Platforms

Content recommendation engine Taboola has acquired Perfect Market, which develops a publisher-side solution designed to improve engagement, driving traffic, and monetization. Taboola CEO Adam Singolda wouldn’t disclose the deal’s terms, though he said it was a mix of cash and stock. With the acquisition, Taboola will change from being a content discovery engine to being […]

It’s hard to bucket Ooyala. The seven-year-old company, which already dabbles in both video monetization and digital content management, wants to be for TV “what Cisco is to network computing.” While Ooyala’s a full-service consultancy that helps traditional networks migrate to the cloud, it also has a software business. The Ooyala Platform hooks up to […]

This is the first in a series of interviews with vendors combating the problem of ad fraud. Other companies participating in this series include White Ops, DoubleVerify, Forensiq, Moat, PubChecker, Telemetry and Integral Ad Science. Videology might not be specialists in ad fraud like White Ops or Integral Ad Science, but preventing and detecting it […]

LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner confirmed the social network wants to enable customers to prospect and nurture leads well beyond its own walled garden during the company’s Q2 call Thursday, though he stopped short of calling it an ad network. “As big a network as LinkedIn is – and they’re adding exponential numbers of people everyday […]

Inventory is where it’s at for RockYou. The company, which recently pivoted away from game publishing to focus on becoming a programmatic in-game video ad network, has raised $10 million in funding from FastPay, a sort of anti-VC that extends credit lines to digital media companies. It plans to use the money to buy up […]

This is the second in a series on evolution in the lead gen space. Read our earlier story on social media lead generation. What’s in a lead? Between aggregators reselling leads, marketers deciding where to focus their sales efforts, and the myriad of marketing platforms supporting both, it can be hard to judge the quality […]

Professional social networking platform LinkedIn on Thursday posted Q2 revenue of $534 million, a 47% YoY increase from $364 million. Marketing Solutions revenue, now 20% of LinkedIn’s total business, was $101 million for the second quarter, a 44% uptick from last year. Talent Solutions and Premium Subscriptions account for 60% and 20% of revenue, respectively. LinkedIn […]

You’re browsing the web and you see a retargeted web banner from eBay for a pair of shoes. You were on the fence before, but…those shoes really are nice. OK. You decide to buy. You click on the banner with credit card in hand and it takes you to — the eBay homepage? That would […]

Memo to marketing industry observers waiting for ad tech to merge with marketing tech: It’s probably safe to go make popcorn, as this could take a while. It’s been a year since Salesforce.com acquired ExactTarget. On Thursday, the company hosted a press event in San Francisco to commemorate the deal’s anniversary, using the occasion to […]

When it comes to audience, there can never be too much of a good thing. That’s the theory behind a self-serve tool from Medialets, dubbed Servo Total Attribution, released Wednesday. The tool is designed to help media buyers, agencies and exchanges measure mobile ad ROI in real time by tying mobile conversions to impressions served […]

AT&T AdWorks, the advanced ads division of the telecom company, is baking two new data sources into its TV audience-targeting tool, TV Blueprint. One source – anonymous, aggregate data on some 70 million subscribers – gives advertisers working with AT&T the ability to reach people based on factors like device, operating system, whether or not […]

Despite the troubles Twitter has had maintaining its audience growth rates, particularly in the US, it has consistently reported revenue increases. Its Q2 2014 revenue was no exception: The company hauled in $312 million – a 124% YoY increase. Twitter again beat analyst predictions that the social media company would see revenues of about $282 million. Advertising […]

Nielsen’s revenue soared in the second quarter. The company on Tuesday reported a nearly 16% revenue growth spurt in the second quarter of 2014 to $1.6 billion, up from $1.4 billion at this time last year, minus the recent acquisitions of Arbitron and Harris Interactive. Although revenue was up, net profits were nothing to write […]

“We sometimes make the joke that we’re the largest mobile ad company that no one’s ever heard of, and it’s kind of true,” quipped Scott Swanson, president of global advertising sales at Opera Mediaworks. The mobile ad platform is looking to change that with the hire of Ryan Griffin as SVP of strategic accounts. Griffin, […]

The strategic deal struck Monday between AOL Platforms and French agency Havas’ programmatic trading desk Affiperf benefits both parties: AOL Platforms gets sell-in with Havas’ clients and Havas can unify media assets for marketers in a central hub – ONE By AOL. This is AOL’s second major agency deal since March, when it debuted ONE […]

