Platforms

If Verizon closes its $4.4 billion AOL acquisition, it will mark one more marriage between a telco and an ad tech company. It’s also a harbinger of more to come. Last summer, Australian telco Telstra grabbed a majority stake into streaming video distribution platform Ooyala and then bought video supply-side platform Videoplaza. In 2012, Singapore […]

Mobile is big and video is big – and putting the two together presents a gargantuan advertising opportunity that Verizon will be primed to capture if it closes on AOL. “Verizon has been trying to figure out how to grab a bigger share of the ad tech pie, so the move makes sense strategically on […]

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 […]

Just over half (54%) of all video ads across the web are viewable compared to YouTube’s 91% average viewability rate, according to a Google report released Friday. It’s not surprising Google is releasing video viewability figures, given its investment in TrueView formats for brand advertisers, which are sold on a cost-per-view basis. Google claims it […]

AOL reported revenue growth of 7% YoY in the first quarter, for a total of $625 million. Global advertising revenue, which includes AOL’s own properties, search and third-party platforms, climbed 12% YoY to $483 million. Read the earnings release. CEO Tim Armstrong said the company continues to make updates “placing AOL at the center of […]

IBM has big digital marketing dreams. Last spring, those dreams warranted a $100 million commitment to future marketing investments. Wednesday saw the latest development, when IBM hooked its own marketing solutions into various Facebook ad products including the CRM matching program Custom Audiences to enable things like lookalike modeling. IBM also is expanding its Digital […]

Facebook’s mobile ad network seems to be a hit with developers. In the six months since it rolled out Audience Network globally, the number of apps participating has grown by a factor of five, a big jump even from Q4 2014 when the number had grown 3x. Basically, app developers are flocking to Facebook. A […]

Criteo, the French online display retargeter turned performance marketing company, saw its Q1 revenue increase 68% YoY to €105 million ex-TAC, driven by the growth of its cross-screen tools and client retention “consistently north of 90%.” It added 640 new clients in Q1, giving it a total of 7,800. Additionally, market conditions have been favorable for Criteo. CEO Jean-Baptiste “JB” […]

As app is only as successful as its monetization strategy. And an app’s monetization strategy is only as successful as a developer’s cash flow. But sometimes it takes Apple and Google 30 or even 60 days to compensate their developers for paid downloads and in-app purchases. “That money’s just sitting there in the bank of […]

LinkedIn’s display business deteriorated during Q1 2015 and will continue to tumble, the company said during its quarterly earnings call on Thursday. While LinkedIn reported Q1 revenues of $638 million, up 35% YoY, its disappointing Q2 and full-year guidance ($670-$675 million and $2.9 billion respectively) sent shares plummeting more than 25%. During the call, CFO […]

Twitter will pay $532.6 million – all in stock– to acquire digital ad platform TellApart, the company disclosed in an 8K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It’s a large figure for an ad tech purchase, placing TellApart’s market cap above most public companies in the space and making it the spendiest merger deal Twitter has done yet. In […]

Fifty-four stories above New York’s World Trade Center site, 800 media planners gathered Tuesday evening for AOL’s annual advertiser NewFront. The big “reveal” was a new video content and distribution agreement with broadcaster NBCUniversal. Starting this summer, select NBCUniversal videos from network partners Bravo, CNBC, E!, MSNBC, NBC, Oxygen, Syfy, Telemundo and USA will be […]

DoubleClick Bid Manager (DBM) clients can soon use the buying platform to purchase Twitter Promoted Tweets across the mobile web, in-app and desktop. Read Google’s blog post. The capability isn’t available yet, but Twitter CEO Dick Costolo anticipated a May release during the company’s earnings call. Google first needs to do some technical jiggering to […]

Twitter is taking cross-device retargeting under its wing with the acquisition of digital ad platform TellApart. “Direct response advertising has been a major growth engine for our ads business over the last several quarters. … TellApart will accelerate that trajectory further,” said Kevin Weill, Twitter’s SVP of product, in a blog post Tuesday. According to […]

