JC Penney knows what part of every programmatic dollar goes to the media seller, ad server, anti-fraud and viewability vendors, data providers and agency trading desk – and it’s still enthusiastic about programmatic. “Accuen has recognized that we can’t not be transparent with where costs are going,” said Rose Sumrall, the senior marketing manager for […]
The Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) is going to help the ad industry check IDs at the door. On Thursday, the fraud-fighting coalition announced the launch of a verification program designed to enable legit companies to demonstrate that they are, in fact, legit. Agencies, advertisers, ad platforms and publishers will be able to apply to the TAG […]
It was a day of firsts and lasts for Alphabet’s Q3 earnings call Thursday afternoon – the first since CEO Sundar Pichai took over in August and the last before the company unbundles its internal properties next year. Alphabet announced quarterly revenue of $18.7 billion, a 13% YoY increase. Google’s advertising revenue was $16.8 billion, […]
It’s been a transitional year for Conversant, the ad technology solution that’s now a part of data marketing services company Epsilon. Integrating Conversant “caused a fair amount of angst for the first half of the year,” acknowledged Ed Heffernan, CEO and president of parent company Alliance Data Systems, during its Q3 earnings call Thursday. The […]
Independent trading desk Accordant Media is holding strong to its bundled offering of services plus technology, even as others like Dstillery, ChoiceStream and Adadyn, roll out self-service options. But technology is still a big deal, particularly when it comes to buying across channels, which is why the company hired former Crisp Media exec Nathan Carver […]
Creative and tech have an uneasy coexistence. But the advertising world is in the early stages of a new hybrid model, where creative relies on tech for personalization and storytelling. “With programmatic buying and targeting, the contextual opportunities are increased to quantum levels, and we’ll need machines in order to address them,” said Chick Foxgrover, […]
Marketers are known for a near obsession with data – metrics, iteration and ROI – but a string of CMOs at this year’s ANA Masters of Marketing conference avoided the firm ground of data and measurement in favor risk-taking and experiential concerns. “Advertising isn’t dead, but it’s craving courage,” said Arby’s CMO Robert Lynch, pointing to […]
From global leaders to energetic startups, “internal disruption” has become the driving force behind marketing resources. “The scary thing for me is to see how fast the disruptors are themselves being disrupted,” said Pepsi’s beverage group president Bradley Jakeman at the ANA’s Masters of Marketing conference. He pointed to the speed with which a company […]
If late-year sales are particularly important to you, then your holiday strategy and product development should now be entering its final lap. What remains is a race to retain customers coming in during the blitz of holiday marketing. “The actual user connections should be in place before the holidays, not just a strategy,” said Richard […]
Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are thriving in the red-hot technology industry, particularly in the United States, according to a spate of research reports released Thursday. In many pockets of the industry, there are fewer deals but the value of those deals has skyrocketed. The investment bank JEGI said the number of transactions in the database […]
The ad tech community has taken its strategies to legacy marketing channels before – billboards, radio, point-of-sale systems and even linear TV. Now add direct mail to the list. PebblePost launched publicly and revealed a $3 million seed round on Tuesday. CEO Lewis Gersh hopes to bring real-time analytics to direct mail campaigns for the […]
Forrester senior analyst Susan Bidel will appear Oct. 29 at AdExchanger’s Programmatic I/O conference, an event dedicated to the advancement of programmatic media and marketing. The ad industry’s collective hand wringing over ad blocking reached a fever pitch in September during Advertising Week in New York City. In reality, however, it’s far from a block […]
Getting 2 million YouTube views on a video of Lindsey Graham smashing cell phones was a very good thing for political website Independent Journal, which orchestrated the stunt. But it didn’t do much for Graham (who made the video after Donald Trump gave away his phone number publicly). The Republican senator from South Carolina is […]
As Axel Springer was rolling out its acquisition of Business Insider on Tuesday, the German publishing giant lost a court case it brought against the Acceptable Ads initiative of Adblock Plus (ABP). The decision gave ABP its fourth consecutive victory against European publishers hoping to prove aspects of its technology or business model are illegal. […]
Origami Logic revealed Tuesday it had received $25 million in Series C funds, which it will use to more than double its teams across sales, engineering and marketing, said co-founder and CEO Opher Kahane. Origami Logic has an employee count in the lower double digits, though Kahane wouldn’t give an exact number. But clients like […]
