Platforms

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 […]

Like their US counterparts, mobile startups in China and India are urging app developers to embrace mobile real-time bidding (RTB). Two such companies, AppFlood and Vserv.mobi, both launched RTB platforms on Tuesday. China-based mobile ad network AppFlood launched a mobile RTB ad exchange and demand-side platform (DSP) designed to serve publishers and advertisers across the […]

There’s a change afoot in the B2B marketing camp, at the heart of which is demand for a more nimble lead-nurturing mechanism. Bizo, a provider of online ad targeting solutions for B2B marketers, released Monday Multi-Channel Nurturing, designed to incorporate a wider swath of lead generating channels, from email to display and social advertising. The […]

Microsoft and Yahoo are loosening their stranglehold on their premium display inventory. MediaMath has set up a buying program that includes guaranteed direct buys in a programmatic environment. The program is enabled through partnerships with publishers Yahoo and Microsoft, along with technology partners Shiny Ads, iSocket and Yieldex. The partnership represents the latest industry attempt […]

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 […]