In the words of Andreessen Horowitz partner Benedict Evans, “Mobile is eating the world.” While the investor community grows dubious about the viability of ad tech, mobile startups still seem to be able to bring in the cash. Two such companies, app data and analytics firm PushSpring and deep-linking outfit Yozio, both announced Series A […]
Pandora took its Sponsored Listening product out of beta on Monday. The mobile ad format lets brands sponsor an hour of uninterrupted listening for Pandora users in exchange for 15 seconds of engagement with an ad. “Advertisers are hungry for a model that lets them buy attention and we’ve seen really great interest from the […]
As feeds become the new standard for web design, there’s a greater need to develop ad units that accommodate them. Such was the thinking behind the IAB’s Wednesday release of specifications for three kinds of in-feed advertising channels: social feeds (notably sponsored Facebook or Twitter posts), product feeds (which encompass ecommerce sites like Amazon and […]
When Univision embarks on an 18-month partnership with Snapchat, it will be the latest test for the nascent social platform to prove its value as a content hosting platform for broadcasters – and for brands advertising against that content. The partnership, revealed Thursday, centers around Snapchat’s Live Stories product, “a curated stream of user submitted […]
Pandora is enjoying rising ad prices aided by its SMB sales efforts, CEO Brian McAndrews told investors during the company’s second quarter earnings call. “Our advertising investments, particularly in local, are paying off,” McAndrews said, adding, “RPMs were up 25% year over year, to a record $49.94.” According to McAndrews, Pandora’s success with local advertisers […]
Sometimes it takes a few bad dates before you find the one. So it would seem to be with Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, who after some less than ideal pairings with sales execs may have found her perfect match in Lisa Utzschneider. Just nine months after her initial hire as head of sales for Yahoo […]
Twitter is looking to capitalize on the when and the where by connecting advertisers with audiences interested in specific events. The rather prosaically dubbed “event targeting” tool, announced Thursday, is separate from Project Lighting, Twitter’s reported upcoming dive into live event curation. But clearly the two are philosophically linked. With event targeting, advertisers will be […]
In-app fraud is turning into another expensive headache for advertisers. According to research released Thursday by fraud detection firm Forensiq, programmatic in-app ad fraud was responsible for roughly $776 million worth of wasted budget in 2014, a number Forensiq projects will crack the $1 billion mark this year. That might seem like a relative drop […]
AwesomenessTV, which was purchased by DreamWorks Animation in 2013 for $33 million, is racing to reach teen audiences and capture more brand dollars in the Gen-Z gold rush. Those born in the mid ’90s-early 2000s, that is. With more than 2 million followers and 1 billion video views per month, AwesomenessTV is generally regarded as […]
A year after Yahoo’s disastrous Q2, the company reported year over year revenue growth of 15%, or $159 million, its best in nearly nine years. Yahoo saw Q2 revenue of $1.24 billion. So-called “Mavens” revenue (mobile, video, native and social) grew 60% to $399 million from $249 million during the same time last year. Yahoo CEO Marissa […]
The Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG), which is uniting industry players to root out criminal activity in digital advertising, has unveiled a pilot program to block fraudulent traffic coming from data centers. Google proposed the data center project and is leading the pilot program, which will see member companies sharing intelligence about fraudulent data centers. The companies […]
YouTube has sparked a brand fire, but can it ignite the same flame with content owners? “YouTube invented short-form video and took the category from zero to 4 billion views over a period of five years, but then it flat-lined and nothing happened,” said Hilary Perchard, head of US investments for European broadcaster and pay-TV operator […]
John Nardone, the newly minted CEO of UK-based ad serving platform Flashtalking, feels like he’s come full circle. After spending more than 10 years deep in the ad tech weeds, Nardone, whose resumé includes the chief exec role at [x+1] – which sold to Rocket Fuel in August 2014 for around $230 million – and the co-presidency at […]
Technorati on Monday released SmartWrapper, a SaaS-based product that helps publishers run multiple header bidding partners by bringing all demand partners into one place. For publishers juggling multiple partners, SmartWrapper helps manage implementation page latency and gives publishers more unified analytics. With the product release, Technorati enters a different market. “We see this continuing down […]
David Karnstedt, who headed performance-marketing engine Efficient Frontier during its $400 million sale to Adobe in 2011, is taking the reins yet again as CEO of a data startup called Quantifind. He will lead a 60-person team seeking to scale quickly. Quantifind, which has raised $12 million, is among a handful of startups that act […]
PowerInbox is bringing content recommendation engines to email via its RevenueStripe product. Think Outbrain meets LiveIntent. Beta-launched last summer and brought to the general market in January, RevenueStripe is gaining traction. It now appears in 1.5 billion emails a month. It’s attracted 60 publishers, like Ziff Davis, Prime Publishing and Hearst, which inserts RevenueStripe into […]
Google’s recent push to prioritize mobile-friendly sites in organic search results is straining the advertising ecosystem, according to Adobe Digital Index’s Q2 2015 Digital Advertising and Social Intelligence report, released Wednesday. The Adobe Digital Index for Q2 2015 noted a 10% decrease in organic traffic on Google among sites that weren’t optimized for mobile. The […]
