Updated with additional comment from SpotXchange CEO Mike Shehan and RTL. European entertainment network RTL Group announced Thursday it will acquire a 65% stake worth $144 million in video supply-side platform and programmatic marketplace SpotXchange. Depending on the performance of the company, RTL could acquire additional stake in the company through the terms of an earn-out […]
The root of the network business is drawing a large audience to attract advertisers. As digital video and device fragmentation have disrupted the value proposition of traditional TV, data has become the equalizer. This is one reason why the ABC Television Network is spearheading an initiative with 4C Insights, a Facebook and Twitter ads partner. […]
AT&T AdWorks, the advanced ads division of the telecom company, is baking two new data sources into its TV audience-targeting tool, TV Blueprint. One source – anonymous, aggregate data on some 70 million subscribers – gives advertisers working with AT&T the ability to reach people based on factors like device, operating system, whether or not […]
Yahoo finally has its video distribution platform. Following flirtations with Hulu, Dailymotion and NDN, the company pulled the trigger Friday on Rayv, an Israeli company focused on high-quality video. In a post on Yahoo-owned Tumblr, Yahoo’s VP of cloud platform and services, P.P.S. Narayan, described how the deal is meant to enhance Yahoo’s “underlying technology […]
ABC on Thursday appointed Mike Dean to the newly created post of VP of programmatic and data-driven sales. He will report to Pooja Midha, ABC’s SVP of digital ad sales and operations. Dean most recently served as VP of media platform sales and solutions for programmatic video ads platform Videology, which he joined in 2011 […]
Remember the scene in the movie “Kill Bill, Vol. 2“ where the vengeful heroine, the Bride, is buried alive in a coffin and has to pound her way out with her bare fists? That’s your video ad. It’s essentially trapped in a box and buried in the publisher’s web page, and whether it can get out […]
Adknowledge has acquired video analytics provider TriVu Media for an undisclosed sum, a move the former hopes will extend its ad targeting capabilities to YouTube advertising. The company is betting the big three sources of video inventory going forward will be native (by which CEO Ben Legg means inventory sold through a transparent network), Facebook […]
On Monday, the Media Rating Council’s (MRC) advisory to avoid buying in-browser video impressions on the basis of viewability will end. Although the MRC defines in-browser video viewability as an ad that is at least 50% in view for at least two continuous seconds, there’s little agreement in the industry on what, exactly, constitutes video […]
Hulu, Condé Nast Entertainment and other members of the digital video and television industry laid out their measurement and monetization challenges on Wednesday at VideoNuze’s Online Video Advertising Summit. Brands and publishers are well aware of the growing popularity of applying programmatic to direct buys. Hulu for instance has reportedly beta-tested a programmatic exchange for more […]
When Comcast’s ad sales division Spotlight revealed a partner deal with Rubicon Project earlier this month, it underscored the multiple system operator’s (MSO) push to power the TV buy through both programmatic and direct sales channels. It was a pivotal moment for Comcast. Digital advertisers for the first time could buy against 19 million subscribers […]
Scott Ferris, GM of television and video at Microsoft Advertising, has been in the video biz for around three decades. For seven of those years, Ferris has been at Microsoft, heading up its video business group. Most recently however, he’s taken the lead role in what Microsoft calls its Content and Entertainment business group, which […]
The big brands have woken up to programmatic buying, and will not be going back to sleep. The gang of marketers directly controlling their exchange-traded media platforms keeps getting larger. Its membership now includes Kimberly-Clark, Kellogg’s, American Express, Procter & Gamble, Allstate Insurance, 1-800-Flowers and Unilever. Mondelez International is the latest to seize a more […]
Audience measurement mainstay Rentrak paid homage to the staying power of programmatic when, on its Q4 earnings call just weeks ago, Vice Chairman and CEO Bill Livek credited automated advertising as a growing trend the company is now “catering to.” Rentrak has been on a tear of late, racking up headlines as a (perhaps less-publicized, […]
Following its glitzy, star-studded digital NewFront in April, AOL got down to business. It closed in on marketing attribution vendor Convertro the same day Google grabbed pure-play competitor Adometry in early May. Then it went shopping again, snapping up TV audience-targeting platform PrecisionDemand. AOL’s acquisitive behavior is not entirely surprising. The company is constructing an […]
Procter & Gamble’s reported push to automate 70-75% of digital ad buys by year’s end underscores the convergence of TV, CPG marketing and programmatic media. “The closer we can tie shopper cart data to media, the stronger we get,” said Jen Mennes, director of media and public relations for Post Foods, during The Advertising Research […]
A few weeks ago, Experian Marketing Services formally merged its Consumer Insights division with its Targeting division. The former, built from Simmons Market Research (providing brand and media outlet profiles) and Hitwise (providing competitive online analytics), is the intelligence arm; the latter is the execution arm. “Imagine seeing not just where ESPN.com traffic comes from […]
This upfront season, a number of media conglomerates flirted with programmatic TV. ABC, for instance, is beta testing data-driven ad sales via video ad server FreeWheel’s new FourFronts Programmatic tool. Likewise, NBCUniversal’s ad sales chief Linda Yaccarino has spoken of opening up portions of premium network inventory to programmatic sales. As marketer and media company interest […]
