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Krishan Bhatia oversees a portfolio that reaches north of 130 million monthly unique visitors across desktop, mobile and over-the-top devices as EVP of digital strategy and operations for NBCUniversal’s digital portfolio. Bhatia, who reports directly to president of advertising sales Linda Yaccarino, is charged with growing NBCUniversal’s digital advertising business, including its maturing programmatic discipline. […]

Publicis Groupe will snap up Sapient, a digital-centric agency and communications company known for experience design and digital-retail integrations, for $3.7 billion. The all-cash transaction comes directly on the heels of Publicis’s acquisition of programmatic platform RUN, and may bring some closure to the holding company’s disastrous courtship of Omnicom Group. Sapient CEO Alan Herrick (AdExchanger Q&A) will become CEO of Publicis.Sapient, a new […]

Facebook is unraveling its preferred marketing developer (PMD) program, its platform for organizing and referring key partners to prospective advertisers. In its place will be a new classification system, called simply Facebook Marketing Partners (FMP, for the acronym-addicted), with no badges but with a list of nine “specialties” – including ad tech, content marketing, and […]

Forrester Research crowned Adobe Marketing Cloud in its first-ever ranking of enterprise marketing software suites – informally called “marketing clouds.” The report, compiled by analysts Cory Munchbach and Rusty Warner and released Tuesday, encompassed eight vendors (Adobe, Salesforce.com, SAS, Teradata, IBM, Oracle, SAP and Marketo). Munchbach and Warner interviewed three clients from each vendor and tallied […]

“Marketer’s Note” is a regular column informing marketers about the rapidly evolving, digital marketing technology ecosystem. This week it is written by Joanna O’Connell, Director of Research, AdExchanger Research.   I spent several days last week enjoying the inside of a giant hotel in sunny Orlando, Florida, for the ANA’s annual Masters of Marketing conference, the second […]

A change is on the horizon for Annalect, Omnicom’s analytics and marketing technology arm. Omnicom agencies – both its media traders and its creative firms – use Annalect when they need data-driven expertise for their clients’ campaigns. As such, Annalect has a wealth of data scientists and technologists, 250 relationships with third-party data sources and a […]

Walmart, one of the last bastions of big box retail, is investing for a digital future – one with considerably less square footage. Walmart recently revealed plans to invest between $1.2 to $1.5 billion in its ecommerce and digital operations for fiscal year 2016. Subsequently, its in-store investments are taking a temporary hit. In its […]

“Marketer’s Note” is a regular column informing marketers about the rapidly evolving, digital marketing technology ecosystem. This week it is written by Lizzie Komar, Associate Analyst, AdExchanger Research.   Over the past few years, we’ve seen both marketer excitement over, and actual investment in, DMPs grow significantly. Heralded as a “true audience intelligence engine,” the DMPs foundational role […]

Salesforce.com revealed Wave Analytics Cloud this week at its Dreamforce conference in San Francisco, the latest patch – alongside marketing, sales and customer service – in the tech giant’s quilt. Speaking to more than 100,000 registrants (some were virtual), Salesforce.com’s chairman and CEO Marc Benioff called the analytics offering “revolutionary” and swiped at analytics competitors. […]

The digital ad sector has made some tangible progress in the war on fraudulent ad impressions, thanks to new detection methods and improved hygiene from many sell-side platforms. But one of the biggest exchanges has added rather than subtracted invalid impressions, and buyers are complaining. AppNexus, the industry’s uber-exchange and one of the most promising […]

HubSpot, an independent, Boston-based tech company that built one of the first all-inclusive marketing and sales platforms (at least for the mid-market), began its first day of trading Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange, its share price rising to $33 in early trading. HubSpot – or HUBS, per its new ticker – was valued at close to $759 […]

Once upon a time, Microsoft seemed to be positioning itself as both a publisher, via its network of owned and operated sites, as well as an ad tech provider – sort of like where AOL is today. In 2007, it bought aQuantive for just north of $6 billion, which included major digital marketing players like […]

Verizon bills itself as a triple threat. It’s got mobile, it’s got television, it’s got broadband. And those three channels form the foundation for a deterministic data cocktail that Precision Market Insights (PMI) – Verizon’s addressable advertising division – is tapping to power Precision ID, the carrier’s answer to the ever-elusive mobile cookie. When Verizon […]

Facebook’s Atlas ad server allows advertisers to target Facebook users not just on Facebook.com, but across the web and app ecosystem. Once a user has logged into Facebook on a device, Atlas can find the user and serve ads just for that person. When he or she acts on the ad, Atlas ties that back to […]

