Platforms

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 […]

Centro has updated its platform so media planners can manage direct-sold campaigns and programmatic ones in one place. The company combined its DSP SiteScout, acquired in 2013, with its workflow automation software for I/O-based buys. It was part of a three-year, $25 million platform update that began after the SiteScout purchase. “When we reset our […]

By now, Google’s brand safety issue has been covered across a broad spectrum of media outlets, ranging from The Washington Post to Recode to (naturally) AdExchanger. Below we bring you the latest in the fast-moving story. Back Story. In February and March, The Times of London described how advertisers found their brands placed next to […]

Spotify revealed Monday it had acquired content recommendation engine MightyTV to further personalize its ad delivery capabilities. Read the release. MightyTV founder and CEO Brian Adams will join Spotify as VP of technology. His eight employees will also join, and MightyTV will cease to exist as its own brand. Spotify declined to share the terms […]

Twitter has its work cut out. Stalling user growth and a rocky Q4 for ad revenue, which was down slightly year over year, present a particular sort of pickle: the need to buckle down on its key value prop. “People come to Twitter to see what’s happening in the world,” said Jean-Philippe Maheu, VP of […]

The UK boycott of YouTube and the Google Display Network jumped the pond Wednesday when AT&T, Verizon and Johnson & Johnson joined the ever-growing pile-on of advertisers suspending their ad spend over brand safety concerns. But the issue at the heart of this developing scandal – ads appearing next to extremist and offensive content – […]

NewsCred on Wednesday laid off 10% of its staff as it changes its product offering and adds advisory services to its content marketing software. As part of the reorg, NewsCred hired a president and COO, Charles Hough. “We’ve been selling [brands] content marketing platforms, but they need expert services, and someone to hold their hand […]

Demand-side platforms are getting snapped up left and right. But DataXu, one of the remaining indies, is planning to stay that way. And it’s hitching its wagon to the in-housing trend. “There’s a lot of interest in having greater transparency and control over programmatic technology,” said Mike Baker, CEO and co-founder of DataXu, which released […]

Facebook is taking the wraps off its header bidding solution, but it’s relying on partners to build the technology. On Wednesday, Facebook officially tossed its hat into the header bidding ring after a lengthy beta period by opening Audience Network as a demand source for mobile web publishers that work with a short list of […]

Google updated its brand safety controls on Tuesday after a slew of companies pulled advertising spend from YouTube and Google Ad Exchange. In response to the withdrawals, Google promised to develop tools to better police and remove ads from content that attacks people based on their race, gender, religion or “similar categories.” To do so, […]

Nielsen Catalina Solutions is teaming up with Facebook on a cross-media measurement product that aims to analyze how the combination of digital and TV drive incremental sales lift for CPG advertisers. “The biggest ask from all advertisers has been to help them with comparability,” said Fred Leach, director of marketing science at Facebook, Nielsen Catalina’s […]

Concerns over ads appearing next to extremist YouTube content has led Havas UK, The Guardian, L’Oréal and the UK government to pull advertising spend from YouTube and Google Display Network. The UK government’s interest in stamping out extremist videos has been brewing for some time. According to a February article in The Times, the UK […]

Want to know what large-scale mobile ad blocking looks like? Go to Asia, specifically China and India, where the bulk of the world’s new smartphone users are entering the market. A PageFair report last year said mobile browsers with pre-installed ad blockers more than doubled over the previous year and now outnumber those without ad […]

As a challenger to Shutterfly, the digital photo book startup Chatbooks has sought to carve a niche with millennials and moms since its 2014 launch. The brand’s initial marketing strategy has been mostly organic and word-of-mouth, but last fall it stepped on the paid media gas pedal and bought its first linear TV ad. Since then, Chatbooks has invested […]

Rubicon Project founder Frank Addante has stepped down as CEO. Former AdMeld and Millennial Media chief Michael Barrett is Rubicon’s new CEO, effective immediately. Addante will switch to a strategic and advisory role as chairman of Rubicon’s board. Barrett has a history of turning companies around and getting them sold. As CEO of Millennial Media, he took a company […]

