The SundaySky has shifted. Since the video ad company launched its SmartVideo platform in 2011, it has ramped up its focus on personalized ads and video content. It’s an evolution for a company whose platform was first used by brands like AT&T to create videos for customer messaging. SundaySky has raised $40 million in funding to date from investors […]
Remember the scene in the movie “Kill Bill, Vol. 2“ where the vengeful heroine, the Bride, is buried alive in a coffin and has to pound her way out with her bare fists? That’s your video ad. It’s essentially trapped in a box and buried in the publisher’s web page, and whether it can get out […]
The cost of Facebook ads is on the rise – but advertisers don’t seem to mind because they’re seeing results. At least for now. According to the most recent Q2 benchmark report from Facebook ad partner Nanigans, the click-through rate (CTR) on Facebook ads was up 146% year over year and rose 47% from the first quarter. Spend […]
Missing in the Media Rating Council’s (MRC) definition of in-browser video viewability (50% in view, playing for two consecutive seconds) is any stipulation around audibility. This isn’t an oversight – the MRC chose not to institute an audibility requirement because the technology doesn’t exist to determine muting in all instances, said David Gunzerath, SVP and […]
Facebook’s purchase of video supply-side platform (SSP) LiveRail for $500 million underpins its deeper foray into video advertising and positions the social network as a major force in premium publisher monetization. While some experts argue the purchase is a direct response to Google’s recent launch of its programmatic video marketplace Google Partner Select, the sum […]
Facebook has agreed to buy video ad platform LiveRail, the companies said today. The acquisition will build Facebook’s capabilities around video, both on its own platform and on those of other publishers. LiveRail customers include Major League Baseball (MLB.com), A&E Networks, Gannett and Dailymotion, giving Facebook its first video ad server integration with premium video owners. Terms of the deal weren’t […]
Three months after launching a pilot program for mobile app install ads, Twitter has made the offering available to all advertisers. The format is a bid to capture surging app promotion budgets that have been a boon to Facebook, Pandora and dozens of mobile-specific ad networks and demand-side platforms (DSPs) over the past two years. Ride-sharing service Lyft, EA […]
Before Brazil defeated Croatia at Arena de Sao Paulo to open the 2014 World Cup, the Coca-Cola Co. unfurled across the pitch the fruits of its biggest marketing campaign in its history: a giant mosaic called the “Happiness Flag.” But this campaign, which ended on the soccer field, began online. Activated across 175 countries, the Happiness Flag […]
When B. Bonin Bough, the VP of global media and consumer engagement at Mondelēz International, took the stage Tuesday at the Cannes Lions festival, he proclaimed that he couldn’t see a reason why brands wouldn’t go completely programmatic – a sentiment he held even back in 2013. In 2014, Mondelēz set the first stages of […]
In a wide-ranging panel at Cannes, CEOs Dick Costolo (Twitter), Philippe Dauman (Viacom) and Martin Sorrell (WPP) discussed the evolution of rich media consumption on mobile devices and why marketer investment in mobile video does not yet match consumer demand. Sorrell, who opened the panel by stating WPP spends $750 million with Viacom (said Dauman: […]
Twitter has seemingly renewed its commitment to the second screen, revealing plans Thursday to acquire live video clipping and distribution platform SnappyTV. “Our goal is to help publishers quickly share great moments from events so people can experience those moments as they happen,” wrote Baljeet Singh, a director of product management at Twitter, in a […]
Updated with comment from Yahoo Yahoo has been courting agencies for months, rumoredly circulating a blueprint to bring Tumblr sponsored posts off-site to Yahoo owned-and-operated properties, as AdExchanger reported in early May. Yahoo has now emerged with those plans publicly, rolling out on Tuesday Tumblr Sponsored Posts through Yahoo’s network, which the Internet company claims will reach […]
Penry Price has a long legacy as an advertising exec. He went from Google to Dstillery and, as of eight months ago, assumed the role of VP of marketing solutions at LinkedIn. Compared to his previous roles, Price has a slightly different imperative at LinkedIn. Because of the social network’s audience of 300 million business-minded registrants, […]
As advertisers seek ways to extend their broadcast media buys through cross-platform campaigns, cross-screen ad-delivery companies are bridging the technical gap. Such is the case with cross-screen tool Civolution, which has teamed up with Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer Brand Networks to help brands buy social ads in conjunction with live television events. Omnicom’s Resolution Media is […]
Why did Singapore Telecommunications’ ad tech subsidiary Amobee buy Adconion and Kontera for a combined $385 million? For Amobee CEO Mark Strecker, it was a matter of moving Amobee’s focus from mobile advertising to digital advertising. And the company needed Kontera’s technological assets and Adconion’s business organization to accomplish that. Once integrated, Amobee will have […]
Following its glitzy, star-studded digital NewFront in April, AOL got down to business. It closed in on marketing attribution vendor Convertro the same day Google grabbed pure-play competitor Adometry in early May. Then it went shopping again, snapping up TV audience-targeting platform PrecisionDemand. AOL’s acquisitive behavior is not entirely surprising. The company is constructing an […]
One of Facebook’s hidden assets is the waterfall of data signals it gets from other websites and apps. These signals wend their way to Facebook from social plugins, conversion pixels and retargeting cookies embedded on millions of websites and mobile apps. Facebook’s code snippets tell the social network whenever a user lands on a product […]
