Platforms

AOL CEO Tim Armstrong addressed a crowd of close to 2,000 media buyers at its NewFront Tuesday night with an exuberant, “tonight is about connecting content with distribution.” It’s clear, with AOL, that much of that connection will happen through video. Ran Harnevo, president of AOL Video, talked up digital video and its intent to […]

Twitter tried to avoid last quarter’s narrative, centered around flagging audience growth, in its Q1 call Tuesday; instead, the company emphasized a 28% quarterly increase in ad engagements (specifically retweets and favorites), driven by higher-quality ads and the use of rich media. Such was the overall theme: engagement over timeline views and audience growth. Yet, the fact remains the latter […]

Rubicon Project went public earlier this month, becoming the fifth ad tech company – give or take – to do so since the IPO door was flung open around this time last year. Since then its stock has had a bumpy ride, but no more so than some others in its class. CEO Frank Addante […]

It seems everyone and their mothers are pushing native ad units and tools to support them. Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo and most recently AOL all have native, in-feed ad units. As these formats catch on, ad tech companies like Sharethrough, Nativo and DistroScale have developed tools designed to automate ad distribution across different publishers’ sites while matching […]

RockYou is clawing its way back. The 8-year-old company, which once produced social games, was one of the first MySpace and Facebook third-party app developers until it suffered a major data breach five years ago that exposed unencrypted user account data of more than 32 million users. That wasn’t RockYou’s only struggle. The company couldn’t […]

LinkedIn has been ramping up its marketing offerings over the last year in the form of self-serve Sponsored Updates and brand Showcase Pages. The professional social platform moved forward Thursday with the roll-out of a Sponsored Updates API the company has alluded to in recent months. It has also formalized two new Certified Marketing Partner programs. […]

AOL introduced its own native ad unit for the mobile Web and apps on Thursday. The ads include an image and text that is inserted in between content on the publisher’s site or app. “Before, if advertisers wanted to work with seven different publishers, they’d have to customize their creative and specs with each one, […]

While both programmatic buying and online video are in vogue, the best way for these two to come together—in the opinions of both publishers and brands—is through private marketplace buys. Programmatic video ad platform BrightRoll has seen 50% of the top 50 publishers engage in private marketplace deals, said company founder and CEO Tod Sacerdoti […]

Facebook reported first-quarter earnings Wednesday, exceeding analyst estimates with ad revenue growth of 82% to $2.3 billion. In contrast, Google’s Q1 revenues were seven times larger at $15.4 billion, but its growth was only 19%. Read the earnings release. Mobile was the star of the show, from both an audience and revenue standpoint. The number […]

Google’s search engine may eventually reward Web sites that use encryption and if it does, advertisers may find themselves cut off from useful data. Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s Webspam team, hinted at the recent SMX West conference hosted by Search Engine Watch editor Danny Sullivan that Google is indeed considering revising its search […]

Facebook’s unveiling last week of a mobile feature called Nearby Friends, through which it might enable location-targeted ads, places the company in a highly competitive segment of tech vendors offering similar products. The company that will develop the best location-targeted ad product, however, is the one that will couple it with the most relevant consumer […]

First Facebook, then Twitter and now Google. The search giant unveiled plans Tuesday to offer app install ads on mobile search and YouTube (where they’ll be presented like TrueView ads), similar to the units that have been a cash cow for Facebook. The company said it plans to launch this new product over the next […]

Four months after first introducing support for native advertising, Twitter’s mobile exchange MoPub is pitching the solution to all publishers. Consisting of an native ads SDK, a publisher-side ad server,  and an RTB extension, the MoPub native product is a “a complete solution for direct sold and exchange traded native ads, delivering the same control […]

Premium publishers have needed some convincing to open up their more valuable inventory to programmatic buying technologies. But interest in tools that streamline the often unwieldy direct sales process has heated up. It’s one of the reasons Yieldex, a company best known for producing forecasting and analytics tools for premium inventory, introduced a new line […]

Despite some volatility in ad pricing and performance last quarter, Adobe Index’s Q1 2014 Social Media Intelligence Report indicates Facebook remains the leader in driving revenue per visit (RPV). Meanwhile other platforms – namely Twitter, Tumblr and Pinterest – are in some instances noticing quarterly double-digit declines in RPV. In paid social, Facebook saw a […]

