Platforms

AppNexus and Index Exchange have the broadest adoption of their adapters and wrappers, according to the first-ever Header Bidding Index – a report from ServerBid, an Adzerk spinoff that builds wrappers for the demand side. Seventy percent of the top 1,000 publishers running programmatic advertising use header bidding, according to the report, which ServerBid created […]

The accuracy of Facebook’s reporting is under the microscope again courtesy of Pivotal analyst Brian Wieser and an Australian trade pub called AdNews. In a note to investors on Tuesday, Wieser called attention to Facebook’s claims that it reaches more people than exist within certain age groups, based on US Census data. Wieser was tipped […]

Before Yieldbot CEO Jonathan Mendez laid off one-third of the company’s employees in mid-July, the company had suffered a series of setbacks. With $10 million in funding last year, Yieldbot bet on a header bidding wrapper that didn’t pay off. Instead, AppNexus won the header bidding wrapper wars with Prebid. Then it had a bad […]

LinkedIn on Wednesday launched the LinkedIn Audience Network, a platform enabling advertisers to serve sponsored content on sites and apps beyond its own feed. These properties include desktop placements on parent Microsoft’s properties like MSN and Outlook.com, as well as on third-party publishers through integrations to exchanges like MoPub, Google’s AdX, Rubicon and Sharethrough. LinkedIn […]

The second-price auction is crumbling. All the major exchanges/SSPs – with the exception of Google AdX – are rolling out or are deep in experiments with first-price header bidding auctions. The tests vary in aggressiveness and scope from exchange to exchange, with AppNexus, Index Exchange and OpenX leading the charge, and with visions of much […]

Consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands are threatening steep investment pullbacks if higher standards aren’t met on marketing measurement and transparency. And those Fortune 500 CPGs, including Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Mondelez, Nestlé and Kraft, seem to be holding to their lines in the sand. In the past few weeks, holding companies like IPG, WPP and […]

Many advertisers want reach, but when Canada Dry executed a campaign with Spotify and Adobe, it optimized against a softer metric: mindset. “We don’t think of consumers as just 18-49-year-olds or young millennials,” said Brit Sundberg, programmatic media and data strategy manager for Dr Pepper Snapple Group, which owns Canada Dry. “We think of our […]

PepsiCo’s fitness water brand Propel wants its digital messaging to reach consumers while they’re working out, so it’s focused its media investments around music and mobile. Propel has a deep relationship with Pandora as well as Under Armour’s fitness tracker app, Map My Fitness. “Propel as a brand has centered itself around uniting fitness tribes and […]

Google’s latest anti-fraud measure aims to stamp out ad fraud by clawing back money from the exchanges where its DSP purchased fraudulent inventory. In Q4, DoubleClick Bid Manager will give advertisers the option to buy only from exchanges that will refund media spend for fraudulent inventory. Over the past month, Google’s DSP has issued advertisers […]

“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by David Jakubowski, director of publisher solutions at Facebook. The benefits of header bidding on the web are well documented: Publishers receive an average increase of 15% to 30% – even as high as 50% […]

The MRC kicked off the second phase of its three-part Facebook audit at the beginning of August: an assessment of the quality of Facebook and Instagram viewability metrics as reported by viewability partners like Moat, Integral Ad Science, comScore and DoubleVerify. Specifically, the MRC is examining if Facebook’s API accurately transmits what’s happening on Facebook […]

While Google claimed advertisers are returning to YouTube, new data from Standard Media Index reveals advertisers really did tighten their purse strings after the video platform’s brand safety scare. YouTube ad spend declined about 26% YoY in Q2, while ad spend spread across digital video platforms such as Hulu or network-owned video services, in comparison, […]

LinkedIn is rolling out native video, which will allow users to record and upload video directly to the platform, the company said Tuesday, after a beta test that began earlier this year. The tool will gradually be available to all individual LinkedIn members over the next few weeks. LinkedIn expects to make the tool available […]

Facebook is giving advertisers a bit more control over how they buy in-stream video ads within the news feed, through Audience Network and on Watch, its newly launched video tab. In the past, advertisers that wanted to purchase in-stream placements delivered into ad breaks were required to run them in the news feed. Starting Thursday, […]

Inc. Magazine released its annual 500/5000 revenue survey on Wednesday and the theme is: There is no theme. At least not from an ad tech perspective in the Advertising & Marketing category. (Click here to read coverage of last year’s list.) “The list does feel a little random,” said Melissa Parrish, VP and research director […]

