Platforms

The retargeted advertising space is becoming highly lucrative, finds retargeting platform AdRoll, which announced today that it had passed a $100 million run rate, up from $50 million last year. The 6-year-old company claims to have more than 10,000 customers across 100 countries and was one of the first platforms to become a Facebook Exchange […]

This morning NBC Universal entered a strategic partnership with Comcast and Twitter to engineer a “See It” feature allowing Xfinity TV viewers to take action around a TV show from their Twitter stream. The integration allows Xfinity TV viewers to take actions such as starting a show on-demand or setting a DVR to record. Executives […]

All location-based mobile advertising campaigns are not created equal and, for retailers, the nuances between data sources and surfaced promotions have several layers of intricacy. Mobile advertising continues to pique the interest of retail marketers – and investors. Just today, end-to-end mobile marketing platform Swirl Networks closed an $8 million strategic investment round from Hearst […]

Panel-based TV ratings and TV-themed “social buzz” are on a collision course, and audience research mainstay Nielsen is doing everything it can to retain its pole position.  The company today announced “Nielsen Twitter TV Ratings” to measure TV-related Twitter discussion — both the volume of discussion and its total reach. Last fall, Nielsen, through a joint […]

In a summer interview, Facebook’s head of vertical measurement, Fred Leach, described the company’s measurement products and its partnership with Datalogix. In the below follow-up Q&A, Leach digs deeper into the company’s work on mobile measurement, attribution and the CPG category. AdExchanger: What are you working on in terms of mobile measurement? FRED LEACH: There are a couple ways […]

There’s a bright future for agencies in being effective purveyors of first-party data, said Brian Krick, the newest head of North American search and biddable for digital agency Essence. But, he said, they have to be willing to have tough conversations and break down barriers. Weaning channel-specific marketers off artificially inflated CPAs that don’t reflect true incremental revenue […]

However much click tracking, psychographic surveying, and big data analysis marketers do, few have a solid understanding of how their customers engage with social marketing content — or how those customers’ behavior differs between commercial and non-commercial interactions. To address the knowledge gap, Forrester Research has come up with a “Social Technographics Score,” a model […]

There is no doubt that data-driven advertising has transformed the marketing landscape. Traditional advertising agencies are fighting a steep battle against data-heavy enterprises like Google and Facebook as well as more nimble startups. Roundarch Isobar — an Aegis Media-owned digital marketing agency — is striving to embrace big data and mobile advertising. Its clients include […]

Twitter’s IPO filing is no longer “confidential” as the microblog released its full S-1 document with the SEC that details its plans to sell $ 1 billion worth of stock. Twitter, which recently acquired mobile supply side platform MoPub and unveiled its own version of an ad exchange with several API partners, will trade under […]

In-app ad supply keeps growing as people spend more time with their devices. Last year 80% of time spent on a smartphones and tablets took place in apps, versus a mobile website, according to comScore. Of course mobile developers remain a prime source of demand in the in-app ad space. There are more than 1.5 […]

Facebook is once again experimenting with a mobile ad network that would place ads on non-Facebook mobile apps and sites based on the social network’s data, the company confirmed. Business Insider first reported the news. “We’re currently running a second test to show Facebook ads off Facebook in mobile apps and on mobile sites. Our […]

Video is a big part of the programmatic ad discussion taking place at New York’s Advertising Week. A recent look at the landscape by Jeffries & Co. finds that early players like Tremor and YuMe have certain advantages in the short term. But the time is nearing when the majority of video advertising will be […]

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% […]