Platforms

Marking up cheap Facebook inventory has been a lucrative business for a range of companies in its Preferred Marketing Developer (PMD) ecosystem. And Facebook is fine with that practice, just so long as it’s clear to advertisers just how big of a cut their partners are taking. But do advertisers know, and do they care? […]

Traditional radio as a hotbed for ad tech? Well, not really – or at all – but this is precisely the problem Jelli co-founder and CEO Mike Dougherty recognized when his company launched on Wednesday a platform, called RadioSpot, designed to enable programmatic buying for radio advertising. “Radio is a little more simple [than digital […]

Although Google is the $4 billion darling of the US display ad space, players like AOL, Amazon and Facebook are closing in on that share. Most noticeably, Facebook, which for the first time last quarter served more ad impressions on mobile devices than on the desktop, experienced a 50.5% increase in US digital display ad […]

Kargo, a mobile ad platform, has undergone several transformations and is about to make another one. Following the 2001 dot-com crash, Kargo pivoted from providing wireless operators with software and services to helping media brands launch mobile ad campaigns. The New York City company now has a client roster that includes CBS, Univision, Meredith and […]

Add another vendor to the Marketing Cloud fray. Teradata on Tuesday updated its marketing products, revealed a partnership with Urban Airship and officially began calling its stack the “Integrated Marketing Cloud.” Teradata isn’t a newcomer in the field of marketing tech. The company’s VP of marketing, Wes Moore, emphasized the company has been providing marketing […]

If you’ve ever shortened or shared a link on a social platform, chances are you’ve used Bitly. “We are so ubiquitous, but at the same time, people gloss right over us,” said Mark Josephson, CEO of URL shortening service Bitly. He joined the company six months ago from AOL, where he served as SVP of […]

RelayRides knows that mobile devices are an essential channel for reaching new and current customers. The San Francisco-based car-sharing service lets private car owners rent out their vehicles. It serves more than 1,900 US cities including 270 airports, connecting drivers with car owners who post photos and information about their vehicle on RelayRides’ website. When […]

Twitter’s average cost per ad engagement decreased steadily over the past seven quarters, culminating in an 18% decrease in the quarter ended Dec. 21. While ad revenue, by contrast, increased during those same quarters, this chiastic trend isn’t sustainable, as Twitter itself conceded in the 10-K it filed Thursday. The company noted its ad revenue […]

Call-measurement company Telmetrics says it’s seeing digital call tracking jump among its customer base of agencies, publishers and brands. The company’s core business focuses on measuring calls to businesses that come in through advertising assets. AdExchanger checked in with President Bill Dinan for an update on the company and the industry. AdExchanger: What’s new at […]

Facebook hasn’t said much about Atlas since buying it a year ago, but it has been making incremental tweaks to the product. On Wednesday it took a bigger step, launching a creative partner program (blog post) with rich media vendors Innovid and Flite. The deal will let Atlas’s agency customers more easily integrate rich media into […]

An updated S-1 from IPO aspirant Rubicon Project shows the sell-side platform’s revenue grew 47 percent in 2013, to $83.8 million for the full year. In its earlier filing, submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last month, the company disclosed revenues only up to the third quarter of 2013. The new document […]

What is the cost of acquiring a loyal app user? Based on the testimonial of various industry insiders, the price is rising so quickly ad revenue can’t keep up. As such, app developers are looking for new ways to profit, often by developing ad tech. Gartner predicts mobile ad spend will reach $18 billion this […]

Adap.tv, acquired by AOL six months ago, unveiled on Monday a new add-on to its Audience Path demand-side platform (DSP), called Audience Path for TV, to let advertisers and agencies apply more data to their linear TV ad buys. The release capitalizes on a trend in which data-driven ad buying on linear TV presents opportunities for […]

Palo Alto and Paris-based startup Ifeelgoods is betting consumers will gravitate toward personalized offers over traditional loyalty concepts like deep discounts. The digital rewards network founded in 2010 has launched a Personalized Offers Platform for marketers and established a strategic partnership with VivaKi for an initial rollout to Publicis Groupe agencies Razorfish, Digitas and Performics. […]

One of the key strengths of a business is knowing when to pivot. For demand-side audience-targeting platform ChoiceStream, that involved switching from product recommendation software to programmatic advertising services in 2011. Eric Bosco, formerly the company’s COO, took the reins as CEO last May. AdExchanger spoke with Bosco about the company’s transition. AdExchanger: Where does […]

