Apple and Google own the app economy – and that makes distribution and discovery pretty tricky for the average app developer. “These companies … are monopolizing this ecosystem,” said Chris Cunningham, newly minted CRO of beacon and proximity data aggregation company Unacast, speaking at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Mobile Marketplace event on Monday in New York […]
Mobile game publisher I Got Games (IGG) – which has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on paid acquisition – was noticing its user retention tank. The culprit? App-install fraud. IGG has 18 million monthly active users evenly distributed across the world, with roughly 40% coming from the Americas, 30% from Europe and 30% from Asia […]
When YP Canada quietly acquired programmatic mobile ad platform JUICE Mobile for $35 million on March 17, its main concern was to assuage any potential investor concerns that the directory and listings behemoth wouldn’t be able to make its debt payments. YP Canada was $1.7 billion in debt and teetering on the brink of bankruptcy […]
The promise of location data is one thing. The undeniable issues around scale and inaccuracy that come along with it are another. “No one disputes that the accuracy and quality of physical data is way below average,” said mobile tech vet Chris Cunningham, who on Wednesday took the reins as CRO of beacon and proximity […]
The messenger app Kik, a chat service catering to teens, debuted its Bot Shop on Monday. The shop lets Kik users download chatbots – automated apps meant to simulate real conversation. The shop currently features 16 bots from companies like Vine, H&M, Funny or Die, The Weather Channel and J-14 (a celebrity mag geared toward […]
A little less than a year ago, Snapchat was still at the beginning stages of working out its advertising strategy. Its ad sales team felt small, at least from the perspective of some agency execs, and unable to keep up with agency and advertiser demand. But in recent months, Snapchat seems to be taking itself […]
The ad industry is still hashing out how to handle the practical implications around desktop viewability, but ready or not, the Media Rating Council released the near-final draft of its mobile viewability standard for public comment on Friday. “I wouldn’t say that everybody is ready for this, but there are numerous people clamoring for standards, and organizations […]
There’s an opportunity around location that extends beyond targeting consumers with ads for mayonnaise or corn flakes when they’re walking down an aisle in a grocery store. “The location data opportunity is still unfolding,” said Tracey Scheppach, EVP of precision video at Publicis Groupe’s Starcom MediaVest. “As agencies start to get smart about things like […]
Some app developers are raking in the cash hand over fist – Supercell made $924 million in profits last year – and others are eating instant ramen noodles for dinner. Most developers make less than $500 a month, according to Vision Mobile. But that doesn’t mean the ramen eaters don’t deserve access to sophisticated analytics and business […]
Macy’s is getting experimental with location data. “Location data can help us move from cross-device to omnichannel,” said Kimberly Yarnell, VP of digital media at Macy’s, speaking at the Mobile Marketing Association’s mobile location leadership forum on Thursday in New York City. “I like to think about location as being the key to providing context […]
For Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, mobile is no longer a sideshow – it’s the main attraction. Roughly 65% of its website traffic comes via mobile devices. But attributing mobile’s impact on ticket sales was no small feat. “The customer journey has become multitouch,” said Sam Gomez, VP of digital marketing at Feld Entertainment, […]
App publishers are paring down the number of software development kits (SDKs) they use to monetize their ad inventory. On Wednesday, German mobile marketing outfit glispa tossed its hat in the ring with the launch of Ampiri, its mediation solution. Ampiri is built from technology glispa acquired from MoneyTap, a St. Petersburg, Russia-based company with […]
Adobe rolled out the Adobe Marketing Cloud Device Co-op – a cross-device system built around Adobe Analytics and the Audience Manager data management platform – at the Adobe Summit in Las Vegas on Tuesday. AdExchanger first reported on Adobe’s attempt to create the data co-op last July. Adobe hopes to patch a big hole in […]
Mobile viewability is going through its awkward adolescent phase. There’s no official standard yet – the Media Rating Council (MRC) is planning to circulate a document for public comment in the next few weeks – and vendors are still tinkering with their methods. Which can lead to confusion around implementation, measurement-induced headaches and wonky reporting. “Everyone is […]
App publishers are constantly walking the line between user experience and making money. That’s the “main challenge” facing Baptiste Chardon, the man in charge of handling monetization for French game publisher Ubisoft’s more than 25 free-to-play mobile titles, which range from kid games to less casual offerings. An additional challenge lies in making sure that advertising […]