Programmatic buying of display and video ads will expand rapidly for years to come, according to new findings from Magna Global. In a forecast released Monday, the Interpublic Group media investment unit predicted the amount of global ad inventory bought and sold using programmatic methods in 2015 will rise 49% compared to last year – […]
Influencer marketing startups think it’s time to become a more strategic part of content marketing initiatives. Part of the problem is that influencer marketing doesn’t get its own budget line, said Pierre-Loïc Assayag, founder and CEO at the influencer management platform Traackr. It’s as likely to come under the jurisdiction of a PR firm as […]
Online political spending – while still trailing far behind the budgets assigned to TV – is poised to match or exceed even the world’s largest brand advertisers. But with no established agency or ad tech model in place, agnostic tech providers are looking to blaze new trails in the hypercompetitive DC market. Rubicon Project and […]
Remember when Facebook said it wouldn’t allow independent viewability verification on its properties? And remember when WPP’s GroupM agencies Unilever, Kellogg and others were extremely displeased with that proposition and said they would curtail spending on platforms, including Facebook and YouTube, where third-party viewability tags weren’t welcome? Well, Facebook announced Thursday that it’s planning to […]
The realm of brick-and-mortar retail data has been steadily absorbed by digital technology in recent years, and that trend took another step forward on Wednesday with the launch of the Cross Device Marketplace by Placed, an in-store attribution firm. While Facebook and Google have put considerable effort into developing retail-specific solutions, Placed founder and CEO […]
HookLogic raised $15.5 million in Series C funding and will sell AutoHook, a suite of lead-gen and marketing tools designed for automotive companies, the company announced Thursday. Terms of the AutoHook sale to auto consultancy firm Urban Science were not disclosed. In addition to previous investors Bain Capital and Intel Capital, this funding round included […]
The rise of ad blocking, mobile usage and a general regard for user experience over pure advertising concerns have all led to a renewed focus on one of the digital world’s most fundamental features: the page load. From buttons and tracking pixels to preload content and infinite scrolling feeds, the digital community is struggling under […]
Attribution companies Adometry and Convertro are frequently linked because they were acquired in quick succession (by Google and AOL, respectively). And the functionality they provide is increasingly important, as marketers want to justify their digital ad spend across channels and devices. Buyers are wary when attribution technologies – which should be agnostic – are integrated […]
Yavli joined the emerging fray of ad-blocking technology solutions for publishers with its public launch on Wednesday, following an 18-month stealth period. Its technology gives users who have downloaded an ad blocker sponsored content suggestions. If the user clicks on the piece of sponsored material, the publisher charges the brand. “The idea behind it is […]
The havoc wreaked on the advertising sector by Monday morning’s global stock slide, and the subsequent clawback, has tracked with the general market. Starting at market open, a variety of ad-supported stocks ranging from tiny ad tech holdings (TUBE, RUBI) to platform heavies (FB, GOOG) plummeted and then recovered within a few hours. Criteo, Rubicon, […]
The programmatic pipes have been laid, but programmatic creative is still ramping up. “There’s a disconnect between media and creative that prevents the industry from taking advantage of what’s possible,” said Adam Cahill, who left his post as EVP and chief digital officer at Hill Holliday in April to found Anagram, a consultancy/agency hybrid focused […]
Eyebrows and heart rates went up in 2012 when political ad spending across digital media surpassed $150 million. Analysts are shocked that campaigns and super PACs are projected to spend only $1.1 billion in 2016. The media research firm Borrell Associates released a report on Tuesday that demonstrates the gradual embrace of digital marketing methods […]
The founder and CEO of Hello Products, Craig Dubitsky, will appear at AdExchanger’s Omni.Digital conference on Sept. 10, an event designed to educate marketers on advanced solutions for building seamless cross-channel brand experiences. Most CPG brands have shifted to using data to make decisions about selling products. To challenge the giants in the space, startup […]
One of Google’s themes, when it announced it was dividing its core advertising business from its more experimental endeavors by restructuring into the holding company Alphabet, was “transparency.” Specifically, in the words of Alphabet CEO Larry Page, “improving the transparency and oversight of what we’re doing.” What that means, however, is anyone’s guess. We asked […]
Adobe and PageFair, a Dublin-based ad-block solutions provider, on Monday unveiled new research that claimed there are almost 200 million active ad-block users, representing a projected loss of $21.8 billion globally for online publishers in 2015. The caveat is that industrywide ad-blocking numbers can be misleading given strong variances both geographically and demographically. That skew […]
