A data-management platform (DMP) panel held Wednesday at AdExchanger’s Industry Preview 2014 revealed the philosophical differences held by four major DMP providers in terms of how the technology should best be implemented and used. The panelists – CEOs Scott Howe of Acxiom, Omar Tawakol of BlueKai, Bill Demas of Turn and John Nardone of [x+1] […]
An expanded partnership between Simulmedia and set-top box data company Fourth Wall is part of a larger effort to replace traditional demographic targeting as the basis for ad placement. Instead, Simulmedia is proposing to target TV audiences based on their purchase history, instead of using broad categories like gender and age to determine where and […]
Hundreds of advertising industry professionals braved the cold, snowy weather of New York City on January 21 and 22, 2014 for AdExchanger’s first Industry Preview conference at The Times Center. The two day show featured some of the biggest names in publishing,marketing and advertising technology. Among the biggest themes: programmatic, mobile and cross-device targeting. Here […]
You’ve got to hand it to Razorfish for even having a media practice. Considering the clout of corporate siblings like Starcom Mediavest Group (SMG) and the growing power of media agencies in general, it would not be surprising to learn that – four years after its acquisition by Publicis Groupe — the digital agency’s media […]
The Australian maker of a media-trading platform, Brandscreen, barely months into a strategic deal it formed with Chinese search giant Baidu to fuel further expansion in the Asia-Pacific region, has been put up for purchase. Entering voluntary administration on the eve of the new year, Australian intellectual property law firm Jirsch Sutherland is administering the […]
Yahoo Chief Operating Officer Henrique De Castro has been canned, according to a regulatory filing. Re/code’s Kara Swisher reported on the story first. De Castro’s departure date is Jan. 16. A former Googler, De Castro is credited by industry insiders with helping to build Google’s display ad business and making YouTube profitable. De Castro joined […]
As we noted last week, Evidon has redoubled its efforts to turn the 20 million users of its Ghostery browser plugin into a larger revenue stream. Execs have decided the tag-monitoring browser extension holds potential as a pixel analytics panel, and they aim to promote this crowd-sourced analytics capability to enterprise marketers to audit their site […]
The proliferation of DVR services, set-top boxes and IPTV services has created a wealth of data marketers can mine. But the process by which one can purchase these targeted, data-driven ads is still in its infancy. For instance, extending programmatic buying concepts to “advanced television” (a custom system that algorithmically optimizes media against an advertiser’s […]
Twitter has rolled out two new prongs to its “Tailored Audiences” targeting regime, which debuted last month as a vehicle strictly for website retargeting. Among the new segmenting features are CRM matching and Twitter ID targeting. The latter allows the serving of ads based on a user’s public characteristics, such as keywords appearing in a […]
“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 really interesting conversation with a Director of Digital Marketing at a financial services company recently as part of my “customer lifecycle management” research (which I’ll […]
Rob Brosnan, a Forrester Research analyst covering customer intelligence and interactive marketing, has secured a new post as SVP of strategy for marketing technology company StrongView. One of the remaining independent marketing-automation platforms, StrongView recently rebranded from the name “StrongMail,” a move company CEO Bill Wagner said is representative of cross-channel buyer needs in today’s […]
As we first reported in November, digital marketing software firm Turn has reeled in a new Series E investment. The $80 million raise was distributed among eight venture capital firms and brings Turn’s total funding to about $138 million to date. (For comparison, direct competitor MediaMath has raised a mere $24.4 million, according to CrunchBase). […]
You might not call it an epic fail, but Vail Resorts’ first stab at developing its EpicMix social ski app forced the brand to reconsider its original digital approach. First launched by the ski resort in the 2010-2011 season, EpicMix tapped RFID-enabled lift passes and gantries to track where and how skiers soared its slopes. […]
As the mobile app market matures, vendors are taking note and offering tools to help app developers drive more engagement among their existing users. One such company is mobile app marketing firm Fiksu, which unveiled its retargeting tool on Thursday. Fiksu identifies groups of users to target ads using data sources such as Apple’s IDFA […]
In a rare instance, Yahoo’s advertising products shared the limelight with the company’s consumer-facing ones when Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer unveiled the company’s new ad products among other new offerings at the Consumer Electronics Show. Ad agency execs responded to Yahoo’s new ad products optimistically, however, some areas remain unclear, such as the development of […]
