Mozilla is in a tough spot. Building a big ad business is key to the nonprofit’s well-publicized revenue diversification strategy, but many targeting techniques that are considered table stakes in digital advertising – such as cookie matching, third-party ad serving and CRM onboarding – are off limits. The main issue is not that Firefox users value their […]
Over the last five years, the InterContinental Hotels Group went from $2 million in mobile booking revenue to just under $1 billion. But that doesn’t mean IHG has any plans to chuck its desktop experience, said Michael Menis, the company’s SVP of digital and voice channels, speaking at ad:tech San Francisco on Thursday in a […]
Centro, which sells media management software, revealed $30 million in Series B funding on Wednesday. Neuberger Berman Private Equity Funds is the sole investor in this round, joining FTV Capital, which led a $22.5 million Series A round in 2010. Founded in 2001, Centro initially focused on automating the guaranteed aspects of digital advertising, such […]
While activist investors like Starboard Ventures LLC had advocated for an AOL-Yahoo merger, Verizon’s intent to purchase the former seems to have dampened that plan. So where does that leave Yahoo? “No different than they were before,” said Pivotal Group analyst Brian Wieser. “In a bad position.” Not everyone has such dire predictions. Cantor & […]
ZenithOptimedia Chief Investment Officer John Nitti will be a speaker at AdExchanger’s CleanAds I/O conference on June 3, an event examining issues and solutions around fraudulent inventory in the online advertising ecosystem. Clients hold their agencies accountable when they run campaigns heavy on fraudulent traffic or misrepresented inventory. While ZenithOptimedia, part of Publicis, understands that […]
Mediabong has designs on the US. The Paris-based video platform, which revealed a $5 million Series B round on Wednesday, plans to use the bulk of its funding to beef up operations out of its nascent New York office, where the headcount is slated to increase from two to around 10 sales and business development people […]
As the media and tech worlds absorb news of Verizon’s planned acquisition of AOL, the largest unanswered question revolves around the fate of The Huffington Post Media Group, a unit that includes the eponymous publication as well as TechCrunch, Engadget and others. While Re/code’s Kara Swisher reported “advanced discussions” for AOL to sell its flagship media […]
Kelly Liyakasa contributed. Verizon will acquire digital media and ad tech platform company AOL in a cash transaction valued at $4.4 billion. The deal vaults the telecommunications company into the media and ad tech sectors and gives it a “three screen” relationship with consumers across desktop, mobile, and television. “It’s really one of the moments in time where […]
The Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG), a group created by the IAB, ANA and 4As late last year, have announced the creation of a Fraud Threat List through which members will share URLs they consider fraudulent to create a master blacklist. “We are developing a registration program to create a safe zone for the digital advertising […]
John Montgomery, COO of GroupM Interaction, North America will appear at AdExchanger’s upcoming CleanAds I/O conference on June 3, an event addressing inventory quality and supply chain issues in the digital advertising ecosystem. GroupM’s stance on viewability is clear: “If an ad can’t be seen, then we can’t expect clients to pay for it,” said […]
One year after the acquisitions of Adometry and Convertro by Google and AOL respectively, new breeds of attribution vendors are surfacing from periods of R&D hibernation, and they’re aiming to capitalize on what they and other observers see as openings in the market. The optimism comes from the belief that advertisers won’t pay for attribution […]
Google on Wednesday released research conducted in partnership with teams at UC Berkeley, UC Santa Barbara and other institutions that details the harm ad injections from toolbars create for consumers, publishers and advertisers. Google and its university partners identified millions of cases of ad injections by tracking the pipeline of users who have foreign software […]
An attention economy solves for viewability. That’s the thinking at real-time analytics firm Chartbeat, which announced $15.5 million in Series C cash on Wednesday, bringing the company’s total funding to $31 million. The bulk of the round, led by Harmony Partners, with participation from DFJ, Index Ventures and Digital Garage, will go toward building products […]
Advertisers only want to pay for viewable impressions. But publishers feel they should have the right to charge more for that type of inventory, said Jeff Bander, president and CRO of biometric online eye-tracking firm Sticky. Sticky announced a $5 million Series A round on Wednesday led by London-based VC firm Dawn Capital, with participation […]
