Platforms

How best to capture and leverage mobile data is a question of critical importance to advertisers. App analytics and advertising firm Flurry approached it from numerous angles at its SourceDigital13 conference last week. AdExchanger caught up with CEO Simon Khalaf to talk about the company’s new mobile RTB platform and what’s top of mind for […]

While it was not mentioned at Apple’s WWDC keynote address earlier this week, the newest version of iOS includes a new privacy feature that pushes more advertisers into adopting its latest user tracking system. After Apple announced nearly two years ago that it was shutting down access to the unique device identifier (UDID), which many […]

Recounting an anecdote in his opening keynote yesterday at Merkle’s customer summit, Merkle CEO David Williams illustrated what a “game-changer” Facebook’s Custom Audience product has been for Customer Relationship Marketing (CRM) companies like his. Williams said that Facebook executives initially told him it would not only never let email addresses match to Facebook login data […]

Following the news that Facebook will be reducing its ad formats by half and redesigning Sponsored Stories, Salesforce.com has released a report on the performance rates of various Facebook ad types that marketers use through its platform, Social.com. Based on data collected from Social.com between January and March of this year, the study measured the […]

Last week, when Facebook signaled plans to sharply reduce the number of discrete ad formats it offers, no one criticized the move. And why should they? After Facebook’s early frenzied experiments in advertising, it’s a natural step to assess what performs best, lose the rest and restructure the whole ad offering around advertiser objectives rather […]

Savvy shoppers know this, bloggers know this and JC Penney now knows this: couponing is a national pastime. About 92.5 million US shoppers redeemed a digital coupon last year, and the number of mobile coupon users is expected to reach 53.2 million in 2014, according to eMarketer. AdExchanger spoke with Coupons.com CEO Steven Boal about […]

Mobile advertising and the need to further educate consumers about its services were key issues at the Digital Advertising Alliance’s first summit, held this week in Washington, DC. The DAA has planned to introduce a set of mobile advertising guidelines for several months and will do so soon, according to Managing Director Lou Mastria. “Mobile […]

Facebook is preparing to slash the number of ad formats it sells from 27 today to less than half that by Q4. On the chopping block are online-only Offer ads, Questions ads and standalone Sponsored Stories placements. Going forward, Facebook will structure and optimize ad buys based on “six or seven” marketer objectives, distributing messages […]

Twitter has shown aggressiveness over the past few months in developing its advertising business, and this morning’s global data-sharing deal with WPP Group represents another significant advancement. Read the release. The relationship is through WPP’s Data Alliance, which includes the holding company’s media buying and planning umbrella GroupM, the analytics provider Kantar and digital creative […]

Brand Networks, a company that serves the social marketing needs of large retailers and other companies with dozens or hundreds of local outlets, has raised a whopping $68 million round from AEA Investors. As one of the remaining scaled independent platforms in social marketing, Brand Networks says it needs the capital to aggressively develop and […]

Aol wants to be the “new TV.” During its lavish NewFront presentation last month, it pressed the message “We’re ready for primetime” – that is, primetime TV ad spending. Today the company released a survey of 770 ad industry executives on the migration of TV spend to digital video. Respondents indicated plans to shift spend […]

Digital advertising agency VivaKi will use Adelphic Mobile’s targeting capabilities to enhance its Audience on Demand (AOD) Mobile platform, the companies said today. Ad targeting and consumer privacy issues continue to complicate mobile ad buying. Adelphic – a three-year-old company founded by executives from Apple, Quattro Wireless (acquired by Apple) and Millennial Media – addresses these challenges […]

Demand-side platform Turn has hired Fernando Tassinari, former CEO of marketing agency MRM Worldwide Brazil, to lead its Sao Paolo office with the goal of expanding Turn’s presence in the country and throughout South America. “We’ve been working down there with US account managers and sales people for more than a year,” Tassinari said in an […]

Certified Twitter partner Mass Relevance is a “social experience platform,” according to founder and CEO Sam Decker; it works not only with Twitter but also Facebook, Instagram, Google+ and more to incorporate real-time social content into brands’ and advertisers’ owned and paid media strategies. “We started the company working with Twitter primarily, and we signed […]

A new venture from former Magnetic CEO Josh Shatkin-Margolis aims to help retailers consolidate their multi-channel interactions with consumers, using the smartphone as the hub. Called Purple Cloud, the company offers a consumer-facing app that creates incentives for users to interact and share data. The company is in beta with retailers and expects to close […]

