Platforms

Brian O’Kelley wants you to know he’s serious about mobile. On the same day IDC reported Q1 PC sales plummeted 13.9% as consumer usage shifted dramatically to tablet and smartphone devices, the CEO of AppNexus told attendees at the company’s San Francisco summit that the company is going “all in” with its mobile strategy. O’Kelley […]

Nearly a year after launching a collaboration and productivity platform for marketers, Shift unveiled its Open Marketing Cloud, a suite of social promotions, media buying, community management, and analytics applications available through partnerships with 12 tech companies. The Open Marketing Cloud brings together apps from the following firms: Aggregate Knowledge (media intelligence platform), Convertro (conversion-tracking), Curalate (Pinterest […]

For the past year, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong has emphasized the company’s position as a programmatic player, discussing the importance of its “tech stack” and building up its year-old demand-side platform AdLearn. The company hopes to complete the circle around its automated ad services with the launch of its long-promised supply side platform, dubbed simply […]

Marketing technology company Syncapse learned first-hand how to work with large companies to integrate digital and social elements into their businesses, by working with RIM Blackberry as its first major client. With a team of about 70 people, the company became skilled at what would work for large enterprise companies when it comes to social […]

Last week X+1 secured a new $17 million debt facility with Ares Capital, a cash reservoir the demand-side platform plans to tap for two acquisitions this quarter (one social, one mobile). A global expansion will follow in the second half of the year, including a possible outpost in Brazil, according to CEO John Nardone. By […]

“Workflow” is not the sexiest of topics, even in the realm of digital advertising. But as the process of buying, planning and tracking digital ad buys gets more complex, both agencies and software companies are taking a more serious look at what can and should be automated. Several months ago, Mediaocean, which was the product […]

Tablet usage is on the rise but retailers have yet to catch up, shows a new report by research company L2. As more people spend time on tablets—which L2 categorizes as a separate device from a PC or mobile device—retailers need to adopt a distinct strategy for engaging shoppers on their tablets. “Tablets have been […]

Facebook’s first deep hardware integration is a custom version of the Android operating system, packaged on a new HTC smartphone called “HTC First.” “We didn’t want to build our own phone or an OS,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during the press conference at Facebook’s Menlo Park headquarters. “We want to provide the best experience for […]

One question that’s unlikely to be addressed during today’s Facebook press conference has to do with the possible data tracking implications of a phone deeply integrated with Facebook’s core features. But given Facebook’s mobile ubiquity (More than 680 million people use Facebook on mobile devices every month) and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s focus on the mobile […]

Before taking the reins at DoubleVerify six months ago, Wayne Gattinella spent ten years at the helm of WebMD. When he signed up for that job, the consumer health publisher was three years old and had collapsed to some extent, like most web content providers in that era. Since then it has largely reversed course. Revenues for […]

The number of display ad tech companies “of size” has risen sharply in recent years as mammoths like Google and Adobe are joined by hulking no-longer-startups such as BlueKai, Rocket Fuel, Collective, and AOL’s Ad.com, among others. Demand-side platform Turn should certainly be included on this list. The profitable company employs 250 and works with […]

Facebook will surface News Feed inventory in its six-month-old exchange, creating more visibility and engagement for retargeted ad placements on the site. Facebook Exchange previously was restricted to ads in the right rail, where response rates are a fraction of what advertisers get in the News Feed. The company’s decision to make them biddable in […]

After debuting its Media Metrix Multi-Platform in beta in November, comScore opened the offering to all US clients and released the top 50 web properties for February 2013, based on data from both desktop and mobile visitors. While the top multi-platform properties overall were similar to the top desktop properties, there were several companies that […]

App developers and publishers who have yet to stop using unique device identifiers (UDIDs) now have a cut-off date. Apple informed app developers yesterday that it will soon ban any apps or updates to existing apps that include UDIDs, a component of analytics systems that publishers and developers have been using to track apps and […]

“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 Phil Gross, Director of Product Management at Visual IQ. With Facebook’s purchase of Atlas, all eyes are on social media measurement. Twitter provides an interesting challenge with respect to measurement, as there […]