AOL’s Adap.tv will acquire Jon Mandel’s PrecisionDemand, a TV ad-targeting company that mines set-top box data and layers it with first-party data. In a Wednesday blog post outlining the acquisition, Adap.tv’s Toby Gabriner wrote: “Integrated into Adap.tv’s programmatic buying and selling platforms and, eventually, ONE by AOL, PrecisionDemand will be a key component of our […]
As the growing number of smart TVs and connected devices cause further fragmentation, de-duped cross-platform measurement has become the media planner’s imperative. Nielsen and comScore are answering the call by beefing up digital video and mobile integrations in their respective media measurement tools. Nielsen since 1950 has been inextricably linked to TV audience measurement, claiming access […]
Mobile analytics and advertising firm Flurry will allow advertisers to buy VAST-enabled (IAB’s Digital Video Ad Serving Template) video ad units programmatically through its network and marketplace. It also unveiled additional features through its SDK designed to give app developers more options to show video ads on their apps. “For the first time, publishers or […]
Before traditional, linear television ad buys can be fully automated, a couple of core constituents must align. “The [idea of programmatic] doesn’t entirely make me nervous, but it definitely needs boundaries and guidelines,” said Phil Lalonde, SVP of ad sales operations, MTV Networks, recently at a BrightRoll Video Summit. Rob Holmes, VP of advanced advertising at […]
RockYou is clawing its way back. The 8-year-old company, which once produced social games, was one of the first MySpace and Facebook third-party app developers until it suffered a major data breach five years ago that exposed unencrypted user account data of more than 32 million users. That wasn’t RockYou’s only struggle. The company couldn’t […]
Media Storm, the media planning and buying arm of agency network Water Cooler Group, is breaking down siloes to mirror consumer – and client – media requirements. Media Storm’s sister companies Hip Genius (social media) and Maude (creative/strategy) share the same real estate and come in on cross-team campaign meetings, according to Charlie Fiordalis, who […]
While both programmatic buying and online video are in vogue, the best way for these two to come together—in the opinions of both publishers and brands—is through private marketplace buys. Programmatic video ad platform BrightRoll has seen 50% of the top 50 publishers engage in private marketplace deals, said company founder and CEO Tod Sacerdoti […]
Most know Adobe for the company’s Creative and Marketing Cloud offerings, but it’s the company’s end-to-end, “TV Everywhere” platform Adobe Primetime that steals the show with broadcasters and cable operators like NBC Sports and Time Warner Cable. The year-old platform encompasses technology Adobe acquired when it bought video ads platform Auditude in 2011, as well […]
Rovio, the creator of the “Angry Birds” mobile game franchise, was one of the first companies to explode in the mobile gaming space. Mobile gamers are fickle, though, and the company has expanded into a multimedia enterprise in addition to growing its advertising business. AdExchanger spoke with Michele Tobin, VP of global brand partnerships and […]
When the Media Rating Council (MRC) recently lifted its advisory against factoring viewability measurement into display ad transactions, one crucial format did not get the green light. The accreditation vendor has urged advertisers to avoid trading on video viewability metrics – at least until the end of June. Question is, will that be enough time? […]
Comcast AdDelivery on Tuesday struck a deal with digital ad-distribution company Adstream to expand global video ad delivery efforts. The deal essentially fulfills each companies’ geographic delivery needs. While Comcast historically had a strong domestic delivery network, Adstream, an Australian-founded, $65 million-a-year business that’s headquartered in London, gives Comcast pertinent global reach. A trend in […]
Online video, especially online video embedded in social networks, is essentially a free-for-all. There are few rules or best practices and brands and vendors are still figuring out what works best for consumers. SnappyTV is figuring its one-tap native video playback on Facebook and Twitter, a feature the video content platform is releasing Tuesday, will […]
Shirlene Chandrapal, former director of Yahoo! Connected TV (CTV) in Europe, says connected television will connect advertisers with a highly engaged audience whose medium of choice is the Internet. Chandrapal now works for cross-channel advertising technology company Adconion Direct, where she’s tasked with driving CTV’s US expansion. She’s taking on a market where an estimated […]
VideoAmp is competing in the measurement space by sharpening its focus on TV audience data, ad performance and, of course, AI. The company is also making strategic hires and promoting from within.
The Prebid Summit in New York City on Tuesday exceeded the event’s reputation for liveliness.
The ad industry has become a community of people who say things like “This is going to sound relatable” and follow it up with a sentence that may as well be Martian to 99% of America.
LG home screen inventory is now available through agentic buying, opening up a premium TV placement to faster, more automated campaign setup.
Reorienting the ad auction so that ad servers bid into Prebid lets publishers access demand from Google AdX without also having to use Google’s ad server.
Starling recently launched as a connected TV SSP and wants to capitalize on the opportunity to address a major pain point facing CTV marketers: the lack of show-level data.