Facebook Watch, the social giant’s video hub that went live for select users on Wednesday, already has a roster of digital video launch partners – like Time Inc., Hearst, Brit & Co., Tastemade, Quartz and McClatchy. But Facebook also wants to broker content deals with the likes of big TV companies like Univision, Major League […]

The NBA’s Sacramento Kings are entering the second season in the Golden 1 Center, the centerpiece of the team’s new data-driven fan experience. “We tend to think of the stadium as a platform,” said Ryan Montoya, CTO of the Kings organization. “Everything plugs into an operating system, and the data can be shared throughout the […]

Snap again came in below analysts’ expectations for its Q2 earnings announced on Thursday. Year-over-year, revenue grew 153% to $181.7 million in Q2 and 200% to $331 million for the half year. Quarter-over-quarter, revenue was up roughly 21%. Analysts expected Q2 revenue to clock in at $186 million. Daily active users (DAUs) grew 21% year-over-year […]

Videology revealed Wednesday that it received an $80 million credit facility from lending and payment services provider FastPay and Tennenbaum Capital. Since its founding a decade ago, Videology has raised about $121 million in capital financing, but at this advanced stage in the company’s lifecycle, it didn’t necessarily make sense to raise another round of costly […]

As its sell-side business takes off due to the success of its Prebid open source wrapper, AppNexus’ buy-side operation is treading water relative to rivals such as The Trade Desk. Now the company is considering downplaying it further. In recent months, AppNexus executives have pondered using parts of its buy-side business as a bargaining chip […]

Ever click on an ad by mistake? You and the rest of internet-connected humanity. On Tuesday, Facebook said it’s going to stop counting those errant clicks in its reporting for ads served through Audience Network and start barring publishers from including clickable white space in the background of their native ads. Beginning next week, if […]

While P.F. Chang’s first order of business is stir-fry, it’s also cooking up a fresh data strategy to support its new brand push. As the owner of 212 Asian-themed concept restaurants around the globe, P.F. Chang’s strategy – and its custom-built technology stack – once primarily catered to the dine-in audience. “As takeout and third-party […]

Lorne Brown, former CEO of Operative and president of SintecMedia, will ascend to the CEO position at Sintec Media. Outgoing CEO Amotz Yarden will assume a seat on the board. As CEO, Brown plans to continue executing the vision he and Yarden laid out last November when SintecMedia acquired Operative for $200 million, about six […]

AT&T just hired an ad platform whiz kid to take charge of its new TV and video ad business – but that’s the easy part. On Friday, AT&T revealed that Brian Lesser, GroupM’s CEO of North America, will helm a new business unit so the telco can attempt to realize the potential of its vast deterministic […]

Mobile app install ads are still a multibillion-dollar business for Facebook. But is Facebook taking too much credit? It’s hard to say, because Facebook is what’s known as a self-attributing network, i.e., a walled garden. A self-attributing network is just what it sounds like: a platform that, usually because of its scale, has the power […]

Rubicon Project has been steadily lowering its take rate over the past year to make its tech more appealing to publishers and buyers, who have pushed back against hidden fees. During its earnings call Tuesday, the company revealed that the declining take rates are one part of its strategy to offer the most value for […]

Pandora’s active listeners in Q2 declined 2.7% YoY to 76 million, the company reported on its Monday earnings call. That’s down from 78 million active listeners during the same period last year. To bolster its user base, Pandora will refocus its marketing efforts on getting users to sign up for its ad-supported tier and upgrading […]

Twitter’s revenue and user growth story – especially US user growth – is grounded in a harsh reality. Overall revenue for the quarter came in at $574 million, down 5% year over year. Ad revenue was also down 8% on a YoY basis, clocking in at $489 million. This is the third quarter in a […]

The New York Post has a love-hate relationship with pre-roll. While pre-roll typically commands high CPMs when sold directly, too often it’s hard to monetize because it’s either in short supply or locked up in private marketplaces. Sometimes the supply issue is technical. The New York Post recently found it had missed half of its […]

Facebook is pretty much minting money at this point. Despite concerns over ad load maxing out in the news feed, Facebook posted revenue of $9.32 billion for the second quarter, up 45% year over year from $6.43 billion. Mobile ad revenue at $8 billion was responsible for the vast majority of Facebook’s overall revenue in […]