Even though it is widely used, customers would be hard-pressed to find vendors who agree with the label “marketing automation,” according to Jon Miller, VP of marketing content and strategy at marketing automation software provider Marketo. Marketing automation is “one of those terms that nobody really seems to love but at the same time it’s […]

Information Builders, a 38-year-old business intelligence and analytics provider that serves customers like Ford, Mastercard, Lockheed Martin, and Verizon, is setting its sights on the CMO. The New York City-based company yesterday launched its WebFocus Social Media Analytics platform, designed to provide insight into customer sentiment on social networks. “We were originally very IT-driven but […]

Berlin-based Rocket Internet incubates e-commerce startups in markets outside the US, running them first as closely held businesses and then encouraging greater autonomy of operations and marketing in advance of a potential sale. As such the company is a big proponent of retargeting and was an early adopter of Facebook’s ad exchange. The company leaped […]

The old thinking: social media channels like Facebook and Twitter will be the death knell of traditional publishers. The new thinking: they need each other desperately. And just maybe, they can actually generate a worthwhile amount of ad dollars and audience engagement through mutual benefit. That was the consensus at the opening panel of the […]

Oreo’s humorous tweet referring the temporary power outage at the Super Dome in New Orleans that halted the Super Bowl action between the ultimately victorious Baltimore Ravens over the San Francisco 49ners was hailed as the marketing play of the game. Oreo’s message that “you can still dunk in the dark” caught fire on Twitter, […]

Digital ad management provider DG is pouring the disparate technologies and products it has bought and built over the last few years into a single receptacle called “VideoFusion.” While having a clearer marketing message is the over-arching reason for the “brand unification,” the company also wants to emphasize its proposition to be the connective tissue […]

While the Wednesday morning keynote at the Adobe Digital Marketing Summit focused on a mega-demo of the new Adobe Marketing Cloud, the Thursday session took a big picture view, with NASCAR, adventure seeker Felix Baumgartner, NBC Sports, and Khan Academy sharing stories of challenges overcome and lessons learned. Taking Risks Baumgartner, who jumped from the edge of […]

Following its string of social media acquisitions, Oracle has pulled all its social capabilities into one product, allowing marketers to create and publish content, listen to and engage customers, and analyze interactions from a single interface. Unveiled at the South by Southwest conference, Oracle’s Social Relationship Management (SRM) product ties together capabilities gained when the […]

Spring has nearly sprung, and it seems Facebook is ready to get the clutter out. The company today rolled out organized, parallel newsfeeds geared to various user information needs. CEO Mark Zuckerberg and several members of his team showed off the new, more visually dynamic newsfeeds at Facebook’s Menlo Park headquarters this morning. The quick […]

Adam Bain, president of global revenue for Twitter, took some jabs at Facebook and explained his marketing vision for Twitter at the Adobe Digital Marketing Summit on Wednesday afternoon. Federated Media CEO John Battelle led the Q&A. After sharing the latest news from Twitter — that the social network now has more than 200 million active […]

Cox Digital Solutions, which houses the white label vertical ad network and ad serving business formerly known as Adify, will no longer offer platform services to outside media companies, the company has told clients. In a letter sent last month to customers, obtained by AdExchanger, Andy Levi director, Publisher Operations at CDS, as part of […]

Google properties dominated the top mobile websites in terms of market share of visits during the week ending February 23, 2013, according to Experian Marketing Services. Experian introduced Hitwise Mobile at the beginning of March, a new offering that will provide data on mobile internet activity, including weekly website rankings from mobile devices, share of […]

This week computer hardware and software marketer HP became the first company on LinkedIn to attract a million followers. HP believes the service can work as an advertising medium, as much as it can a customer relationship management or public relationship channel. “Our one million followers are connected to over 42 million people on LinkedIn, […]

Facebook has confirmed its agreement to buy Atlas from Microsoft, paving the way for a more robust demand-side offering from the company. In an interview with AdExchanger, Ads Product Director Gokul Rajaram said the primary aim is to help advertisers compare their Facebook ads with all online, and eventually offline, placements. An ad network is not […]

In his first high profile appearance since jumping from Google to Yahoo, Henrique De Castro, the portal’s COO, took the stage on the second and final day of the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Annual Leadership Meeting to showcase the company’s vision under his fellow ex-Googler, CEO Marissa Mayer. The content vision, as demonstrated by the new […]