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  • Nikesh Arora Out At Google

    Nikesh Arora, Google’s SVP and chief business officer, will be leaving the company after a decade, according to the company’s earnings press release. He’ll join Japanese telecommunications and internet company SoftBank, where he’ll be vice chairman of SoftBank Corp. and CEO of SoftBank Internet and Media. Omid Kordestani, a senior adviser to the CEO and one of […]

  • Oracle’s Kevin Akeroyd: Without Data, You're Chasing Unicorns

    Kevin Akeroyd, SVP and GM of the Oracle Marketing Cloud, warned a crowd of 1,500 marketers Wednesday to “beware false marketing clouds.” All jokes aside, Akeroyd did not mince words about competitors’ perceived strengths at the Oracle Marketing Cloud Interact 2014 event in San Francisco. “It’s not just web analytics and it’s not going to come […]

  • Yahoo's Display Revenue Falls Again, And Marissa Mayer Is 'Not Satisfied'

    In its second quarter, Yahoo sold 24% more ads compared to the second quarter of 2013, and yet the price per ad went down 24%, suggesting the company has been unable to stem the tide against declining CPMs. (Read the press release.) CEO Marissa Mayer expressed disappointment in the company’s display ad performance. “Our top priority is […]

  • Remember The Titan: Email Marketing’s Programmatic Pivot

    A recent article by New York Times media columnist David Carr revealed a radical publishing technology catching on in news media companies everywhere: email newsletters. Carr wrote that email is a marketing tool many people tend to forget about. But, he argued, email is the most consistent and useful medium for advertising. Email and search drive […]

  • Garbage In, Garbage Out: Why Smart Trafficking Matters So Much

    “Marketer’s Note” is a weekly column informing marketers about the rapidly evolving, digital marketing technology ecosystem. It is written by Joanna O’Connell, Director of Research, AdExchanger Research.   Last week, I had a wonderful conversation with an interactive lead at an independent agency as part of my ongoing “When and How to Take Programmatic In-House” research […]

  • White Ops And ANA Partner To See What’s The What With Bots

    There’s a digital ad fraud outbreak – one that gobbles up roughly $14 billion in advertising spend and between 25 and 50% of ad spend per campaign. White Ops CEO and cofounder Michael Tiffany likens the landscape to a cholera outbreak. Bots cause their devastation in a certain corner of the web and move on. White […]

  • Walmart: The New Media Agency

    Walmart’s widely revered as a retail maven, but media buyer? It’s a brand-new capability for the $473-billion company, which on Friday revealed more details about the digital marketing platform it’s developed, the Walmart Exchange (WMX). Like Amazon, which has turned massive amounts of shopper data into monetization opportunities for brands via Amazon Media Group’s demand-side […]

  • Dirty Tricks, Red Flags And Pitfalls You Should Know About ROI

    “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 Jean-Baptiste Rudelle, CEO and co-founder at Criteo. Return on investment (ROI) is the only thing that matters for an advertiser: How much return am I really getting for my money? […]

  • Iframing The VAST Problem Of Video Viewability

    Remember the scene in the movie “Kill Bill, Vol. 2“ where the vengeful heroine, the Bride, is buried alive in a coffin and has to pound her way out with her bare fists? That’s your video ad. It’s essentially trapped in a box and buried in the publisher’s web page, and whether it can get out […]

  • Time To Grow

    “Marketer’s Note” is a regular column informing marketers about the rapidly evolving, digital marketing technology ecosystem. It is written by Joanna O’Connell, Director of Research, AdExchanger Research. So many fascinating questions, trends and technologies to research, so little time! Thankfully, I’ve now got some help. I’m pleased to announce that Lizzie Komar has joined the AdExchanger Research […]

  • TubeMogul Updates S-1, Valued At $372 Million

    Video demand-side platform (DSP) TubeMogul has updated the S-1 it filed in March, saying it will sell 7,187,500 shares at a suggested offering price of $13 per share. Read the S-1. TubeMogul hopes to raise $93 million and will now take this offer to potential IPO investors – “the roadshow” – prior to the company going public. […]

  • If A Video Ad Plays And No One Hears It, Does It Make An Impression?

    Missing in the Media Rating Council’s (MRC) definition of in-browser video viewability (50% in view, playing for two consecutive seconds) is any stipulation around audibility. This isn’t an oversight – the MRC chose not to institute an audibility requirement because the technology doesn’t exist to determine muting in all instances, said David Gunzerath, SVP and […]

  • Facebook To Acquire Video Ad Platform LiveRail

    Facebook has agreed to buy video ad platform LiveRail, the companies said today. The acquisition will build Facebook’s capabilities around video, both on its own platform and on those of other publishers. LiveRail customers include Major League Baseball (MLB.com), A&E Networks, Gannett and Dailymotion, giving Facebook its first video ad server integration with premium video owners.  Terms of the deal weren’t […]

  • PubMatic Builds Out Programmatic Direct

    PubMatic had a good spring. The company won top honors in Forrester’s sell-side platform shoot-out, acquired a mobile ad server (Mocean Mobile) and hired up to support its product initiatives around programmatic direct. The macro strategy, according to CEO Rajeev Goel, is to provide a full stack spanning all publisher ad revenue. That means guaranteed […]

  • Let’s Not Lose Sight Of The Real Power Of Programmatic

    “Marketer’s Note” is a regular column informing marketers about the rapidly evolving, digital marketing technology ecosystem. It is written by Joanna O’Connell, Director of Research, AdExchanger Research. Call me naïve but I believe in the open exchange model. I always have. Something about the battle of wits it promises always spoke to me: The buyer who actively […]

