Basis Global Technologies – aka Centro – is angling to join the stampede of OG ad tech companies that hit the public market this year. On Thursday, less than a week after changing its name to Basis from Centro, the Chicago-based company confidentially submitted what’s known as a draft registration statement S-1 with the Securities and Exchange […]
“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Ian Trider, VP of RTB platform operations at Centro. If there are at least 80 companies purporting to offer identity solutions, surely the ad tech industry is set, right? Nope. I would argue that most […]
Centro said on Wednesday that it’s acquiring search engine marketing platform QuanticMind with plans to integrate the technology into its automated ad management platform called Basis. Although Shawn Riegsecker, Centro’s CEO and founder, declined to say how much Centro paid, he did share that QuanticMind reached $10 million in yearly revenue at its pinnacle and […]
“The Sell Sider” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Ian Trider, VP of RTB platform operations at Centro. SupplyChain Object, along with its companion Sellers.json, are critical tools for enhancing transparency in the programmatic ecosystem. They enable ad platforms […]
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. From CCPA To The Cabinet President-Elect Joe Biden has selected Xavier Becerra to lead the Department of Health and Human Services – a name that should be familiar to privacy-heads the world over. Becerra is the attorney general of California, and it’s his office […]
The pandemic has turned Centro CEO and founder Shawn Riegsecker into a slipper-wearing night owl. When Slack and email goes quiet, Shawn gets busy, staying up until the wee hours. Working from home can do that to you. “There are too many pings throughout the day, too much mental confusion,” he says. “When everybody shuts […]
While the increased digital media supply caused by the pandemic has prompted CPMs to plummet – dropping 20% in March, according to ad analytics company Adomik – programmatic auctions are still healthy. Certainly bidding in March declined overall, said Francois de Laigue, Adomik’s VP of sales and strategic partnerships. The average dropped from 2.5 to […]
“The Sell Sider” is a column written for the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Ian Trider, director of RTB platform operations at Centro. There is a widespread practice in this industry which puts advertisers at risk: resellers acquiring inventory from other resellers. With such an overly complex supply […]
AdExchanger Talks is a podcast focused on data-driven marketing. Subscribe here. Shawn Riegsecker may be the world’s most durable ad tech founder, but he didn’t plan it that way. Riegsecker founded Centro in 2001 to automate the manual work required to plan and buy local digital ads. After years of development, he scrapped and reengineered the platform […]
Door hardware maker Schlage was spending seven figures on linear TV advertising. While the brand still wanted to take advantage of TV’s mass reach, it wanted better targeting, measurement and optimization. So Schlage called on its agency of record, The Basement, and demand-side platform Centro to bring programmatic elements to its TV media buys. “They […]
Advertisers buying on the open marketplace often sacrifice viewability, quality and transparency for cheaper prices and scale. But as more buyers decline to make that concession, the pendulum is swinging toward curated publisher lists. And many DSPs now offer to shoulder the burden of setting up private marketplace deals for their clients. Recently Centro, which […]
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 […]
Ad tech companies flocked to Washington, DC, during the recent election cycle in pursuit of political ad budgets, but many were disappointed. Rocket Fuel was the most aggressive newcomer, adding approximately 15 people to its DC office for political business development beginning last summer. But the company dismissed most of those hires in the week […]
Despite the advantages of programmatic buying, political advertisers hoping to go beyond the giant walled gardens owned by Facebook and Google see real challenges with the system. Those challenges include inventory scarcity, placement transparency and auction dynamics that don’t match up with brand spenders. Publishers who are hankering for political ad spend don’t always have […]
“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Katie Risch, senior vice president of software client solutions at Centro. The headlines we’ve seen about bots eating billions of dollars in digital ad budget are downright frightening. Lots of […]
“The world may have a polling problem,” declared Nate Silver, the former New York Times statistical wunderkind who’s since launched FiveThirtyEight under the ESPN banner, in an article last year. Silver made this claim following the failure of UK polls to predict results of the country’s general election last May. In the US, he noted […]
