Platforms

Viacom sales chief Jeff Lucas’s affinity for Snapchat dates back a year, to when the broadcast network first explored distribution opportunities with the popular video-messaging app. Now the two have set up a multiyear content and advertising agreement, which gives Viacom’s sales teams the right to monetize Snapchat US-based ad inventory. In turn, Snapchat gets […]

If you take the headlines at face value, Google and Facebook are killing it – dwarfing all others in terms of revenue and scale – and there’s not much reason for other publishers to get out of bed in the morning. But there’s a more nuanced story going on. Certainly, Facebook and Google have become the […]

Say you’re an advertiser plunking down $5 million for 30 seconds of prime Super Bowl ad time. You’re going to want to make sure that campaign drives some sort of action online. But between Facebook, Google and Twitter, how do you choose what to use? According to a report released Monday, Google’s attribution engine, Adometry, […]

Is dynamic ad insertion finally coming to podcasting? New audience measurement guidelines released Thursday by a collection of public radio companies address one of the big concerns advertisers have with the medium – thereby paving the way for new methods of selling and placing ads. “Up until recently, whenever we put an ad into the […]

LinkedIn acquired Bizo in July 2014 with grand visions of making a B2B ad platform. Those visions haven’t panned out. During its Q4 earnings call Thursday, the company said it would kill off Lead Accelerator, the B2B lead-nurturing product that came out of the $175 million acquisition of Bizo. It was a fast death: LinkedIn […]

Yahoo will dismiss around 15% of its workforce in Q1, including, more than likely, a large chunk of its global sales force. Five global offices will also get the chop. The cuts are part of a $400 million cost savings plan that will seek to grow profitability ahead of a likely sale of the business. […]

Magazine publishers need Snapchat, but Snapchat needs them, too. That may be one reason why Evan Spiegel, Snapchat’s relatively press-shy CEO, appeared Monday at the American Magazine Media Conference in New York to discuss the origins of Discover and his plans to monetize the platform. Discover, Snapchat’s video magazine product, was created to “remove as […]

Twitter seems to be having a little trouble on the turnaround front – but that doesn’t mean it’s for the birds. “When I talk to agency and buy-side contacts, they recognize the value of Twitter and that the real-time nature of the platform is unique,” said Dan Salmon, managing director of BMO Capital Markets. “But the […]

Remember 2008, when the App Store was full of fart apps? That’s not the sort of inauspicious start Apple has in mind for Apple TV. “Sure, you’ll get lots of weird stuff at the beginning – the Fireplace app was the most popular Apple TV app over the holidays – but we’re going to see […]

Watch out YouTube. Facebook is coming for your video ad honeypot. In his first week back in the saddle after the birth of his daughter Maxima, CEO Mark Zuckerberg told investors on the company’s Q4 earnings call that Facebook will explore the launch of a video-specific property, possibly an app that would compete with Google […]

When many creative agencies failed to pivot into mobile, tech and media companies converged on their own solutions. “Creative agencies were disinterested in making experiences for mobile,” said James Chandler, mobile director for the GroupM agency Mindshare. After all, app-oriented mobile campaigns aren’t built around flashy art or high-production videos. While this mentality frustrated him […]

Wikia unveiled a new property called Fandom this week at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting in Palm Desert, Calif. The slick-looking site features news articles contributed by readers, as well as bite-size stories designed for social sharing. CEO Craig Palmer described it as “a one-stop shop if you’re a fan of pop culture.” Behind the […]

OpenX unveiled a new product Tuesday, real-time guaranteed (RTG), with features that fall between private marketplaces and automated guaranteed. The aim is to solve drawbacks to each current buying method. One of the biggest complaints about private marketplaces is that they don’t deliver the scale both sides want. And one of the biggest complaints about […]

AOL rolled a slew of sell-side tools into a unified publisher platform called ONE by AOL: Publishers, which launched Monday, and revealed its intent to acquire French yield management startup AlephD. It didn’t take long for AOL to make good on an earlier declaration by then-President Bob Lord in late October that AOL would remain […]

Advertisers are embracing Instagram, with its video and direct-response potential gaining particular interest, according to a new report from social advertising and content marketing firm Brand Networks. CPG, fashion and retail advertisers in particular have been quick to embrace Instagram, which proved to be a significant player over the 2015 holiday season. The study examined more […]

