Tremor Video had a rosy Q2, with a 23.2% increase in revenue year-over-year to $43.7 million, up from last year’s $35.5 million. After a rocky entrance to the public markets one year ago, Tremor recouped its losses and improved gross margins. This quarter, Tremor experienced a greater net loss than in the second quarter of 2013, at $5.4 million. […]
Popular audio-recognition app Shazam, which has amassed 475 million users to date, set its sights on TV Tuesday with the release of a network sales platform called Resonate. Initial launch partners include: A&E, AMC, FUSE and dick clark productions. Kevin McGurn, the company’s chief revenue officer and former SVP of sales for Hulu, said television […]
It’s hard to bucket Ooyala. The seven-year-old company, which already dabbles in both video monetization and digital content management, wants to be for TV “what Cisco is to network computing.” While Ooyala’s a full-service consultancy that helps traditional networks migrate to the cloud, it also has a software business. The Ooyala Platform hooks up to […]
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 […]
Lifestyle content publisher Evolve Media is evolving its ad formats along with its publishing assets. Evolve historically competed with such vertical media and ad services hybrids as Say and Federated Media, beginning originally as a blog network. Over the last 15 years, it has acquired 50 vertical interest and publisher assets (sites like Crowd Ignite […]
With video ad tech deal activity surging, independent players must decide whether to go it alone, brave the impending volatility of public markets or sell. Facebook acquired video supply-side platform LiveRail for an estimated $500 million in early July. Yahoo one week later snapped up video distribution platform RayV, which answered some questions about its […]
Updated with comments from Brett Wilson, TubeMogul’s CEO Video demand-side platform (DSP) TubeMogul ($TUBE) made its NASDAQ debut Friday. While its share price was projected at only the $7 to $8 range – below previous predictions of $10 to $11 – within only an hour of trading, TubeMogul’s share price increased to $9.84. At the top of the hour, the company […]
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 […]
Video ad platform BrightRoll is looking long-term. In the words of Tod Sacerdoti, its founder and CEO, “we’ve been focused on building an alternative stack to Google for a long time.” And BrightRoll’s got just the man to do it. Barely a day after it brought on DoubleClick vet Bruce Falck as COO to scale […]
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 […]
The SundaySky has shifted. Since the video ad company launched its SmartVideo platform in 2011, it has ramped up its focus on personalized ads and video content. It’s an evolution for a company whose platform was first used by brands like AT&T to create videos for customer messaging. SundaySky has raised $40 million in funding to date from investors […]
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 […]
Missing in the Media Rating Council’s (MRC) definition of in-browser video viewability (50% in view, playing for two consecutive seconds) is any stipulation around audibility. This isn’t an oversight – the MRC chose not to institute an audibility requirement because the technology doesn’t exist to determine muting in all instances, said David Gunzerath, SVP and […]
Facebook has agreed to buy video ad platform LiveRail, the companies said today. The acquisition will build Facebook’s capabilities around video, both on its own platform and on those of other publishers. LiveRail customers include Major League Baseball (MLB.com), A&E Networks, Gannett and Dailymotion, giving Facebook its first video ad server integration with premium video owners. Terms of the deal weren’t […]
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 […]
Much like the waves programmatic private marketplaces have made domestically of late, more European broadcasters are considering these deals for the “brand safety” they promise marketers and the perception of control over CPMs they provide. London-headquartered Videoplaza, which was founded in 2007, is going after this very trend. Its sell-side ad-serving and management platform Karbon […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
Following a March launch of its first programmatic platform Video Reach, video ad tech company YuMe showed 40% growth in revenue year-over-year, totaling $37.3 million for the first quarter. While some might say YuMe is late to the programmatic party, cofounder and CEO Jayant Kadambi said the company is methodically building out a diverse set […]
David Cooperstein, a darling of the digital marketing analyst ecosystem, has exited Forrester Research to join Simulmedia, a company that harnesses data on how some 50 million Americans watch TV everyday. He’ll be Simulmedia’s chief marketing officer, the company revealed Wednesday. Simulmedia has 85 employees. Cooperstein spent close to five years at the analyst firm, […]
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 […]
Vindico, a buy-side video ad server, on Tuesday rolled out the Vindico MatchPoint platform, designed to let advertisers onboard first-party records to match against Vindico’s database of consumer profiles. MatchPoint is integrated with the Vindico Bid Manager, a DSP the company made generally available Tuesday; it has built-in viewability capabilities powered by AdTricity, a video ad-measurement […]
AT&T’s plans to acquire satellite and pay TV provider DirecTV for an estimated sum of $49 billion, revealed Sunday, gives the carrier more reach – but it also could help the carrier scale its addressable TV initiatives. “AT&T and DirecTV combined will have a massive base of customers to market to, and that is a […]
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 […]
Shortly after spending $485 million on DG (now Sizmek’s) TV ads business, Extreme Reach has bought video ad intelligence company BrandAds. Although he declined to name the deal price, John Roland, CEO of Extreme Reach said all 12 BrandAds employees will continue on with the acquiring company. “What the DG [acquisition did was] give us […]
At its NewFront event last week, Time Inc. unveiled partnerships with Nielsen and comScore’s cross-platform measurement solutions to simplify the digital ad-buying process. TV-online audience research has become something of a theme at the NewFronts, with AOL and Yahoo unveiling similar plans. Time Inc., a division of Time Warner that will be spun off this quarter, […]