Social platforms like Tumblr and Twitter give content producers tremendous opportunities to engage with audiences. But they also present a tremendous challenge – namely being able to distribute and measure that content cross-platform. As the TV upfront season approaches, Viacom sales chief Jeff Lucas said overcoming this challenge will be a priority. Viacom is working […]

The native ad company Sharethrough expanded its services nearly three years ago from a purely video ad platform to multiple types of branded content. The move to include additional branded content has paid off. The company raised $17 million in a third round of funding in January. It also released a new SDK in early April […]

The rules of marketing have changed drastically for organizations that traditionally relied heavily on the big broadcast buy. Consider political campaigns, which are placing a growing premium on targeted messaging across multiple channels. The tech-savvy campaign that President Barack Obama’s aides unleashed six years ago was only the beginning – employing digital strategies is quickly becoming […]

Twitter, as rumored, is developing an ad product specifically designed for app installs. On Thursday, Twitter acknowledged the existence of the mobile app promotion suite, the first product that connects Twitter with the mobile ad exchange it inherited when it acquired MoPub last September. Advertisers shouldn’t try to jump on board quite yet, however: The […]

Correction 4/17: The product name is Harvest RTG, not Heritage RTG as originally stated. Public service advertising (PSA) agency PlowShare is introducing a programmatic trading desk, Harvest RTG, built by advertising technology provider RUN. The platform is designed to enable non-profits to run PSA’s programmatically, targeting diverse audiences across different screens. Josh Millman, director of digital […]

Despite a surge in programmatic buying for mobile ads, a recent Forrester report cautions that challenges unique to mobile advertising make direct sales away from open marketplaces the preferred buying method for the foreseeable future. Based on interviews with 21 industry executives, mobile marketing analyst Jennifer Wise wrote in her report – “Mobile Advertising: It’s Time to […]

Facebook’s Atlas Advertiser Suite is laying the groundwork to support “programmatic direct” buys for Microsoft inventory. Beginning in early 2015, Atlas will begin supporting programmatic purchases of Microsoft ads directly through the Atlas interface. Atlas customers will be able to query avails in Microsoft’s ad serving system and reserve guaranteed buys programmatically. Over time the […]

Yahoo reported gross revenue of $1.13 billion and $1.07 billion in ex-TAC revenue for Q1 2014. GAAP revenue was down 1% from the same period last year, but ex-traffic acquisition revenue was up 1%. GAAP display revenue was $453 million for Q1 2014, flat compared to the same period last year. Yahoo increased the number […]

Apple has been slow to improve its offerings around mobile app installs, but it’s showing signs of life. Last week, the company issued its first clear signal that its Identifier for Advertising (IDFA) can be used as an attribution tool. But what about its own mobile ad product, a.k.a. iAd? The company has been more […]

When Jimmy Maymann sold content distribution company GoViral to AOL in 2011, some expected the Danish entrepreneur to take his share of the $96.7 million exit and chase new startup opportunities. Instead, he stayed on at AOL as SVP for international, much to even his surprise. “I always knew I didn’t want to stay on […]

IBM will acquire email and marketing automation vendor Silverpop, the companies said Thursday. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but a story last month in the Atlanta Business Chronicle reported the value of a rumored acquisition at $270 million. IBM, like Adobe and Oracle, has remained steady on the acquisitions front. “They got massive marketing […]

Despite the growth of mobile real-time bidding (RTB) platforms, some publishers remain skeptical about the benefits of this technology, as they are fearful of cannibalizing inventory and driving down auction rates. The mobile ad platform TapSense, which offers a private mobile RTB marketplace, is tackling this challenge by making a deal with publishers. “We want […]

Facebook is increasingly focused on connecting audiences across screens and channels, and helping clients measure those results. Graham Mudd, the company’s director of advertising measurement for North America, described aspects of the company’s approach to AdExchanger at the IAB’s Mobile Marketplace conference. “We believe the future of marketing is being able to find specific consumers […]

Comcast AdDelivery on Tuesday struck a deal with digital ad-distribution company Adstream to expand global video ad delivery efforts. The deal essentially fulfills each companies’ geographic delivery needs. While Comcast historically had a strong domestic delivery network, Adstream, an Australian-founded, $65 million-a-year business that’s headquartered in London, gives Comcast pertinent global reach. A trend in […]

Online video, especially online video embedded in social networks, is essentially a free-for-all. There are few rules or best practices and brands and vendors are still figuring out what works best for consumers. SnappyTV is figuring its one-tap native video playback on Facebook and Twitter, a feature the video content platform is releasing Tuesday, will […]