  • Twitter Takes The Wraps Off App Install Ads Product

    Three months after launching a pilot program for mobile app install ads, Twitter has made the offering available to all advertisers. The format is a bid to capture surging app promotion budgets that have been a boon to Facebook, Pandora and dozens of mobile-specific ad networks and demand-side platforms (DSPs) over the past two years. Ride-sharing service Lyft, EA […]

  • Video Viewability: The Standard That Isn’t A Standard

    On Monday, the Media Rating Council’s (MRC) advisory to avoid buying in-browser video impressions on the basis of viewability will end. Although the MRC defines in-browser video viewability as an ad that is at least 50% in view for at least two continuous seconds, there’s little agreement in the industry on what, exactly, constitutes video […]

  • The Fizz Behind Coca-Cola's Massive World Cup Campaign

    Before Brazil defeated Croatia at Arena de Sao Paulo to open the 2014 World Cup, the Coca-Cola Co. unfurled across the pitch the fruits of its biggest marketing campaign in its history: a giant mosaic called the “Happiness Flag.” But this campaign, which ended on the soccer field, began online. Activated across 175 countries, the Happiness Flag […]

  • Agencies Brace For Change As Brands Lean In To Programmatic

    When they write the history of programmatic advertising, June 2014 will go down as the month when you needed two hands to count the number of big advertisers running their machine-driven media buys in-house. Procter & Gamble, American Express and Mondelez all recently joined the small club of brands embracing exchange-traded media (existing members include Kellogg’s, […]

  • Who’s Really Winning If CPA Programs Rule?

    “Marketer’s Note” is a weekly column informing marketers about the rapidly evolving, digital marketing technology ecosystem. It is written by Joanna O’Connell, Director of Research, AdExchanger Research.   I was inspired by this week’s AdExchanger comic, which features “Mr. CPA” on the top of the mythic Mr. Universe winner’s podium, to comment on the market’s continued […]

  • IPG Mediabrands CEO Matt Seiler: Automation Trend Will Force New Agency Pay Models

    Matt Seiler is remarkably on-message. For the past five years, the CEO of Interpublic Group’s media investment arm, Mediabrands, has banged the drum about the need for performance-based compensation for agencies. More recently he also took up the banner of automation, proposing to automate 50% of all media investment by the end of 2015. Interestingly, the automation rallying […]

  • GroupM Quits Open Ad Exchanges? Not So Fast

    GroupM made waves last week when Ari Bluman, chief digital investment officer for North America, said WPP Group’s media agencies will stop buying impressions in open auctions by the end of 2014. It turns out that’s not quite the case, as Brian Lesser, CEO of WPP’s Xaxis programmatic platform, made clear in public comments Tuesday […]

  • Can LinkedIn Link Content With Business Results?

    Penry Price has a long legacy as an advertising exec. He went from Google to Dstillery and, as of eight months ago, assumed the role of VP of marketing solutions at LinkedIn. Compared to his previous roles, Price has a slightly different imperative at LinkedIn. Because of the social network’s audience of 300 million business-minded registrants, […]

  • Mondelez, Heineken Take The Programmatic Bull By The Horns

    The big brands have woken up to programmatic buying, and will not be going back to sleep. The gang of marketers directly controlling their exchange-traded media platforms keeps getting larger. Its membership now includes Kimberly-Clark, Kellogg’s, American Express, Procter & Gamble, Allstate Insurance, 1-800-Flowers and Unilever. Mondelez International is the latest to seize a more […]

  • Why I Worry for Agencies

    “Marketer’s Note” is a weekly column informing marketers about the rapidly evolving, digital marketing technology ecosystem. It is written by Joanna O’Connell, Director of Research, AdExchanger Research. Is it just me, or are there an awful lot of great folks leaving their agency jobs these days? I took notice when Matt Spiegel left Annalect, a division […]

  • IPG Mediabrands Programmatic Boss Michael Brunick Exits

    The steward of Interpublic Group’s trading desk strategy has left the holding company, AdExchanger has learned. Michael Brunick, SVP for programmatic within IPG Mediabrands’ Magna Global media investment unit, will join Unbound, a consulting firm focused on helping publishers and advertisers seize the programmatic opportunity. “One of the biggest trends since middle of last year […]

  • Facebook Lets Competing Advertisers Target Off Each Other's Site And App Data

    One of Facebook’s hidden assets is the waterfall of data signals it gets from other websites and apps. These signals wend their way to Facebook from social plugins, conversion pixels and retargeting cookies embedded on millions of websites and mobile apps. Facebook’s code snippets tell the social network whenever a user lands on a product […]

  • The Cautious Courtship Of Programmatic And Linear TV

    Procter & Gamble’s reported push to automate 70-75% of digital ad buys by year’s end underscores the convergence of TV, CPG marketing and programmatic media. “The closer we can tie shopper cart data to media, the stronger we get,” said Jen Mennes, director of media and public relations for Post Foods, during The Advertising Research […]

  • Customers First, Company Needs Next, Individual Agendas Last

    “Marketer’s Note” is a weekly column informing marketers about the rapidly evolving, digital marketing technology ecosystem. It is written by Joanna O’Connell, Director of Research, AdExchanger Research.   I had a wonderful conversation with Renee Horne, AVP, Social Business at USAA, at last week’s Merkle CRM Summit, in which she noted something that could make a […]

  • Apple Starts Blocking Some Apps For Rewarding Ad Views And Shares

    Monetizing apps in the iOS environment means playing by Apple’s rules, and occasionally adapting to changes in how those rules are enforced. Sometimes those changes can impact the way ads are served and tracked, as happened back in February when Apple (briefly) put a barbed wire fence around the use its Identifier For Advertising for […]