Platforms

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.” […]

Relying on ads to monetize a kids’ mobile app comes with a minefield of rules and restrictions. Apple, for example, requires app developers to avoid any behavioral advertising, ask for parental permission for in-app purchases and include a privacy policy. Developers also must get parental consent before collecting personal information like phone numbers and email […]

Twitter’s wading deeper into the TV pool. The end goal? Unlock more viewer data to balance the scale on social engagement and determine the opportune time to push paid media promotions. With its latest acquisition of real-time social data analytics platform Trendrr, which is used by a range of media companies and TV networks such […]

While Yahoo has lately focused on buying and rolling out consumer-facing products, the Sunnyvale company also has ambitions around advertising. It drew attention to them yesterday, unveiling plans to add its Stream Ads format to several properties. Yahoo first introduced Stream Ads, which it refers to as a native ad format, to its homepages in […]

LifeStreet, an in-app advertising platform that claims to have more than 3,500 Facebook developers using its product, is going after a bigger slice of mobile with its new self-service publisher portal. The portal, which was launched today, is an extension of the company’s current portal that is used by Facebook app developers to publish display […]

Facebook is investing heavily in measurement products to help prove out the value of its ads. Its offline conversion tracking on behalf of CPG marketers is perhaps the key example of this. In one indicator of that program’s importance, the company recently promoted Fred Leach, who helped develop it, to head R&D measurement and partnerships across verticals. […]

Pinterest has always been a little different than the rest of the social pack –primarily because pinned products means pinned intent. The platform is inherently commercial. When Pinterest debuted price alerts in early August, it appeared to be a move on the visual social network’s part to help retailers reactivate purchase intent based on items […]

Hotels.com estimates more than one in five transactions on its platform occur through mobile devices, representing a growing area investment for a predominant player in online travel booking. “We can always do better from a brand recognition standpoint,” commented Steven Quach, director of online marketing for Hotels.com. “Anywhere we can find pops of growth that […]

With its new partnership with a number of TV media sellers, announced yesterday, Interpublic Group has begun to make good on its pledge earlier this year to “automate” 50% of media. The use of “automation” here is perhaps a bit misleading however, since what IPG is really trying to solve is a workflow problem – […]

Location data is often touted as the key to unlocking the targeting opportunities in mobile ads. How to best leverage location data varies by company, however. For JiWire—a 10-year-old firm that started out as a Wi-Fi hotspot provider—the answer lies in layering data over customized audience segments. AdExchanger talked to JiWire President David Staas. AdExchanger: […]

It’s a frenzied IPO season in the ad tech space. Despite the tepid reaction of investors to public offerings by Tremor and YuMe, companies like Rocket Fuel aren’t showing signs of cold feet. True, it helps to have a set of impressive financials, which Rocket Fuel submitted to the SEC last week. The Redwood City, […]

Google is ramping up its focus on online gaming by bringing its video ad-skipping tool TrueView to the space. In doing so, Google is making good on a promise Susan Wojcicki, SVP of advertising, made back in February at the IAB Annual Meeting to expand the use of TrueView, which the company sees as a […]

It all comes down to who owns the digital identity and the addressability that follows. Late this spring when Amazon launched the Login with Amazon service, it gave access to 200 million-plus active Amazon users to app developers and site owners. “Login with Amazon is the latest offering in an array of services that make […]

With the mobile app market growing more competitive every day, app developers are under increasing pressure to find people who will not only download their games, but remain engaged players. Advertising and mobile analytics firm Apsalar is trying to address this need in a number of ways. In addition to offering a mobile analytics platform […]

Tying mobile ad impressions to in-store visits is critical for advertisers looking to measure the value of their ads. Location analytics company Placed is approaching the challenge with a new product called Placed Attribution, that provides metrics around the number of people who saw an ad on their smartphone and then visited the advertiser’s store. […]

Millennial Media’s acquisition of competitor Jumptap has shed new light on the mobile arena. Despite being the country’s second-largest provider of mobile display advertising, behind Google, Millennial has struggled to recapture the momentum it enjoyed when it went public last year. The $193 million acquisition will inject new vitality into the Baltimore-based company, claimed Millennial CEO […]

