Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here. Social Consolidation Social marketing software company Brand Networks snapped up rival SHIFT for $50 million on Thursday. It’s the second notable social advertising acquisition for Brand, which bought Optimal for $35 million about 18 months ago. All three companies got their starts as Facebook […]
Acquisitions and earnings – Sizmek likes to multitask. On Thursday, the company announced its Q1 2015 results and its intention to buy mobile DSP StrikeAd for $11.7 million. Excluding StrikeAd, revenue from mobile formats, in other words HTML5-related revenue, was up 103% YoY in Q1 2015, while in-stream video revenue increased 10% in the same timeframe. […]
In a small change that speaks to its huge cross-device aspirations, Facebook is ending its support for mobile app install reporting at the device level. On Wednesday, Facebook called up its mobile measurement partners (MMPs) – a group that includes companies such as Appsflyer, Apsalar and Kochava – and told them that as of August 20 […]
Wayne Gattinella, CEO of DoubleVerify, will appear at AdExchanger’s CleanAds I/O conference on June 3, an event addressing inventory quality and supply chain issues in the digital advertising ecosystem. Because of the high demand for mobile location-based data, it’s a big opportunity for fraudsters looking to game geo-coordinates. “With more money flowing to place-based advertising, […]
Interactive audio ad firm XAPPmedia closed a $3.8 million round of Series A-1 funding on Thursday, which it will use to crank up its offerings for Internet radio publishers. With its latest funding, XAPPmedia will add staff and develop new interactive capabilities, many of which are being designed at the request of customers such as […]
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 […]
Beliefnet attracts a niche audience (about 5 million to 7 million uniques per month) of all faiths who come to read content about religion. But while its readers believe in a greater power, Beliefnet wasn’t always sure they had the same faith in ads. Even though advertisers began to prioritize viewability, the publication, which fielded […]
“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 Thierry Cornet, partner portfolio manager at UM. The market is awash with mobile ad networks claiming to be specialists in geolocation and, more recently, device bridging. But pulling back the […]
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here. TV Turning To DMPs Turner debuted a DMP, the Turner Data Cloud, which it likens to Amazon’s targeting service. The WSJ reports that Turner wants to tap its cross-channel properties, “getting data pulled from information on folks who have shared stories via social media […]
In its first earnings call since going public in March, MaxPoint reported revenue growth of 87% to $28.7 million. Its revenue ex-TAC, which excludes the cost of programmatically buying impressions through real-time bidding, rose 90% to $16.8 million. [Read the earnings release.] The total number of enterprise customers rose 62% to 529. In the first quarter of […]
Facebook has confirmed it will begin displaying publishers’ articles natively in the Facebook mobile app, naming nine initial media partners for the program. (Read the blog post.) Participating publishers are The New York Times, National Geographic, BuzzFeed, NBC, The Atlantic, The Guardian, BBC News, Spiegel and Bild. “We’ve been comfortable with experimenting with a variety of storytelling platforms over the past […]
Verizon has access to deterministic data – and now it ostensibly owns the programmatic tech to put that data to work via AOL, which the telecom bought for $4.4 billion on Monday. This isn’t Verizon’s first stab at ad tech. Precision Market Insights, the company’s addressable advertising division, has been groping about, with various degrees of […]
While activist investors like Starboard Ventures LLC had advocated for an AOL-Yahoo merger, Verizon’s intent to purchase the former seems to have dampened that plan. So where does that leave Yahoo? “No different than they were before,” said Pivotal Group analyst Brian Wieser. “In a bad position.” Not everyone has such dire predictions. Cantor & […]
ZenithOptimedia Chief Investment Officer John Nitti will be a speaker at AdExchanger’s CleanAds I/O conference on June 3, an event examining issues and solutions around fraudulent inventory in the online advertising ecosystem. Clients hold their agencies accountable when they run campaigns heavy on fraudulent traffic or misrepresented inventory. While ZenithOptimedia, part of Publicis, understands that […]
Even as marketers increasingly see native programmatic as a part of the core digital arsenal – alongside video, display and mobile – industry leaders like Sharethrough have encountered a lag in adoption from major DSPs. Part of the problem is that the existence of technology solutions hasn’t had a chance to sink in with brands […]
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 […]
“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 Tony Casson, senior director of ad tech products at sovrn. Advertising impressions are the means by which advertisers attribute value to people they hope to engage in ad campaigns. The […]
“The Sell Sider” is a column written for the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Daren Trousdell, CEO at OneUp Sports. I recently had a discussion with a digital industry leader whose company aims to grow video’s scale and overall inventory levels to take advantage of rising demand. The part […]
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here. Google’s Growing Dominance The gap between Google’s media revenue and the revenue of its competitors is growing, according to a report from ZenithOptimedia. The Publicis agency estimates that Google is 136% bigger than the world’s second-largest media owner, Disney, up from 115% a year […]
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 […]
Mobile is big and video is big – and putting the two together presents a gargantuan advertising opportunity that Verizon will be primed to capture if it closes on AOL. “Verizon has been trying to figure out how to grab a bigger share of the ad tech pie, so the move makes sense strategically on […]
As the media and tech worlds absorb news of Verizon’s planned acquisition of AOL, the largest unanswered question revolves around the fate of The Huffington Post Media Group, a unit that includes the eponymous publication as well as TechCrunch, Engadget and others. While Re/code’s Kara Swisher reported “advanced discussions” for AOL to sell its flagship media […]
“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 Nanda Kishore, chief technology officer at ShareThis. When you’re an Olympic sprinter, the only thing that matters is speed. But when you’re an online advertiser, you need more than just […]
On Tuesday, Gigya, a company that develops customer identity management solutions for Fortune 500 brands, rolled out IDX Marketplace, a platform anchored by 50-plus marketing and ad-tech partner integrations. Gigya claims users can activate audiences across a variety of partner tools, including data-management platforms like Krux, Adobe AudienceManager and Lotame; marketing clouds like Oracle and […]
Nestlé found its sweet spot through a recently executed branding campaign for its Nescafé Dolce Gusto brand. For its first-ever wholly programmatic ad campaign, the European java vendor tapped UK-based online marketing firm Jellyfish to drive sales of its coffee machines. The goal was to maximize the efficiency of its display advertising, without compromising on […]
Kelly Liyakasa contributed. Verizon will acquire digital media and ad tech platform company AOL in a cash transaction valued at $4.4 billion. The deal vaults the telecommunications company into the media and ad tech sectors and gives it a “three screen” relationship with consumers across desktop, mobile, and television. “It’s really one of the moments in time where […]
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here. Cadreon Does TV IPG-owned Cadreon and TubeMogul have paired up to build TV targeting tools for ad delivery across networks. Cadreon will draw proprietary data from its Audience Measurement Platform as well as from set-top boxes and other consumer shopping sources in order […]
The Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG), a group created by the IAB, ANA and 4As late last year, have announced the creation of a Fraud Threat List through which members will share URLs they consider fraudulent to create a master blacklist. “We are developing a registration program to create a safe zone for the digital advertising […]
John Montgomery, COO of GroupM Interaction, North America will appear at AdExchanger’s upcoming CleanAds I/O conference on June 3, an event addressing inventory quality and supply chain issues in the digital advertising ecosystem. GroupM’s stance on viewability is clear: “If an ad can’t be seen, then we can’t expect clients to pay for it,” said […]
