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  • Fraudsters Locate A New Frontier

    Wayne Gattinella, CEO of DoubleVerify, will appear at AdExchanger’s CleanAds I/O conference on June 3, an event addressing inventory quality and supply chain issues in the digital advertising ecosystem. Because of the high demand for mobile location-based data, it’s a big opportunity for fraudsters looking to game geo-coordinates. “With more money flowing to place-based advertising, […]

  • Verizon-AOL Deal Foretells More Merger Fervor

    If Verizon closes its $4.4 billion AOL acquisition, it will mark one more marriage between a telco and an ad tech company. It’s also a harbinger of more to come. Last summer, Australian telco Telstra grabbed a majority stake into streaming video distribution platform Ooyala and then bought video supply-side platform Videoplaza. In 2012, Singapore […]

  • Verizon Will Buy AOL For $4.4 Billion In Media And Ad Tech Expansion

    Kelly Liyakasa contributed. Verizon will acquire digital media and ad tech platform company AOL in a cash transaction valued at $4.4 billion. The deal vaults the telecommunications company into the media and ad tech sectors and gives it a “three screen” relationship with consumers across desktop, mobile, and television. “It’s really one of the moments in time where […]

  • How Fraud And Viewability Metrics Are Affecting Ad Peformance, Pricing

    Viewability and fraud will be addressed at AdExchanger’s upcoming CleanAds I/O conference on June 3​​, along with a host of other inventory quality and supply chain issues in the digital advertising ecosystem. Screening out fraudulent and non-viewable ads  has never been easier or more popular. Last summer AdExchanger reported that the number of marketers running viewability […]

  • How The Rise Of Publisher Coalitions Helps Programmatic

    The joke is that France’s socialist roots made it easy for publisher coalitions to spring up in the country. La Place Media led the way, three years ago, followed by Audience Square in December 2012. But now the idea of cooperation among former competitors is spreading. In recent weeks, AdExchanger profiled coalitions in the UK […]

  • App Annie Buys Mobidia For Access To More Usage Data

    Mobile app analytics company App Annie is beefing up its Usage Intelligence product with the acquisition of mobile measurement firm Mobidia. Although terms of the deal, unveiled Wednesday, were not disclosed, App Annie CEO Bertrand Schmitt told AdExchanger it was a mixture of cash and equity. Mobidia will help App Annie developer and publishers “build a […]

  • Rubicon Project Grows Revenue 62%, Orders Biz Takes Off

    Rubicon Project’s Q1 revenue grew 62% year over year to $37.2 million, thanks to increases in its mobile and orders business, as well as international expansion. As CEO Frank Addante stated in previous quarters, Rubicon will benefit from the network effect, as an influx of buyers and sellers on the platform will cause growth to snowball. […]

  • Twitter To Pay About $533 Million For TellApart, Largest Acquisition To Date

    Twitter will pay $532.6 million – all in stock– to acquire digital ad platform TellApart, the company disclosed in an 8K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It’s a large figure for an ad tech purchase, placing TellApart’s market cap above most public companies in the space and making it the spendiest merger deal Twitter has done yet. In […]

  • Coming Soon To Google's DoubleClick Bid Manager: Promoted Tweets

    DoubleClick Bid Manager (DBM) clients can soon use the buying platform to purchase Twitter Promoted Tweets across the mobile web, in-app and desktop. Read Google’s blog post. The capability isn’t available yet, but Twitter CEO Dick Costolo anticipated a May release during the company’s earnings call. Google first needs to do some technical jiggering to […]

  • Twitter Acquires Retailer-Focused Ad Platform TellApart, Stock Tumbles After Q1 Stumble

    Twitter is taking cross-device retargeting under its wing with the acquisition of digital ad platform TellApart. “Direct response advertising has been a major growth engine for our ads business over the last several quarters. … TellApart will accelerate that trajectory further,” said Kevin Weill, Twitter’s SVP of product, in a blog post Tuesday. According to […]

  • Kroger Acquires Dunnhumby Data Assets From Tesco, Forges New Venture

    Finally. British grocer Tesco’s customer data science and loyalty division dunnhumby, reportedly on the market for several months now as its parent company explored “strategic options,” will transfer many of its employees and data assets to Tesco’s US-based joint venture partner Kroger. Under the transaction, “dunnhumby Ltd and Kroger will replace their existing exclusive joint venture with a […]

  • Answering Your Questions About Google's Forthcoming DMP

    On Wednesday, Adweek’s Garrett Sloane reported that Google is finally, officially (no, really) closing the last big gap in its ad tech stack. That is to say, it’s coming to market with a data-management platform (DMP). Called DoubleClick Audience Center (DAC), the product will allow advertisers to create audience segments using their first-party data along […]

  • CEO Bill Demas Is Out At Turn

    Turn is making some changes at the top. Bill Demas, CEO of the scaled demand-side platform, will exit the company in what is being characterized as a mutual decision between him and the board. Demas told employees on Wednesday that he will stay on long enough for the company to identify a successor and that he will remain […]

  • Layoffs At Rocket Fuel, As Company Begins $30M 'Efficiency' Push

    As it grapples for profitability, ad net/programmatic media platform Rocket Fuel has initiated layoffs as part of what it called “a new efficiency program that is expected to reduce the publicly traded company’s operating costs by $30 million annually.” Read the release. The move comes just one month after co-founder George John stepped down as […]

  • Facebook Sustains Mobile Velocity As Q1 Ad Revenue Climbs To $3.5B

    As it has done like clockwork for the past eight or so quarters, Facebook on Wednesday reported strong audience and ad revenue growth led by mobile. An aggressive investment in video is adding to its momentum, though exactly what video contributes to its top line is unclear. Facebook’s Q1 2015 revenue from advertising totaled $3.5 billion, an increase of […]

