Measurement

Women’s clothing retailer Bebe is rewiring the way it turns data into personalized offers for young, fashion-forward females on their devices of choice. Founded in 1998 and now operating more than 200 retail stores with 100 international franchisees, the company hired a chief digital officer, Erik Lautier, in January 2014 to improve conversions on Bebe’s […]

Microsoft has reversed its approach to Do Not Track (DNT) and will no longer make it the default setting on the Internet Explorer browser and IE’s eventual replacement, Spartan. In a Good Friday blog post, Microsoft Chief Privacy Officer Brendon Lynch said the decision was made in order to comply with the World Wide Web […]

Viewability is stressing publishers out. Brands want more for less. Sites need to be redesigned. Every vendor brings different numbers to the equation. But some publishers, like Condé Nast and Tribune Media, are reaping the benefits of “embracing viewability.” “We’ve seen our yields increase,” said Brad Agens, SVP of digital sales for Tribune Media, who […]

Facebook violates EU law by tracking users for targeted advertising, a European privacy panel said Tuesday. The report was commissioned by the Belgian Privacy Commission, which sits under the EU’s European Commission, and is an updated version of an initial draft that surfaced in February. A key development of the update claims that Facebook cookies […]

With digital audio consumption on the rise, advertiser expectations about targeting and buying advertisements are also growing fast. These concerns surfaced Thursday during Mediaocean’s “Radio Reinvented” panel in Manhattan. Panelists included executives from Pandora, Spotify and Triton Digital. The panelists revealed there are 143 million monthly online radio listeners in the US, representing 53% of […]

Facebook is working with a dozen mobile ad networks to better track installs beyond mobile media it directly controls. Millennial Media, InMobi and AppLovin are among the networks to sign on for the beta program, but Facebook’s biggest competitors predictably aren’t playing along. The feature is part of a product called Analytics for Apps that […]

The average tech stack runneth over, but that’s not exactly a good thing. According to joint IAB/Winterberry Group research, more than half of marketers use between five and 10 point solutions and roughly 27% of marketers use between 11 and 20 different technologies to manage their programmatic campaigns. One industry insider quoted in the report, a […]

In 2008, NBC Universal released a system called TAMI – the Total Audience Measurement Index. Despite the promise of its name, it did not revolutionize TV measurement. In fact, it wasn’t even a system. “It was a spreadsheet that someone updated manually,” recalled Julie DeTraglia, the network’s SVP of digital research, during a Thursday panel […]

Depending on whom you survey, linear TV viewership is either flat or rapidly declining. Thus, increasing digital’s revenue share is a priority for networks like CBS. In 2010, CBS started doing audience profile studies and, this year, found that 30% of CBS.com users didn’t subscribe to a cable package, according to Domenic DiMeglio, VP of distribution […]

Unilever’s open-door approach to data and technology are on display in the brand’s Foundry effort, a program that invites startups to pitch their wares and work on digital innovation with the consumer packaged-goods company. Global Marketing SVP Marc Mathieu noted today’s data-obsessed marketing landscape has little to do with the French railway advertisements he remembers […]

Nielsen’s acquisition of data technology company eXelate for an estimated $200 million positions it squarely in the digital camp, a move experts agree was essential to break away from its perceived image as a purveyor of panels and diaries. “It’s a recognition that the future is more than measurement and analysis,” said Dave Morgan, CEO of […]

Nielsen has acquired data-management technology platform and exchange eXelate, the companies announced Wednesday. The deal is a major foray into the programmatic arena for TV-centric researcher Nielsen, which has been looking for ways to accelerate its digital audience intelligence. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but AdExchanger sources estimated the transaction price at close to $200 […]

Podcasting is hot, podcast measurement is not. In a bid to address the myriad measurement challenges facing on-demand audio content, Triton Digital has partnered with Edison Research to strengthen its podcast measurement offering. Starting later this year, a new Webcast Metrics On Demand (WCMOD) product will sit alongside Triton’s existing tracking solution and provide publishers […]

Digital measurement company comScore needed WPP’s investment in order to rival Nielsen in cross-platform ratings, according to one comScore partner. Although Nielsen dominates linear TV measurement, its push toward a “Total Audience” rating will improve its mobile Online Campaign Ratings tool, launched last summer. ComScore, in lockstep, rolled out a cross-platform tool in January to […]

The divide between publishers and advertisers around viewability sharpened during a Tuesday morning panel “Inside The Mind Of The Advertiser,” hosted by analytics provider Integral Ad Science. This wasn’t much of a surprise considering one panelist was Ari Bluman, GroupM’s chief digital investment officer for North America. GroupM has taken a notoriously hardline stance around […]

