Platforms

Pandora’s audio ads are about to get personal. The streaming giant partnered with UK-based dynamic audio creative vendor A Million Ads on Thursday to bring tailored creative and sequential messaging to audio ads in-stream. The capability will launch this year in beta, but Pandora did not state specifically when. Pandora will leverage A Million Ads’ […]

Snapchat is settling into ad tech, and so are its partners. Video production and editing startup VidMob, one of five Creative API partners that Snapchat announced in late January, launched a self-serve platform on Thursday that lets advertisers and publishers create, manage and buy Snap Ads within a single interface. The platform combines Snapchat’s recently released […]

The Media Rating Council (MRC) will audit YouTube’s third-party measurement partners, Moat, Integral Ad Science and DoubleVerify, Google revealed Tuesday in a blog post. While the MRC has audited several parts of Google’s ad-serving and search functions for years, YouTube wasn’t historically included, said George Ivie, the council’s CEO: “This will be a first-time audit […]

The Verizon-Yahoo marriage is still on and will close “as soon as practicable” in Q2, the companies announced Tuesday. The companies have jointly amended the terms of their purchase agreement by $350 million, shaving 7% off Yahoo’s original sticker price of $4.8 billion. The agreement puts an end to a monthslong game of “Will they, […]

User retention, good user experience and monetization can coexist, they just require a deft touch. But for devs that monetize mainly through ads, there’s an inherent tension between their retention and re-engagement efforts and the bottom line. They make the bulk of their money through a means that could easily turn off the users they’re […]

Facebook will be audited by the Media Rating Council. (Pause for dramatic effect.) The company said Friday in a blog post that it plans to commit to an independent audit by the MRC in order to verify the accuracy of the measurement it delivers to its ad partners. Facebook had reportedly started talking to the […]

Since iCrossing entered the market as a search agency in 1998, digital spend has expanded to social, display and mobile, all of which are table stakes. As a result, iCrossing expanded into a full-service agency, eventually getting acquired by Hearst in 2010. Since then, it’s snagged AOR accounts for clients like Bayer, Church and Dwight and […]

Ad revenue was down year over year for Donald Trump’s favorite communication channel. Twitter’s ad revenue for Q4 slumped to $638 million from $641 million in 2015, although ad revenue was up from $616 million in the third quarter. A year-on-year ad revenue loss is a major problem, considering mobile advertising revenue comprises 89% of […]

The Association of National Advertisers voted “transparency” as 2016’s marketing word of the year. Although this year is still young, “crap” is shaping up to be 2017’s word. “The reason why so much of digital marketing doesn’t work is because it’s basically crap optimized on crap,” Rishad Tobaccowala, strategy and growth officer at Publicis, said […]

Hootsuite aims to prove it’s not just your average social media management dashboard. The company – which was founded in 2008, the heyday of companies seeking to tame the social fire hose – revealed Tuesday it had acquired AdEspresso, a Facebook and Instagram ads platform, for an undisclosed amount. Hootsuite will roll out an enterprise […]