Mobility has meant marketers can deliver high-value messages to consumers using less real estate, Nicholas Franchet, Facebook’s head of global ecommerce, told a crowd of 1,150 marketers and retailers today at the eTail East conference. The good? Nearly 50% of time spent on retail sites now happens through mobile devices, according to comScore. Tablet sales […]

NBC News has acquired the user-generated live video service Stringwire, in addition to hiring the startup’s founder, Phil Groman. Stringwire’s technology allows NBC News to gather video footage from the public more efficiently, but the technology poses challenges from an advertising standpoint. When Twitter users tweet about a news event, NBC News will be able […]

As the mobile ad market grows, so do the stakes for providing contextually relevant ads. Geo-targeted ads on mobile devices are getting a boost from companies like Google, Foursquare and Twitter, which are in various stages of rolling out new ad units that leverage location data. In a blog post yesterday, Google announced ads will […]

Facebook’s big push into video ads, expected this fall, is bound to have ripple effects in the online video space — as a major new source of premium inventory becomes available. From Tremor Video’s perspective, Facebook’s focus on what appears to be in-banner ads will allow the company to further differentiate itself in what remains […]

Retailers that push fewer posts, but better and more targeted ones, are gaining an edge over those that pursue volume when it comes to publishing Facebook content, new data suggests. The 50 Social Retail Report from enterprise social media management company Expion analyzed 16,000 posts for the top 50 retail brands as designated by Interbrand. […]

Twitter is letting CPG advertisers link their ‘Promoted’ ad placements to offline sales, courtesy of Datalogix. The offering has strong echoes of Facebook’s year-old POS conversion-tracking relationship with Datalogix. Twitter has already run tests with 35 brands using the “offline sales lift” feature  to weigh the impact of online engagement with in-store transactions. Advertisers include […]

Adap.tv was not the only video company to have a good day yesterday. On the same day that AOL snapped up video-ad marketplace Adap.tv for $405 million, digital ad management provider DG saw its stock shoot up 25% to $10.31 at yesterday’s closing bell. Although DG rescheduled its earnings call from Wednesday afternoon to Thursday, […]

AOL is not taking its foot off the programmatic gas pedal, and agencies are impressed. The $405-million acquisition of video ad platform Adap.tv sheds new light on other recent developments, including the hire of Razorfish’s global CEO Bob Lord to lead AOL Networks and a planned “programmatic upfront” event in September. Their obvious conclusion: AOL’s […]

Its $405 million acquisition of video ad marketplace Adap.tv closes two big loops for AOL. The first is around video, which has become a bigger part of both its and rival Yahoo’s strategies. Both portals have doubled down on original video content creation, but AOL has looked to video as an ad-tech solution, whereas Yahoo […]

AOL will shell out $405 million for Adap.tv, as we reported this morning. That’s a lot of scratch for an ad-tech company – or any company, for that matter. While M&A comparisons are only useful up to a point, it might be instructive to consider the video-ad platform in light of other few recent deals […]

Aside from the big news that AOL was acquiring video-ad marketplace Adap.tv to further its programmatic goals, the portal reported its Q2 earnings, which showed continued strides on its display business. While the single-digit gains made during the period may not seem too exciting, they do compare favorably with the recent earnings from Yahoo and […]

AOL has agreed to buy video-ad company Adap.tv in a deal that will add another arrow to the programmatic quiver, with products facing both the buy and sell side. Adap.tv is one of a handful of mature companies, alongside YuMe, Tremor Video and TubeMogul, that are seizing the digital video opportunity. Its revenue growth has […]

Based on a survey of more than 5,000 people in Canada, France, Germany, the UK and the US, Forrester Research predicts 905 million people, up from 15 million in 2010, will be using tablets by 2017. Tablets, write Forrester analysts JP Gownder and Michael O’Grady, have “exceeded the status of mass market to become what […]