The self-regulatory group Network Advertising Initiative, whose members include Google, Yahoo and Aol Advertising, has released a revised code of conduct regarding information collected from mobile apps. The updated code introduces new requirements regarding interest-based data collection and advertising. The proposed draft rules address types of information unique to mobile, such as geolocation data and […]

Email and search continue to drive the most referrals to ecommerce sites, according to Q1 2013 data from website optimization company Monetate. But word-of-mouth through social media does influence purchases, despite a lack of last-click attribution for the channel. After analyzing more than 500 million online shopping experiences, the Ecommerce Quarterly report found conversion rates […]

There were two adjectives Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer used repeatedly when discussing the advertising opportunity with Tumblr, which her company agreed to buy for $1.1 billion. Those words: “native” and “aspirational.” It’s what you would expect. In its short history of monetization, Tumblr has focused on organic ad formats, tentatively rolling out tools to promote […]

Yahoo’s planned acquisition of Tumblr brings it “coolness,” young demos and mobile eyeballs, says the blogosphere. The deal, reported at $1.1 billion, is Yahoo’s Instagram – even with aging Flickr already aboard. Okay, fine. From here, this acquisition may also be a new, strategic move into “identity.” Yahoo Mail used to be the portal’s identity magnet, but product development neglect and […]

It’s no secret that the mobile app market has exploded. Roughly 224 million people use mobile apps on a monthly basis, compared to 221 million desktop users, according to mobile analytics firm Flurry. Advertisers are eagerly reaching out to this growing audience. Enter Mobilewalla. The three-year-old startup is betting that the demand for targeting ads […]

Streaming audio player Pandora has increasingly focused on building ad revenues from the local level up but has met with some hurdles in trying to pry ad dollars from the $15 billion terrestrial radio market. This week it struck deals with two media buying and planning software providers, Mediaocean and STRATA , which Pandora hopes […]

Following on the heels of Facebook’s announced plans to introduce video ads to its News Feed, Moontoast, a rich media ad platform provider, and the video platform VideoGenie unveiled a new partnership today that will also enable advertisers to insert videos into the social network’s News Feed. Moontoast is a Facebook-preferred marketing developer and winner […]

There’s been no shortage of talk about “programmatic direct,” which involves using automated buying tools to support negotiated ad deals with presumably branding-oriented campaign goals. But for Priceline.com CMO Brett Keller, the idea is an illusion. “We’ve been using TV as our branding vehicle from very the beginning of this company 14 years ago and […]

David Bell, the chairman emeritus for Interpublic Group, offered his take on some barriers to growth in digital advertising today at Aol’s Thought Leadership Summit on programmatic advertising. Number one on his hit list was the clutter of ad tech startups. He also took aim at the power wielded by procurement officers and bashed the ad industry for […]

Smartphones – and Apple’s iPhone in particular – may seem ubiquitous in the US (see AdExchanger’s Q1 mobile RTB report). Yet worldwide, Samsung beat out Apple and Android-based smartphone sales in the first quarter 2013, according to Gartner. Gartner found 426 million mobile phones were sold in the first quarter, up 0.7% from Q1 2012. Worldwide smartphone […]

In her role as Managing Director of Connected Platforms at media agency PHD, Andrea Wolinetz helps manage client opportunities that are digital but don’t necessarily fit a silo such as “mobile” or “social.” She offers Foursquare as a prime example of this conundrum in the agency: “Should you call your mobile specialist because it’s a […]

Do people really want to scan that little black-and-white pattern better known as a QR code? Mike Wehrs, CEO of QR code marketing tech company Scanbuy, doesn’t give any ground, saying QR codes are here to stay and a new partnership with AT&T helps prove it. Wehrs told AdExchanger this week, “We have distribution and partnership […]

After a strong 2012 holiday season for mobile advertising, marketers took a step back in the beginning of 2013, then charged ahead again toward the end of the first quarter. In AdExchanger’s third quarterly mobile roundup, mobile ad networks and companies found that rich media, targeting and the rise of tablets drove expansion in the […]

Aol was able to maintain its hard-won profitability and ad sales gains Q1. But just as Aol was finally able to turn US display around with a decent growth of 6%, the usual powerhouse of third-party network revenues showed signs of slowing down. Read the earnings release. The company’s third-party network revenues growth slowed to […]

Yahoo will roll out targeted mobile ads through its partnership with ad network Chitika, the vendor confirmed. Chitika has worked with Yahoo since 2006 and already uses the company’s location and time-based ad targeting technology to deliver paid search listings across its web properties and across Chitika’s network of publishers. Yahoo has now tapped the […]