Platforms

Randy Wootton will speak about advertiser perceptions on April 14 at AdExchanger’s PROGRAMMATIC.IO conference in San Francisco. The past couple of years have been a tumultuous adolescence for ad tech, and perhaps no single company embodies the growing pains as neatly as Rocket Fuel, with its near-solo public spotlight, its dispute over margin transparency and the rough […]

Digital audio inventory is increasingly available for programmatic purchase. But while audio publishers see value in the audience-based buying and granular targeting that programmatic offers, they are wary of dumping their inventory into an open exchange. And advertisers aren’t really sure how programmatic audio fits into their paid media mix. Here’s the landscape: iHeartRadio inventory […]

Live-streamed video is hitting its stride. Both Twitter, which inked a 10-game streaming deal with the NFL, as well as Facebook, which gave consumers access to an expanded Facebook Live tab this week, want in on the action. And on Thursday, Al Roker Entertainment, the production company owned by longtime NBC Today co-host and weatherman […]

IBM’s hire of AOL’s former president Bob Lord as its chief digital officer naturally begs the question: What will it mean for IBM’s collection of marketing applications? After all, Lord helped architect AOL’s transition into an ad tech platform – which eventually led to its acquisition by Verizon. But while Lord’s duties at IBM will […]

VICE is prioritizing off-platform distribution to reach new, loyal consumers who want more than a casual fling with its content. But although VICE has a gut read on who its audience is, it’s less clear what content mix resonates best across YouTube, Snapchat Discover and other platforms. “We have to recognize that Facebook is required […]

The Awl is moving three of its four sites from WordPress to Medium, as part of the Medium for Publishers program, which was announced Tuesday. Migrating an entire site onto a platform is the latest example of the rise of platform publishing. The Awl’s publisher, Michael Macher, tells AdExchanger that “indie publishers need to streamline […]

A little less than a year ago, Snapchat was still at the beginning stages of working out its advertising strategy. Its ad sales team felt small, at least from the perspective of some agency execs, and unable to keep up with agency and advertiser demand. But in recent months, Snapchat seems to be taking itself […]

Getting agencies to buy enterprise software is hard, which is why AppNexus quietly killed off its two-year-old product Twixt in December – which included both workflow automation (aka RFP automation) and automated guaranteed functionalities. Ultimately, Twixt was too difficult and expensive to sell. “The level of investment that would have been required to drive penetration, […]

Sizmek has rebuilt most of its ad tech stack into what it describes as a cloud-based modular suite. The rejiggered product is called MDX-NXT. Sizmek hopes the change will strengthen its position against the ad serving monster that is Google’s DoubleClick. (According to Alexa, Sizmek has the second most ad server market share – 9.8% […]

AOL rolled out a programmatic self-serve platform for TV buyers on Monday, and Omnicom Group is the first agency partner to test-drive it. While some competing solutions only enable planning, AOL said its platform also handles execution and reporting. AOL thinks its developing device graph under Verizon gives it a competitive advantage in omnichannel media […]

IBM has nabbed Bob Lord, who formerly served as president of AOL and global CEO at Publicis-owned Razorfish, as its chief digital officer. Lord is one of the few executives with experience running companies in both marketing services and advertising technology, a nexus where IBM has been making large bets lately. An IBM spokesperson said […]

While content recommendation engines used to be a commodity business, that’s no longer the case, said Camilla Cho, executive director of business development and strategy at New York Media. New York Media – owner of the NYMag.com, Vulture, The Cut and Grub Street sites – is looking for partners that share its focus on using […]

Playbuzz, a creation platform for quizzes, polls, trivia, slideshows and videos, raised a $15 million strategic investment Thursday. Saban Ventures, an existing investor in Playbuzz, led the investment, which included participation from Walt Disney Co. Playbuzz’s CEO and co-founder, Shaul Olmert, said the company was looking for “potential partners as well as investors,” but would […]

With the NCAA men’s basketball tournament well underway, digital publishers and broadcasters are clamoring to package “cross-platform” sponsorship deals for big advertisers. The economic implications of sports sponsorships are massive. In the US, global sponsorship revenue reached an estimated $45 billion in 2015, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers. That may ebb and flow if the calendar year […]

On Monday, Pandora appointed a new CEO, CFO, COO and CPO. And the company has lately begun evaluating a possible sale. But at least one member of the C-suite is still standing: CRO John Trimble. That may be because while Pandora’s user growth has stalled in the wake of competition from places like Spotify and […]

