2014 was the year advertisers collectively asked the question, “How much?” As in, viewability aside, how much ad fraud is actually out there? Some of the numbers bandied about, often by the fraud vendors themselves, were alarming to say the least. A report released by cyber-security startup MdotLabs in October 2013 before it was acquired […]
Although programmatic direct solutions – which automate direct relationships between sellers and buyers – started cropping up around six years ago, growth has been slow. But that’s likely to change. eMarketer predicts automated direct deals will grow from $800 million this year to more than $8 billion in 2017, which would make programmatic direct 42% […]
CPGs are starting to spend more on digital – and that makes Snuggle Bear very happy. “It’s no secret that we’re all dealing with ongoing media fragmentation,” said Brendan O’Marra, director of digital and promotion for the fabric softener’s parent company, Sun Products Corporation, the laundry conglomerate also responsible for Wisk and Surf. “It might […]
One week after completing its $2.3 billion acquisition of ad tech company Conversant on behalf of its Epsilon subsidiary, Alliance Data Systems has made some C-level org changes. Epsilon President Andy Frawley has become Epsilon’s CEO, reporting to Bryan Kennedy, the former Epsilon CEO who has been placed in charge of a joint Conversant-Epsilon unit. His title? That’s right. […]
“I don’t care if only a portion of my ads are actually seen,” said no advertiser ever. But 100% viewability is still a work in progress. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) issued a report Tuesday in which it emphatically stated that 100% viewability simply “isn’t possible,” setting 70% as a more realistic threshold, at least for […]
The rise of automation has made the ad-buying and selling process more informed and efficient, but it’s also provided an outlet for fraudsters to profit. After all, if machines conduct more transactions that used to take place between two humans over the phone, there’s less human oversight. Additionally, ad ops teams, excited by the […]
Ad tech company Sizmek has appointed Liz Ritzcovan to whip the company’s disappointing revenues back into shape. Ritzcovan, who most recently served as Parade Magazine’s CRO, will officially start in Sizmek’s newly created global CRO position next Tuesday. She will report directly to Sizmek President and CEO Neil Nguyen. The addition of a CRO position […]
The results are in – and they’re not pretty. “I’ve had my eyes opened and it’s frightening,” said Bob Liodice, president and CEO of the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), which released the fruits of its anti-fraud study on Tuesday. The work was conducted in conjunction with online ad security firm White Ops as part […]
Mozilla, which makes the Firefox web browser, officially released on Thursday its in-browser ad product, which the company first announced in February. Early adopters include media agency Mindshare North America, online booking site Booking.com, and The Weinstein Company’s video-on-demand portal Radius-TWC. How it works: Individuals opening Firefox for the first time will see tiles filled […]
Linda Woolley wants TAG to have teeth in the fight against online ad fraud. The Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) is part of a cross-industry coalition composed of the American Association of Advertising Agencies, the Association of National Advertisers (which launched its own anti-fraud initiative with White Ops in July), and the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). […]
Digital ad revenues in the US hit an historic high in the first half of 2014, reaching $23.1 billion, according to the IAB’s Internet Advertising Revenue Report released Monday. Notably, the IAB reported that mobile jumped 76% YoY and overtook banner ads. In another Monday release, the VivaKi AOD Benchmark Report saw CPMs increase across display, social, […]
Roughly a year ago, CPXi began building out two consumer-facing sites: PressRoomVIP for celebrity culture, and the music-oriented portal Hip Hop My Way. These two sites formed the foundation of CPXi’s Consumed Media publishing division, which launched in late September. What’s unusual is that CPXi, which used to be the ad network CPX Interactive, doesn’t […]
This is the 11th in a series of interviews with vendors combating the problem of ad fraud. Other companies participating in this series include Sizmek. Read previous interviews with comScore, DoubleVerify, Dstillery, Forensiq, Integral Ad Science, PubChecker, Telemetry,Videology, White Ops and RTB Asia. The meta-problem with ad fraud, according to Moat CEO Jonah Goodhart, is that it’s a tremendous […]
The clock’s ticking for the click, and its replacement is rounding the corner: attention. Real-time analytics startup Chartbeat has some illustrious publisher partners on board for its attention-based metrics – which snagged Media Rating Council (MRC) accreditation last week – including the Financial Times (FT), Wall Street Journal and Time.com. While publishers have traditionally used […]
This is the tenth in a series of interviews with vendors combating the problem of ad fraud. Other companies participating in this series include Moat and Sizmek. Read previous interviews with comScore, DoubleVerify, Dstillery, Forensiq, Integral Ad Science, PubChecker, Telemetry, Videology and White Ops. When Andy Fan founded Shanghai-based RTB Asia a couple of years […]
