Platforms

More than 4,000 app developers will descend on San Jose, Calif., on April 18 and 19 for Facebook’s F8 conference, where, if you believe the rumor mill, Mark Zuckerberg will regale them with splashy announcements about group chatbots for Messenger and possible hardware offerings from his secretive Building 8 Lab. But at its core, F8 […]

McDonald’s is on a “mass personalization” push to attract more millennials. Even though it markets to national audiences, many of its fast-food restaurants operate as local franchises. Thus, McDonald’s must create content that resonates at a community level in addition to its national assets. To pull off an operation at McDonald’s scale requires unity among […]

After its merger with Starwood, Marriott is doubling down on paid media to drive awareness for some of its new portfolio brands. One ad campaign, “Go Beyond,” which launched this week, commemorates Sheraton Hotels’ 80th year in business. “We are trying a lot of new things in digital including people-based marketing and sequential messaging with […]

While about 80% of engagement with sponsored content on LinkedIn now happens on mobile, marketers had a hard time influencing the final conversion on that channel. So LinkedIn expanded its native ad arsenal on Tuesday by launching lead-gen ads, which aim to reduce friction with lead-gen forms and improve marketers’ mobile conversions. Although it sounds […]

Nielsen Marketing Cloud has built a new brain. The measurement company unveiled Nielsen Artificial Intelligence (AI) on Tuesday, meant to help advertiser and publisher clients build custom audience segments in real time. Nielsen AI is baked into the Nielsen Marketing Cloud platform and designed to process multiple external circumstances concurrently, which it can then use to […]

IPONWEB might have made its name building ad tech for other vendors, but it’s increasingly hoping to directly service agencies, brands and publishers. An expanding 35% of IPONWEB’s business comes directly from media buyers and owners, and in late February, the company brought on Rubicon Project and Spotify vet Jana Jakovljevic to build out its […]

The “last-look” advantage Google’s ad server gave to Google’s ad exchange so bothered publishers and exchanges that it gave rise to header bidding. As of this week, that advantage is no more, AdExchanger has learned. Google just reworked its auction so it no longer favors itself in the allocation of bids. A support document this […]

Intuit CMO Lucas Watson wants to give the financial services software company more name recognition among the Googles, Facebooks and Apples of the world. And he’s well positioned to do so, considering he last served as Google’s VP of global brand solutions and innovations before he joined Intuit last July. “As we start to stitch […]

Music and entertainment duo Billboard and The Hollywood Reporter are on an ambitious mission to reach 300 million video views each month. The sister publications have collectively crossed the 210 million monthly mark, thanks to a growth initiative dubbed “Project 300,” which centers on video of all varieties, said John Amato, president of The Hollywood […]

Media agency employees sitting for Facebook’s Blueprint certification exam may have flashbacks of their experiences taking the SATs. The exam, which certifies agency employees on every Facebook native ad product within its Ads Manager, Business Manager and Power Editor tools, is a multiple-hour affair that requires weeks of prep. Test-takers must roll up their sleeves […]