Platforms

No one’s going to say that walled gardens don’t have their perks. Just look at Facebook and the new and improved Atlas. Facebook’s long-awaited announcement of a cross-device user ID solution, made Monday as part of Advertising Week in New York City, invites advertisers into a putative Eden that gives them access to what could […]

If AOL hadn’t already made it clear it would double down on digital video and end-to-end marketing tech at its Digital Newfront in May, Monday’s Programmatic Upfront at Advertising Week in New York left no doubt. AOL’s latest development? The company has layered in and built a data-management platform (DMP) out of attribution vendor Convertro, which it purchased […]

While AOL and Publicis Groupe have been programmatic cohorts since last July, the media giant and the holding company took their partnership to another level by adding video and linear TV to the mix Monday at Advertising Week. The move will link Publicis’ digital arm VivaKi with AOL Platforms, which will become Publicis’ preferred partner for programmatic video. […]

Google’s betting the industry needs a hand making ads workable across devices. On Monday, it unwrapped two mobile display formats and a handful of desktop tools that aim to help advertisers optimize ads across multiple screens. Google will release the tools piecemeal over the coming months across the Google Display Network, the AdMob Network and […]

Facebook has done something big with the relaunch of its Atlas ad server, acquired from Microsoft 16 months ago, but that something has little to do with serving ads. Rather it’s about replacing the beleaguered cookie with a new, more reliable ad-tracking mechanism for the mobile age. The new Atlas – expected to be unveiled […]

Yahoo has $6 billion in its wallet thanks to Alibaba’s IPO last week. But investors showed little faith in Yahoo’s core business, sending the stock plummeting. An article in Businessweek went so far as to value Yahoo’s business at zero. That means CEO Marissa Mayer needs to go shopping. “I think she’ll do a big […]

This is the ninth in a series of interviews with vendors combating the problem of ad fraud. Other companies participating in this series include Moat, Sizmek and Asia RTB. Read previous interviews with DoubleVerify, Dstillery, Forensiq, Integral Ad Science, PubChecker, Telemetry, Videology and White Ops. Digital ad fraud isn’t anything new. comScore has been picking […]

Hootsuite, which raised $60 million in new venture financing from an unnamed Boston asset manager Thursday (it has $250 million now in total financing), is at a major crossroads. As it branches into enterprise markets, the company is also planning a bigger push into advertising. As a consumer-facing platform, Hootsuite – a $1 billion company […]

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Put another way, mobile links that don’t link directly to specific in-app content are pretty weak. Deep-linking tech provider Branch Metrics revealed it’s received $3 million in seed funding Tuesday led by New Enterprise Associates, the majority of which it plans to use to build […]

AppNexus wants to rethink the publisher ad server as a holistic platform for yield management, and it’s starting with a rather old piece of technology. The company will acquire Open AdStream (OAS) from Xaxis as part of a major transaction with WPP Group that will also give the holding company a $25 million stake in […]

Do open auctions have a future? It depends which publisher you ask. According to executives from Meredith, Yahoo and AOL, who spoke at the Programmatic I/O Conference on Wednesday, change is coming. “It won’t live on” in its current form, said Meredith’s VP of programmatic sales and strategy, Chip Schenck. “Because it’s used and thought […]

Russian real-time bidding (RTB) engineering firm IPONWEB has largely operated behind the scenes as the backbone of many media-trading platforms. Notably, IPONWEB helped RightMedia build out its ad exchange preceding its 2007 acquisition by Yahoo, and has since constructed 40 more trading systems at a similar or smaller scale. In late August, IPONWEB moved in […]

Marketers generally react to Yo, the one-touch messaging app, with bemused dismissal. Its sole function lets users ping each other with a single “Yo,” the simplicity of which has sparked no shortage of skepticism. But no one took Snapchat seriously when it surfaced, and the ephemeral photo messaging platform is now valued at a behemoth […]

Rather than an isolated channel, programmatic is a means to an end – and it all starts with measurement between devices and across channels. And from measurement comes revenue. “The whole cross-device measurement question is about understanding the broader marketing goal, but we also all know that if it’s not measured, it’s not valued,” said […]

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) wants to know what marketers are doing with segmentation profiles like “urban scrambler” and “ethnic second city struggler.” The potential for advertising segmentation to exacerbate inequality was a central topic at Monday’s FTC workshop, “Big Data: A Tool for Inclusion or Exclusion?” The Washington, D.C., event included representatives from advocacy groups […]

