Facebook and Twitter are keen to build more commerce functionality into the social stream. Earlier this summer Facebook began working with select commerce brands to support direct transactions on its platform, and Twitter has been expected to produce something similar after sharp-eyed users spotted a semi-functional “buy” button on the site in July. Well, now that other […]
Ad management platform Marin Software has partnered with Yandex to let its clients automate and manage paid search campaigns on the Russian search engine giant. Basically, if those clients have similar advertising campaigns running on other search engines, they can clone those campaigns and pop them into Yandex. “We have more global clients looking to leverage the campaigns, […]
Mobile is social, social is mobile. Working from this premise, video ad server Mixpo began a strategy review several months ago with the intention to build out its social capability. That process concluded Tuesday when the company closed on the acquisition of ShopIgniter, a social rich media specialist with 15 to 20 employees that is a […]
If cross-device tracking is a room, then Facebook and Google are the elephants – except Google is the only elephant that isn’t talking. Facebook hasn’t been shy about its cross-device intentions. At the time of the Atlas acquisition in 2013, its ads product director, Gokul Rajaram, noted that Facebook’s goal is to “be able to measure […]
Refinery29 started out as a fashion blog, but it’s since expanded its vision: It plans to be the go-to source for millennials on the subjects of beauty, travel and points of view on subjects ranging from dieting to news coming from Ferguson, Mo. It’s also a high-growth company. The digital publication has 15 million monthly uniques, according […]
“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 by Megan Pagliuca, VP and GM for digital media at Merkle Inc. It was penned in response to Rob Griffin’s recent piece, “The Death of the Third-Party Ad Server.” Rob Griffin’s […]
While it would be wrong to say that advertisers aren’t spending on mobile — they are, to the tune of $7.1 billion in 2013, a 110% year-over-year increase, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau — it wouldn’t be wrong to say that they are spending at a rate not commensurate with mobile consumption. Mary Meeker and […]
Facebook wants to be the answer to your cross-device measurement problem and it’s in a pretty good position to do it. Enter cross-device reporting for ads, courtesy of Facebook. The new measurement solution, unleashed Wednesday, is available within Facebook’s campaign back end and is designed to allow advertisers to track customers as they move across […]
AdStage, a cross-platform campaign automation tool as well as a Facebook and LinkedIn ads API partner, has raised $6.25 million in Series A financing from Verizon Ventures and myriad other investment firms. This brings the company to $8.78 million in total funding since its founding less than two years ago. AdStage will predominantly use the […]
It’s hard to bucket Ooyala. The seven-year-old company, which already dabbles in both video monetization and digital content management, wants to be for TV “what Cisco is to network computing.” While Ooyala’s a full-service consultancy that helps traditional networks migrate to the cloud, it also has a software business. The Ooyala Platform hooks up to […]
Professional social networking platform LinkedIn on Thursday posted Q2 revenue of $534 million, a 47% YoY increase from $364 million. Marketing Solutions revenue, now 20% of LinkedIn’s total business, was $101 million for the second quarter, a 44% uptick from last year. Talent Solutions and Premium Subscriptions account for 60% and 20% of revenue, respectively. LinkedIn […]
What’s the hottest new digital toy? If you’re Facebook and Twitter, it’s the buy button. To recap: Facebook published a blog post explaining its experimentation with a buy button – currently with select small and medium-sized businesses – with which users can purchase goods directly through the Facebook platform. This announcement followed Twitter’s own dalliance with […]
Facebook reported second-quarter earnings on Thursday amid generally high expectations for the company’s advertising business, especially as it pertains to mobile and video. Investors were not disappointed. Facebook posted Q2 advertising revenue of $2.68 billion, a 67% increase from Q2 2013. Of that, mobile advertising is becoming increasingly important – it constituted 62% of Facebook’s total advertising […]
With video ad tech deal activity surging, independent players must decide whether to go it alone, brave the impending volatility of public markets or sell. Facebook acquired video supply-side platform LiveRail for an estimated $500 million in early July. Yahoo one week later snapped up video distribution platform RayV, which answered some questions about its […]
Triggit, known to many as the “Facebook-only” retargeting firm, is taking on native ads outside the Facebook platform. The company is courting publishers with the promise to support their native advertising formats and bring the kind of in-stream ad experiences it has run in Facebook’s news feed over the past year to a wider range […]
