcast’s inheritance of AudienceXpress, which provides provides digital workflow automation for the buying and selling of linear TV ads, could reduce the media giant’s reliance […]
ISpot.tv, which helps advertisers gauge the cross-channel impact of their national TV ads, revealed Tuesday it raised $21.9 million in Series B funding from Insight Venture Partners, bringing its total funding to $27.5 million. The Seattle-based company, which has more than 60 employees and 150 customers including P&G and Holiday Inn, will invest this latest […]
“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Reed Barker, vice president of cable ad products at The Weather Company. Remember when you were a kid and you finally realized that there was no Santa Claus? There was a decision on the […]
“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Jay Stocki, vice president of digital services at Experian Marketing Services. You won’t get fired for buying age and gender gross rating points (GRPs) at this year’s upfronts. But mark […]
Mediabong has designs on the US. The Paris-based video platform, which revealed a $5 million Series B round on Wednesday, plans to use the bulk of its funding to beef up operations out of its nascent New York office, where the headcount is slated to increase from two to around 10 sales and business development people […]
In the first quarter, TubeMogul’s self-serve software, called Platform Direct, accounted for 78% – or $55.3 million – of total advertiser spend running through the company. The video demand-side platform (DSP) has worked to migrate managed services clients onto its platform, which could garner the recurring revenue and customer-retention rates characteristic of enterprise software deployments. Agencies accounted for 37% of Q1 spend on […]
“On TV And Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in programmatic TV and video. Today’s column is written by Bob Rupczynski, vice president of media, data and CRM at Kraft Foods Group. You can’t fool me. I see you there. You’re reading this on your phone in the middle of another NewFront (or […]
Nielsen and Roku’s marriage for over-the-top (OTT) measurement, along with Roku’s development of a unique device identifier, may be a watershed moment for the connected TV ecosystem. The agreement, announced last Thursday, will enable Roku’s publisher partners to measure the impact of ads on some 10 million set-top boxes by accessing Nielsen’s demographic data and […]
A programmatic API for cable television? Cablevision, a telecom and cable systems company reaching 2.5 million households in the New York tristate region, claims it has developed one. It launched Total Audience Application (TAPP) last Thursday, an audience-planning tool that allows marketers to apply first- and third-party data to optimize addressable or linear TV campaigns. […]
“On TV And Video” is a new column exploring opportunities and challenges in programmatic TV and video. Today’s column is written by Hagai Tal, CEO at Taptica. Video is a powerhouse advertising tool because it can engage on multiple levels, and advertisers increasingly want to leverage video across channels. After years of technological advancement in […]
Fifty-four stories above New York’s World Trade Center site, 800 media planners gathered Tuesday evening for AOL’s annual advertiser NewFront. The big “reveal” was a new video content and distribution agreement with broadcaster NBCUniversal. Starting this summer, select NBCUniversal videos from network partners Bravo, CNBC, E!, MSNBC, NBC, Oxygen, Syfy, Telemundo and USA will be […]
Traditional cable nets are increasingly turning to video demand-side platforms to factor things like digital purchase habits into the TV-planning process. Cadent Network, a national media network that partners with more than 200 multichannel video programming distributors (MVPD) and more than 80 cable networks at the local and national level, including Verizon FiOS, Comcast and […]
The $45 billion Comcast-Time Warner Cable (TWC) deal is officially kaput. If the merger had materialized, it would have created an unsurpassable media and cable conglomerate with massive audience reach. From day one, regulators were wary about one company controlling too much broadband access, resulting in Comcast terminating the deal Friday. “Today, we move on,” […]
Apple’s WebKit crackdown appears to extend well beyond The Trade Desk, putting hundreds of ad tech, data and identity vendors on a mysterious, dynamically updated block list.
Zoom has 99% unaided brand awareness, which sounds great on paper. But there’s a catch: Most people still think it’s just a video-call app.
Agencies are differentiating their tech stacks by building custom agentic AI tools for their clients. And they’re rethinking owning those AI tools – particularly since licensing them creates new revenue streams.
Agencies and marketers discussed the future of AI governance at AdExchanger’s Programmatic IO NYC this week. The main takeaway? Expect insurers to play an increasingly important role in managing AI compliance.
The Trade Desk is unable to serve ads to the Safari browser for Apple device owners that have downloaded iOS 27. Apple has been investigating the issue since last week.
The open web is done, stick a fork in it. Banner blindness is near universal, search traffic has run dry and publishers are struggling for oxygen. But what if that’s … not true?
