Platforms

When Dentsu Aegis Network bought programmatic shop Accordant Media on Thursday, it was the Japanese holding company’s second major tech acquisition in less than a month, following the majority stake Dentsu took in CRM agency Merkle. “Programmatic is the way of working in the future and we’ll continue to invest in people who have the […]

Musical.ly is mainly known as a lip-syncing and video sharing app popular with teens, but it’s starting to sing a different tune and expand its user base. “We’re probably that lip-syncing app you hear about from your niece or nephew,” said Kevin Ferguson, director of sales and business development at Musical.ly, which allows users to […]

This is the second installment in “PII,” a series featuring the talent that makes the wheels turn in our data-driven advertising world. Read the first PII interview with Nazanin Jazayeri. As associate director of social experience and custom product at Publicis’ Mediavest | Spark, Andrew Klein loves discovering new technologies and platforms. That wasn’t how […]

The shopping app Ibotta, which gives users cash back for purchases, has streamlined app-to-app buying. Tech from deep-linking vendor Button now allows Ibotta users to make purchases from apps in Button’s network, which includes Hotels.com, Groupon, Jet and Spring. Ibotta hopes to connect commerce apps into an easy-to-use marketplace. While it’s easy to link and […]

When it comes to doling out rewards, app developers like Hothead Games walk a fine monetization line. “You want to give meaningful rewards without hurting your economy,” said Kenneth Wong, senior monetization manager at Hothead, which makes a number of sports-themed and first-person shooter games for mobile. While advertising is part of Hothead’s monetization mix, […]

Because Wix, a website builder competing with Squarespace, doesn’t have a traditional sales force, its marketing needs to go the extra mile. The public company is under pressure to grow profits, so Wix has to make sure marketing investments (pegged at about $150 million this year, according to recent guidance) translate into revenue performance. Wix […]

If AppNexus Chief Economist Gabriel Weintraub could go back in time to the beginning of real-time bidding (RTB), he would have designed a different type of auction. “Because you are targeting so finely, you are creating thin markets. So the question is, how do you create rules that alleviate that issue, especially from the publisher […]

The Knot’s audience is engaged – literally. Eight out of 10 couples in the US – around 12 million monthly uniques – visit the wedding planning site for advice while getting ready for the big day. But The Knot has transformed itself over the last three years from an online publication to what Mike Steib, CEO and president […]

Facebook just showed up to the header bidding party. Facebook confirmed it’s “exploring header bidding with a small set of publishers.” Those partners may include USA Today and Hearst, according to The Information, which was first to report the news. For Facebook, the move could mark a significant expansion of its Audience Network platform, expanding […]

Although the Rio Olympics broke its own record for reserved ad dollars set during the London Games in 2012, broadcast is losing its iron grip on live sports media. Ratings for NBC across a portfolio of Comcast-owned properties (like MSNBC, CNBC, USA Network, Golf Channel, Telemundo and the NBC smart-TV app channel) were down compared […]

Entrepreneur and investor Peter Pham knows teens, and the term “native advertising,” like, totally makes him roll his eyes. “I’m sick of hearing the word ‘native’ because nothing I’ve seen in the market is actually native to the experience,” said Pham, co-founder of Science, a tech incubator with a knack for getting startups off the […]

Peter Horst will speak at AdExchanger’s Omni.Digital conference in Chicago on September 8. After decades of focus on TV and print advertising, Hershey’s is “in the early stages of a long, judicious process of building out a data operation and translating our brands to a digital mindset,” according to CMO Peter Horst. AdExchanger spoke with Horst about […]

Since Betabrand crowdsources its ephemeral designs – including the “dress pant yoga pants” – it focuses on Facebook as a primary traffic source. The platform accounts for about 80% of the ecommerce brand’s acquisition budget, and more than half of its members authenticate using their Facebook credentials. Betabrand is no newbie at CRM and email […]

When General Mills launched Tiny Toast in June, its first new cereal brand in more than 15 years, the company also launched its first completely digital marketing campaign. Because General Mills was targeting millennials, it stayed away from traditional TV and instead placed short video clips across YouTube, Snapchat and Instagram. In the two months […]

GhostBed is ready to go to the mattresses to gain share of voice in the super-competitive bed-in-a-box market. One tactic in its arsenal: cars wrapped in advertising. “It’s like a moving billboard – you’re getting an enormous number of impressions and it’s cost-effective for us,” said Marc Werner, CEO and founder of Nature’s Sleep, manufacturer of […]

