As expected, Facebook enjoyed dramatic revenue growth in the third quarter on the strength of its massive mobile user base. Ad revenue grew 57% year over year to $6.8 billion. Mobile ad revenue accounted for 84% of that figure, or $5.7 billion, up from 78% one year ago. Read the earnings release. The company’s desktop […]
Although Neustar’s marketing services division saw 54% Q3 revenue growth YoY to $63.3 million, CEO Lisa Hook noted Thursday that new client wins in its marketing analytics business, MarketShare, had fallen short. As a result, the company lowered MarketShare’s full-year revenue guidance for 2016 from $70 million to $55 million-$60 million. “Our overall results for […]
Dunkin’ Donuts’ marketing might be known for big awareness campaigns like “America Runs On Dunkin” and “Keep On,” but the brand also breaks down media into smaller, product-specific activations. For instance, when Dunkin’ began serving cold-brew coffee this past summer, it let consumers unlock custom geofilters through a special code on Snapchat. “Coffee is such […]
This year, Facebook appeared to abandon its plan to develop an ad tech stack to rival Google’s DoubleClick. It shut down its SSP (LiveRail), closed the Facebook Exchange and threw away its DSP before it got off the ground. All that remains is Atlas, a former ad server repurposed as a measurement tool, and the […]
Adidas-owned Reebok is in a unique position, both as a challenger to Nike and as a target of other challenger sports and apparel brands like Under Armour. As such, it invests heavily and consistently in content – despite its fluctuating ad spend over the years. Because content must generate larger, measurable performance results, Reebok bets the […]
Facebook is changing the way it values ad placements across its Audience Network as part of an ongoing transition from proxy ad metrics to actual business conversions. “The dominant proxy for the industry, and it’s been true as well for us, is the click,” Facebook ad tech head David Jakubowski told AdExchanger. “[Except] no marketer […]
AT&T, which completed a $49 billion merger with DirecTV last July, is relatively behind competitive carrier Verizon in acquiring (or building) an ad stack and monetizing its mobile data set. AT&T has been largely silent on the mobile data front following its shift away from building a mobile ad network in 2013 in order to prioritize […]
InStyle fans tuning into Facebook Live earlier this year watched a La Mer expert conduct a skin consultation with an InStyle editor. The editorial video with brand integration became one of the first examples of Time Inc.’s Social Now ad product. “We are providing very authentic and transparent ways for advertisers to play [with Facebook […]
Local advertising is undergoing dramatic change. Because this presidential election has relied on earned media instead of TV, revenue for local broadcasters who aren’t in swing states has gone down. And it’s not an anomaly. This pattern has “forever changed political advertising,” said Gordon Borrell, CEO of Borrell Associates. Facebook is making a play for […]
Cross-device identity match rates have shot up in recent years, but brands and agencies remain skeptical of the results. “We were consistently disappointed with cross-device identity matches,” said David Kohl, CEO of the digital media advisory firm Morgan Digital Ventures. “There’s a gap in understanding of what’s possible between vendors and the buy side, [which […]
When Celestial Seasonings first redesigned its iconic packaging last summer to attract more millennial tea drinkers, it didn’t go over well. Although the Boulder, Colo.-based tea brand had invested in promotional and brand marketing to reinforce its new brand look, loyal customers weren’t having it. After engaging in consumer studies – and gathering consumer feedback […]
LinkedIn has finally launched a feature that has been available to marketers on Facebook for three-plus years. The site rolled out conversion tracking for sponsored content and text ads on Thursday after a serious overhaul of its tech infrastructure. At its most basic level, the feature lets marketers determine if a user converted after clicking or viewing […]
About.com grew up during the big portal-publisher era that included Yahoo, MSN and AOL. Similar to those other Web 1.0 properties, About.com, too, was acquired – for nearly $300 million in 2012 by IAC – and forced to reinvent in the platform age of Facebook. After a complete site redesign two years ago, About.com is […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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%. […]
Nielsen has entered into an open marriage with three viewability providers. The company will now support Integral Ad Science, Moat and DoubleVerify within its digital audience measurement solution, Nielsen Digital Ad Ratings. Although it had a preexisting relationship with Integral Ad Science since 2012, clients have requested support for alternative providers that fit their preferences. […]
App users that don’t convert or engage in some way are not healthy for a developer’s bottom line. On Monday, Facebook rolled out a product to help publishers attract users that are most likely to keep using an app after they download it. Facebook also expanded dynamic product ads and its full-screen mobile ad unit, […]
When brands think about video advertising, sequential retargeting isn’t always top of mind. But multinational rental-car company Sixt, in its bid to capture more share in the US market (it has 50 stations across the US, after opening its first in Florida in 2011), is test-driving Facebook video coupled with expanded Custom Audiences to improve […]
Facebook, which recently took the wraps off a tool that lets advertisers link location-aware ads to store visits, may have more than 1.5 billion users, but scale isn’t the only prerequisite for cracking offline attribution. “My question for Facebook would be: Do they know the spatial outlines of every McDonald’s in America?” said Duncan McCall, […]
Kim Kardashian and pop star Taylor Swift are the only people with more social followers than Ellen DeGeneres. The popular talk show host’s brand transcends demographics and geographies, which has spurred a deeper shift into digital despite Ellen’s TV ratings strength. In May, Ellen Digital Ventures and Warner Bros. Television launched the Ellen Digital Network […]
Facebook-owned Instagram debuted business profiles and account tools on Tuesday. While many personal accounts are used for business, Instagram formalized the system and added promotional capabilities like putting spend behind a post and basic targeting, measurement and reporting tools. While business accounts aren’t meant to be an enterprise-class solution, the vast majority of advertisers on Instagram […]
Kelly Liyakasa contributed. What a month for Facebook’s ad business. Late Thursday and early Friday, Facebook signaled plans to serve more ads to nonusers on its Facebook Audience Network (FAN). The company also moved to shutter two other ad tech components: its LiveRail exchange (parts of which had already been sunsetted) and its Facebook Exchange […]
The long-rumored demise of Facebook’s desktop FBX will finally arrive. The social media giant will shut off its desktop retargeting tool Nov. 1. Partners buying through the FBX API will have to use a different one, said Matt Idema, Facebook’s VP of product monetization. Current partners include AppNexus, Criteo, AdRoll and MediaMath, among others. “FBX […]
It’s hard to scroll through Facebook without encountering some short-form video from NowThis (like Donald Trump “awkwardly sort of apologizing” to Fox News host Megyn Kelly) in your news feed, and the socially distributed media company wants it that way. Founded four years ago by BuzzFeed and HuffPo execs Ken Lerer and Eric Hippeau, NowThis […]