Beyond the morass of fraud and viewability hides another tripwire for advertisers: government regulation. That’s why UK-based credit card issuer Barclaycard is getting proactive about compliance. As a company that’s smaller than the competition and still making inroads in the US market, Barclaycard is particularly risk averse when it comes to regulatory issues. To that […]
Despite the doom and gloom around declining linear TV viewerships, networks like Discovery Channel still score on popular annual programming events like Shark Week. The network claimed 2014’s Shark Week was its biggest ever, drawing 42 million viewers in the course of the week, which spurred its decision to expand the weeklong summer event, which […]
When Ellen Pao stepped down from her post as CEO of Reddit on Friday – ceding the spot to Reddit co-founder Steve Huffman – it left Reddit’s monetization situation murkier than ever. In a question and answer session on Reddit’s popular AMA (Ask Me Anything) section, Huffman wrote, “Reddit has a lot of cash. Monetization […]
AOL is giving its multitouch attribution system, Convertro, a little extra juice by adding contextual data that measures the impact of ZIP code-level weather data within marketing mix models. Other forthcoming additions to Convertro will include conditions around the local and national economy and gas prices. Convertro claimed, even before it was acquired, that it […]
YouTube multichannel networks (MCN) – and their influencers and fan bases – keep whetting investors’ appetites. Media research firm Ampere Analysis values the entire MCN business at approximately $20 billion in a study of three years’ worth of MCN investments released this week. German media giant ProSiebenSat.1 is the latest to jump in, acquiring on […]
If mobile and video are the twin engines driving ad tech, then AOL’s rumored $300 million to $350 million acquisition of Millennial Media would put the pedal to the metal. The potential deal, first reported by AOL-owned TechCrunch on Thursday, comes just a few weeks after the official close of Verizon’s $4.4 billion purchase of […]
Remember StumbleUpon? The content discovery and social bookmarking site born in 2001 wants to go beyond its bread and butter, driving social shares and referrals to publisher sites. That means StumbleUpon is expanding into new channels – and with good reason. StumbleUpon had 30 million monthly active users in 2014, but that number pales in […]
Pinterest is proving to be a nice fit for secondhand online clothier Twice. The company, which acts as a sort of hybrid Amazon/eBay-like marketplace for gently used duds, had seen success with all the usual marketing mix suspects – display, search ads, Facebook, Twitter – but it was on the hunt for a fresh channel to reach […]
A year after embracing programmatic technology, Live Nation is planning another major expansion of its ad tech capabilities, this time by connecting its many online and offline properties into a holistic marketing platform. With its “Fan Connect programmatic platform,” the entertainment company is continuing its evolution into a “digital publisher” – not in the sense […]
Microsoft isn’t the advertising behemoth it once aspired to be when it purchased aQuantive for $6 billion in 2007. Since then, Microsoft has mostly been a publisher, selling inventory both directly and programmatically across its Microsoft Network (MSN) family of sites, its Outlook email portal, Skype and Xbox. Following the Microsoft-AOL search and display deal, […]
Microsoft and AOL observers have a lot of questions in the wake of the companies’ landmark search and display ad deal, announced Monday. Here’s a big one: How will AOL, a company of some 4,500 employees, possibly absorb 1,200 new sales, marketing, biz dev and engineering people? Once the partnership is consummated, AOL will have […]
Autoplay is here to stay, especially in light of Facebook’s and Twitter’s latest video launches. Two weeks after Twitter offered marketers a 100% in-view guarantee on autoplay video ads for three seconds, Facebook came out swinging with a cost-per-view model and a revenue-sharing agreement for ads sold against Suggested Videos. With unique pricing models emerging for […]
While AOL’s absorption of Microsoft’s display, search and video ads business is indicative of Verizon’s digital media interests, industry insiders aren’t quite convinced the flagship publications it inherited through the AOL acquisition will stick around for the long haul. An early Huffington Post exec said Verizon will need to treat the media group like “a […]
Atria’s collective approach is a response to growing monetization challenges and the need to protect the value of human journalism in the AI era.
The current administration has discouraged many marketers and organizations from showing support for the LGBTQ+ community, including during Pride month.
As much as consumers complain about AI-generated content, advertising experts say AI still has an important place in video creation and production, including for ads. But using AI in content without turning off consumers is a tricky dance.
Smart TVs, refrigerators and other home appliances may pester you with marketing, but at least the hardware is cheap. Another startup taking a different approach to the same theory is Tovala, which was founded in 2015 and combines a standalone countertop oven with a weekly meal kit subscription.
Shopify is slowly but surely making its way into the ads business. But the ecommerce leader maintains its laissez-faire approach to ad monetization.
Netflix touts sharper targeting, but buyers say its black-box approach – especially the lack of usable IP data – is blunting measurement and quietly pushing performance-driven spend elsewhere.
