Platforms

When Facebook, Twitter and Google executives were summoned late last year to testify before Congress on political interference and advertising in the 2016 election, they were steadfast that they could manage the issue through ad policies and disclosures. Early bipartisan calls for legislation have mostly faded and, for now, self-regulation is the name of the […]

Spotify filed its F-1 with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday, forgoing a traditional IPO for a direct listing on the New York Stock Exchange. Read the filing. The direct listing means Spotify can directly post its shares on the stock exchange rather than going through the traditional process of hiring a bank […]

Did Facebook’s algorithm force the Clinton campaign to pay more for ads than the Trump outfit during the 2016 US presidential election? That’s fake news, said Facebook, which provided a rare public statement on the dynamics of its ads auction on Tuesday after claims of discriminatory pricing. Senior Facebook exec Andrew Bosworth disclosed on Twitter […]

With additional reporting by Alison Weissbrot. Sizable brands and top-tier publishers can use their clout to pressure media platforms into sharing more measurement data – but what are advertisers actually getting? Just enough to keep them spending, said Chris Kane, founder of programmatic consultancy Jounce Media. “Walled gardens will do the minimum acceptable thing so […]

Although athletic apparel manufacturer New Balance makes more than $4 billion in annual revenue in 130-odd markets, it doesn’t share the same name recognition as competitors like Nike, Adidas or Under Armour. “We found through market research that in most of our markets globally, consumers are aware of us, but they weren’t considering us because […]

Facebook is doing some early spring cleaning in Ads Manager, the tool advertisers use to create, manage and track campaigns. Starting Thursday, it will begin labeling whether metrics are estimated and start marking metrics that are still being tested. The goal is to give advertisers more insight into how metrics are calculated. Knowing when metrics […]

Mobile texting never quite made it into the marketer toolkit, but some online sellers are re-examining SMS as a more cost-effective way to engage known customers than advertising. And ecommerce tech vendors are beefing up mobile messaging because the channel now supports data-driven segmentation, like retargeting campaigns. These capabilities are increasingly valuable as frictionless mobile […]

Call it fashionably late: Pandora has finally showed up to the programmatic audio party. The digital audio platform said Tuesday buyers can now purchase its audio inventory programmatically through a private marketplace (PMP) via The Trade Desk, MediaMath and AdsWizz’s AudioMatic DSP. Pandora is testing the PMP in a pilot program with five to 10 […]

Data is helpful in the fight against fraud, but it’s not enough, said Martzel de Domingo, who leads user acquisition at French gaming giant Ubisoft, whose titles include “Assassin’s Creed” and “South Park: Phone Destroyer.” Fraudsters know how to hide behind the numbers. “Some people might not look to see what’s happening after an install,” […]

Ericsson remains keen on ad tech. On Wednesday, the Swedish networking and telecom company announced its acquisition of Placecast, a combo data management and demand-side platform (DSP) for location data. Placecast is now part of Emodo, Ericsson’s programmatic mobile ad platform that helps telcos monetize their subscriber data. Emodo is housed within a newly created […]

FTD Companies, parent company of online floral delivery brands ProFlowers and Interflora, wants to get back to the basics of brand marketing. “Our company, like many brands, has been obsessed with directly attributable, perfectly measured marketing for the last five years,” said Jeff Severts, CMO of FTD Companies, who previously served as CMO of Ulta […]

Paris-based app retargeting platform Adikteev – think Criteo for apps – snagged $12 million in Series B on Tuesday. The company plans to spend it on research and development and on expanding its 100-person headcount with around 40 new engineer hires over the next month. The round, which brings Adikteev’s total funding to $14.2 million since it […]

There’s no point eating up engineering resources to build technology that can be provided out of the box, Lomit Patel, VP of growth at IMVU, said at the Mobile Growth Summit in San Francisco last week. Although most mobile growth marketers would rather build than buy, nearly every app relies on a constellation of third-party […]

Publishers, prepare yourselves for another Facebook organic reach reality check. Starting Monday, Facebook will finally begin measuring organic page reach the same way it measures paid ad reach: based on viewable impressions. This is only a reporting change and unrelated to how organic distribution works on Facebook. Facebook started alerting publishers in early February, but […]

The New York Times is making good on its goal to rev digital subscription revenue, but not at the expense of its other key growth driver: digital advertising. The Times’ total subscription revenue surpassed $1 billion in 2017 as the company added 157,000 net new, digital-only subscriptions in Q4, it announced during its Q4 earnings […]

