Platforms

Online video player and distributor Brightcove has extended short-form video support for Twitter’s growing slew of video-monetization tools, Twitter Amplify and Twitter Video Cards. Underpinned by tech from its recent acquisition of digital ad-insertion platform Unicorn Media, the Brightcove Once cloud platform is designed to enable publishers and media companies to ease the playback of […]

Call 2011 and 2012 the first wave of social CRM, when companies like Salesforce.com and Oracle snapped up social media analytics and marketing companies. Little more than one year later, all signs point toward paid media becoming a part of the enterprise social stack with more M&A and partnerships likely to come. Although CRM, in […]

Are Twitter and Pinterest on their way out and is there room for other social networks? These were among the topics that advertising and marketing executives tackled on a panel discussion on day two of Ad Age’s Digital Conference. The panelists included Bob Lord, CEO of AOL Platforms; Scott Galloway of L2ThinkTank; Kelly Mooney, CEO […]

As the digital video ecosystem gets more crowded, players that plan for cross-device content delivery and who can partner with multiple platforms will win. Both Amazon and Yahoo have been working toward this by mastering their respective delivery methods, increasing audience scale and developing premium inventory. Consider Amazon’s Wednesday launch of its Fire TV set-top […]

Rubicon Project began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday at $15, the low end of its previously stated $15 to $17 range range. Updated: As of 10:45 a.m. EDT, the stock was trading up 34% at $2o.10 per share. CEO Frank Addante and fellow C-Suite founders Greg Raifman (president) and Todd Tappin (COO/CFO) were […]

Mobile app install ads have proven to be lucrative for Facebook, and sources say Twitter is close to releasing its own version of such ads along with a new mobile app install partner program. “Given the prevalence of Twitter app usage in mobile, which has an even higher percentage of mobile vs. desktop than Facebook, […]

Speculation about Alibaba’s upcoming IPO pegs Yahoo’s share at about $10 billion, giving Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer substantial firepower to acquire more companies and develop Yahoo’s businesses. But Mayer has an extremely thin margin of error to turn the Sunnyvale, CA company’s fortunes around. Despite its expected windfall, Yahoo is struggling. Its revenue for 2013 […]

Rob Leathern, the CEO of Optimal Inc. who sold his company to Brand Networks last year for $35 million, is sailing for new shores. The serial entrepreneur and one-time research analyst told AdExchanger he has started work on a new venture that is aimed at consumers and is not ad-related. Leathern, whose title was chief […]

Shirlene Chandrapal, former director of Yahoo! Connected TV (CTV) in Europe, says connected television will connect advertisers with a highly engaged audience whose medium of choice is the Internet. Chandrapal now works for cross-channel advertising technology company Adconion Direct, where she’s tasked with driving CTV’s US expansion. She’s taking on a market where an estimated […]

Mobile ad platform 4INFO ties mobile ad campaigns to offline conversion rates by matching offline consumer data with mobile devices on a household level. Founded in 2004, the company started out as a SMS publishing company but pivoted to mobile advertising in 2010. Its client roster includes Macy’s, Target, Kraft, Campbell’s, Walmart and Southwest Airlines. […]

Social data analytics platform 4C released a study, commissioned by Facebook, ranking television show and genre popularity among consumers of various product categories. The research was the result of the company’s data science team combing Facebook for publicly available user behavior data. While some results were unsurprising — the strongest link for alcohol brand audiences […]

AOL Networks on Wednesday rebranded as AOL Platforms. As part of the rebrand, the company has rolled programmatic capabilities for video with Adap.tv, mobile and display with the AdLearn Open Platform (AOP) and its supply-side Marketplace product, into the development of platform “ONE by AOL.” IPG Mediabrands is the charter agency partner for ONE, which […]

A company already making waves in the insurance advertising world has taken the wraps off a “programmatic” approach to lead generation. Dubbed MediaAlpha Exchange, the demand-side platform vendor has already engaged with some of the biggest names in advertising— including Geico , Progressive and Esurance—to target audiences and acquire customers through custom bidding strategies for […]

Location data is a key component of many mobile ad strategies, but more is needed to make the ads relevant. Sportswear company Columbia wanted to reach people who were likely to be interested in its Omni-Heat jackets, but it knew that serving ads in cold climates wasn’t enough. Through the ad agency BSSP, Columbia tapped […]

One challenge of programmatic buying in the Asia-Pacific region is lack of data. Two Singapore-based companies, Seed and mediaQuark, are joining forces to provide more audience data solutions to Southeast Asia. The merger, announced today, brings together audience development from Seed and media trading technology from mediaQuark. The new company, simply called mediaQuark, to provide […]