If an ad isn’t seen, that ad shouldn’t be counted. That’s Facebook’s position on viewability in a nutshell. As the debate around viewability swirls, Facebook outlined its point of view in a blog post Wednesday. “It doesn’t make sense for advertisers to count impressions that never enter a person’s viewable area,” said Brad Smallwood, Facebook’s VP of measurement […]

One hundred percent desktop ad viewability sounds like the simplest thing and an easy standard to meet. But advertisers still are in want, publishers wish they could provide it and this demand has generated frothy press releases from the ad tech community with “100% viewable” bolded in the header. The problem is that “100% viewable” […]

Advertisers’ demand for viewability is frustrating for publishers, who must contend with new contracts, new billing structures and new ways to value inventory, all while ensuring meeting viewability standards doesn’t erode ad revenue. During a town hall at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting in Phoenix, about half the publishers in the packed room said they had […]

Measurement mogul Nielsen is bullish on its evolving digital measurement capabilities – but panels aren’t going anywhere, said CEO Mitch Barns. “The future of measurement is not about choosing between panels and big data,” Barns told investors on an earnings call Thursday. “It’s about combining high-quality panels with granular data sets for the best of both […]

WPP Group’s data management investment division Kantar entered Thursday into a strategic deal globally with online measurement mainstay comScore, which could give it up to 20% equity stake in the company — if all shakes out as planned. Read the full release. Through the deal, comScore will issue about 5% of its shares in exchange for […]

The vodka market is as crowded as a downtown bar on a Saturday night – and Stolichnaya is looking to differentiate. That’s where the millennial male – a social animal – enters the picture. “Our key target is millennial men, ages 25 to 35,” Stoli brand director Sarah Gorvitz told AdExchanger. “We call them ‘authentic experiencers.’” For […]

Jeff Lucas, head of ad sales for Viacom Music and Entertainment, likes photo-messaging app Snapchat. Because its user base is dominated by females under 25, the platform that popularized the “fleeting” SMS aligns closely with Viacom property MTV’s young millennial audience. It’s one of the reasons why MTV is test driving Snapchat’s new Discover feature, part of […]

At Industry Preview 2015, a group of analytics pros discussed what attribution looks like in 2015 in this panel led by Gartner’s Martin Kihn. Participants included: Anush Prabhu, Chief Channel Planning & Investment Officer, Deutsch NY Jon Vein Co-founder & CEO, MarketShare Michael Wexler, Director, Digital Insights and Marketing Effectiveness, Citi Sunny Youn, Director, Digital Media Analytics, Epsilon Check […]

A few years ago, pancake purveyor IHOP was doing more push than pull. “We typically did what many clients do – we pushed a lot of information,” said Kirk Thompson, IHOP’s VP of marketing, speaking at the Ad Club of NY’s MeasurementNOW conference in New York City on Thursday. “We knew a lot about [our […]

While many brick-and-mortar retailers grapple with bringing their businesses online, cosmetics brand e.l.f. did things in reverse. After 11 years in ecommerce, e.l.f. (that stands for Eyes Lips Face) is now expanding its offline footprint, said Megan O’Connor, VP of digital and ecommerce at e.l.f Cosmetics. In the past year, e.l.f. has opened three flagship […]

Just because someone didn’t click on an ad doesn’t mean that ad didn’t have an effect. Facebook has been beating that drum for quite some time now with the release of a variety of tools aimed at getting nearer to true multitouch attribution and effectively measuring the connection between online media and offline sales, including […]

comScore is making a foray into the world of inventory quality analysis. The measurement company, known for its validated Campaign Essentials (vCE) product and Media Metrix planning tool, announced Thursday that it’s going to make viewability, non-human traffic certifications and publisher rankings available via programmatic trading platforms with the launch of what it’s calling “Trust […]

While comScore’s Video Metrix had been limited to desktop and PC, on Monday the company unveiled an update that will allow the video measurement tool to account for mobile, tablet and over-the-top (OTT) viewership. The New York Times first reported the development. Rather than break down program- or show-level viewership, the company is now calculating cross-platform audience viewership, comScorce […]

WBEZ’s “This American Life” spinoff, “Serial,” shattered the iTunes record for the fastest podcast to reach 5 million downloads. From its October premiere through Jan. 1, the episodes were downloaded 31 million times. But for “Serial,” the sleeper winner was email marketing solutions provider MailChimp, the podcast’s sponsor whose brand went viral thanks to the […]

The mad dash for offline-to-online data connections has been one of the top trends of 2014. Enterprise giant Oracle was the latest to close the loop between the online and offline worlds when it revealed Monday its intent to acquire data solutions company Datalogix. “This deal is about championing commerce,” said Ray Wang, principal analyst at […]