The flurry of marketing tools that LinkedIn rolled out last year is paying off for its ad business, said CEO Jeff Weiner during the company’s Q2 earnings call. Its Marketing Solutions business grew 32% in the second quarter to $140 million. With 52% of all traffic to LinkedIn coming from mobile, the platform saw a […]
Fuisz Media, a company that creates interactive video ads for brands like Nike, Dell and Victoria’s Secret, has raised $10 million in a Series A round led by Evolution Media Partners. Ross Levinsohn, who served as interim CEO of Yahoo and president of Fox Interactive, and Ian Doody, principal at Evolution Media Capital, have joined […]
WPP-owned Kantar Media revealed Tuesday its strategic investment in digital media intelligence firm BIScience. The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Kantar and WPP clients will have access to BIScience’s platform, AdClarity, which lets advertisers run competitive benchmarking across 500,000 unique publishers and mobile apps to identify high-performing traffic sources. “Our footprint as […]
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 […]
AnyClip Media, which helps studios like Universal Studios and Warner Brothers distribute video content, has raised $21 million to beef up its product road map. AnyClip will also hire about 100 people globally this year to support growth in Europe and Asia. It also intends to examine non-organic growth opportunities for companies that fit its […]
The volume and scope of ad tech/marketing tech M&A activity in 2015 shows investors want in on marketing stacks with scalable infrastructure that can support programmatic growth and increased automation of marketing functions, says a duo of investment firms. Such were the findings in reports from The Jordan, Edmiston Group (JEGI) and Petsky Prunier. The […]
Updated with comments from CEO Bill Wise. Continuing the trend of private equity investment in ad tech, Vista Equity Partners revealed Monday it had acquired a majority stake in Mediaocean, a company most commonly known for automating trafficking and billing software for ad agencies. The deal values Mediaocean at about $720 million, the company confirmed. Mediaocean was the result of […]
Change or die. The smart brands acknowledge this. It’s one of the reasons why ad tech cabanas and beach houses have taken over the sandbars surrounding the Cannes Lions festival, and why ad tech yachts almost exclusively line the port. “It’s important to us to understand what will change in the future and what will […]
Commerce-focused publisher Purch has raised a big $135 million round, money it aims to spend on potential media acquisitions outside its established B2C and B2B tech verticals. Some of the money will also support an ad tech expansion, including heightened analytics capabilities. “Investors don’t like money in the bank,” said CEO Greg Mason. “We want to […]
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 […]
Percolate, which has been compared to social publishing platforms like Buddy Media, has raised $40 million to take on enterprise marketing cloud acquirers and standalone social point solutions. The Series C round, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, brings Percolate’s total funding to $74.5 million. It raised $24 million in Series B last spring, which the company’s co-founder, James Gross, said is […]
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 […]
If Verizon closes its $4.4 billion AOL acquisition, it will mark one more marriage between a telco and an ad tech company. It’s also a harbinger of more to come. Last summer, Australian telco Telstra grabbed a majority stake into streaming video distribution platform Ooyala and then bought video supply-side platform Videoplaza. In 2012, Singapore […]
While it has taken video ad network YuMe quite some time to make programmatic progress, the company revealed during its first-quarter earnings call it would launch a demand-side platform sometime in the second quarter. Wall Street analysts wondered whether YuMe’s DSP, called YuMe For Advertisers (YFA), would include a bidder or simply integrate with external […]
Tremor Video’s growth continued in Q1 2015 as the company netted $40.6 million in revenue (16.4% YoY growth), above analysts’ predictions. Read the release. Eighteen percent of that revenue came from programmatic, which has been growing at a steady pace. Last quarter, programmatic was 14% of Tremor’s revenue; it was 4% this time last year. […]
Rubicon Project’s Q1 revenue grew 62% year over year to $37.2 million, thanks to increases in its mobile and orders business, as well as international expansion. As CEO Frank Addante stated in previous quarters, Rubicon will benefit from the network effect, as an influx of buyers and sellers on the platform will cause growth to snowball. […]
