Platforms

Driving continued mobile app engagement is a continuing challenge for businesses — and the stakes continue to rise. Mobile app downloads will reach 102 billion in 2013, up from 64 billion in 2012, according to a September report from Gartner. The research firm also said that in-app purchases will account for 48% of app store […]

Twitter’s Wednesday release of conversion tracking is the company’s latest direct-response push. Beta advertisers, including retailer Alex and Ani, food-delivery and takeout service GrubHub Seamless and political agency Targeted Victory, used the tool to measure ROI on Twitter ad campaigns. Targeted Victory initiated CPA campaigns to meet a target number of “sign-ups” for a National […]

Facebook’s acquisition Tuesday of sports-centric social analytics and real-time trending platform SportStream signifies it’s not letting up in its tête-à-tête with Twitter. “Twitter has natural advantages in the social TV space,” commented Martin Kihn, a research director at Gartner. “It’s the go-to platform for real-time event-driven conversation, facilitated by hashtags. … On the other hand, […]

Pushing hyperlocal mobile advertisements is becoming increasingly viable for businesses as tech giants like Google, Facebook and Twitter, as well as startups, enter the space. One such hyperlocal ad startup is Thinknear, which was acquired by GPS solutions provider Telenav for $22.5 million last year. AdExchanger spoke with Thinknear CEO Eli Portnoy about the evolution […]

Social advertising has become table stakes for multiplatform marketers. On the vendor side, the emerging leaders providing social-ad technologies share a few key commonalities to meet that demand, according to an inaugural Forrester Wave: Social Advertising Platforms report released Tuesday. In a series of interviews with 21 digital marketers, Forrester Research found the average amount […]

It took the better part of a year, but Facebook has overcome its internal angst about “motion” in the News Feed with the debut of cross-channel, auto-play video ads. The offering (officially in beta) instantly creates the largest digital video buy ever, with potential daily reach covering nearly half the U.S. population. Mindshare purchased the […]

Yahoo is making an unspecified portion of its reserved inventory available to demand-side platforms (DSPs), months after display rivals like AOL pledged to put its guaranteed placements on exchanges. Read the release. When Yahoo acquired ad exchange pioneer Right Media six years ago for $680 million, the portal was seen as taking steps far beyond […]

Two announcements last week underscored the importance of email as a means for bridging the gap between online and offline customer data. The first was the acquisition of Rapleaf, a provider of email marketing personalization solutions, by email data services provider TowerData. And Facebook announced it was adding a feature within Custom Audiences that links offline […]

As enterprise technology companies race to make their respective suites the digital marketer’s platform of choice, building or acquiring to fill product portfolio holes becomes near protocol. Global German software giant SAP, which recorded $5.4 billion in revenue last quarter, is no different – the company’s been active on the commerce (Hybris) and advanced analytics […]

By Judith Aquino and Zach Rodgers Twitter unveiled a native ad offering for app publishers on Thursday, courtesy of its MoPub mobile exchange subsidiary. Read the blog post. While not new, the idea of “programmatic” native ads in mobile  raises some interesting possibilities, agency execs told AdExchanger. Most of those possibilities hinge on Twitter’s willingness […]

When Pinterest debuted “Place Pins” in late November to a select group of beta brands, luxury hotel company Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts was among the first businesses on board. The program, which gives consumers a way to geo-pin their interests to make their pins “more actionable in real life,” is a feature Pinterest provides, […]

Video advertising platform Tremor Video announced Tuesday that it had hired 10 engineers from the recently shuttered mobile ad exchange Mobclix. The former Mobclix team will work on the development of Tremor’s programmatic buying solutions for brand advertisers. Tremor Video was eager to hire its engineers for their experience in mobile and programmatic solutions, said […]

Since its IPO in September – in which its share price more than doubled from $29 to $62 – media buying platform provider Rocket Fuel has pretty much shot the moon. In November, during its premier quarterly earnings disclosure, it reported top-line revenue growth of 132% and customer expansion from 406 in Q3 2012 to […]

You can’t throw a 23-year-old media buyer without hitting a software “cloud.” One of the precocious contenders in this bunch, social-centric SHIFT, has raised $6 million to support an expansion of its Open Marketing Cloud into Europe. The investment, led by DN Capital, brings its total financing to $14 million. The company’s 29-year-old CEO, James […]

The belief that cookies don’t work on handhelds or tablets, requiring an alternative tracking mechanism, oversimplifies the complex problem of mobile tracking. While advertisers cannot use third-party cookies to track mobile users the same way they would a desktop user, cookies can indeed be applied to an extent in a mobile environment. And while many […]

