Comcast’s acquisition of French video supply-side platform StickyAds on Monday will give its video ad tech division a serious boost. Comcast’s video ad server FreeWheel will be able to streamline the way big TV broadcasters allocate inventory by embedding StickyAds’ private exchange tech into its own video ad server. The capability will let FreeWheel’s TV […]
Updated with comment from FreeWheel’s CEO. Comcast has acquired StickyAds.tv, a French video ad tech startup focused on publishers. Re/code first reported the news Sunday night, and Comcast confirmed it Monday morning. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Business Insider claimed the deal was an all-cash transaction and worth “at least $100 million.” […]
The claim that Facebook Instant Articles is about a faster user experience is a red herring. While that may be one goal, the program has a strong business rationale: It extends Facebook’s walled garden and creates a new foothold for its $1 billion Facebook Audience Network ad platform. Instant Articles does not allow third-party monetization. […]
After completing his first full quarter as CEO of performance marketing company Criteo, Eric Eichmann seems confident. Criteo had “very strong top-line growth,” Eichmann told AdExchanger ahead of the company’s Q1 earnings call on Wednesday. Revenue was up 41% year-over-year to $162 million at constant currency minus traffic acquisition costs and that performance was consistent across […]
Here’s a scenario that has played out millions of times in recent months: A user clicks a Taboola or Outbrain link to arrive at a content page of marginal quality, such as the ViralWalrus.com slideshow “These 16 Celebs Served Real Jail Time.” When the reader clicks the right arrow button to see the second page […]
Video ad platform Videology laid off about 32 staffers – or about 8% of its workforce – in recent months [Update: Videology said they occurred in January], as the company pivots to larger enterprise and linear TV deals. The company has since hired about 25 people and claims the transitional impact to its organization was immaterial. […]
Marketers and CFOs are struggling to speak each other’s languages, and agencies are getting drowned out amidst the noise. When a brand’s marketing and finance teams can’t align on a goal, the agency fails to meet client KPIs. Agency responsibilities are either passed off to new players in the space, like tech firms and management […]
Xaxis is getting its ad tech house in order with the creation of a new role: chief technology officer. Filling those shoes at the WPP programmatic trading desk is Bob Hammond, whose career spans some of the most recent greatest hits in ad tech M&A. Hammond, whose appointment was announced on Tuesday, served as CTO […]
Snapchat’s 10 billion daily video views can’t be wrong. At least, that’s publishers’ logic as they push vertical video. Hearst, for instance, rolled out a vertical video unit last month that it sells via direct deals with advertisers, and on Monday, outstream video company Virool launched a vertical video format called Vertical Reveal, which exchange partner […]
LiveRail, once a dominant video supply side platform and ad server focused solely on publishers, is now a shell of its former self. It’s been nearly two years since Facebook bought the company for $400 million-plus, and in the last six to nine months it has shut down major pieces of it and transferred some […]
The steady growth of AppNexus’ advertiser-facing business in recent years has led to a jump in employees. Out of AppNexus’s roughly 1,050 total headcount, about 318 now serve the buy side, developing and supporting the company’s demand-side platform product. Of those employees, about 97 are engineers, 19 are product managers, 74 are in sales and a […]
Intuit has hired Mike Zeman, an architect of Netflix’s programmatic trading desk, to help grow its Mint personal finance brand. Zeman will serve as director of marketing and business development for Intuit’s Consumer Ecosystem Group, reporting to SVP Albert Ko. During his three years at Netflix, Zeman led digital marketing during a period of dramatic […]
Facebook’s growth led to a strong first quarter and stock that shot upward post-earnings. Facebook’s Q1 2016 revenue grew 57% year over year to $5.4 billion, compared to $3.5 billion the same time last year. Advertising comprised $5.2 billion of that revenue. Of that ad revenue, 82% came from mobile, compared to 73% in Q1 2015. Meanwhile, monthly […]
Transparency could be a way for brands to differentiate. Because building trust with consumers is about more than telling them why your brand is great and expecting them to just believe it. “Trust is earned in drops, but lost by the bucketful,” said Forrester principal analyst Fatemeh Khatibloo at Forrester’s Marketing Forum on Wednesday in […]
“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 Loren Wilson, CEO and co-founder at Answer Media. After years of working with both advertisers and publishers, I’ve witnessed the often inharmonious relationships of the two sides. Advertisers want guaranteed […]