Revcontent is angling to usurp Taboola and Outbrain in the content recommendation space. The fast-growing network on Monday signed Newsweek to be its exclusive provider of content recommendations. The news follows the Jan. 8 announcement that it had acquired ContentClick, a European native advertising network, to gain a foothold in that continent. In tests, Revcontent […]

There’s a world of difference between achieving mass reach and engagement in multiplatform video. Just ask Stephanie Horbaczewski, CEO of the fashion and beauty multichannel video network (MCN) StyleHaul. StyleHaul was among the first YouTube MCNs to join larger companies (Maker/Disney, Fullscreen/AT&T and Chernin Group, Collective/ProSieben) when German broadcast giant RTL Group purchased a majority […]

Google sounds more and more like Twitter, heralding ways marketers can tap into live events for engagement. As such, the company on Wednesday rolled out a new ad product called Real-Time Ads at a press event in New York. With Real-Time Ads, Google aims to capitalize on the ripple effect of live events, such as […]

Programmatic native ads are now available on the BrightRoll Exchange, opening up access for advertisers beyond Yahoo’s owned-and-operated properties. “We’re offering all third-party RTB buyers access to native inventory,” said Tod Sacerdoti, Yahoo VP of display and video ad products, on stage at AdExchanger’s Industry Preview conference in New York City on Wednesday. The upshot: […]

If Apple is indeed shifting its iAd platform to focus on direct deals, as BuzzFeed reported Wednesday, it means its experiment accepting programmatic demand has come to an end after little more than a year. Perhaps it was inevitable. While Rubicon Project, Accordant Media and MediaMath were among iAd’s programmatic partners, not much happened after […]

“On TV And Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in programmatic TV and video. Today’s column is written by Hadrien Bouchrara, solutions architect at Facebook. It’s time for another installment of “Ad Tech: The Acronyms Awaken.” In November, the IAB released VAST 4.0, its new video ad-serving template, for public comment. Since VAST […]

At 1.55 billion monthly active users and growing, Facebook’s audience reach is massive. And Facebook is hammering out constant improvements to the video discovery mechanism in the news feed. But the social platform remains largely in experimental mode with video, and agencies and publishers are chomping at the bit for a clearer monetization path and […]

MSN.com has gone through a lot of changes recently, switching to a syndication-only content model a year and a half ago and having its ad sales move to AOL. To personalize MSN.com’s content and ad experience, Microsoft revealed Tuesday it had signed on with Taboola to bring native ads and personalization to the MSN site […]

Since its launch in 2014, Facebook’s ad network has limited itself to mobile app placements, choosing to avoid working with mobile web properties. Now that’s changing. AdExchanger has learned Facebook Audience Network is one month into a test involving about 10 publishers that would see the ad network’s placements run on mobile web pages. The […]

Yahoo doesn’t have a fraudulent traffic problem, a company leader said Friday. Tod Sacerdoti, VP of display and video ad products and the founder of Yahoo’s video ad exchange BrightRoll, was responding to a CNBC report late last week, which claimed widespread fraud in Yahoo’s ads business and sales “ineptitude” as responsible for the downfall of […]

Sandwiched somewhere between the smart cars and $599 headsets at CES, Facebook dropped a mini-bomb by way of its developer blog when it revealed Thursday that LiveRail – the video ad server, SSP and publisher monetization platform it acquired in 2014 – would exit the ad-serving business. Facebook purports the move will allow it to […]

Like many vendors and publishers at CES, AOL is using the conference as an opportunity to update its agencies and brands on what’s going on at the company and to solidify global partnerships. AOL, after all, had a busier year than most of its peers, having been acquired by Verizon while being acquisitive itself – […]

Snapchat is said to be rolling up its sleeves on an ads API, and agencies, advertisers and tech vendors alike are happy to hear it. “There’s a great deal of interest in Snapchat as a platform,” said Noah Mallin, head of social at MEC North America. “The intersection of video, mobile and messaging, combined with […]

When Taco Bell launched its breakfast option last year, the brand had two main challenges on its plate: driving awareness among millennials and translating that heightened awareness into repeat foot traffic. It was a tall order considering that Taco Bell isn’t known for breakfast and that competition in the quick-service restaurant space is fierce. (See the […]

“The world may have a polling problem,” declared Nate Silver, the former New York Times statistical wunderkind who’s since launched FiveThirtyEight under the ESPN banner, in an article last year. Silver made this claim following the failure of UK polls to predict results of the country’s general election last May. In the US, he noted […]