The revenue opportunity around mobile ad spend is too big to ignore, said Dan Rosen, global director of advertising at Spanish telco Telefonica, at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in early March. It’s why telcos like Verizon, Telenor, Telstra and SingTel are spending big on ad tech. Telefonica carved out a niche in the mobile […]

“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Eric Picard, vice president of advertising product management at Pandora. The first seven years of the programmatic revolution were driven by three major efforts. It began with the creation and propagation of the massive […]

Consumer packaged goods brands like Campbell’s Soup are the epitome of content and commerce. The company ladles up recipes and cooking tips through an online community, app and email newsletter called Campbell’s Kitchen. But socially distributed content increasingly is its main ingredient for success. To boost content engagement across its owned-and-operated site and social channels, […]

Hotel and travel brands are looking to pour more performance dollars into Facebook. For years, hotel operators have used the social platform as a source of online check-ins, reviews and customer service responses, but “the next step was taking it to advertising,” said Chris Georgas, digital marketing manager for Fairmont Hotels. After debuting its Dynamic […]

Facebook is again tackling cross-device measurement and attribution. Although its Atlas product struggled as an ad server in the marketplace, Atlas could successfully use Facebook IDs to measure across devices and help marketers assess campaign performance. Now Facebook is making those features available to marketers through its Business Manager, in a tool dubbed Advanced Measurement. […]

If publishers and platforms often hold contentious relationships with each other, NBCUniversal shows signs of wanting to change that frenemy dynamic. Leading up to last week’s Snapchat IPO, NBCUniversal invested $500 million in the video messaging and content app, CNBC reported Friday. That investment would give the media company an approximately a 2% stake, according to […]

Mike Jones, the former CEO of MySpace, knows a thing or two about driving viral engagement with video. As co-founder and CEO of startup incubator Science Inc., he was an initial investor in Dollar Shave Club, which rose in popularity with a single video and was acquired by Unilever for $1 billion last July. Jones has a […]

Think of IBM and you’re likely imagining heavy technologies managed by an expensive services division. But IBM Chief Digital Officer Bob Lord emphasizes that’s the old company. He’s here to help IBM reinvent itself and, most importantly, its way of doing business. “What I’ve loved doing throughout my career is helping a company pivot,” Lord […]

What works better for publishers: Snapchat or Instagram Stories? Both platforms are quickly gaining ground as ways for publishers to distribute their content to wider audiences. Snapchat made its public offering Thursday, and Instagram Stories launched last year with a competitive, video-focused offering. While each platform claims more than 150 million daily users, Snapchat and […]

Away from the dancing robots, Power Rangers-themed VR experiences, self-driving race cars and the buzzing of drones, deals do get done at Mobile World Congress. That’s why French location-based dating app Happn came to Barcelona for the show. “We’re here to have discussions, to gather insights, to see what our competitors are doing, to find […]

Snap Inc. is expected to go public on Thursday, leaving many to wonder how the most anticipated tech IPO since Facebook will be treated by investors on Wall Street. While Snap described itself as a camera company during its roadshow, investors know that its success hinges on its ability to monetize successfully as an ad […]

Although Verizon’s appetite for ad tech was the main driver behind its acquisition of AOL, it’s content that really sweetened the deal. “Our content is a differentiator for Verizon amidst all of the other telcos,” AOL CMO Allie Kline told AdExchanger. But there’s a lot knocking around under the AOL umbrella – everything from ad tech […]

ComScore had a rough go of it in 2016, with fierce competition from Nielsen and other media validation companies, culminating in its delisting from the Nasdaq this month. But CEO Gian Fulgoni also expressed disappointment with the performance of comScore’s digital ad measurement tool, Validated Campaign Essentials (vCE), during a corporate update on Friday. Though […]