The SundaySky has shifted. Since the video ad company launched its SmartVideo platform in 2011, it has ramped up its focus on personalized ads and video content. It’s an evolution for a company whose platform was first used by brands like AT&T to create videos for customer messaging. SundaySky has raised $40 million in funding to date from investors […]
The cost of Facebook ads is on the rise – but advertisers don’t seem to mind because they’re seeing results. At least for now. According to the most recent Q2 benchmark report from Facebook ad partner Nanigans, the click-through rate (CTR) on Facebook ads was up 146% year over year and rose 47% from the first quarter. Spend […]
Missing in the Media Rating Council’s (MRC) definition of in-browser video viewability (50% in view, playing for two consecutive seconds) is any stipulation around audibility. This isn’t an oversight – the MRC chose not to institute an audibility requirement because the technology doesn’t exist to determine muting in all instances, said David Gunzerath, SVP and […]
Facebook’s purchase of video supply-side platform (SSP) LiveRail for $500 million underpins its deeper foray into video advertising and positions the social network as a major force in premium publisher monetization. While some experts argue the purchase is a direct response to Google’s recent launch of its programmatic video marketplace Google Partner Select, the sum […]
Facebook has agreed to buy video ad platform LiveRail, the companies said today. The acquisition will build Facebook’s capabilities around video, both on its own platform and on those of other publishers. LiveRail customers include Major League Baseball (MLB.com), A&E Networks, Gannett and Dailymotion, giving Facebook its first video ad server integration with premium video owners. Terms of the deal weren’t […]
Before Brazil defeated Croatia at Arena de Sao Paulo to open the 2014 World Cup, the Coca-Cola Co. unfurled across the pitch the fruits of its biggest marketing campaign in its history: a giant mosaic called the “Happiness Flag.” But this campaign, which ended on the soccer field, began online. Activated across 175 countries, the Happiness Flag […]
One of Facebook’s hidden assets is the waterfall of data signals it gets from other websites and apps. These signals wend their way to Facebook from social plugins, conversion pixels and retargeting cookies embedded on millions of websites and mobile apps. Facebook’s code snippets tell the social network whenever a user lands on a product […]
Monetizing apps in the iOS environment means playing by Apple’s rules, and occasionally adapting to changes in how those rules are enforced. Sometimes those changes can impact the way ads are served and tracked, as happened back in February when Apple (briefly) put a barbed wire fence around the use its Identifier For Advertising for […]
Questions lingered after the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) presented to the data marketing space a 100-plus-page push for greater transparency Tuesday. The FTC’s manifesto, “Data Brokers: A Call for Transparency and Accountability,” sparked debate about what a data broker is and the potential pitfalls for a proposed centralized portal through which consumers can control the […]
Need more proof Pinterest is preparing for a big monetization push? The social platform has hired Jonathan Shottan, a former Facebook ad product exec who led Facebook Exchange and due diligence on ad tech M&A. Shottan, who has also signed on as an adviser to TellApart, joins Pinterest as product manager for advertising. His first […]
Facebook is rolling out additional video metrics such as unique video views, the average duration of the video view and audience retention over the coming weeks, the company said Monday. “These new metrics are designed to help you learn what’s resonating with people and determine how to more effectively create and promote your videos on […]
Over the last decade, Facebook has evolved from a forum for college students to poke each other to a company trying to position itself as a maturing, cross-device communication platform for marketers and consumers. CEO Mark Zuckerberg certainly hopes this maturation is reflected in the company’s evolving slogan, from “move fast and break things” to the […]
Unified, a company that helps brands with social ad buys, has acquired social analytics startup Awe.sm for an undisclosed sum, the companies announced Thursday. Unified is a Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer and Twitter Ads API Partner. The core of its product is a “Social Operating Platform,” a cloud-based tool that combines social marketing capabilities ranging […]
UPDATE: Facebook has confirmed that David Jakubowski will be joining the company, and that he will have a role that extends beyond Atlas. UPDATE 8:15PM ET: Jakubowski, through Neustar’s public relations agency, released the following comment via email: “I have been presented with an opportunity that I simply couldn’t refuse. I can assure you that Neustar has […]
Facebook unveiled its mobile ad network at its f8 Developer Conference on Wednesday, noting the Facebook Audience Network will include native advertising formats for developers that “want to invest a little more time.” The ad network buy will be available to all advertisers via a “single click” within the Facebook Advertising interface as well as through its Advertising […]
