There have been some significant organizational shifts within Acxiom in recent years. While the company was mostly known as a seller of third-party data sets – at least, by lawmakers in Washington – or as a builder of large, complex databases, Acxiom now wants to be considered a data infrastructure provider. That is, it wants […]
Last September, BrightRoll COO Bruce Falck became CEO of the troubled ad tech company Turn. It’s an interesting time for Turn. The company is not a spring chicken in the ad tech world – an industry often rocked by the mercurial whims of investors, agencies and brands. So how can Turn be a stabilizing force […]
The debate over which will prevail – native apps or the mobile web – is moot. The question, rather, is not which will win, but when the two will merge into a more fluid system centered on content and discoverability, rather than friction and discrete downloads. “We’re going to see less disparity between the mobile web […]
What do loyalty programs and paid media have in common? Not a lot, at face value. Loyalty marketing has long been relegated to card-based, point-of-sale programs and customer retention. It was always the stuff of database marketers and direct mail – not user acquisition. But that’s starting to change. Coalition loyalty programs or “co-ops,” such […]
Yahoo’s bloodletting on Wednesday also included a number of advertising and sales-related roles, AdExchanger has learned. Yahoo is in the midst of executing a board-approved cost savings scheme that will see 15% of its workforce receive pink slips. The layoffs, the first round of which went down last week, continued Wednesday with the announcement of […]
Ad tech has long poached talent from agencies and publishers. But those with publishing backgrounds have been returning to the media world recently. Media companies are seeing an uptick in resumes from people with ad tech backgrounds. Plus, as companies have created programmatic roles, they’ve staffed them with people who have experience in the ad […]
There’s an old ad industry saw that goes, “a little Procter & Gamble budget in everyone’s paycheck.” Well, now there’s a half billion less. The CPG giant told investors on the company’s earnings call in January that the company had succeeded in cutting $370 million in marketing costs in 2015, and that it expected to […]
The telco industry’s obsession with ad tech shows no sign of slowing down and Verizon’s corporate venture arm is the latest accelerant. Verizon Ventures has invested $5.5 million in Qualia, a company focused on mining intent data, and which recently merged with cross-device tool BlueCava. The Series B round included support from S3 Ventures. It’s […]
China is a market that gets people excited – a largely untapped potential audience of more than 1 billion people. It’s certainly one of the stated “strategic rationales” behind the recent $1.2 billion buyout offer that browser maker Opera received from a consortium of Chinese companies, including mobile game maker Kunlun and security software provider […]
Google is realigning its advertiser product management team by consolidating its buy-side products under a single product leader, AdExchanger has learned. Eight-year Google product management exec Brad Bender, who oversees the Google Display Network (GDN), will now also oversee Google’s programmatic buying platform DoubleClick Bid Manager (DBM) and the ad server DoubleClick Campaign Manager (DCM). […]
Why shouldn’t Time Inc. take on Facebook? The 94-year-old media brand will acquire ad platform company Viant for its “people-based” marketing capabilities, the companies said Thursday. Viant – an amalgam of companies that rebranded a year ago from Interactive Media Holdings (IMH) – includes the remains of MySpace, ad network Specific Media, video ad platform Vindico and Xumowill, a smart […]
Allison Schiff contributed. The fat lady hasn’t sung, but it appears likely that a group of Chinese companies will acquire Opera and its lucrative mobile advertising business. Oslo-based Opera told investors Wednesday that it had received a buyout offer of $1.2 billion led by investment fund Golden Brick Silk Road, along with security software player […]
Performance marketing agency Merkle’s acquisition Tuesday of London-based data marketing agency DBG for undisclosed terms marks another step toward international growth, specifically in the UK. While DBG offers similar capabilities as Merkle around marketing databases, campaign management, data platforms and CDI, it gives Merkle key insight into UK data knowledge, platforms and technology. “A big […]
In an age of banner blindness, nearly every publisher has added a sponsored content offering. Meanwhile, programmatic native is replacing banners and boxes. The programmatic native bucket, which includes Outbrain, TripleLift, Sharethrough, Taboola and Yahoo Gemini, features advertising in the form of article snippets, which look similar to sponsored content teasers. Sponsored content, by contrast, […]
If you take the headlines at face value, Google and Facebook are killing it – dwarfing all others in terms of revenue and scale – and there’s not much reason for other publishers to get out of bed in the morning. But there’s a more nuanced story going on. Certainly, Facebook and Google have become the […]