People like to talk about the next billion Internet users – but “you don’t get there by navel-gazing in North America,” said Nathan Eagle, CEO and co-founder of Boston-based Jana. Jana provides free connectivity in emerging markets where, according to a report from the International Telecommunications Union, the cost of data is often as much as […]
Mobile monetization platform Supersonic on Tuesday released a souped-up version of its SDK, in beta for the last five months, that joins rewarded video mediation through its supply-side platform with mediation for mobile interstitials via ironSource’s technology. The two companies merged last September. Essentially, it’s a single SDK that enables developers to manage multiple demand […]
Even minor tweaks to copy or layout can have a big impact on app engagement. “Little changes really do matter,” said Luca Criscuolo, head of mobile product at Germany-based Bonial.com Group, parent company of Retale, a location-based app that aggregates and mobilizes offline coupons, deals, flyers and circulars from chains and local stores. That’s particularly […]
Following a previous Snapchat campaign aimed at campus students from last year, Goldman Sachs is doubling down with a broad investment across the messaging service’s Discover and Live Story channels. Major financial players like American Express, Visa, MasterCard, Bank of America and JP Morgan have also been early adopters to Snapchat advertising. Goldman’s ad buy, which […]
That settles it: Verizon Wireless has agreed to pay regulators a $1.35 million fine for failing to be transparent around its use of supercookies. The Federal Communications (FCC) said Monday that it had reached a settlement with the telco following a probe that began in December 2014 after it was first revealed that Verizon was […]
Berlin-based RNTS Media group, which owns a portfolio of mobile technology companies, will acquire Israeli RTB mobile ad exchange Inneractive for an initial payment of $46 million, which could rise to $72 million if Inneractive hits incentivized targets. This is the third in a string of acquisitions RNTS Media and its primary business property, the […]
Call it the holistic grail: the ability to connect advertising, ecommerce activity and in-store buying with a single measurement. No one’s filled that gap yet, but a bunch of companies are taking incremental steps. Earlier this month the location analytics shop Placed added a product for attributing in-store lift to its suite. Then last week […]
Facebook on Thursday formally unveiled Canvas, its new full-screen mobile ad unit that offers creatives the real estate they’ve been craving in the news feed. But the richer mobile ads will not be constrained for long to what the company internally refers to as the “big blue app.” At a Facebook press event Thursday, execs […]
MWC drinking game: Take a drink every time someone says “value exchange” in reference to the ad-blocking issue. You won’t stand a chance. “We believe in the fair value exchange. If someone wants content from CBS Interactive, we will deliver it to them happily for free in exchange for them watching an ad,” said CBS […]
Location data is buzzing at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. “Where you go is who you are,” said Daniel Rosen, global director of advertising at Telefónica, speaking at an MWC Mobile Media Summit (MMS) satellite event. “[It’s] hugely powerful.” That’s coming from a carrier with its own mobile exchange, Axonix, an audience buying platform fueled […]
A new attribution product from Foursquare will demonstrate in-store lift for media campaigns by linking ad exposures to likely retail conversions. Foursquare President Steven Rosenblatt called attribution “the holy grail of consumer advertising,” and said the product is a key step in the company’s long-term evolution from a consumer app to a data and intelligence […]
The debate over which will prevail – native apps or the mobile web – is moot. The question, rather, is not which will win, but when the two will merge into a more fluid system centered on content and discoverability, rather than friction and discrete downloads. “We’re going to see less disparity between the mobile web […]
Video ad spend is on the rise. Video supply, on the other hand: not so much. “Right now, video is mostly launched either in a pre-roll environment or on a social network, so there’s no scalable way to buy other video formats across the web,” said Vitaly Pecherskiy, COO of native advertising DSP StackAdapt. For […]
China is a market that gets people excited – a largely untapped potential audience of more than 1 billion people. It’s certainly one of the stated “strategic rationales” behind the recent $1.2 billion buyout offer that browser maker Opera received from a consortium of Chinese companies, including mobile game maker Kunlun and security software provider […]
Following a brutal 2015 for publicly traded ad platform companies (at least those not named Facebook or Alphabet), the first month of 2016 was, well, not much better. That is until Wednesday, when Criteo reported Q4 revenue growth of 55%, to $407 million (362 million euros). Additionally, the company crossed two symbolic milestones, hitting $1 […]