Monetizing apps in the iOS environment means playing by Apple’s rules, and occasionally adapting to changes in how those rules are enforced. Sometimes those changes can impact the way ads are served and tracked, as happened back in February when Apple (briefly) put a barbed wire fence around the use its Identifier For Advertising for […]
Twitter has snatched up mobile native advertising provider Namo Media, adding technology to enhance exchange-based monetization for app developers. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, and Twitter declined to comment. Namo Media has roughly eight employees, and will merge its product into the MoPub platform. The company’s SDK helps mobile app developers integrate native advertising by […]
The world’s largest independent ad tech company broke character this week. Before snatching up Paris-based ad viewability firm Alenty, as AdExchanger was first to report, AppNexus had been historically inclined to build rather than buy owing to its strong engineering culture. But that may be changing as bargains present themselves in the form of mature […]
User-generated photos and videos are a largely untapped resource for advertisers. The challenge is leveraging the inventory. A few startups have offered up solutions: GumGum helped L’Oréal place ads on publisher sites based on the hair color of women in photos and Stipple lets consumers make purchases directly from an image. British ad tech firm WeSEE is […]
The underlying theme of SAP’s massive annual show SapphireNow in Orlando, Fla. this week was simplicity, or SAP’s lack thereof. CEO Bill McDermott heralded the dream of enabling the enterprise software company to “Run Simple,” while acknowledging the company’s skeptics. “Yes, I do realize there will be some of you, especially the pundits, who say we can’t,” […]
Beginning in September, Yahoo Japan will use Taboola’s video discovery and content distribution network to power recommendations on owned and operated properties, as well as partner publisher sites, with the rollout of Yahoo Content Discovery. Yahoo Japan is a joint venture of Yahoo and SoftBank. In addition to its role as an online search and Internet […]
Two months after the Media Ratings Council (MRC) green-lighted viewable impressions as a viable metric for transacting display ads, real-time bidding platform AppNexus has acquired French viewability vendor Alenty for an undisclosed sum. The deal closed Monday, AppNexus confirmed to AdExchanger. Paris-based Alenty was founded in 2007 by CEO Laurent Nicolas and CTO Nicolas Thomas. It claims to […]
Is Bitly quietly becoming a platform company? The link cruncher rolled out Tuesday the Bitly Certified Partner Program with inaugural partners Percolate, Spredfast, Buffer, Sprinklr, IFTTT, Dynamic Signal and EveryoneSocial. “We’re focused on platform integrations to support owned, earned and paid campaigns with Bitly’s tools and audience data,” said Jennifer Hanser, the company’s newly-hired senior […]
Online advertising-management provider Marin Software has acquired retargeting platform Perfect Audience for $22.8 million. The deal adds to Marin’s social media and display advertising retargeting arsenal and to the flurry of funding rounds, IPOs and acquisitions in the retargeting space over the past year. San Francisco-based Perfect Audience was founded under the Y Combinator seed accelerator program […]
Mobile and video ad spend are rising and, while North America is the leader in ad spend, Europe is catching up, according to quarterly reports from ad exchanges Turn and Smaato. Increased competition for inventory continued to drive up effective cost per thousand impression (eCPM) rates across channels, reported Turn. Social media eCPM rose 64%, […]
Vendors are racing to offer advertising solutions for Instagram, which recently struck a multimillion-dollar ad deal with Omnicom. One such company is Culver City, Calif.-based startup theAmplify. The 11-employee firm pegs itself as an “Instagram marketing agency.” AdExchanger spoke with President Justin Rezvani. AdExchanger: What problem are you trying to solve? JUSTIN REZVANI: We want to […]
Questions lingered after the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) presented to the data marketing space a 100-plus-page push for greater transparency Tuesday. The FTC’s manifesto, “Data Brokers: A Call for Transparency and Accountability,” sparked debate about what a data broker is and the potential pitfalls for a proposed centralized portal through which consumers can control the […]
AdChina, an advertising technology company for both the supply and demand side in China, is expanding its mobile side of the business to incorporate a mobile data management platform (DMP), in addition to the mobile ad network and mobile DSP that the company offers. “Most of our competitors are either PC-only and trying to expand […]
Good news for advertisers, many of whom have found it difficult to meet minimum spend budgets on ChatGPT: Logged-out users can now see ads.
The Amazon advertising boycott last week wasn’t really about Amazon’s ad platform as much as it was a dispute over evolving seller economics, which raises a fundamental question: Can you even build a brand on Amazon anymore?
For the first time, Unity’s gaming audiences will be available for ad targeting outside the Unity platform, with Index Exchange using Unity’s data to curate web and CTV inventory.
Agentic commerce company Envive builds on-site agents for brands like footwear company Clove, painting a clearer picture of what their customers are looking for.
Paramount might have outlasted and outbid Netflix in the competition to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, but Netflix is not overly fussed about the loss.
Paramount is merging the ad tech stacks behind Paramount+ and Pluto TV, releasing a new performance product, offering more control over ad placements and introducing dynamic ad insertion in live sports.