Location-based technology has come a long way from geofences. As mobile usage grows, location data has become more granular, providing marketers with greater opportunities to fine-tune their messages—but it has also created more complications. Apple, for example, switched on its iBeacon technology on Friday to send customers’ tailored messages depending on their exact location in […]

Both agencies and ad partners draw comparisons between Twitter’s launch on Thursday of retargeting product Tailored Audiences and Facebook Exchange (FBX). Just how technically similar they are remains to be seen, but the industry is buzzing about the ad product’s cross-channel targeting potential. We asked some Tailored Audience partners, media agencies and a beta tester to […]

Retargeting advertisements across mobile apps is quickly becoming a critical component of app developers who want to not only drive app installs but also move to the next step: driving continued app engagement among current users. “We’re spending a lot of money getting users to download our app and it wouldn’t make sense to stop […]

After beta-testing retargeting capabilities back in July, Twitter rolled out Tailored Audiences globally Thursday. The offering includes website retargeting along with third-party audience segments, supported by an eclectic crew of ad partners. Advertisers can now “reach users on Twitter who have shown interest in your brand or category even away from Twitter,” wrote Twitter product manager Abhishek […]

Mobile advertising exchange Nexage has become one of the largest independent mobile ad exchanges following Twitter’s decision to snap up its competitor, MoPub. As competition in the mobile ad space continues to heat up, it remains to be seen what Nexage’s next steps will be. AdExchanger spoke with Nexage CEO Ernie Cormier about the company’s […]

While most marketers today understand why they need to establish data-driven marketing strategies, the big question for most is how exactly to do it. Not only must they worry over technical implementation details, but data-driven marketing practices also depend on the effective leadership of people and processes to deliver value. As a career marketing leader […]

Mozilla wants to build content personalization into future generations of its products, and has recruited MDC Partners’ Darren Herman to lead that charge as VP for content services. Herman – a digital agency exec and startup entrepreneur – will head up a brand new Content Services division focused on building out a content experience within the […]

Mobile rewards and advertising platform Kiip is hoping to put a spin on online offers with its new self-serve platform. Tuesday’s launch of the Kiip Self-Serve platform, following a five-month beta period, is intended to enable marketers to serve targeted offers to consumers who complete an activity or other action on a mobile app. The […]

Datalogix has hired a seasoned agency alum to spearhead brand marketing globally, and to strengthen ties to the agency world. Steven Wolfe Pereira, previously the EVP of Publicis-owned MediaVest and managing director of MediaVest Multicultural, comes to Datalogix at a time of great acceleration for the company. The data services provider, which matches its clients’ […]

Mobile retargeting platform TapCommerce has raised $10.5 million in a Series A round led by Bain Capital Ventures with participation from RRE and Nielsen Ventures and existing investors. While Web-based retargeting historically focused on recent visitors who abandoned an onsite purchase, certain aspects of mobile behavior completely disrupt traditional retargeting practices. For instance, TapCommerce CEO […]

According to Merkle, Facebook’s Custom Audiences program and its related lookalike modeling tools lead the pack when it comes to customer prospecting. Merkle bills itself as a CRM agency, so the company knows a thing or two about database matching online. Paul Steketee, head of paid social and emerging media, said match rates on Facebook […]

As brand marketers demand increasingly sophisticated tools to quantify the value of social media campaigns and improve performance, social analytics provider Socialbakers finds itself reaping the benefits. Headquartered in Prague with offices in New York, London and other cities, Socialbakers’s client roster includes Samsung, LVMH, Discovery and Disney. It acquired two thousand clients within a […]

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer remained relatively unfazed onstage Tuesday at the Dreamforce conference as a pack of protesters disrupted an otherwise smooth Q&A session with Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff. Despite the larger-than-life mural of Mayer’s mug and echoing shouts protesting her seat on Walmart’s board of directors, the fireside chat between the two CEOs covered […]

A new report from Neustar’s Aggregate Knowledge notes the strong performance of advertising in social channels in terms of reach (58% better than exchanges) and the ability to deliver more high-quality buyers than ad portals, networks and exchanges. According to Aggregate Knowledge President Rob Gatto, this portends a shift in the role of social advertising […]

LinkedIn delved deeper into marketing with its launch Tuesday of Showcase Pages, through which companies can feature specific products within their branded pages. Designed as an extension of LinkedIn’s Company Pages, users that follow Showcase Pages will receive updates on products, events or other content. “We tell marketers, ‘Yes, we’re a professional network, but people […]