At the outset of Advertising Week in New York City, WPP chief Sir Martin Sorrell turned his attention to Amazon’s VP of global ad sales Lisa Utzschneider on the stage they shared with Live Nation, CBSi and ESPN. “Your job, I guess, is to demonstrate the value of Amazon’s data for off-platform advertising,” he quipped. “Your revenues […]

Chicago-based Iris Mobile provides a CRM platform that helps retail industry clients identify and personalize messaging to their customers across devices. The system works partly by taking a phone number from a customer record, and then pinging the phone associated with that number to establish a device link. Iris then tries to deliver offers most […]

Consumers may spend a lot of time watching video on over-the-top devices and mobile, but advertisers still haven’t invested heavily in those areas. While panelists throughout Advertising Week in New York City agreed that the development of measurement techniques will help close that gap, device fragmentation complicates these initiatives. Still, connected TV makers and distributors […]

Retailers face an uphill battle when it comes to justifying mobile ad spend. At the Shop.org Digital Summit in Seattle, some shared how they are tackling cross-device measurement and mobile attribution as more time and sales shift to mobile. “There is a study that says people spend 20% of their time on their phone, so […]

In a reprise of their recent startup adventure, former Sociomantic CEO and Admeld exec Jason Kelly will become “President of the Company’s Managed Media” as Millennial CEO Michael Barrett looks to re-create the programmatic magic of his Admeld days which led to an eventual acquisition by Google. From today’s release (see it): “Reporting to CEO and President Michael Barrett, Kelly will […]

Facebook has done something big with the relaunch of its Atlas ad server, acquired from Microsoft 16 months ago, but that something has little to do with serving ads. Rather it’s about replacing the beleaguered cookie with a new, more reliable ad-tracking mechanism for the mobile age. The new Atlas – expected to be unveiled […]

MediaLink, long a dabbler in ad tech, has now jumped in with both feet. The strategic advisory firm tapped agency and startup veteran Matt Spiegel to ramp up its consulting work in the marketing technology area. That work will include advising marketers, publishers and tech companies on how to capitalize on the data-driven media automation […]

Roku, the first streaming player to translate Netflix to TV, has reached the 10 million-device mark. With 1,000-plus channels ranging from free to subscription (Hulu Plus, Netflix) and on-demand services (HBOGo and WatchESPN), Roku is scaling up its ad-supported vertical. Bringing publishers and brand partners onboard in a cookieless, connected TV environment comes with its own unique challenges, […]

Publicis-owned Starcom MediaVest Group (SMG) and Nielsen Catalina Solutions (NCS) – a 2009 joint venture between Nielsen Research and Catalina – unveiled a two-year partnership Wednesday wherein Nielsen Catalina’s household-level purchase data will integrate directly with SMG’s optimization system TARDIIS. This deal will ideally let SMG clients swiftly access NCS data so they can better allocate […]

Millennial Media needed a good story around programmatic, and now it has one. The publicly traded mobile ad tech platform has signed an agreement to buy mobile exchange player Nexage for $107.5 million in cash and stock. The deal enhances Millennial’s credentials as an independent programmatic platform connecting advertisers with mobile supply sources, including app […]

“Marketer’s Note” is a regular column informing marketers about the rapidly evolving, digital marketing technology ecosystem. This week it is written by Joanna O’Connell, Director of Research, AdExchanger Research.   In a recent interview with CMO Today, Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of holding company WPP Group, called the “in house” trend (i.e. marketers moving media buying – […]

AppNexus wants to rethink the publisher ad server as a holistic platform for yield management, and it’s starting with a rather old piece of technology. The company will acquire Open AdStream (OAS) from Xaxis as part of a major transaction with WPP Group that will also give the holding company a $25 million stake in […]

When will buying a linear TV ad be as simple as executing a Facebook ad buy? Sky Media, the ad sales arm of one European broadcast and telecom giant, says it’s already happening. British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB) dominates the pay-TV market in the UK, counting some 10.7 million paid subscribers a month and banking nearly […]

“Marketer’s Note” is a regular column informing marketers about the rapidly evolving, digital marketing technology ecosystem. This week it is written by Joanna O’Connell, Director of Research, AdExchanger Research.   This week I released my new research report, The “6-5-3” Framework: How to Pick the Right Programmatic Media Management Model, and presented it at yesterday’s Programmatic I/O […]

Marketers generally react to Yo, the one-touch messaging app, with bemused dismissal. Its sole function lets users ping each other with a single “Yo,” the simplicity of which has sparked no shortage of skepticism. But no one took Snapchat seriously when it surfaced, and the ephemeral photo messaging platform is now valued at a behemoth […]

Given the building momentum around native advertising and the growing number of publishers and startups seizing on the trend, it was only a matter of time before the 800-pound gorilla of ad technology threw its hat in the ring. While Google has yet to formally introduce its native offering, numerous AdExchanger sources with knowledge of […]