You could say digital entrepreneurship runs in the family. Zach James cofounded Movieclips.com in 2009 before embarking on his latest venture into video with Zefr, which helps brands and networks manage and monetize their YouTube video assets. James is also the brother of Josh James, founder of Omniture (which was sold to Adobe Systems for […]

Mobile demand-side platform (DSP) Tapad has hired Ben Regensburger, the former president of the DoubleClick ad exchange in EMEA and APAC before its acquisition by Google. Regensburger will serve as president of Tapad Europe. He joins Jim Clark, formerly of Turn, whom Tapad brought on this month to lead media and programmatic ad sales, as well […]

Demand-side platform The Trade Desk has received $20 million in Series B funding led by Hermes Growth Partners. The Ventura, Calif.-based company told AdExchanger the move was a natural response to growth in demand for programmatic platforms globally. “We made a strategic decision that we wanted to take in more capital,” CEO Jeff Green said, […]

Pegasystems, a company that offers customer relationship management and business process management solutions for B2B customers, is moving deeper into the marketing world. The Cambridge, Mass., company last week added location-based mobile targeting capabilities to its marketing solution and appointed Robert Tas, JPMorgan Chase’s former head of digital marketing, as its new CMO and SVP […]

In emerging markets worldwide, where mobile-first internet users are more common, mobile programmatic has become an interesting space for ad tech companies and advertisers alike. Vserv, a mobile ad exchange working exclusively in emerging markets, launched its mobile RTB platform in December 2013. Dippak Khurana, the co-founder and CEO of Vserv, has been working in […]

Enterprise software provider Oracle moved further into targeted advertising by acquiring BlueKai, a third-party data provider and data management platform (DMP). Analysts and vendors differ however, on the mobile advertising implications behind the acquisition. Bluekai’s technology will be combined with Oracle’s Responsys application, which is geared toward B2C marketing campaigns, as well as Eloqua, which […]

Millennial Media is at a crossroads. With a new CEO and recent acquisition, the Baltimore company has made several moves to strengthen its position in the mobile advertising space and speculation over its next move is growing among industry insiders. Last month, Millennial tapped ad tech veteran Michael Barrett to replace founding CEO Paul Palmieri, […]

Tremor Video’s fourth-quarter financials, reported Thursday, included a continuous rise in mobile ad revenue and a reduction of its demo pricing-related losses. The company’s total revenue for 2013 rose 25.3% to $131.8 million year-over-year. Its in-stream revenue was $128.3 million, a 28.7% increase from the same period in 2012. It reported a net loss of […]

Facebook will acquire mobile messaging service WhatsApp in a deal worth $16 billion – $4 billion in cash and approximately $12 billion in Facebook shares. Factoring in an additional $3 billion employee stock grant that will vest over four years, the deal value is more than 10% of Facebook’s approximately $173 billion market cap, and makes the $1 billion […]

For a mobile ad startup, getting kicked off Facebook’s platform is pretty much the worst-case scenario. As reported by AdExchanger last week, this nightmare recently became reality for two companies, HasOffers and Kontagent, who were found to have violated data collection policies and were removed from Facebook’s mobile measurement partner (MMP) program. The rejection of […]

Many app developers and ad tech vendors received a jolt recently when Apple began rejecting some apps that retrieve a user’s Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) without serving an ad. Apple’s decision was especially surprising, since the device manufacturer had allowed that activity for nearly two years. Regardless of Apple’s motivations for this change (the company did […]

Professional social platform LinkedIn is cooking up a number of paid product extensions, at the base of which is its nearly 300 million-member-strong social graph and a quickly growing content operation. At LinkedIn’s FinanceConnect in New York Thursday, an event that drew roughly 200 marketers, financial professionals, customers and partners to the Time Warner Center […]

Facebook has cut two partners from its mobile ad measurement program for failing to honor its policies around data retention and disclosure, AdExchanger has learned. The companies, HasOffers and Kontagent, violated their agreements with Facebook, including holding onto data longer than their contracts allowed and failing to require their advertisers  — app developers — to […]

FreeWheel, a technology and services company cofounded seven years ago by Jonathan Heller, Doug Knopper and Diane Yu, helps media companies like NBCUniversal and Viacom connect TV buyers with premium digital video inventory. It also worked with Amazon to help power video ad content for the ecommerce giant. Knopper, who also serves as FreeWheel’s co-CEO, […]

It’s a tumultuous time for the usually staid ad-tech subsector of sell-side platforms (SSPs). As The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday (registration required), PubMatic will chase direct competitor Rubicon Project into the public markets, seeking a valuation of more than $1 billion. Additionally, PubMatic has replaced its top marketer, Larry Harris, with Razorfish and […]