When discussing the advances of programmatic media buying outside the US, the stock answer the past few years has been, “It’s catching up.” But at some point in 2013, the investment that marketers, agencies and ad-tech companies have made in Europe and Asia began to appear more concrete and significant. Some companies, like New York-based […]
Pandora’s evolution bodes well for advertisers looking for enhanced targeting opportunities in a multiscreen world. At CES 2014, Pandora and WPP Group media agency Mindshare toured how the online radio service is acclimating to an omnichannel environment, in the process developing enhanced personalization capabilities that both Pandora’s users and advertisers can leverage. At the core […]
Evidon wants to better monetize the data waterfall pouring from its network of 20 million Ghostery users, and will look to new Chief Operating Officer Emily Riley to help it pull that off. Riley, a longtime Forrester analyst who spent the last year driving Audience Science’s pivot from an ad network into a data intelligence […]
“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 read this recent article on what I call the “privacy versus relevancy” conversation with some interest – it’s a topic that’s been on my radar, as it […]
Oracle’s deal to acquire Responsys comes with a key question: What will Oracle’s future hold for digital advertisers? When Oracle snapped up Eloqua for $810 million last December, a chain reaction of subsequent purchases followed, from Salesforce.com’s acquisition of ExactTarget to Adobe’s Neolane buy mere months later. As competitors rush to build or acquire digital […]
BrightTag’s name reflects its origins as a provider of tag-management technology, a tool that allows businesses to collect information within a Web browser. The issue today, of course, is that the flow of data transcends browsers, flooding across mobile handsets, tablets and increasingly connected devices like gaming consoles and smart TVs. This puts standalone tag-management […]
Beginning about a decade ago, Seattle-based Marchex made a flurry of acquisitions in several digital marketing categories, and then floundered. The company was diversified but undifferentiated, as President Peter Christothoulou describes it. It ran side businesses selling domains, driving leads and publishing a tech vertical through the 2005 acquisition of Industry Brains (recently sold to […]
Although marketing industry deal activity was flat in 2013, the sector saw some eye-popping deal sizes, according to boutique investment bank Jordan, Edmiston Group Inc.’s (JEGI) annual review of mergers and acquisitions. In 2012, many of the biggest deals in 2012 tracked by JEGI involved consumer brands (Yahoo, Kayak), with only two marketing industry mergers coming in […]
“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 read the recent news about Yahoo!’s opening up guaranteed inventory to Demand-Side Platforms (DSPs), including MediaMath, Doubleclick Bid Manager and The Trade Desk, with enormous interest, but […]
Ever more companies on the buy side want to partner directly with publishers. Sell-side platforms (SSPs), ad networks, agencies, demand-side platforms (DSPs), retargeting networks and others have over the last year increased their efforts to gain visibility and direct inventory access. In a recent telling example, WPP Group’s Xaxis programmatic platform absorbed 24/7 Media to […]
It’s that time of year. To get a sense of what’s coming in 2014, we reached out to some senior marketers with a single, open-ended question about the coming year. “What new consumer or technology trend do you expect to see in 2014 that will change your marketing strategy?” The below response is from Scott […]
It’s that time of year. To get a sense of what’s coming in 2014, we asked some senior marketers to answer a single, open-ended question about the coming year: “What new consumer or technology trend do you expect to see in 2014 that will change your marketing strategy?” The below response is from Tamara Gruzbarg, […]
A Wednesday hearing held by the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation about the operations of so-called “data brokers” highlighted the disconnect between data marketers and consumer advocates. The hearing followed the release of a report detailing the findings of a yearlong investigation into data marketers. The core disagreement revolves around the extent to which businesses […]
Beijing-based BlueFocus Communications has bought a majority stake in We Are Social, strengthening its Western presence and gaining a global social marketing capability. Under the deal terms, BlueFocus paid an initial $30 million for an 82.8 percent position in We Are Social, with additional incentive-based compensation doled out over the next three years. London-based We Are […]
‘Tis the season for predictions, so AdExchanger reached out to members of the venture capital community for their opinions on what’s in store for 2014. Click below to read “the bets” or scroll for more: Jeff Crowe, managing partner, Norwest Venture Partners Seth Levine, co-founder and managing director, Foundry Group Roger Ehrenberg, founder and managing […]
