Platforms

Rubicon Project’s focus on premium inventory, international expansion and new products looks to be paying off. CEO Frank Addante said during the company’s Q4 earnings call – in which it posted quarterly revenue of $41.8 million, up 49% YoY – that Rubicon had avoided low-quality sellers that would have boosted short-term revenue while hurting its […]

With the revamp of its partner program last week, Facebook is for the first time allowing agencies to pursue certification – under a specialization called Media Buying. (Don’t call it a badge.) The change is a tacit acknowledgement that Facebook’s key relationships in the ad ecosystem include not only the builders of tools for reaching […]

Getting freemium users to become paid users is a nuanced process that varies from person to person. Users on the brink of turning their free trial into a paid subscription need only a little nudge. Others, admittedly a much smaller number of people, will quickly pay for subscriptions. But neither group is the ideal target. […]

Paris-based direct and programmatic ad platform Smart AdServer will break away from its parent company, the Internet portal AuFeminin, through a buyout by private equity firm Cathay Capital for $42.1 million, the companies said Thursday. “Smart AdServer is entering a new phase and the market is evolving very fast,” said Smart AdServer US General Manager […]

Yahoo is buoying its push to be a mobile player with a mobile dev suite, revealed Thursday at the company’s first-ever mobile developer conference – but the products, and Yahoo’s plans, are highly contingent on an important factor. Will developers see the value in Yahoo’s app-monetization tools? Flurry’s SDK now includes demand from both Gemini, […]

Rocket Fuel appears to be bracing for a chilly wind, at least when it comes to the insertion order-based media sales business that has been the core of its revenue engine for the past several years. The programmatic platform company reported Q4 revenues of  $139.5 million, a 63% lift compared to Q4 2013. That’s a […]

Facebook has decertified more than half the seat holders on its Facebook Exchange (FBX) as part of a revamp of its marketing partner program, unveiled Tuesday. Among the partners no longer badge-certified to buy on FBX are some very big ad platform players, including Adobe, Advertising.com (AOL), Rocket Fuel, IgnitionOne and Dotomi/Conversant (Epsilon). In total, […]

LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner referenced a “re-envisioned” marketing solution suite coming soon during the company’s Q4 earnings, and it appears he acted swiftly. The company on Thursday rolled out two products: LinkedIn Network Display and LinkedIn Lead Accelerator. [The company’s blog post.] Network Display is an ad product reaching across 2,500 publisher sites as well as […]

If an ad isn’t seen, that ad shouldn’t be counted. That’s Facebook’s position on viewability in a nutshell. As the debate around viewability swirls, Facebook outlined its point of view in a blog post Wednesday. “It doesn’t make sense for advertisers to count impressions that never enter a person’s viewable area,” said Brad Smallwood, Facebook’s VP of measurement […]

Criteo, which began as a retargeter of online display, expanded on its product roadmap during the company’s Q4 and FY 2014 earnings call Wednesday. Criteo’s focus is “leveraging the huge momentum in mobile commerce,” said CEO Jean-Baptiste Rudelle by emphasizing its multi-screen solution and cross-device ID. “Converting customers across multiple marketing channels is critical for CMOs. […]

Facebook on Tuesday rolled out product ads designed to let retailers connect their product lists with news feed units. Read the blog post. Retailers traditionally have trouble syncing up inventory-level data with media, since the bulk of that information sits in transactional databases. “With dynamic product ads, marketers can directly upload their product catalog to Facebook or set […]

Mobile is the mother of all invention at BabyCenter, an online content hub for pregnancy and parenting-related content. Founded in 1997, BabyCenter has always maintained a digital-first mindset – but the changing consumption habits of its more than 40 million global monthly users, mainly current and expectant mothers, means that mobile is fertile ground for […]

“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Brian Mikalis, senior vice president of monetization at Pandora. Publishers that want to retain their premium stature are executing programmatic deals through private exchanges or directly with advertisers as they jump in to figure […]

The majority of TripAdvisor’s revenue came from advertising in Q4 2014. Of TripAdvisor’s reported $288 million in fourth-quarter revenue – up 35% from Q3 – $181 million came from click-based advertising (63% of total revenue) and $36 million from display (13% of total revenue). Display CPMs were up for more than 2,000 advertisers in TripAdvisor’s network, President […]

AOL’s programmatic revenue grew 250% in the fourth quarter, and now accounts for 39% of AOL’s non-search revenue. In Q4 the company “integrated the first set of private marketplaces,” Armstrong said, for a total of 15 private marketplaces. AOL’s shift to programmatic led to a recent restructuring of its sales force, another area of heightened attention from investors. AOL recently […]

