French performance marketing company Criteo turned in a solid second quarter, growing its revenue ex-TAC by 65% to €110 million (US$120 million), up from €67 million (US$73 million) last year. Criteo continued its client growth streak, adding 730 net new advertiser clients in the last quarter to total about 8,500. It claims those clients are spending more, too, resulting […]
Publishers seeking to create more competition and access for programmatic buyers have embraced header bidding over the past year. AppNexus first brought header bidding technology to market in 2009, back when RTB first started, but not many of its customers used it. Now it’s seeing increased demand from publishers adding its header bidding (or pre-bid) […]
First Facebook bought TheFind. Then Twitter grabbed TellApart. Now Yahoo wants a piece of the ecommerce pie. The company revealed late Friday its acquisition of Polyvore, a social shopping site founded in 2007 by former Yahoo engineer Pasha Sadri. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Although it preceded Pinterest by three years, Polyvore’s audience […]
Media quality verification company Integral Ad Science revealed Friday a new $67 million investment. The round is a mix of debt and equity financing, which CEO Scott Knoll described as an “optimal” blend for the 6-year-old company. Knoll also said the company’s revenue will surpass $100 million this year. The company had raised about $49.8 […]
Ad tech partnerships are fast and frequent, as vendors move to establish a presence in disciplines where they were formerly lacking, or to bolster their inventory pool. Certainly, these integrations are easier with the emergence of standards like openRTB, but there’s still more to it. “Now that everyone can support openRTB, you have to do […]
“Marketer’s Note” is a weekly column informing marketers about the rapidly evolving digital marketing technology ecosystem. This week it is written by Joanna O’Connell, Lead Analyst forAdExchanger Research. I read this recent WSJ CMO Today piece, which explored the proud anti-ad tech stance a number of young digital publishers are taking, with a mix of […]
Facebook is mostly an app company now. Desktop monetization of Facebook’s owned and operated properties keeps shrinking both in actual numbers and as a percentage of the overall business. In the second quarter of 2015, desktop revenue shrank 8% and contributed less than one-fourth of Facebook’s total ad revenue, the company said in its earnings disclosure […]
Publishers, users and advertisers hate in-banner video. It creates a poor user experience and, for advertisers, it doesn’t even drive ROI like pre-roll video. “If you want the entire video to be viewed and have complete attention, in-stream works best,” said Anush Prabhu, chief channel planning and investment officer for ad agency Deutsch Inc. In-banner […]
The competition among cross-device providers is no longer a one, two or even three-horse race, but looks more like a mad steeplechase with 20 animals of various sorts, including thoroughbreds, rabbits and perhaps snakes. The biggest consumer platforms, like Facebook and Google, are often given the best odds, but some dark horses are moving up […]
Consumer packaged goods companies, historically big TV spenders, are moving money to digital video. MyWebGrocer, an ecommerce platform and ad network for grocers and CPGs, is witnessing this shift. The company, which manages $40 million in digital media spend and which helps CPG advertisers target ads based on its retail partners’ first-party data, has built […]
As feeds become the new standard for web design, there’s a greater need to develop ad units that accommodate them. Such was the thinking behind the IAB’s Wednesday release of specifications for three kinds of in-feed advertising channels: social feeds (notably sponsored Facebook or Twitter posts), product feeds (which encompass ecommerce sites like Amazon and […]
When Univision embarks on an 18-month partnership with Snapchat, it will be the latest test for the nascent social platform to prove its value as a content hosting platform for broadcasters – and for brands advertising against that content. The partnership, revealed Thursday, centers around Snapchat’s Live Stories product, “a curated stream of user submitted […]
Pandora is enjoying rising ad prices aided by its SMB sales efforts, CEO Brian McAndrews told investors during the company’s second quarter earnings call. “Our advertising investments, particularly in local, are paying off,” McAndrews said, adding, “RPMs were up 25% year over year, to a record $49.94.” According to McAndrews, Pandora’s success with local advertisers […]
AOL Platforms moved five video formats out of beta on Thursday, an update to the pre-roll format that dominates video advertising. The interactive video ads will run across AOL properties such as The Huffington Post, TechCrunch and AOL.com, and publisher partner video content, via AOL’s video content service, AOL On. The ads are available programmatically […]
In-app fraud is turning into another expensive headache for advertisers. According to research released Thursday by fraud detection firm Forensiq, programmatic in-app ad fraud was responsible for roughly $776 million worth of wasted budget in 2014, a number Forensiq projects will crack the $1 billion mark this year. That might seem like a relative drop […]
