Platforms

Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer and newly inducted Twitter Ads API partner Voxsup is applying data science to social media to help brands smartly segment audiences. The company is VivaKi’s preferred partner for social insights and Facebook ad-buys, working alongside partner The Echo System. Drawing on algorithms developed at Northwestern University by CEO Alok Choudhary, the […]

Close to a year after Facebook debuted a real-time bidded ad exchange (FBX) and nine months after the release of its Custom Audiences CRM matching product, Twitter has unveiled plans for similar targeting features. But don’t call it “TWX” yet. Senior director of product for revenue Kevin Weil wrote in a blog post that Twitter is […]

“Twitter is in many respects the most powerful ad tech company in the world, just because of their ability to keep their finger on the pulse of where the conversation is right now. If you’re a brand and you want to enter the conversation, Twitter is obviously ground zero to that. The power they wield […]

North America will account for close to half of the $72 billion consumer spend on tablet devices this year, one study indicates. According to new “Media Tablets and eReaders” market data published by ABI Research, North America’s piece of the total tablet revenue pie will reach about 47% in 2013, suggesting the burgeoning volume of […]

With so many mobile apps in the marketplace, app discovery is more competitive than ever. The race to get apps in front of people has turned ad installs into a lucrative market. Combined with a huge mobile user base, Facebook’s Mobile App Install ads have emerged as a star ad product for the company. Approximately […]

As Salesforce.com and Oracle CEOs Marc Benioff and Larry Ellison demonstrated last week, what CEOs say in public can rarely be taken at face value. Following a bitter rivalry and lots of name-calling, Oracle and Saleforce.com announced a nine-year partnership to integrate Salesforce.com’s CRM software and Oracle’s cloud-hosted human resources and financial applications. There was […]

The mega-vendor wars continue. Today, Adobe Systems announced plans to acquire Parisian cross-channel marketing automation player Neolane for $600 million. The move comes weeks after cloud giant Salesforce.com said it would buy email and CRM vendor ExactTarget for $2.5 billion (AdExchanger story), part of a plan to “double down” on its Marketing Cloud strategy in the […]

Gokul Rajaram, the fast-talking architect of Facebook’s ad products for the past couple years, has left to oversee product engineering at Square, where he’ll drive software development for the company’s Square Register point-of-sale software, among other products. At Facebook, Rajaram led a rapid iteration of the company’s ad platform, including the development of Facebook Exchange, […]

Earlier this year we noted that investment company JMG Exploration, the parent company of the ad network AdVantage Networks, had acquired travel ad network Travora Media and rebranded itself as MediaShift. AdExchanger caught up with Brendon Kensel, MediaShift’s president, to talk about the company’s first launch since the acquisition and its strategy for monetizing Wi-Fi […]

Specialty retailers are getting especially good at weighing the value of consumer behavioral targeting, but still have room to grow when it comes to mobile and, surprisingly, email strategies. According to L2’s newly released Digital IQ Index for Specialty Retail, more than half of specialty retailers are engaged in Facebook advertising, with “the majority of […]

In its latest move to simplify its ad products, Facebook is upgrading its Ads Manager Reports with more data and reporting features. Among the changes: It will now provide reach and frequency metrics that can be segmented by age, gender and country. “By giving these kinds of demographic insights, marketers will be able to look […]

Mobile real-time bidding may still be an emerging technology but the vendor landscape is already crowded. As platforms with similar features and functionalities continue to pile up, uncovering a reliable solution gets increasingly difficult. For PC and mobile game developer Aeria Games, simplicity and the ability to quickly scale campaigns were key differentiators. “If you’ve […]

“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 Marc Grabowski, chief operating officer of Nanigans. Customer acquisition and customer retention have historically lived in separate silos within marketing organizations. Those days are ending: CEOs and CMOs are beginning […]

After stints running TV media sales software INVISION and heading corporate development for ad exchange operator AppNexus, former AOL executive Lynda Clarizio is joining investment bank Berenson & Co. to help expand its digital media dealmaking portfolio. Read the release. The post puts Clarizio on the other side of the M&A table from her early […]

Mobile ad exchange Nexage has rolled out three new tools designed to inject more transparency into its Nexage Exchange for buyers and sellers, the company said today. The tools include aggregate reporting, session depth indicators and advertiser-level reporting. US advertisers are expected to spend nearly $3.4 billion this year on digital display ads (including mobile) […]

Facebook has made so many embellishments to its ad monetization machine in the past year that communicating it all to clients has become a big chore. This week in Cannes, the company participated in a “Creativity at Scale” panel and convened its 18-member Client Council to discuss its embrace of hashtags, its recent decision to […]

As the mobile landscape expands, so does the trove of consumer data mobile carriers are sitting on. Enter SAP AG, which is hammering out deals to crunch carriers’ mobile user data and sell it to marketers. AdExchanger talked to Kevin Outcalt, head of Consumer Insight at SAP and Guy Rolfe, global mobile practice leader at Kantar […]

Turn has snatched up Wolfgang Maasberg, the former chief executive at email and marketing automation firm Lyris, to lead its global sales operation. Prior to his job at Lyris, which he quit in March, Maasberg held North American sales leadership roles at Omniture and later Adobe. The hire speaks to two priorities at the demand-side […]

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 […]