Platforms

Maybe it’s the turbulence that has surrounded Yahoo for the last several years, or maybe it’s reflective of CEO Marissa Mayer’s general worldview, but when asked about the competitive landscape by Charlie Rose during a Q&A at the IAB Mixx conference, she said the portal is more of a potential partner than a challenger to […]

Microsoft is hoping to gain more traction with higher priced, direct sales inventory on its network by striking an agreement with its fellow portals, AOL and Yahoo, to support technical specifications for automating the buying process around reserved ad sales. In other words, Microsoft is joining the push toward “premium programmatic” that AOL trumpeted Monday […]

AOL finally answered the question “What is a programmatic upfront?” by saying it would put its money where its mouth is: starting in 2014, it will make its reserved, guaranteed inventory available through its automated platforms for the first time. The portal lined up an array of advertising partners, noting that five of the six […]

While online video continues to grow, it’s becoming less certain that media buyers are ready to shift their focus demonstrably away from primetime TV. That’s not to say companies in the video space aren’t trying to make the movement between PC, mobile and TV screens more seamless. “We’re seeing single-digit ad dollars starting to move […]

Spotify, the ad-supported music streaming service, has barely scratched the surface of its advertising capabilities, but the 7-year-old company is treading carefully. The streaming service is up to more than 24 million active users, a quarter of whom are premium subscribers, and earned $577 million in total revenue last year. Part of the Stockholm-based company’s […]

Twitter is in New York this week talking up Amplify, which is at the heart of the company’s monetization strategy around broadcast content. The Amplify program offers audience extension for TV networks by letting them tweet short video clips such as sports replays minutes or seconds after their on-air broadcast. Broadcast advertisers can “ride along” […]

Advertisers that push paid media with organic content on Facebook are driving measurably higher results than singular social efforts, one report has found. But the success of a campaign can vary greatly by post type. According to new ShopIgniter data released in August, “The 2013 Social Rich Media Benchmark Report” reveals more retailers and brands […]

Twitter significantly boosted its advertising profile last week, acquiring mobile ad exchange MoPub and filing (confidentially) for an IPO. The San Francisco-based company is expected to bring in $583 million in advertising revenue this year, and $950 million in 2014, according to eMarketer. It also earns additional revenue by selling the data in its “fire hose” or […]

A “significant jump” in the number of advertisers tapping into programmatic platforms – 39% of advertisers now take advantage of these technologies – indicates interest is on the upswing on the buy side. According to the Online Advertisers Survey Report 2013 by digital marketing research company Econsultancy in partnership with Rubicon Project, the number of […]

Pinterest is getting closer to formal ad products with the announcement today that it’s experimenting with promoted pins for select businesses. Although Pinterest co-founder and CEO Ben Silbermann noted promoted pins won’t be “flashy banners or pop-up ads,” and that it’s not a paid product, yet, Pinterest looks to be finding more ways to commercialize the […]

Facebook engineering director Andrew Bosworth informed marketers that “mobile is the ultimate branding device” and that “brands are more important than ever before” as he kicked off day two of the Dmexco conference today in Germany. In his opening keynote, Bosworth drew a comparison between 19th-century travelers, who had very little information about the places […]

“Data Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Ramsey McGrory, CEO at AddThis. The formula used to be simple: In order to drive a transaction, you needed a combination of compelling creative and a clear message delivered […]

Fashion retail chain Forever 21 is in the midst of an online marketing remake and mobile is a pillar of its strategy. Gerard Florendo, who joined Forever 21 as manager of online marketing and Web analytics in April, was tasked with deploying up-to-date tools and scaling their respective reach alongside the brand’s new head of […]

Mobile advertising is still emerging as a category but the vendor landscape is already crowded with platforms offering overlapping feature sets. As mobile ad networks, data management platforms, targeting firms and other technologies continue to pile up, drawing a clear line between these services and guarding against conflicts of interest is getting harder, according to […]

In Facebook’s last earnings call, Sheryl Sandberg surprised some by saying the Facebook Exchange “is actually a very small part of our business.” That may be changing, as the company pushes more ad space into its RTB marketplace — and there are signs mobile News Feed inventory is waiting in the programmatic wings. “We believe FBX […]

Twitter’s acquisition of mobile supply-side platform MoPub this week could pave the way for more activity and something close to standard business models in the nascent mobile exchange space. Established desktop exchange players like the Rubicon Project and PubMatic, which have expansive networks on the sell side, have struggled to retrofit their existing platforms to […]

