Private equity firm Vista Equity Partners has acquired a majority stake in ad verification vendor Integral Ad Science. Terms were not disclosed. IAS detects ad fraud by scanning billions of insertions from both buy and sell sides, searching for anomalies. It also assesses whether individual impressions are fraudulent or not. Industry insiders had wondered about […]
As many brands move to six-second spots to promote their brands, Grey Goose has gone in the other direction with “Off Script,” a nine-episode series featuring 10-minute segments of Jamie Foxx interviewing celebrities. Participants include Melissa McCarthy, Gabrielle Union, Vince Vaughn and Sarah Silverman. “We wanted to change the model from interrupting with branded content […]
The European Union’s GDPR regulations have been in force for less than a week, but ad tech exchange players are already feeling whiplash. The crux of the problem is advertising technology vendors must have user consent for data-driven advertising – yet there are only two scaled ways to get it. Either use Google’s GDPR pipeline […]
The odds are stacked against ad tech companies that go public. But Integral Ad Science CEO Scott Knoll wants to buck that trend. Among a trio of leading verification companies, it’s the only one left that hasn’t taken an exit. Oracle bought Moat in April 2017 and bolted on brand-safety tool Grapeshot a year later […]
Google soon expects to join the IAB Europe’s Transparency and Consent Framework, which transmits consent across the ad tech ecosystem to serve data-driven ads under GDPR. Google said it will join once it has resolved technical and policy details so parts of its ad tech can operate with the framework. “We absolutely want to be […]
Shopper marketing, a longtime favorite of CPGs typically used for in-store signage or to get products on eye-level shelves, is undergoing a massive transformation thanks to the spread of ecommerce and online shops. Of the $178 billion marketers spend annually on in-store marketing, $55 billion could shift from traditional retail trade marketing to online ads, […]
Acxiom intends to sell its marketing solutions division before moving to a potential sale of LiveRamp, because it believes selling them separately will drive more shareholder value, said sources close to the company. Interest in Acxiom and LiveRamp in particular heated up in March, after Salesforce bought the middleware tech company MuleSoft for $6.5 billion, […]
There was a time when the yogurt company Chobani had to track its digital marketing activity vendor by vendor. But last October, it put out an RFP to consolidate its activity with a marketing cloud. “One of the benefits with a marketing cloud is it gives us a holistic picture of all of our digital […]
Google’s decision to stop providing DoubleClick (DCM) advertising IDs in its ad server log files beginning May 25 will throw a wrench into multitouch attribution, because it will block marketers’ ability to compare Google campaigns with other ad platforms. Whether this policy change is an existential threat to independent attribution or not, the loss of […]
The Trade Desk generated $85.7 million in revenue during the first quarter of 2018, a 61% jump from the same period last year, the company disclosed in its earnings report Thursday. Profitability was also up, with net quarterly income reaching $9.1 million, compared to $4.9 million in Q1 2017. The Trade Desk raised its 2018 […]
The global digital advertising market grew 21% to $88 billion in 2017, according to the IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report released Thursday and conducted by PwC. But because Facebook and Google account for 90% of that growth, according to Pivotal Research analyst Brian Wieser, others shouldn’t benchmark their own growth rates against the industry average. […]
In the National Football League, the whole team has to know the same playbook for the plays to work. And the same is true for the NFL’s marketing group, which in 2017 began centralizing its audience data to improve team-level marketing and the value of league sponsorships. “We’re building a data co-op, in a sense,” […]
Don’t confuse Google’s Waze with its homegrown Maps product. Waze, which Google acquired in 2013, has a much different value prop. “Waze is for drivers,” said Suzie Reider, Waze’s head of ads in North America. “Google Maps is about navigating the physical world.” Waze also has a big community that works collectively to update the […]
Aside from the Trade Desk, which outstrips competitors among agencies, independent DSPs still struggle to differentiate or break out from the pack behind the category killers, Google’s DoubleClick Bid Manager (DBM) and Amazon’s ad platform, in Advertiser Perceptions’ latest demand-side platform benchmark report released Monday. The report, based on a survey of more 700 execs […]
Google disclosed how it will help publishers obtain tracking consent from users during a call last week with the IAB Europe GDPR Transparency and Consent steering committee, and its approach could spell trouble for media and ad tech companies. The consent gathering tool, called “Funding Choices,” is in beta with some DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) […]