Sometimes Mihkel Jäätma has to break some hearts. Jäätma is CEO of Realeyes, a London-based company that uses so-called “emotional analytics” to measure subconscious responses via webcam to video content based on four key metrics: attention, retention, engagement and impact. The process is conducted with opted-in panels, and videos are scored on a scale from […]
Google’s Q1 2015 earnings report continued a trend that’s more than three years old: declining CPC value, offset by the rising number of total paid clicks. The number of users clicking on a Google ad was up 13% year over year, though analysts were expecting that number to be slightly higher. Google CFO Patrick Pichette, who […]
As it has done like clockwork for the past eight or so quarters, Facebook on Wednesday reported strong audience and ad revenue growth led by mobile. An aggressive investment in video is adding to its momentum, though exactly what video contributes to its top line is unclear. Facebook’s Q1 2015 revenue from advertising totaled $3.5 billion, an increase of […]
Measuring viewability can feel like a math class where each student has a different answer to the same problem. Each vendor employs different methodologies, which makes it difficult for publishers and advertisers to consistently agree on ad viewability. While the Media Ratings Council is working to iron out this problem – it even has a few reconciliation guidelines – […]
The viewability standard may be better served by saying what it isn’t, rather than what it is. “Viewability does not guarantee that an ad will be looked at, or that an ad will be appealing, or have an impact or generate awareness or change brand perception,” said Sherrill Mane, SVP of research, analytics and measurement at […]
Marketers are seizing upon advanced attribution models as a way to rationalize their data and divvy up credit. InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), one of the world’s largest hoteliers, is an ideal example of where and how advanced attribution methods are taking hold. David Schmitt, director of interactive marketing operations and analytics for IHG, recently partnered […]
While Rubicon Project might be widely thought of as a provider of ad tech for the supply side, CEO Frank Addante hopes to dissuade advertisers from that perception. “Our strategy has been to be the infrastructure that powers automation,” he told AdExchanger. “We want to be the grid that connects everybody.” That grid extends from […]
Facebook’s introduction of a cross-device ID last fall was a big deal in marketing circles. Based on the company’s direct relationships with its 1.4 billion users, it offered a viable alternative to the broken cookie. Since then, Facebook has been on a communications and sales blitz, driving awareness and adoption of its “people-based marketing” product […]
In 2012, Barack Obama’s and Mitt Romney’s campaigns spent almost $80 million combined on online advertisements leading up to the election. And that total was in turn dwarfed by the amount that was channeled through digital by super PACs, whose expenditures are more difficult to track with precision. While those fundraising totals may have bowled […]
Ozone Media is changing its name to Adadyn and expanding into the US market. The company, which started out as an ad network for India and the Asia-Pacific region, retired that business last year. It provides programmatic solutions to medium-size buyers. “There are a number of agencies that don’t have access to these tools and […]
On Feb. 16, Lionsgate, media agency Mindshare and ad tech company Sizmek launched a campaign to promote the home video release of “Mockingjay Part I,” the third movie in the uber-popular “Hunger Games” series. The initiative, called Unlock Mockingjay, was both quick – lasting from 8:30am to 11am – and incredibly complex, beginning with a […]
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 […]
Conversant (formerly ad net ValueClick and now owned by Epsilon, for those who haven’t updated their M&A scorecard) uncorked a private exchange Wednesday, designed to hook up programmatic buyers with 6,000 publishers via Deal ID. The ad tech company will build Deal IDs for advertisers working with a trading desk or using a demand-side platform […]
Hear that? It’s the sound of Google quietly mentioning that it plans to report on audibility for video ads at some point later this year. The audibility reference was buried as a footnote toward the end of a larger update on Google’s intention to roll out viewability reporting across all of its ad platforms, including […]
The banner ad was born in 1994 – and some people would be more than happy to see “2014” as the date of death on its tombstone. “Since the banner is digital advertising’s legacy, it’s what most people defer to when considering creative, ad serving and measurement,” said Jeremy Sadwith, VP of engineering at mobile ad […]