Advertiser agency reviews took center stage during Omnicom’s Q2 call. Chief John Wren claimed the holding company is well positioned to weather the storm of media reviews, which have spurred the reevaluation of nearly $30 billion in media billings, according to estimates from Pivotal Research, because of Omnicom’s investments in its data-management platform, Annalect, and its programmatic […]
The Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG), which is uniting industry players to root out criminal activity in digital advertising, has unveiled a pilot program to block fraudulent traffic coming from data centers. Google proposed the data center project and is leading the pilot program, which will see member companies sharing intelligence about fraudulent data centers. The companies […]
Open auctions generated 70% of total programmatic revenue in the US last year, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s (IAB) first-ever Programmatic Revenue Report. Programmatic display advertising totaled $10.1 billion last year, the study found, and made up 20% of 2014’s $49.5 billion total Internet ad revenues. The report, prepared in partnership with PricewaterhouseCoopers US […]
John Nardone, the newly minted CEO of UK-based ad serving platform Flashtalking, feels like he’s come full circle. After spending more than 10 years deep in the ad tech weeds, Nardone, whose resumé includes the chief exec role at [x+1] – which sold to Rocket Fuel in August 2014 for around $230 million – and the co-presidency at […]
SodaStream, a manufacturer of home carbonators, is letting some fizz out of its mass media activations to focus on increasing reach and frequency across digital and out-of-home. SodaStream is repositioning from its reputation as purely a soda maker to a company that supplies naturally flavored and low-calorie drink mixes and products like its new Power […]
Google’s recent push to prioritize mobile-friendly sites in organic search results is straining the advertising ecosystem, according to Adobe Digital Index’s Q2 2015 Digital Advertising and Social Intelligence report, released Wednesday. The Adobe Digital Index for Q2 2015 noted a 10% decrease in organic traffic on Google among sites that weren’t optimized for mobile. The […]
Ari Paparo is a longtime builder, explainer and sometimes lampooner of ad tech. And now he’s a CEO. The former product executive with Google, Nielsen and AppNexus has taken the wraps off his new company, Beeswax, which provides a licensed “Bidder-as-a-Service” technology geared to two primary constituents: (1) ad tech firms, such as ad networks […]
When Ellen Pao stepped down from her post as CEO of Reddit on Friday – ceding the spot to Reddit co-founder Steve Huffman – it left Reddit’s monetization situation murkier than ever. In a question and answer session on Reddit’s popular AMA (Ask Me Anything) section, Huffman wrote, “Reddit has a lot of cash. Monetization […]
Recipe publishers have realized they can tap into shopper marketing budgets by making their recipes shoppable. Matching brands and stores to relevant recipes requires technology, and the arms race is on. Meredith Digital on Monday acquired Grocery Server, which provides technology to make recipes shoppable. Separately, Reader’s Digest-owned Taste of Home, once a customer of […]
Many industry analysts expect B2B media marketing budgets to finally reach pre-recession levels by the end of 2015, following a drop-off in 2009 that removed almost one out of every $5 spent on B2B outlets. And those revenue streams are migrating to programmatic technology and new native strategies to develop brand awareness. One of the […]
YouTube multichannel networks (MCN) – and their influencers and fan bases – keep whetting investors’ appetites. Media research firm Ampere Analysis values the entire MCN business at approximately $20 billion in a study of three years’ worth of MCN investments released this week. German media giant ProSiebenSat.1 is the latest to jump in, acquiring on […]
If mobile and video are the twin engines driving ad tech, then AOL’s rumored $300 million to $350 million acquisition of Millennial Media would put the pedal to the metal. The potential deal, first reported by AOL-owned TechCrunch on Thursday, comes just a few weeks after the official close of Verizon’s $4.4 billion purchase of […]
After signing up 150 publishers for its self-service DSP, Centro officially launched the platform Thursday. The publishers managing reach extension internally come from opposite ends of the spectrum: McClatchy, a local media company with roots in more than two dozen markets, and PureWow, a small, national lifestyle publisher. They’ve come to the same decision. “It’s increasingly […]
The Programmatic TV Standards Group is drafting a standard designed to set baseline parameters for national and locally distributed inventory. The organization is championed by a few industry vets, agencies (Magna Global, Starcom MediaVest), one third-party measurer (Management Science Associates, or MSA) and vendors (AudienceXpress). “The first standard we’ll be defining is [what constitutes] national […]
Consumer packaged-goods startup Hello Products is combining TV with offline activations to create a competitive edge for its oral care products. As a challenger to household names like Crest and Colgate, Hello aims to differentiate its ethos through natural formulas and bright and alluring packaging. The brand is now activating digital video and TV with […]
