Platforms

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 […]

The proliferation of customer relationship management (CRM) platforms and marketing automation platforms has allowed business-to-business (B2B) marketers to focus higher up the sales funnel and seek out vendors to automate lead gathering. At the same time, the growth of social media has provided a wealth of data on potential customers. It’s led some marketers to […]

Triggit, known to many as the “Facebook-only” retargeting firm, is taking on native ads outside the Facebook platform. The company is courting publishers with the promise to support their native advertising formats and bring the kind of in-stream ad experiences it has run in Facebook’s news feed over the past year to a wider range […]

Video demand-side platform TubeMogul priced the shares for its public offering Thursday, and the target price is significantly lower than the $11 to $13 per share the company previously specified. The company now expects to debut shares at a rock-bottom $7.00 to $8.00, according to an updated S-1. The company had previously hoped to raise $93 million, […]

China accounted for more than half of the total global mobile ad spend in Q2 2014. We’ll let that sink in for a moment. From a number like that, it’s little wonder Chinese advertisers and developers are increasing their mobile spend and scaling up their businesses internationally, according to a report released Thursday by app […]

The sad tale of mobile ad exchange Mobclix, which was forced to declare bankruptcy in 2013 after being acquired — and mismanaged — by mobile agency Velti, seems like it could have a happy ending. In November, Mobclix was acquired yet again, re-emerging several months ago as Axonix, a programmatic mobile exchange underpinned by the […]

In its second quarter, Yahoo sold 24% more ads compared to the second quarter of 2013, and yet the price per ad went down 24%, suggesting the company has been unable to stem the tide against declining CPMs. (Read the press release.) CEO Marissa Mayer expressed disappointment in the company’s display ad performance. “Our top priority is […]

The cross-device measurement chasm just got a little smaller with the commercial release of mobile ad measurement capabilities, now available as part of Nielsen’s Online Campaign Ratings (OCR) tool. The promise of mobile web and in-app measurement is both an alluring prospect for advertisers looking for a cross-platform view of consumers across digital and TV […]

Yahoo finally has its video distribution platform. Following flirtations with Hulu, Dailymotion and NDN, the company pulled the trigger Friday on Rayv, an Israeli company focused on high-quality video. In a post on Yahoo-owned Tumblr, Yahoo’s VP of cloud platform and services, P.P.S. Narayan, described how the deal is meant to enhance Yahoo’s “underlying technology […]

“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. In general, I’m a huge fan of making the buying and selling of digital ads more efficient and effective. This desire to continually evolve and improve […]

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 […]