Chango’s new CRO, Keith Lorizio, has an ad tech CV as long as your arm – but it was only a short while ago that he became a convert to the gospel of programmatic. “I wasn’t a fan of programmatic about three years ago back when I was a rep with a big publisher working […]

Twitter’s Tailored Audiences just got a little more more tailored. Advertisers can now augment their customer data using mobile advertising IDs and mobile phone numbers as a way to reach existing customers and increase audience size. In essence, the move is an extension of Twitter’s Tailored Audiences for CRM retargeting, which allows advertisers to use […]

During a presentation at the AppNexus annual Summit last November, Microsoft’s Esco Strong made a promise to beef up its exchange inventory. As of Tuesday, Strong, director of programmatic managements, said that promise had been fulfilled in the form of new mobile inventory being made available in the Microsoft Advertising Exchange (MAX). Advertisers in the US, Australia, […]

Alliance Data Systems’ (ADS) intent to acquire Conversant (formerly ValueClick) for its Epsilon subsidiary might seem like a change in direction. R Ray Wang, principal analyst and founder at Constellation Research, described the intent to acquire as “the right move” to make Epsilon “a legit…tech company.” On a first gloss that seems like a pivot. Epsilon […]

This is the seventh in a series of interviews with vendors combating the problem of ad fraud. Other companies participating in this series include Moat, Telemetry, Sizmek, comScore and Asia RTB. Read previous interviews with DoubleVerify, Forensiq, Integral Ad Science, PubChecker, Videology and White Ops. The battle against botnets is ongoing. Ad tech firm Dstillery […]

Wondering about Conversant’s future? Wonder no more, as the ad network turned ad tech company will be acquired by Alliance Data for $2.3 billion in cash and stock. Conversant (formerly known as ValueClick/Dotomi) will be folded into Alliance’s marketing services division Epsilon. Alliance hopes to close the deal by the end of the year. From the release: […]

Pinterest is one of those up-and-comers in the world of social advertising. The image-based social network doesn’t divulge audience numbers, but comScore pegs it at around 60 million monthly active users (MAUs). Of course, that’s not quite the volume of Twitter’s 271 million MAUs or Facebook’s 1.3 billion, but it’s still nothing to sneeze at, especially as […]

AOL added another premium ad format to its programmatic offerings on Monday. A full-page mobile ad, the Road Devil Interstitial for Mobile, is part of an effort to add more premium, brand-friendly units to its programmatic inventory. The unit offers brands the ability to display a store locator, bring in recent tweets or play a video […]

Rocket Fuel closed on its acquisition of [x+1] Friday, transforming itself from what was primarily an ad network company into a credible platform play focused on the software-as-a-service opportunity in programmatic marketing. The new Rocket Fuel has far more of the attributes of a “programmatic marketing platform” than the old one, providing clients with the […]

Each day, 7 million fans tune in to YouTube to see bubbly video blogger Bethany Mota make breakfast or braid her hair. The breakout video star draws tweens eager for a taste of Mota’s fashion and beauty must-haves, averaging 100 million minutes of video watched per month. She’s equally attractive to brand advertisers, clinching campaigns […]

Facebook and Twitter are keen to build more commerce functionality into the social stream. Earlier this summer Facebook began working with select commerce brands to support direct transactions on its platform, and Twitter has been expected to produce something similar after sharp-eyed users spotted a semi-functional “buy” button on the site in July. Well, now that other […]

Ad management platform Marin Software has partnered with Yandex to let its clients automate and manage paid search campaigns on the Russian search engine giant. Basically, if those clients have similar advertising campaigns running on other search engines, they can clone those campaigns and pop them into Yandex. “We have more global clients looking to leverage the campaigns, […]

This is the sixth in a series of interviews with vendors combating the problem of ad fraud. Other companies participating in this series include Moat, Telemetry, Sizmek, comScore, Dstillery and Asia RTB. Read previous interviews with DoubleVerify, Forensiq, Integral Ad Science, PubChecker and Videology. When it comes to catching bots, higher walls and better locks […]

Apple is laying down the law for app developers through a set of new rules, which are slated to take effect in conjunction with its long-awaited iPhone release on Monday. Apple’s alterations restrict developers’ access to data from HealthKit, its factory-installed fitness monitoring app, and third-party app extensions. The new stipulations will likely apply to the next-generation […]

Following a $50 million infusion of cash Thursday, mobile location vendor xAd appears to be sitting pretty. The money is a combination of equity and debt financing. XAd is not publicly disclosing the split. According to CEO Dipanshu Sharma, the company doesn’t “have any immediate plans for the funding,” which came courtesy of Institutional Venture Partners, […]