On Wednesday, Criteo reported revenue of $564 million in the first quarter of 2018, a 9% increase from the same period last year, with profits up 15% at $210 million. Criteo stock jumped after the earnings reports, as strong financials and its relatively optimistic outlook on GDPR and ePrivacy regulations in the European Union assuage […]
IAB Europe and the IAB Tech Lab released on Wednesday a commercial version of the Transparency and Consent Framework, a new publishing standard meant to reconcile ad tech with GDPR regulations. From a consumer point of view, the experience would be similar to the current standard for web browsing in Europe, where there’s already omnipresent […]
Trigger warning: This article contains references to yet another three-letter acronym in the advertising technology ecosystem. Improvado is an extract, transform, load (ETL) data startup focused on the agency and advertiser landscape. The company raised a $3 million seed round with backing from a range of familiar ad tech names, including Auren Hoffman, the CEO […]
Oracle has acquired Grapeshot, a UK-based contextual targeting startup, the companies announced Tuesday. Grapeshot provides pre-bid insights based on the media being considered. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Grapeshot will join the Oracle Data Cloud, where it will be combined with Moat to strengthen the company’s brand safety service. The company initially focused […]
The Alphabet revenue train is full steam ahead, as the company reported more than $31 billion in revenues in the first quarter of 2018, a 26% jump from the same period last year, the company announced in its earnings report Monday. Programmatic and the core search business were the biggest driver of that growth, rising […]
The IAB Tech Lab, the research and development arm affiliated with the trade group, has acquired the nonprofit online identity consortium DigiTrust. Terms of the deal are unknown, though a key feature is the acqui-hire of Jordan Mitchell, DigiTrust’s founder and CEO, as the Tech Lab’s senior VP of members and operations. The Tech Lab […]
AdRoll and Magento Commerce announced a partnership on Friday to combine the companies’ ecommerce platforms, incorporating AdRoll’s ad targeting and attribution directly into the Magento cloud management service for online sellers. Bay Alarm Medical, which sells medical alert systems, has been working with Magento for four years and with AdRoll for almost a decade, said […]
The blockchain-based advertising marketplace NYIAX on Friday announced new leadership appointments and a partnership with Rebel AI, another blockchain ad tech startup, as it looks to scale. Bill Wise, the CEO of Mediaocean, has gone from a NYIAX adviser to executive chairman of the board and Richard Bush, formerly the company product chief, is being […]
Is opportunity fading for ad tech startups to go public or be acquired at a healthy premium? The answer is no, at least not for everyone, said Elgin Thompson, managing director of the technology investment advisory firm Digital Capital Advisors, at AdExchanger’s PROGRAMMATIC I/O in San Francisco last week. A look back at IPO filings […]
Because it can take a month or more to tie digital media to offline purchases, CPGs like Del Monte are used to relying on proxy metrics like viewability or engagement. But Del Monte is piloting an Amobee product released Wednesday called Sales Accelerator, which aims to collapse that timeline to about a week and help […]
Marketers taking a conservative approach to brand safety are pulling back from buying the long tail to minimize their exposure to fraudulent, non-viewable and brand-unsafe inventory. As premium publishers develop strong programmatic capabilities, brands are transacting with them directly rather than on the open exchange. EMarketer predicts that nearly 80% of programmatic dollars will be […]
Salesforce’s data management platform (DMP) continues the strong ascent it began last quarter, according to Advertiser Perceptions’ Q4 Programmatic Intelligence report, and has moved closer to catching Oracle. Oracle DMP, despite leading in marketer use and intent, lags behind in the selection factors relevant to marketers. Advertiser Perceptions Chief Strategy Officer Kevin Mannion noted that Oracle inherited […]
Much has changed since Outbrain was founded in 2006. Clickbait is no longer in favor but supply chain hygiene is, your in-laws are sharing fake news and whenever Facebook stirs, many of the little pubs worry about getting crushed. But Outbrain seems to still be going strong. Co-CEO and co-founder Yaron Galai declined to share […]
When the International Business Times and its parent Newsweek Media Group were accused in February of buying bots to help win a major ad buy from the Consumer Financial Protection Board, they had a helping hand from PopAds. PopAds, which specializes in pop-unders and didn’t respond to requests for comment, also resells traffic, performs unauthorized […]
Dish Network hopes to perform attribution and cross-device targeting using non-cookie-based browser data, said Brad Stamulis, Dish’s director of digital marketing. The satellite TV provider is using a solution called fTrack, from online ad platform Flashtalking, which recognizes consumers based on about 50 data points – including browser type, user location, screen size and orientation, […]