Some app developers are raking in the cash hand over fist – Supercell made $924 million in profits last year – and others are eating instant ramen noodles for dinner. Most developers make less than $500 a month, according to Vision Mobile. But that doesn’t mean the ramen eaters don’t deserve access to sophisticated analytics and business […]

Brian McAndrews is out as CEO and president of Pandora, where he served since 2013. He has been replaced by company founder Tim Westergren. McAndrews, who has a long history in digital advertising, departs at a time when Pandora faces major growth challenges in the intensely competitive music streaming space. While McAndrews brought a long […]

A group of publishers is testing a header bidding solution from Rubicon Project that is compliant with Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages program. Tribune Publishing is among those who have implemented header bidding for AMP. It’s the first time header bidding functionality has been leveraged in support of the “platform publishing” craze that has lately seen […]

Mom-and-pop shops can now buy and target their Facebook ads through Square as part of a deeper integration between the two partners. The move, announced Wednesday, makes a heck of a lot of sense. Small business owners that use Square can already automatically share their promotions on Facebook. Now they’ll be able to combine their […]

App publishers are paring down the number of software development kits (SDKs) they use to monetize their ad inventory. On Wednesday, German mobile marketing outfit glispa tossed its hat in the ring with the launch of Ampiri, its mediation solution. Ampiri is built from technology glispa acquired from MoneyTap, a St. Petersburg, Russia-based company with […]

Michael Zimbalist – who spent the past 10 years at The New York Times, most recently as SVP of advertising products – is hopping to ad tech, taking a post as Simulmedia’s CMO. “I’m a change agent by career and inclination,” Zimbalist said. “TV is in the early stages of volcanic eruption of change, and […]

Moat CEO Jonah Goodhart finds himself in the middle of the industry’s rocky transition from transacting on ad impressions served to running campaigns with tags to track bots and viewability. He says the first step in this transition is to ditch the served impressions in favor of a standard that’s based on how many impressions […]

LinkedIn is no Facebook, but it is a growing source of referral traffic for publishers. And as it turns to sponsored updates for more of its revenue, LinkedIn is encouraging users to spend more time scrolling through the feed – a move that will only benefit publishers posting content in that feed. Forbes, Bloomberg and […]

Adobe rolled out the Adobe Marketing Cloud Device Co-op – a cross-device system built around Adobe Analytics and the Audience Manager data management platform – at the Adobe Summit in Las Vegas on Tuesday. AdExchanger first reported on Adobe’s attempt to create the data co-op last July. Adobe hopes to patch a big hole in […]

Mobile ad revenue will grow 128% by 2018, accounting for 92% of new global advertising dollars, according to the global ad spend forecast from Publicis Groupe-owned ZenithOptimedia, released Monday. That’s an increase of $64 billion over the next three years. “Consumers are using their mobile devices to consume media in a place where they previously […]

App publishers are constantly walking the line between user experience and making money. That’s the “main challenge” facing Baptiste Chardon, the man in charge of handling monetization for French game publisher Ubisoft’s more than 25 free-to-play mobile titles, which range from kid games to less casual offerings. An additional challenge lies in making sure that advertising […]

Google, Facebook and Twitter have become powerful platforms for political candidates, and each has earned a line item on every campaign’s media plan. But it may require another election cycle before smaller players can break into the big time. In 2015, Borrell Research predicted $1.1 billion would be spent by political buyers on digital media […]

New Balance sells sneakers and sports apparel, but the brand is not all about chasing the transaction. The Boston-based footwear manufacturer, which competes with names like Nike, Under Armour and Adidas, instead seeks to differentiate by pushing stories, not products. As such, it faces a unique challenge in combining content and commerce. “We hear these […]

OpenSlate – which helps brands find engaged YouTube audiences – also wants to make it easier for buyers to understand the value of YouTube inventory in TV terminology. In that spirit, OpenSlate on Thursday launched its YouTube GRP Planning Tool. A number of agencies and brands are already using it, including DigitasLBi. The GRP Planning […]

Following a previous Snapchat campaign aimed at campus students from last year, Goldman Sachs is doubling down with a broad investment across the messaging service’s Discover and Live Story channels. Major financial players like American Express, Visa, MasterCard, Bank of America and JP Morgan have also been early adopters to Snapchat advertising. Goldman’s ad buy, which […]