Is dynamic ad insertion finally coming to podcasting? New audience measurement guidelines released Thursday by a collection of public radio companies address one of the big concerns advertisers have with the medium – thereby paving the way for new methods of selling and placing ads. “Up until recently, whenever we put an ad into the […]
“On TV And Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in programmatic TV and video. Today’s column is written by Bryan Noguchi, senior vice president and media director at R2C Group. I worked in San Francisco for a few days the other week and was amazed to see street closures, insanely disruptive out-of-home (OOH) […]
Just because an ad is “in-view,” that doesn’t mean it’s effective. On the contrary, time spent is often a better indicator of ad effectiveness than percentage of pixels in-view on a page. That’s according to a new viewability study from Interpublic Group (IPG) and measurement firm Integral Ad Science. The report, “Putting Science Behind The […]
Server-side ad insertion (SSAI), also known as ad stitching, is emerging as a key method for video publishers to mitigate ad blocking and boost video playback across devices. Though the technique is not new, industry insiders say there is massive growth potential as consumers stream more video content and new over-the-top devices enter the fray. […]
Yahoo will dismiss around 15% of its workforce in Q1, including, more than likely, a large chunk of its global sales force. Five global offices will also get the chop. The cuts are part of a $400 million cost savings plan that will seek to grow profitability ahead of a likely sale of the business. […]
Magazine publishers need Snapchat, but Snapchat needs them, too. That may be one reason why Evan Spiegel, Snapchat’s relatively press-shy CEO, appeared Monday at the American Magazine Media Conference in New York to discuss the origins of Discover and his plans to monetize the platform. Discover, Snapchat’s video magazine product, was created to “remove as […]
When IBM revealed Friday it had closed its deal (financial terms weren’t disclosed) for The Weather Co.’s product and tech business, it began setting expectations on how those assets will be used. There are two things to consider. First, The Weather Co. has digital publications that sell advertising. Second, it sits on a massive front […]
Watch out YouTube. Facebook is coming for your video ad honeypot. In his first week back in the saddle after the birth of his daughter Maxima, CEO Mark Zuckerberg told investors on the company’s Q4 earnings call that Facebook will explore the launch of a video-specific property, possibly an app that would compete with Google […]
Ad blocking isn’t the only route to revenue for telcos. Sprint-owned Boost Mobile announced Tuesday that it had inked a deal with Unlockd, a mobile platform that helps telcos reward subscribers for viewing ads on their lock screen. It’s a move that’s nearly the opposite of Caribbean carrier Digicel’s arrangement with Shine to block ads […]
LiveIntent, which automates the placement of ad inventory within email messages, appointed industry heavy-hitter Jason Kelly as its president on Monday. Kelly was instrumental in helping mobile ad network Millennial Media sell to AOL for $240 million in September, facilitated the sale of retail DSP Sociomantic to Tesco/dunnhumby in 2014 and served as CRO of […]
Ad blocking might be marketers’ current headache, but FTC Commissioner Julie Brill believes it’s up to the advertising industry to alleviate that pain. At AdExchanger’s Industry Preview event in New York on Thursday, she called on the audience of vendors, agencies and marketers to create “usable tools” so consumers can deal with their privacy concerns. […]
Advertisers are understandably looking for scale with their cross-device campaigns – but when they ask for it at the expense of accuracy, that’s a problem. “The marketer has erred on the side of reach, but reach and frequency are a tradeoff,” said Omar Tawakol, SVP and GM of Oracle Data Cloud, speaking at a panel […]
When Condé Nast created its Food Innovation Group 14 months ago by combining Bon Appétit and Epicurious, the move gave it enough scale to take on AllRecipes and the Food Network. The group recently sensed an opportunity in the market to focus on short food videos designed for mobile and social audiences. It quickly pounced, […]
Intent-targeting platform Qualia has merged with early cross-device shop BlueCava, AdExchanger has learned. The move will marry cross-screen data with purchase signals, which the two companies say will strengthen their collective offering. BlueCava’s technology – and 40 employees – will fold into the larger Qualia brand. BlueCava chairman and CEO Phil Myers will move into […]
Publishers thinking about how to deal with the growing rates of ad-blocking users can start by doing something simple: Just ask them to unblock. Requests to turn off ad blocking resulted in 30-40% of users whitelisting the publisher, according to data shared by GQ (30%), IDG Communications (37% for B2B and 38% for B2C) and […]
