Verve Group, the mobile ad tech unit of the gaming publisher Media and Games Invest (MGI), acquired the mobile gaming ad tech company Smaato on Tuesday for almost $170 million (140 million Euros). MGI Group, which trades on the Frankfurt stock exchange and a Stockholm-based Nasdaq exchange, updated its financial forecast after the Smaato deal […]
Out-of-home advertising has long been an important category for FreshDirect. It allows the grocery delivery service to reach city dwellers en masse — particularly in New York where it’s based. But once the pandemic took hold, the company had to rethink its OOH campaigns, as subway riders and use of public transport dwindled while demand […]
Hello, subscribers, are you there? Newsletter operators may ask that question more often, after Apple announced new privacy protections for email users earlier this month at the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference. Specifically, Apple introduced “Hide my Email,” a feature that generates fake email addresses that forward to someone’s real address, so people can sign […]
The “un-carrier” is getting into programmatic. T-Mobile has hired ad tech vet Mike Peralta, former CEO of AudienceScience, EVP at Criteo and CRO of Future, as VP of Marketing Solutions, an ad tech and analytics business unit that uses the company’s first-party mobile data. “Everyone’s watched what’s going on with AT&T and Verizon,” Peralta said, […]
Vungle reached into its bag of Blackstone cash on Tuesday and announced its intent to acquire programmatic influencer marketing platform JetFuel – its fourth acquisition in less than a year. Jeremy Bondy, Vungle’s CEO, declined to share a purchase price, but did say that it’s the largest deal the company has done so far. Vungle, which […]
Mobile demand-side platform Jampp was acquired by Affle on Wednesday. It’s a mobile marketing company with a presence in India and Singapore. There’s nothing like a little uncertainty (ahem, Apple) to spark M&A. The mobile advertising industry has been experiencing a massive wave of consolidation in the wake of privacy-related platform changes. Since February, AppLovin […]
Sayonara self-attribution. Apple is making a tweak to SKAdNetwork in iOS 15 that will strip the big ad platforms, including Facebook, Google and Twitter, of their status as self-attributing networks. Starting with the next version of iOS, slated for release sometime this fall, advertisers will be able to opt in to get copies of the […]
Google will zero out the Android Advertising ID – literally – when users have opted out of personalized advertising starting later this year. The company notified mobile developers Thursday about the switch. Currently, users who have opted out of tracking and personalized advertising are still tagged by the Advertising ID when they open an app, […]
On-device is so in. On Friday, the mobile ad tech business Verve Group launched an in-app targeting product for Apple devices that uses on-device data to aggregate cohorts of users rather than targeting individuals. The product, dubbed ATOM (Anonymous Targeting on Mobile), collects data from the device and the app when it’s in use, but […]
One of the companies that created the technical specifications for the China Advertising ID (CAID) was acquired last month by Chinese mobile ad tech company Mobvista. One can think of Reyun, which helped developed the code for CAID on behalf of the state-backed China Advertising Association (and whose name in Chinese – 热云数据 – roughly […]
AppTrackingTransparency enforcement officially began in late April. But advertisers, publishers and mobile ad tech vendors are still grappling with a lot of head scratchers – and the dust is far from settled. Until the release of iOS 14.5 last month, among the biggest unknowns consuming the mobile ad ecosystem was the agita-inducing question of timing […]
Zynga is buying in-app growth and mobile monetization platform Chartboost for $250 million. It’s an excellent exit for a company that’s only raised $21 million since its $2 million Series A in 2011. The deal, expected to close in the third quarter, was announced on Wednesday on Zynga’s Q1 earnings call, during which the company […]
Seems like almost every ad tech company you meet these days has attained unicorn status. Mobile ad platform Moloco has raised a Series C funding round, announced Thursday, that brings its valuation to $1 billion. The funding came courtesy of the South Korean investment banking group Shinhan GIB and a handful of other new and […]
ironSource is 2021 in a nutshell. It’s a mobile ad tech provider founded more than ten years ago, with a multibillion valuation that’s on the cusp of going public via a special purpose acquisition company by merging with a private equity firm. The SPAC in question is led by Thoma Bravo, whose blank check company […]
It’ll be hard to beat the drama that surrounded the release of iOS 14.5 on Monday. But the beat goes on, and the beta of iOS 14.6, which includes a feature update for the third version of SKAdNetwork, is waiting in the wings. SKAdNetwork is Apple’s limited (and therefore privacy preserving) solution for attribution on […]