Mobile ad startups take note: Opera Mediaworks is revving up its acquisition engine. Spun out from the Norwegian browser company Opera Software last year, Opera Mediaworks is made up of companies such as AdMarvel, Mobile Theory, 4th Screen Advertising and Handster. After integrating its various services into one suite, the company’s next goal is to […]

If all goes according to plan, Rubicon Project’s public offering will raise about $108 million ($77 million after expenses) in cash and give it a market cap of $671 million. In an update to its January S-1 filing with the US Securities And Exchange Commission, the company said shareholders will offer 6.8 million shares of […]

Mobile app retargeting firm ActionX is the latest company with a solution to help retailers target consumers across screens. ActionX’s Crossfire technology uses a set of pixels on a retailer’s app or website to track customers logged in to the site across a mobile device and desktop PC. “[Customers] roll up their cross-screen data and […]

Facebook and Google have emerged as the front-runners in the race to capture mobile ad dollars, with Google leading the charge. Facebook’s efforts to extend its mobile reach and rapid growth has made it a strong contender for first place, but can the behemoth social network overtake Google’s hold on mobile advertising? It is difficult […]

As brick and mortar giants like Walmart and Tesco do more to monetize their customer data, the question becomes – will they go it alone or maintain third-party partnerships? Tesco subsidiary dunnhumby’s rumored purchase of demand-side platform Sociomantic is the most obvious example of a seismic shift that’s occurring in the shopper data space. The […]

Display and search ad tech company IgnitionOne has acquired Knotice, a data-management platform (DMP) and email service provider with approximately 70 employees, AdExchanger has learned. The deal is the latest in a wave of consolidation in the DMP space that began with the October acquisition of Aggregate Knowledge by Neustar for $119 million, and also includes Oracle’s […]

China is one of the fastest-growing, largest mobile markets in the world. Two new studies from Forrester Research and mobile developer-services platform Umeng delve into the unique characteristics of this continuously growing industry, including how consumers deal with the lack of high-speed data service and how social sharing plays a role in many apps. According […]

Demand-side platform (DSP) DataXu has recruited Ed Montes, CEO of programmatic trader Digilant, to lead its sales and marketing operations as chief revenue officer. Montes helped found Digilant in 2009, back when it was still called Adnetik and operated as the trading desk unit of French agency conglomerate Havas. Later, when Adnetik was spun off […]

Although the performance-based pay-per-call model is not new, there is renewed interest from publishers due to the ubiquity of mobile and new experimentation in ad formats. Twitter last week, for instance, revealed plans to serve direct-response marketers through beta tests with brands for click-to-call functionality, as first reported by Digiday. At its most basic, the […]

Data management platform (DMP) Lotame has acquired AdMobius, a company that identifies audiences across devices for ad targeting purposes, AdExchanger has learned. Terms weren’t disclosed for the deal, which comes two weeks after we first reported on talks between the companies. With the purchase, Lotame accelerates its ability to use non-cookie methods to find users […]

Mobile analytics firm Kontagent has rebranded itself with a new name – Upsight – through its merger with mobile monetization platform PlayHaven, the companies said Monday. The rebranding comes a month after Kontagent and its competitor, HasOffers, were booted out of Facebook’s Mobile Measurement Program (MMP). Upsight also launched a new mobile analytics platform that shares the […]

Media agency MediaCom launched a partnership with mobile ad creation and analytics platform Celtra on Wednesday, a year after the two began working together. The two companies hope to develop solutions that simplify the management, observation and delivery of mobile advertising. Traditionally, these steps required clients to work with individual publishers and multiple tools. In […]

Despite Bitcoin’s volatility, businesses are beginning to experiment with the peer-to-peer payment system. One such company is Vungle, which helps mobile app publishers promote through 15-second in-app video trailers distributed through its ad platform. Vungle said Thursday it’s giving publishers the option to be paid in bitcoins, though its advertising clients cannot pay with the digital […]

Microsoft has added new ad formats to Skype’s “connection hub,” the screen users see before and after placing calls and while instant messaging each other. The new placements are a logical way to boost Skype’s monetization. The company hopes connection hub ads will generate an at least 20 billion additional impressions per month for advertisers. […]

Marc Landsberg knows agencies. Landsberg previously served as the former EVP at Leo Burnett and president and CEO of Arc and MRM Worldwide. As the current CEO of Chicago-based social agency socialdeviant, he says the traditional media-buying process has been turned upside down and the players flipping the tables aren’t the platform providers. Comcast’s planned […]