Antonio Garcia Martinez led the team that built Facebook Exchange, the company’s first foray into programmatic advertising. He also had a front-row seat when Facebook killed off the initiative, a decision that effectively aborted his future with the company, as he details in his tell-all book “Chaos Monkeys.” “I had bet my entire social capital […]

As publishers embraced header bidding, many programmatic buyers observed the trend from the sidelines. Since header bidding boosts yield for publishers by increasing competition, it follows that buyers may be paying more. But buyers wouldn’t necessarily know if that’s the case, since SSPs don’t note whether the impression comes through a header or not. If […]

Facebook introduced a page-loading protocol on Tuesday that makes its ads almost indistinguishable from Facebook content, and thus prevents ad blockers from working on its site. Andrew Bosworth, the social media company’s VP of ads and business platform, said the change forces ad blockers to choose between not blocking ads or severely undermining the user […]

Salesforce has named CRM technology pioneer Bob Stutz as CEO of its Marketing Cloud, replacing outgoing CEO Scott McCorkle. McCorkle, a soft-spoken and well-liked exec, has for the past two years driven the marketing tech bus at Salesforce, a bus that has arguably been stuck in a fast idle since the company paid $2.5 billion […]

Spotify made its big debut of programmatic audio, but Pandora’s recent ad products focus on the visual. While the highest engagement is with its audio ads, Pandora is investing heavily in visual ads. Reason being: It wants to be more than a listening platform. Sponsored Listening, launched last year, allows brands to sponsor one hour […]

Vivendi-owned Dailymotion is expanding its network of video demand sources and its programmatic presence in New York, despite reports of restructures and the closing of the French video platform’s Palo Alto, Calif., office. Dailymotion is partnering with the mobile DSP StrikeAd, owned by recently acquired Sizmek, to serve more rich media units and enable geo-based […]

  Header bidding is changing the industry and creating a new set of winners and losers. After a dismal earnings call, Rubicon Project’s stock fell 32% and lost $200 million in value Wednesday. Rubicon CEO Frank Addante said the company failed to respond quickly to the header bidding trend, sending its desktop revenue into decline. […]

Studio71, a multichannel video network (MCN) owned by German broadcast, radio and print media giant ProSieben, aims to be a media company for the social media creator. To ensure content makers and brands work together effectively, Studio71 snagged agency vet Matt Seiler as president of marketing solutions last month. The former chairman of IPG Mediabrands […]

French performance marketing company Criteo came out swinging yet again in its quarterly showing on Wednesday despite a 7% dip in its share price when the market opened. Revenue, excluding traffic acquisition costs, rose 36% to $166 million in the second quarter, with mobile ad revenue generating half of it for the first time. Criteo […]

Rubicon Project CEO Frank Addante told investors on Tuesday that the company was slow to recognize the importance of header bidding to its publisher customers. As a result, desktop managed revenue declined 2% in Q2. That unexpected drop led Rubicon to lower its revenue guidance for the year. Rubicon’s FastLane header bidding product did not enter the […]

Google parent Alphabet finished out Q2 2016 with $21.5 billion in overall revenue, a 21% jump from Q2 2015. It’s also a notable acceleration of growth rate from that year-ago quarter, when top line revenue grew 11%. [Read the earnings release.] The company chalked up the faster growth to investments in mobile and video. “The strength of the quarter […]

If you’re a developer looking to monetize and attribute spend across devices, Facebook and Google might soon become the only shows in town. “Bummer,” called out an audience member at Grow.co’s MAU event in New York City on Tuesday. As programmatic buying grows on mobile, so does the need for an analytics infrastructure that traces […]

Facebook’s top-line revenue surged dramatically in Q2, growing 63% year over year to $6.2 billion. Mobile ads continue to be the star of Facebook’s show, comprising 84% of total advertising revenue, up from 76% at the same time last year. The company’s costs grew much more modestly, allowing it to increase operating margin from 31% to 46%. […]

Yahoo and AOL sell the same stuff to the same advertisers and, once their sales organizations combine – likely after the deal closes around Q1 2017 – there will be plenty of layoffs. Yahoo CEO Marisa Mayer said as much in Monday’s call to investors as the acquisition progressed. She said the company already has its lowest headcount since […]

Despite similar origins as Web 1.0 content portals, Yahoo’s inability to shake its roots and AOL’s decisive transformation into an ad tech company sent the two down starkly different paths, even as they both landed beneath Verizon’s big red checkmark: the communications giant purchased AOL for $4.4 billion last May and revealed its intention to […]