Visa wants merchants and consumers to know it’s everywhere they want to be. And, increasingly, everywhere means mobile. The brand is committing more than 50% of its US media budget to digital, including social and mobile, said the company’s SVP and head of North America marketing, Lara Balazs. Last year, it invested 30-40% or more […]
In 2012, Target had to swallow a few hard truths. Its digital platform relied solely on third-party code and it had little to no engineering talent in-house. And it was playing catch-up with mobile. “My focus has been on moving toward an agile product model where we rewrote our code [over three years] for about […]
There’s something fishy going on in China. According to mobile attribution company Apsalar, for every valid in-app purchase (IAP) made in China, there are 273 fraudulent ones. But China isn’t the only place with IAP problems. Taiwan sees 54 fake in-app purchases for every valid one, while Saudi Arabia clocks in at 24.6 and Israel […]
The public market has not been too kind to ad tech companies, but French performance marketing company Criteo has seemingly fared far better (it had five straight quarters of revenue growth and a market cap of $2.6 billion). Numerous industry insiders laud Criteo for its recurring revenue stream, typically associated with a software model. Yet Criteo […]
If MediaMath co-President Mike Lamb has his druthers, the convergence of ad tech and marketing tech – the industry’s current inescapable narrative – will manifest in two ways. The first is beginning to happen: a set of integrations that advertisers or their agencies can use to clip together their paid media platform to their marketing […]
When French holding company Publicis Groupe decentralized the programmatic capabilities of its agency trading desk VivaKi in February, it did so to capitalize on the increasing performance of programmatic, said VivaKi CEO Stephan Beringer. While Beringer didn’t pinpoint the exact drivers for the restructuring, “It was the culmination of insights that led to the need […]
The digital marketing technologist isn’t exactly a new kid on the block in the enterprise, given Gartner’s prediction – in 2012 – that 70% of companies employed one. But the job title has definitely evolved as many of the technologies that fuel brands’ consumer interactions – from data-management platforms to CRM to commerce systems – […]
What’s the future of content distribution and monetization, particularly as major players like Facebook, Google and Verizon make strategic moves to capture more share in mobile video? This was the dominant theme at JW Player’s JW INSIGHTS conference Tuesday in New York, where a group of execs from Google and AOL’s likely owner, Verizon, gathered for the […]
It’s time for the next can of worms: mobile viewability. And the mobile ad vendors are already on the scene. Less than two weeks after the Media Rating Council (MRC) issued its long-awaited interim guidance on mobile viewability measurement, three separate mobile media sellers – Millennial Media, 33Across and JUICE Mobile – have announced their intention to offer a 100% […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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’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 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 […]
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 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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, 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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