A budding sense of optimism around Twitter was substantiated Thursday when the social platform announced its first-ever quarter of profitability and a return to revenue growth. Twitter saw 2% year-over-year revenue growth with a total of $732 million in the final quarter of 2017, after a string of revenue declines last year. Twitter averaged 330 […]

Pixability, a platform that originated as a tool for identifying high-performing YouTube channels, is putting its money where its mouth is. The company will refund advertisers for views that run on YouTube inventory that is not brand-safe or fails to meet an advertiser’s agreed-upon brand safety terms, either through cash or TV-like “make-goods.” Although Pixability […]

Google will turn on its built-in Chrome ad blocker on Feb. 15, meaning ad tech companies must hustle to get their products in compliance as publishers fear lost revenue. Beginning that day, Chrome will begin auto-blocking ad formats that obstruct access to content. Chrome has more than 62% of the mobile browser market share and […]

Snap finally snapped out of its earnings slump on Tuesday as it beat analyst expectations for both revenue and daily active user growth. Revenue in 2017 reached $825 million, a 104% increase from the year before, while 2017 Q4 revenue grew 72% to roughly $286 million, topping analysts’ quarterly estimates of $253 million. “Our business […]

Champagne brand Moët & Chandon wanted its “Love Unconventional” campaign, running Valentine’s Day through Mother’s Day, to drive engagement with elements of gameplay. While the campaign will be heavy on digital video and influencer content across Facebook and Instagram, its more immersive elements are more endemic to Snapchat’s platform, said Christine Ngo, marketing director and […]

Alphabet posted revenues of $32.3 billion in the fourth quarter of 2017, up 24% compared to the same period last year. The earnings showed a spike in traffic acquisition costs [TAC] as Google paid more to publishers in its Google Network Members’ properties revenue segment. The segment also includes revenue from Google’s DoubleClick Bid Manager, […]

Pandora said Wednesday it would shift resources and savings by investing in ad tech. The music streaming platform, which has fallen behind competitors in developing programmatic advertising solutions for buyers, said it will redeploy staff to build ad tech and mar tech and expand into non-music content. Pandora declined to comment further. Read the release. […]

Traffic is down at Facebook. It’s a new look for the platform, which has done almost nothing but grow quarter over quarter and year over year. Changes to Facebook’s news feed algorithm deprioritizing viral video in Q4 reduced time spent on the platform by around 50 million hours a day. Daily active users in the […]

Twitter is a company that always seems on the verge of flight. The potential is there, but the question remains: Will the platform ever be able to fulfill it? Instability in Twitter’s C-suite doesn’t help. On Tuesday, COO Anthony Noto – second in command to Jack Dorsey – became the most recent top Twitter exec to fly […]

When Facebook updates Ads Manager or tests a new ad placement, agencies – and even their account reps – are sometimes the last to know. In some cases, new features are enabled by default without any overt communication from Facebook, which can be “par for the course,” said Anita Walsh, director of social strategy at Horizon […]

When Facebook said it would change its news feed algorithm to prioritize users’ families’ and friends’ posts, advertisers worried it would also affect how paid placements are bought and sold. Would this reduce the amount of available inventory? Would it drive up costs? Facebook’s VP of global marketing solutions, Carolyn Everson, sought to assuage the […]

Adobe and AppNexus plan to give marketers supply-chain transparency from the DSP to the SSP by partnering on a pilot program. Adobe Advertising Cloud will reveal all fees taken by the DSP, including the platform fee and any add-ons, as well as AppNexus’ bill to the publisher, which will help marketers track media dollars through […]

Spotify was an early mover in programmatic audio, and it’s taking that momentum into 2018. “Marketers are moving so much money to programmatic. We’ve seen that channel explode,” said Brian Benedik, global head of ads monetization at Spotify. “We’ve seen brands [come to Spotify] that have never invested in audio because we’ve made it programmatic-enabled.” […]

In-app header bidding is coming to MoPub. On Tuesday, the Twitter-owned mobile ad exchange started testing an advanced bidding solution to replace the app ads waterfall with a unified auction. Roughly a dozen publishers are testing the solution. The closed alpha test does not have a set end date. Until now, advertisers could buy MoPub […]

Product and marketing go hand in hand at OkCupid. There’s a dotted line between user engagement, platform tweaks and the deployment of marketing dollars to reach specific types of users, mainly on social channels like Facebook, Instagram and Snap, said OkCupid CMO Melissa Hobley. “Our product truth is that we create experiences based on depth, […]