ChoiceStream, which began as a product recommendation engine before three years ago shifting to programmatic ad tech, has raised $7.5 million in Series B financing from Fred Alger Management. The financing will help ChoiceStream grow out its sales capabilities, with the remainder going toward the build-out of its demand-side platform (DSP)  technology. CEO Eric Bosco […]

You don’t have to be good at math to know that if you only get $3 back on a $4 investment, then there’s something painfully wrong with whatever you’re doing. No one’s more aware of that than game app developers, some of whom spend thousands of dollars on user acquisition daily — though the truly […]

What’s the hottest new digital toy? If you’re Facebook and Twitter, it’s the buy button. To recap: Facebook published a blog post explaining its experimentation with a buy button – currently with select small and medium-sized businesses – with which users can purchase goods directly through the Facebook platform. This announcement followed Twitter’s own dalliance with […]

Mobile ad revenue was up significantly for Pandora during Q2 2014, jumping 59% from last quarter to $167.5 million, a 51% year-over-year increase. Total revenue for the Internet radio streaming company came in at $218.9 million, 76% of which was made up by mobile ad revenue. While it represented a 38% year-over-year growth for the […]

Multiscreen tracking company Crosswise, which on Thursday launched its cross-device identification solution, doesn’t care about buying media. It doesn’t care about creating segments. Basically, Crosswise CEO and co-founder Steve Glanz doesn’t care if you’re a man or a woman, how old you are or where you live — at least not as isolated data points. […]

Facebook reported second-quarter earnings on Thursday amid generally high expectations for the company’s advertising business, especially as it pertains to mobile and video. Investors were not disappointed. Facebook posted Q2 advertising revenue of $2.68 billion, a 67% increase from Q2 2013. Of that, mobile advertising is becoming increasingly important – it constituted 62% of Facebook’s total advertising […]

Professional social networking platform LinkedIn seemed to commit to programmatic, particularly among the B2B community, when it acquired business data company Bizo for an estimated $175 million Tuesday. LinkedIn “has a bet on CRM and their investment in Bizo shows they really want to double down on B2B marketers,” said Ray Wang, chairman and principal […]

Yahoo has doubled down on its mobile bet, agreeing to buy mobile analytics and advertising company Flurry. What does that mean for a company that less than a week ago reported disappointing earnings as it struggled with declining CPMs? A company that’s not yet even breaking out its mobile revenue in its earning statements, while […]

What does Yahoo’s deal to buy Flurry have to do with Twitter’s purchase of mobile exchange MoPub last year? Nothing and everything. But first, let’s define our terms. What is Flurry, exactly? Flurry has a grab bag of solutions under its umbrella: analytics, ad network capabilities and ad exchange functions. But at its core, Flurry […]

LinkedIn will buy Bizo, a B2B display ad platform, for $175 million in cash and stock, the companies said Tuesday. “It’s exciting for us to bring Bizo’s expertise and technology into our ecosystem,” said Deep Nishar, LinkedIn’s SVP of product and user experience, in a statement. “Our ability to integrate their B2B solutions with our content marketing […]

Quantifind, whose technology is designed to find relevant marketing signals amid the noise of unstructured data, has raised $12 million in a strategic growth round led by Comcast Ventures and Iris Capital. The company had raised about $10.5 million in the last eight months, according to cofounder and CEO Ari Tuchman, although this does not […]

It’s hard times for late stage advertising technology companies. Many public and private investors are gloomy on ad tech, and older startups needing new funds lately find themselves forced to choose between unattractive options, such as going public or raising money at a lower valuation, a painful event sometimes referred to as a “down round.” […]

Just a week after Yahoo’s Q2 earnings call, in which CEO Marissa Mayer said she was looking to position Yahoo as a “mobile-first company,” the M&A bug has hit again: Yahoo is acquiring mobile analytics platform and ad marketplace Flurry. Publishers sell their ad inventory through Flurry’s platform or buy traffic from applications, which also provides analytics to […]

With video ad tech deal activity surging, independent players must decide whether to go it alone, brave the impending volatility of public markets or sell. Facebook acquired video supply-side platform LiveRail for an estimated $500 million in early July. Yahoo one week later snapped up video distribution platform RayV, which answered some questions about its […]

Following an injection of $15 million in Series B funding, app monetization platform and mobile SSP Supersonic has its eye on the East. The company, which changed its name from SupersonicAds last week, plans to use the cash to expand into Asia — China, Japan, and India specifically — which Supersonic CEO and cofounder Gil […]