Pinterest on Monday announced a Marketing Developer Partners program for its content publishing API, following the lead of Facebook and Twitter. The API will enable brands, who produce two-thirds of the content on Pinterest, to manage workflow and optimization of organic Pinterest content through their preferred centralized marketing platform. “We want to enable the developers […]

The $45 billion Comcast-Time Warner Cable (TWC) deal is officially kaput. If the merger had materialized, it would have created an unsurpassable media and cable conglomerate with massive audience reach. From day one, regulators were wary about one company controlling too much broadband access, resulting in Comcast terminating the deal Friday. “Today, we move on,” […]

True or false: Social data is the largest and least biased set of observational data that ever existed. The answer depends on whom you ask. Twitter sees its platform as a sort of public playground of contextual social conversations. All you need to do is have the right tools to mine the insights. LinkedIn views […]

Pandora CEO Brian McAndrews said during the digital radio company’s Q1 earnings call that its mobile programmatic solution, currently in beta, will be generally available in Q3. “During beta, we are open to a handful of customers to ensure we are set up to operationally scale the program similarly to what we’ve done in web,” […]

Turn is making some changes at the top. Bill Demas, CEO of the scaled demand-side platform, will exit the company in what is being characterized as a mutual decision between him and the board. Demas told employees on Wednesday that he will stay on long enough for the company to identify a successor and that he will remain […]

Pangia Games doesn’t have money to waste. What app developer does? Monetization and user acquisition are tricky for anyone – although it certainly helps to have extra cash to throw at the problem. But the smaller devs out there, like Pangia, need to get creative. “We’re a team of two,” said Nick Barbato, managing partner at […]

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 […]

When it comes to shopping ads, it’s not all about Google anymore. While Q1 US spend for Google Shopping Ads (formerly Product Listing Ads) was up 37% year over year, Bing/Yahoo is starting to encroach on Google, at least in the United States, where spend increased 72% last quarter, according to the Adobe Digital Index […]

Mail.ru, the Russian internet company, today launched a mobile ad platform called myTarget, opening up the Russian mobile audience to advertisers within Russia as well as internationally. The Russian online advertising market has historically been very insular, which is an issue that Mail.ru wanted to tackle, according to CEO Dmitry Grishin. “It’s usually local advertising […]

Although Yahoo continues to plow ahead on mobile, the company’s Q1 2015 disappointed. Yahoo’s revenue clocked in at $1.04 billion, missing analysts’ estimate of $1.06 billion. During the company’s investor call with analysts, CEO Marissa Mayer suggested programmatic has lowered the prices that Yahoo can command for its inventory. “We see a lot of advertising […]

“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Jeremy Randol, vice president of programmatic sales strategy at Pandora. Five years ago, programmatic buyers were in the driver’s seat, with access to an overabundance of cheap, programmatically accessible inventory. Cookies were all you […]

Spotify added Playlist Targeting to its advertising mix on Thursday, an offering that lets brands access its first-party data to target listeners based on current moods or activities. Playlist Targeting will be available for all brands when it launches out of beta on May 1st. Thursday’s launch adds to Spotify’s video offerings, Video Takeover and […]

The rumors were true. Google’s skippable and click-to-play YouTube ad format TrueView will be available programmatically, the company announced Thursday at the Programmatic I/O conference in San Francisco. The 5-year-old format, priced on a cost-per-view basis, represents more than 85% of in-stream ads on YouTube, according to Rany Ng, product management director for Google. TrueView […]

“im really upset that I have not yet gotten any Girl Scout cookies because I can’t find those freaking Girl Scouts anywhere” Tweets like that make it pretty clear that Girl Scout cookies don’t have an awareness problem. Tweets like that also make it clear that cookie lovers often have trouble finding the Thin Mints, […]

Consider it AOL ONE’s coming-out party. A year after AOL first outlined a vision to unify its programmatic technologies for both advertisers and publishers under a single platform, Tuesday marks the day the product officially ships. AOL has also renamed each of its technologies to more accurately reflect their capabilities. For instance, Adap.tv is now […]