Ad-tech companies shed hundreds of employees from their payrolls in recent weeks. Turn, PubMatic, Collective and Centro all laid off workers, adding to the toll of Rocket Fuel’s large job cuts earlier this year. The cited reasons vary but often boil down to simple survival as ad tech companies position themselves for profitability in a tough market. […]
Chicago-based ad platform company Centro let go 29 of its 725 employees on Monday, or about 4% of total staff. Unlike other recent layoffs in the ad tech sector – including at Turn, Collective and PubMatic – the cuts were not motivated by a shrinking pool of cash, restless investors or slouching revenue growth. Instead, […]
After signing up 150 publishers for its self-service DSP, Centro officially launched the platform Thursday. The publishers managing reach extension internally come from opposite ends of the spectrum: McClatchy, a local media company with roots in more than two dozen markets, and PureWow, a small, national lifestyle publisher. They’ve come to the same decision. “It’s increasingly […]
Centro, which sells media management software, revealed $30 million in Series B funding on Wednesday. Neuberger Berman Private Equity Funds is the sole investor in this round, joining FTV Capital, which led a $22.5 million Series A round in 2010. Founded in 2001, Centro initially focused on automating the guaranteed aspects of digital advertising, such […]
Centro launched a private marketplace within its ad exchange on Tuesday. Although Centro Brand Exchange was already an exclusive, invitation-only auction house, the private marketplace enables advertisers to purchase premium inventory in unique formats, such as 300×600, and in places that had previously been unavailable, such as on homepages. It also allows selected trading desks […]
If your local advertisers have an advertising budget to spend but nowhere to spend it, why not do it for them? That’s part of the logic behind reach extension, a tactic that’s long been popular with media companies like newspapers that get much of their budget from local businesses too small to warrant hiring an […]
It’s hard times for late stage advertising technology companies. Many public and private investors are gloomy on ad tech, and older startups needing new funds lately find themselves forced to choose between unattractive options, such as going public or raising money at a lower valuation, a painful event sometimes referred to as a “down round.” […]
Since demand-side platform (DSP) SiteScout’s $40 million acquisition by Centro in last November, the company has evolved its business model from a pure self-serve platform to managed services. Shawn Riegsecker, Centro’s CEO, hinted at the time of acquisition the company might acquire a data-management platform to extend its biddable media offerings. Matt Sauls, cofounder and […]
Centro’s estimated $40 million purchase of demand-side platform SiteScout isn’t just intended to imbue the digital media workflow specialist with real-time bidding chops. Read the release. For Centro CEO Shawn Riegsecker, the point of this deal goes beyond wrenching the obvious efficiencies of having a DSP function in-house. Adding SiteScout will prepare Centro for the […]
Centro is bringing mobile and tablet ad inventory to its programmatic display ad serving system, called Brand Exchange. Publishers and agency trading desks AdExchanger spoke with view the offering as a way to further unlock the largely untapped local ad market. While mobile and tablet usage is growing, it’s still a mere fraction of the […]
“Workflow” is not the sexiest of topics, even in the realm of digital advertising. But as the process of buying, planning and tracking digital ad buys gets more complex, both agencies and software companies are taking a more serious look at what can and should be automated. Several months ago, Mediaocean, which was the product […]
As of the fall of 2012, the newspaper industry had limped through 20 straight quarters of decline, according to figures collected by the Newspaper Association of America. The consecutive decreases began in the third quarter of 2006, when combined print and online ad dollars fell 1.5 percent to $11.7 billion. Since that point, newspaper ad […]
Centro CEO Shawn Riegsecker recently discussed his company with AdExchanger as well as Centro’s workflow software known as Transis. In addition, the company just launched Brand Exchange for digital, display advertising, which the company describes as “an invitation-only exchange to connect brand advertisers with a unique group of premium publishers.” Click below or scroll for more: […]
Shawn Riegsecker is Founder & President of Centro, a media services and technology firm and makers of Transis, a media buying system. AdExchanger.com: Can you discuss the pivots in Centro’s business model since 2001? And how has it led today’s Transis offering? Centro’s vision is the same today as the day we started. Our whole […]