AppLovin is hoping to get some lovin’ from a white hot public market that’s been rewarding technology stocks with massive valuations. The company announced its IPO on Thursday, offering 22.5 million shares at $80 a pop. Trading will begin on the Nasdaq under the ticker APP. (Update: Shares opened at $70, below the target, and […]
Swaarm, a Berlin-based startup that helps advertisers, agencies and ad networks track their performance marketing, hadn’t yet launched in June 2020 when Apple first announced its plans to limit IDFA use. The timing was fortuitous. Rather than having to pivot like a legacy mobile measurement provider, Swaarm’s co-founders (who had been developing the technology for […]
P&G isn’t the only western company that was deeply involved in the development of the China Advertising ID (CAID). The China-based arms of Nielsen, Deloitte and PricewaterhouseCoopers are all listed as “drafting organizations” behind the CAID standard in the original technical specs. CAID is an IDFA workaround that was devised for the specific purpose of […]
And so it begins. Apple started rejecting app updates on Thursday that conflict with its App Tracking Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework. ATT prohibits user tracking without explicit consent and bans developers from using fingerprinting to try and identify a device or user. The news was first reported by independent analyst John Koetsier in Forbes. Specifically, […]
Vungle chief exec Jeremy Bondy refers to himself as a “virtual CEO.” Bondy was at Vungle for six years, most recently as COO, before being elevated to the top spot in November, seven months into the pandemic. It’s been a busy few quarters for Vungle, which is evolving from a mobile ad network into a […]
On Monday, on-device media technology company Digital Turbine bought app monetization platform Fyber for $600 million. Digital Turbine has become one of the most prolific acquirers of mobile ad tech over the last two months – beginning with its $400 million acquisition of mobile ad network AdColony in late February, followed by its early March […]
It’s mobile mania. There were three big pieces of mobile news before lunch on Monday – evidence that the mobile app market is white hot and only getting hotter. Content discovery provider Digital Turbine is acquiring app monetization company Fyber for $600 million in cash and stock – less than a month after spending $400 million to […]
App marketing platform AppLovin filed for its IPO on Tuesday after the market closed, and it wins for best ticker symbol ever: APP. Read the full S-1 filing here. AppLovin is taking advantage of a public market boom for advertising-related technology companies, but AppLovin was actually quite hot before the froth started frothing. The company […]
Apparently ad tech is so hot right now that ad networks can get acquired in the year 2021 for hundreds of millions of dollars. On Friday, Digital Turbine acquired AdColony for $400 million from its parent, Norwegian internet company Otello Corp. (formerly Opera Software). The transaction is expected to close in March. Otello and Digital […]
Location intelligence company Cuebiq is sunsetting its software development kit and replacing it with a clean room-type product called Workbench that will allow data analysis in a more secure, privacy-safe way. Cuebiq had been planning to make this move for around two years. Even when there’s no malicious intent, SDKs pose a security risk and […]
The public tussling between Facebook and Apple over the latter’s fast-approaching privacy push in iOS 14 is what grabs headlines. But while the titans trade barbs, developers have been hustling behind the scenes as the deadline approaches. Apple is expected to release its AppTrackingTransparency (ATT) framework as part of iOS 14.5 at some point in […]
AppLovin’s recent acquisition of mobile attribution provider Adjust for $1 billion is evidence that M&A doesn’t necessarily decline in times of uncertainty. The mobile advertising ecosystem may be in a holding pattern waiting for Apple to release its AppTrackingTransparency (ATT) framework, which should finally happen by March or early April. But the fact that Apple’s […]
Apple appears to be providing its homegrown ad network with more granular measurement functionality that what everyone else will get through SKAdNetwork. Specifically, the Apple Ads Attribution API payload field will include two parameters that are important for optimization – creativeSet ID and keywordID – but totally absent from SKAdNetwork postbacks. Without creativeSetID, advertisers won’t know which […]
AppLovin has struck again. Bloomberg scooped late Wednesday afternoon that AppLovin is on the cusp of acquiring mobile app attribution startup Adjust for $1 billion. The news was confirmed by AppLovin in a press release. [Read the release]. AppLovin is an app marketing platform that helps advertisers automate their user acquisition and re-engagment campaigns. Adjust, […]
SKAdNetwork is entering its final form, though details are scant. Apple recently updated its page dedicated to user privacy and data use to reflect its plan to add support for view-through attribution for video, audio and interactive ads in apps by “early spring” 2021. Apple will tie these attribution capabilities to creative measurement, so developers […]