There’s nothing investors want to see more from Twitter than monthly active user (MAU) growth. It’s been the recurring theme every quarter since former CEO Dick Costolo flew the coop in June. The needle moved minutely this past quarter. Twitter told investors on Tuesday that its monthly active user base increased from 305 million last […]
About one year ago, GroupM quietly introduced a new structure designed to consolidate its real-time ad buying capabilities across programmatic, social, search and mobile. Called Connect, the new group appeared to be the WPP-owned media agency network’s answer to the growing need for programmatic decentralization of programmatic buying. We have seen that decentralization play out across […]
Will Google’s grand plans for TV, evidenced by its launch of DoubleClick Dynamic Ad Insertion on Wednesday, be successful? Google’s move into dynamic ad serving across live, linear and on-demand programming marks a critical shift in the search giant’s strategy, which some industry insiders say was necessary to meet future business objectives. “Google will not […]
Acorns is an app that allows users to invest spare change left over from daily purchases in the stock market. Now it’s making an investment of its own with the creation of a digital magazine called Grow aimed at millennials. “We’re looking to satisfy a hunger our users have for financial content,” said Jeff Cruttenden, […]
“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 Alastair Boyle, global client partner and head of strategy at Essence. You might be surprised to hear these words in the same sentence, but compassion has been a core concept […]
With additional reporting by Allison Schiff. Scrap cat videos. Google wants a piece of the $70 billion linear TV ad pie – of which $300 million-plus and growing is addressable. As such, the tech giant unveiled a bunch of TV-related products and updates Wednesday at the National Association of Broadcasters meeting in Las Vegas. Announcements […]
While publishers combatting the rise of ad blocking can select from a growing number of vendors who address the issue, many of the available solutions are largely the same. One group of offerings is designed to change user behavior. There are generally four methods: asking users to turn off ad blockers, blocking content when ad […]
YouTube is starting to measure the offline sales lift for consumers exposed to its viewable video ad format TrueView. Through a tool called DLX ROI Sales Lift for YouTube, developed in partnership with the Oracle Data Cloud, Google is telling CPG advertisers that its video ads not only have brand impact, but that they drive […]
Updated with statement from Amazon. Amazon’s forthcoming $8.99-a-month subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service offers strong new competition to Netflix and Hulu. Will it include advertising as well? Not at first, but there is an internal debate at Amazon around the proper role of ads in its video offering. According to one source with knowledge of Amazon’s […]
Why did Google “democratize” dynamic allocation within its ad server on Wednesday to include external demand? Google addressed its rapid response to the rise of header bidding for broader exchange and publisher partners Thursday – and other developments – at AdExchanger’s PROGRAMMATIC.IO in San Francisco. “I find it interesting that this is the fastest time-to-market […]
Retargeting, a word long associated with the cookie-based world of direct-response display advertising, is getting a refresh. With the explosion of mobile and subsequent deterioration of cookie matches, marketers are demanding upper-funnel features that go well beyond conversion and tracking pixels. “What we’re seeing across our portfolio with clients like Nike, for example, is they’re […]
In a major change to its Double Click for Publishers ad server, Google will bring in the real-time bids of a publisher’s outside exchange partners to its dynamic allocation product. The feature addresses a key problem that led to the rise of header bidding, essentially doing away with Google’s previous policy where it only allowed […]
When Omnicom Media Group on Friday launched Hearts & Science, its third agency network alongside OMD and PHD, it chose Annalect founder and CEO Scott Hagedorn to lead the effort. The development comes four months after Omnicom grabbed the majority of Procter & Gamble’s $2 billion media account from Publicis Groupe’s Starcom Mediavest. Part of P&G’s […]
MediaMath is in the midst of replacing its single product architecture with a new sales and engineering org that’s built around enterprise software and services. The company gradually began reorganizing a year ago, first by refocusing the engineering team around specific products. Last fall it implemented an enterprise account structure within the sales team, which […]
At Amazon Media Group (AMG), sometimes the objective isn’t to sell advertisers more ads. AMG has a lesser-known service – ecommerce marketing – where it might evaluate a partner’s broader retail health and the roles contextual elements (e.g., Amazon product detail pages), third-party placements or product availability play in the path to conversion. “You can’t […]