Digital ad veteran Brian McAndrews has been named chairman, president and CEO of streaming music service  Pandora. He replaced Joe Kennedy, who announced his intention to retire in March. (Read the release.) McAndrews built one of the first digital agency networks at aQuantive, where beginning in 1999 he began rolling up firms including Razorfish, Avenue […]

Despite the recent flurry of mobile acquisitions, marketers are still somewhat in the dark when it comes to defining objectives for their mobile campaigns and deploying analytics tools to help them measure cross-channel reach, one study suggests. In a survey of agencies, vendors and 228 marketing professionals, the study by Forrester Research determined that 37% […]

Twitter’s acquisition of mobile ad exchange MoPub came within two weeks of its acquisition of social TV analytics Trendrr and the wide release of lead-generation cards. These staccato moves, according to one Twitter Ads API partner company, are exactly what Twitter needs to counter Facebook’s aggressive pipeline of ad products. “They’re doing a nice job […]

Scale continues to be one of the most challenging aspects of native advertising, and a growing number of companies are working to solve it. As advertisers look for solutions, a number of trends are beginning to emerge, according to a new report from the research firm Altimeter Group. “We’re seeing two fundamental ways that the […]

Twitter’s acquisition of mobile ad exchange MoPub adds a new layer to its strategy. In addition to selling native ad units, Twitter will become a seller of standardized mobile ads as well — perhaps with its own user data thrown into the mix. “Buying MoPub reclassifies Twitter beyond a social platform, or even a broadcast […]

Twitter has acquired MoPub, which provides ad management services to thousands of mobile publishers. The move gives Twitter considerable advertising reach in mobile, including real-time bidding inventory through MoPub’s Marketplace mobile ad exchange. Kevin Weil, Twitter’s VP of Product for Revenue, wrote in a blog post: “The two major trends in the ad world right […]

Independently owned-and-operated outdoor specialty retailer Rock/Creek  has realized early return as one of Twitter’s early beta advertisers. The brand was founded 25 years ago as a Chattanooga-based canoeing company. It operates five standalone stores in addition to an ecommerce platform, but has yet to mobile-optimize its site. Fifty-one percent of retailers cited this very optimization […]

Amobee, a mobile advertising company that was acquired by Singapore-based telecom SingTel last year, has bought Gradient X, a Los Angeles-based startup that offers a real-time bidding platform for mobile ads. Gradient X will provide Amobee with a real-time bidding functionality for various ad channels and formats, such as video and HTML5, as well as […]

AOL and Yahoo – so different, right? Well, not exactly, but they have less in common than they once did. Here’s a crackpot theory for you: The companies are taking different paths in preparation for an eventual megamerger of the sort that was discussed, and then scrapped, back in 2011. Now we’re deep in speculative […]

Ned Brody can officially join Yahoo as SVP for the Americas, five months after resigning his post as CEO of AOL Networks, the unit that houses the company’s ad-tech properties. Brody had been constrained from heading to Yahoo by a noncompete clause, which could have kept him from starting the job until April 2014. But […]

Tapping into second-screen viewing and related search habits is the new black. Facebook confirmed Friday it is testing “trending topics” in the news feed after rolling out a hashtags feature, according to The Wall Street Journal. Apple and, especially, Twitter have made notable moves in the space. But, for all of the interest, the fact […]

Founded six years ago by three former Yahoo engineers, social commerce community portal Polyvore has amassed 80 million product boards or “sets” since inception. To date, the company has raised more than $22 million in funding from Benchmark Capital and others, and now feeds 7.5 billion product impressions per month to brand and retail clients […]

With its 6.3-inch screen, it is easy to mistake the new Samsung Galaxy Mega smartphone for a tablet. It isn’t even the largest smartphone — the Sony Xperia Z Ultra has a 6.4-inch screen. As the gap between smartphones and tablets shrinks, combined with the growing hype around wearable devices, the demand for tablets is […]

Twitter has opened up Lead Generation cards to all advertisers after a limited release earlier this May. Twitter appears to be after direct-response advertising. Writing in a blog post, Twitter product manager Tarun Jain described the Lead Gen cards as “a streamlined tool to help advertisers find and connect off-Twitter with users interested in their message.” […]