  • Defining Viewability: ‘The Opportunity To Be Seen Can’t Tell You If An Ad Worked Or Not’

    The viewability standard may be better served by saying what it isn’t, rather than what it is. “Viewability does not guarantee that an ad will be looked at, or that an ad will be appealing, or have an impact or generate awareness or change brand perception,” said Sherrill Mane, SVP of research, analytics and measurement at […]

  • Google Switches On Programmatic For TrueView Video Ads

    The rumors were true. Google’s skippable and click-to-play YouTube ad format TrueView will be available programmatically, the company announced Thursday at the Programmatic I/O conference in San Francisco. The 5-year-old format, priced on a cost-per-view basis, represents more than 85% of in-stream ads on YouTube, according to Rany Ng, product management director for Google. TrueView […]

  • Marketing Automation Meets Digital Media

    Marketing automation, long defined as a B2B lead-gen system, is making its way into B2C territory. One of the most common complaints about standard marketing automation systems is that they’re simply too old or unable to sync data in real-time. But Salesforce.com’s Pardot and Marketo are all updating to compete effectively in a cross-channel media environment. […]

  • In Privacy Policy Refresh, Facebook Tells People What Its 'People-Based' ID Can Do

    Facebook’s introduction of a cross-device ID last fall was a big deal in marketing circles. Based on the company’s direct relationships with its 1.4 billion users, it offered a viable alternative to the broken cookie. Since then, Facebook has been on a communications and sales blitz, driving awareness and adoption of its “people-based marketing” product […]

  • Email Hashing: What Could Go Wrong?

    You can’t un-ring a bell, but you might be able to un-hash an email, depending on whom you ask. In order for marketers to safely use hashes for targeted advertising, they must stay abreast of the latest hashing formats. Email hashing involves converting an email address to a hexadecimal string. Each time an email address […]

  • YuMe Struggles To Reinvent As Programmatic Video Takes Hold

    In the words of Amy Grant, “It takes a little time sometimes.” She might have been singing about video ad network YuMe’s programmatic push. While competing platforms like LiveRail and TubeMogul have either been acquired or pivoted into automation, some industry insiders say that YuMe is in survival mode. Consider that TubeMogul’s market cap of […]

  • 2015 Edition: A Marketer’s Guide To Cross-Device Identity

    As the cookie weakens, brands and agencies are looking for an alternative. Cross-device seems to be the answer – but questions remain. AdExchanger examines the state-of-play around cross-device IDs. Consumers are media multitaskers – and cookies are not. As users migrate to mobile at record speeds – according to comScore, apps already account for more than 50% […]

  • With New Ad Tag, AppNexus Forces Transparency On Media Sellers

    Six months after it came to light that AppNexus has a problem with invalid inventory, the New York-based company is imposing more transparency on ad networks and websites that use its platform to sell media. AppNexus confirmed to AdExchanger that it has started inserting a new snippet of JavaScript into its ad tag in order to […]

  • Data Surge: WPP's Data Alliance Plugs Into Facebook

    Holding company WPP’s Data Alliance and Facebook have expanded their partnership such that WPP clients globally can use data assets from Kantar Media, media agency GroupM and Wunderman’s KBM Group to build unique audience segments to target across the Facebook ecosystem. This partnership is considerably different from what Facebook has with third-party data providers like Acxiom and Datalogix. […]

  • Profitability Is The New Black

    Boom and pop. One is the sound of VC money pouring into the ad tech industry. The other is the sound a bubble makes when it bursts. Ad tech has been notorious for heavyweight funding rounds and even larger, some might say bloated, valuations. And companies that were flying high before they went public – Rocket […]

  • Oracle Links Cross-Platform IDs, Touts Data Neutrality

    Oracle is rallying behind a product called Oracle ID Graph, announced Wednesday at Oracle Modern Marketing Experience in Las Vegas. It’s not a cross-device ID – the enterprise cloud company recognizes big consumer platforms like Facebook, Google and Apple are up to the task. Instead, ID Graph is designed to make the “unique identifiers” associated […]

  • What Are They Building In There? A Look At Xaxis’ Tech Investments After Its ActionX Acquisition

    For a holding company, WPP is an aggressive buyer of ad tech – most of which winds up within its GroupM unit Xaxis. Since Xaxis absorbed 24/7 Media in December 2013, the programmatic media company’s investments in tech, most of which are acquisitions, have been methodical. The most recent occurred Monday, when Xaxis revealed it […]

  • Josh Jacobs Out As CEO Of Omnicom's Accuen Trading Desk

    The longtime chief of Omnicom Group’s trading desk operation is leaving the company after nearly four years. Josh Jacobs will move on to unspecified pastures after his lengthy stint as global CEO of Accuen, where he helped grow Omnicom’s revenue from programmatic buying activities to $140 million in 2014. Reached by phone, Jacobs cited personal motives, […]

  • Facebook Breaks Into The Mobile Exchange Space

    Welcome to the real Facebook Exchange. Facebook is using its F8 Developer Conference in San Francisco, where it trotted out its Audience Network one year ago, to unveil an expansion of its publisher-facing ad tools. The big news is this: Facebook has extended the capabilities of its LiveRail video SSP – acquired last summer – […]

  • Rocket Fuel In A State Of Change As CEO George John Steps Down

    George John, co-founder of ad network/programmatic media platform Rocket Fuel, has vacated his CEO position. Board member Monte Zweben will temporarily step into his place as the company searches for John’s successor. Read the release. “The company’s evolution over the last couple of years put it in a different operating regime, which requires a different type […]