Ad-serving and verification company Telemetry isn’t in favor of automating the ad fraud detection process. The problem, said Geo Carncross, the company’s global VP of engineering, is that detection sensors can be fooled into thinking fraudulent impressions are real and, consequently, advertisers will start optimizing for fraud instead of for real ad performance. Telemetry’s fraud […]
Russian real-time bidding (RTB) engineering firm IPONWEB has largely operated behind the scenes as the backbone of many media-trading platforms. Notably, IPONWEB helped RightMedia build out its ad exchange preceding its 2007 acquisition by Yahoo, and has since constructed 40 more trading systems at a similar or smaller scale. In late August, IPONWEB moved in […]
How bad a problem is online ad fraud, and how should the buy and sell sides divvy the responsibility to combat it? This question formed the crux of the panel “New Methods For Defeating Fraud In The Programmatic Era,” moderated by WPP’s Team Detroit chief digital officer, Kurt Unkel, at Wednesday’s Programmatic I/O conference in New […]
One of the best things about Deep Eddy Vodka is the taste. At least that’s what Brandon Cason, VP of marketing, has to say about the 4-year-old spirits brand that’s based in Austin, Texas. But prospects aren’t going to seek out a product they’ve never heard of. That’s one reason the brand, whose efforts are focused […]
Independent trading desk Accordant Media uncorked on Friday a consolidated offering called Audience Targeting System (ATS) designed to make programmatic trading more accessible to direct market clients and prospects. The goal, according to company CEO and co-founder Art Muldoon, is to demystify the world of programmatic trading. To do this, Accordant consolidated four components it […]
Digital media could be the No. 1 ad category in the US by 2017 with $72 billion in spend, outpacing TV by about $1.5 billion, according to a MAGNA Global quarterly Advertising Forecast released Tuesday. The report attributed the shift partly to “the advent of programmatic buying in digital media and the stabilization of cost […]
Startups built on programmatic technologies are among the fastest-growing companies in the United States, as reported Monday in Inc. Magazine’s annual 500/5000 revenue survey. Among the notable entries in this year’s list: Demand-side platform MediaMath’s revenue in 2013 reached $310.8 million, representing 490% growth over three years. Its competitor DataXu also made significant revenue strides for the second […]
Demand Media has named a former Ticketmaster chief Sean Moriarty as its new CEO. The move follows a rough second quarter, when it revealed last Thursday that its revenue excluding traffic acquisition costs (ex-TAC) declined 10% year-over-year to $87.1 million. The company on Monday also acquired online art community Saatchi Online in a $17 million cash-and-stock deal. Moriarty […]
Media and audience measurement company comScore reported on Tuesday a 14.5% YoY revenue increase for Q2 2014 to $80 million, up from $69.9 million last year. Although comScore renewed its preferred strategic partner deals with agency GroupM and consumer packaged goods company P&G for audience delivery measurement, the company recognizes there is room for improvement […]
Digital media measurement company comScore revealed a deal Monday to acquire MdotLabs, a cyber-security startup that uses statistics and machine-learning to fight online fraud. Non-human traffic, click-farms and other “invalid activity” represent a $14 billion assault on the advertising industry and have spurred deals in online fraud detection, most notably Google’s acqui-hire of Spider.io earlier this […]
Triggit, known to many as the “Facebook-only” retargeting firm, is taking on native ads outside the Facebook platform. The company is courting publishers with the promise to support their native advertising formats and bring the kind of in-stream ad experiences it has run in Facebook’s news feed over the past year to a wider range […]
Are you a technology or retail company? If so, you’ve probably got a bigger problem with ad fraud than your CPG or telco counterparts, at least according to Integral Ad Science’s Q2 2014 Industry Report, which includes information from the ad tech companies, exchanges and agencies it works with. So why are verticals like technology […]
There’s a digital ad fraud outbreak – one that gobbles up roughly $14 billion in advertising spend and between 25 and 50% of ad spend per campaign. White Ops CEO and cofounder Michael Tiffany likens the landscape to a cholera outbreak. Bots cause their devastation in a certain corner of the web and move on. White […]
Investment bank Berkery Noyes’ first-half report for 2014 shows total value for mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in the media and marketing industry up on a half-year basis, from $45.8 billion to $49.8 billion. Total value of M&A in the industry had a sharp 70% increase compared with the first half of 2013, which had a […]
The on-again, off-again IPO plans of Israel-based Matomy Media Group are on again. The performance-based ad tech company began three days of so-called “conditional trading” on the London Stock Exchange on Tuesday in preparation for its official debut on Friday. It will seek to raise $70.1 million at a $347 million valuation. Matomy previously attempted […]