Criteo, the French online display retargeter turned performance marketing company, saw its Q1 revenue increase 68% YoY to €105 million ex-TAC, driven by the growth of its cross-screen tools and client retention “consistently north of 90%.” It added 640 new clients in Q1, giving it a total of 7,800. Additionally, market conditions have been favorable for Criteo. CEO Jean-Baptiste “JB” […]
Nielsen is chomping at the bit to start measuring total audience, but it also needs advertisers and publishers to figure out what exactly they want, especially in video. In its Q1 2015 earnings call, Nielsen reiterated last quarter’s commitment to push forward on “Total Audience Measurement” as its top 2015 priority. Total Audience Measurement, as described by CEO […]
Programmatic ad tech companies aren’t properly estimating their total addressable market, said BMO Capital Markets equity research analyst Dan Salmon. Salmon presented a report Thursday at Programmatic I/O in San Francisco that pointed to two areas where these estimates tend to get thrown off. First, most ad tech vendors don’t factor in take rates – the […]
Boom and pop. One is the sound of VC money pouring into the ad tech industry. The other is the sound a bubble makes when it bursts. Ad tech has been notorious for heavyweight funding rounds and even larger, some might say bloated, valuations. And companies that were flying high before they went public – Rocket […]
M&A activity in marketing services and tech declined in Q1 2015, compared to the same period last year, in volume and value. Investment bank Jordan, Edmiston Group Inc. (JEGI), which released its Q1 2015 M&A Overview on Thursday, noted 128 deals in Q1 2015, compared to 154 in Q1 2014 (a 17% decline). Value of […]
The past year has seen numerous private equity firms buy ad tech companies. Although there has been slight uptick in the overall volume of transactions and investment bankers predict more of these types of deals on the horizon, they are divided on what’s piquing the growth and timing of PE investor interest. These include Rockbridge […]
Sizmek’s earnings story quarter by quarter seems to be on perpetual repeat, but the company exceeded the pessimistic predictions of Wall Street analysts, posting Q4 2014 revenue of $48.9 million, a 3% YoY increase, and FY 2014 revenue of $170.8 million, a 6% YoY increase. The company suffered more expected declines in Flash-based rich media, which spiraled […]
For Acxiom’s 2015 Q3 earnings, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Or, in the words of CEO Scott Howe, “Spectacular growth in AOS and LiveRamp has been mirrored by declines in our core business.” Read the press release. Howe, speaking during the company’s earnings call Wednesday, was referring to the data connectivity […]
If you’re looking for a deep dive into Google’s advertising business, you’re not getting it in an earnings call. Google reported FY 2014 revenue of $66 billion, up 19% YoY. Its Q4 revenue was $18.1 billion, all inclusive of traffic acquisition costs (TAC), which were $3.6 billion in Q4 (22% of ad revenue). Read the […]
If four video ad tech acquisitions in the second half of 2014 weren’t enough evidence the space is hot hot hot, a barrage of new investments in video marketing startups should help drive that point home. Vidyard, a video marketing automation platform, just raised $18 million in Series B funding from Bessemer Venture Partners and […]
The ad tech industry isn’t going anywhere, but 2014 exhibited some of the financial shakiness that dogged public ad tech stocks through much of 2013, especially for companies that went public in the last 12 to 15 months. “The only slight surprise for me and many others [in 2014] was the sudden switch in sentiment […]
Adobe Systems posted strong growth in its fiscal year ($4.15 billion in annual revenue). Adobe Marketing Cloud also did well in terms of revenue, bookings and customer adoption. Revenue for the Marketing Cloud in Q4 was $330 million and more than $1.1 billion for the fiscal year, an annual record that occurred because the company exceeded its annual bookings […]
Video demand-side platform (DSP) TubeMogul posted Q3 revenue of $27.4 million, up 112% from $13 million during the same period last year. Total advertiser spend through its platform was $62.5 million, up from $25.7 million last year. TubeMogul stock was up 6% in late trading. TubeMogul gained considerable business via its self-serve model “Platform Direct” used by […]
Gigya, a customer identity management platform, has raised $35 million in growth financing led by new investor Intel Capital, bringing its total to $104 million. Common Fund Capital, Vintage Investment Partners and existing investors, also backed Intel in this round. The new financing will go toward additional hires and to fund international expansion. Gigya’s headcount […]