Five months after taking the wraps off its revamped ad management product, Facebook is slowly but steadily chalking up new Atlas customers. In the wake of its splashy deals with Omnicom Group and Havas, the company has unveiled agreements with database marketer Merkle and Mediaocean, the dominant provider of RFP and workflow management software geared […]

The company formerly known as Yellow Pages has worked hard in recent years to transfer its historical strength – helping consumers find local businesses via large printed books – into a business that’s now booking more than $1 billion in digital revenue. YP acquired mobile ad firm Sense Networks one year ago and continues to refine and experiment with […]

The vodka market is as crowded as a downtown bar on a Saturday night – and Stolichnaya is looking to differentiate. That’s where the millennial male – a social animal – enters the picture. “Our key target is millennial men, ages 25 to 35,” Stoli brand director Sarah Gorvitz told AdExchanger. “We call them ‘authentic experiencers.’” For […]

Pandora will leverage its data assets and introduce mobile programmatic capabilities later this quarter for its iOS and Android platforms, CEO Brian McAndrews said during the company’s Q4 and year-end earnings call Thursday. “Advertisers are looking for high engagement on mobile,” McAndrews said. “In terms of digital revenue opportunities, we are positioning Pandora to lead the […]

LinkedIn had strong growth across all lines of business in the fourth quarter. Marketing Solutions revenue for the quarter was up 56% year over year, coming in at $153 million. This beat some analysts expectations, which projected that figure at a slightly lower $131 million. [Here are the full results.] Marketing Solutions accounts for 24% of […]

You know the Twitter earnings narrative by now. Enthusiasm around strong revenue from advertising products is dampened by concerns over the growth rate of monthly active users (MAUs). Such was the case with the company’s Q4 Thursday, in which Twitter’s ad revenue doubled from the previous year to $432 million, beating Wall Street estimates. Mobile […]

Jeff Lucas, head of ad sales for Viacom Music and Entertainment, likes photo-messaging app Snapchat. Because its user base is dominated by females under 25, the platform that popularized the “fleeting” SMS aligns closely with Viacom property MTV’s young millennial audience. It’s one of the reasons why MTV is test driving Snapchat’s new Discover feature, part of […]

Twitter has developed ad products for big budgets (like second-screen targeting tool Twitter Amplify), but it’s also trying to show small and midsize advertisers it’s got their interests in mind. Twitter on Wednesday rolled out “Quick Promote,” an update to its 2013 self-serve ad platform. The feature is designed to simplify optimization for promoted tweets, […]

Now that Right Media Exchange (RMX) has been officially sunsetted by the powers that be, the Yahoo Ad Exchange has become a private marketplace of sorts, where demand can plug into Yahoo-owned and -operated supply. Yahoo has made a concentrated effort to streamline its ad business in the past year. The company used CES 2014 as […]

Google has a long history of working with agencies, but its push for premium video – resulting in more direct relationships with publishers – may alienate it from its longtime partners. A seeming point of contention is Google Partner Select, a video exchange established in 2014, promising exclusive access to 30 premium publishers. Typically, Google […]

Twitter is finally giving its promoted tweets wings to fly beyond Twitter’s own walls. In a blog post Tuesday, Ameet Ranadive, Twitter’s senior director of product, said that advertisers will be able to syndicate promoted tweet campaigns running on Twitter to non-Twitter properties using the same creative and audience targeting parameters. Twitter didn’t get specific on how the […]

The recent history of digital advertising is full of ad networks that have pivoted, or are trying to pivot, away from the withering RFP trade. Some have become demand-side platforms or analytics tools geared to advertisers and agencies. Fewer have positioned around the publisher. Family run Casale Media is in that smaller group. Founded in […]

Yahoo’s looking to befriend the devs. During the company’s Jan. 27 Q4 2014 earnings call Marissa Mayer confirmed Yahoo’s plan to use its acquisition of mobile analytics platform Flurry and its SDK as a foundation for a soon-to-be-announced mobile ad network. The Flurry SDK has been installed on more than 600,000 apps, in theory giving Yahoo […]

Face it: It’s unlikely your video campaign will go viral. Unlike Dollar Shave Club’s Michael Dubin, not everyone is a standup comedian. This is why metrics like engagement and target audience reach become much more sellable KPIs. Video platform Virool recognized this. Founded in 2012, the first iteration of the platform was as a self-serve tool for brands and […]

If you happen to have $4.5 million burning a hole in your pocket, congratulations! You can afford a 30-second Super Bowl TV spot. Of course, for most big game advertisers it’s not enough to have 30 seconds of spectacular creative – you also have to support it via online and social channels. “Social is huge […]