Supply-side platform PubMatic has created an advisory unit as it looks to differentiate itself from other publisher technology providers. As CEO Rajeev Goel tells it, publishers’ use of programmatic is expanding in a variety of ways and many want to take more control with a “do-it-yourself” sensibility. “Our industry is at a tipping point, as […]
Facebook has made steady progress on closing the loop between media spend and consumer transactions, according to Brian Boland, the company’s VP of ads product marketing. “Digital marketers expect accurate reach,” Boland said in a presentation at the DMA 2013 annual summit in Chicago this week. More and more are “expecting proven results. They’re now […]
Refinery29 has raised $20 million in Series C funding from Stripes Group to expand its category coverage and technological clout. The round brings its financing total to $30.4 million. What began as a grassroots fashion discovery portal for emerging brands and designers in New York, the city where high school friends Philippe von Borries and […]
Brand Networks, a social marketing firm focused on large retail clients, has acquired rival Optimal Inc. for $35 million. The deal brings together two early movers in Facebook’s Preferred Marketing Developer (PMD) program, each adept in its own way at seizing the social opportunity. In Brand Networks’ case, the strategy has been to focus on […]
The lawyers may be scurrying and the deal fees mounting, but Omnicom and Publicis are still on track to complete their $35 billion megamerger by early 2014. The companies are making slow but steady progress on achieving regulatory approval for the deal, Omnicom CEO John Wren told investors on the company’s Q3 earnings call this morning. […]
“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. When Acxiom announced the release of its Audience Operating System (AOS) in late September, I expected it to make a bigger splash. Likewise when Experian acquired digital data […]
MAGNA GLOBAL Research has issued a new report this morning chock full of data that shows robust growth in programmatic buying of digital media. For starters, the company says that in the U.S. programmatic inventory (display, mobile, social, video) will hit $7.4 billion this year. Of that, $3.9 billion will be real-time biddable, which $3.5 […]
Data science is the backbone of numerous ad-tech firms competing in an increasingly technology-driven environment. Explaining what data scientists do is difficult, however, given that their work is often described as a mix of art and science and varies with each company. AdExchanger asked data scientists from Decide.com, a price research firm acquired by eBay, […]
The “Ad Tech Industry” is maturing. For the past five years, AdExchanger has observed, engaged and, hopefully, enlightened about this budding sector. But! Today this sector has expanded its horizons and global appeal to the point where the “ad tech” label no longer easily fits. It has become a “Digital Marketing Technology Industry,” steadily embraced […]
“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. Having just returned from the three-day ANA Masters of Marketing conference, held this past weekend in Phoenix, I thought it worth sharing my thoughts with marketers on what […]
There’s an ever-growing opportunity for advertisers on Amazon, the commerce marketplace maven every retailer hopes to emulate (and simultaneously fears). The company has nearly doubled its global ad revenues since 2011, from $420 million to an expected $835 million this year, eMarketer estimates. If true, this puts it ahead of publishers like Pandora, Twitter, LinkedIn and […]
In a summer interview, Facebook’s head of vertical measurement, Fred Leach, described the company’s measurement products and its partnership with Datalogix. In the below follow-up Q&A, Leach digs deeper into the company’s work on mobile measurement, attribution and the CPG category. AdExchanger: What are you working on in terms of mobile measurement? FRED LEACH: There are a couple ways […]
Each day at 6:30am, Dunkin Brands President of Global Marketing and Innovation John Costello gets a report showing the previous day’s sales by item at every US location. The company, which owns Dunkin Donuts and Baskin Robins, launched 43 new products this year, Costello told marketers at the Association of National Advertisers’ annual Masters of […]
Breaking: The sizzle reel still has legs. Two thousand attendees at the Association of National Advertisers’ annual Masters of Marketing conference were treated to numerous examples of the genre Friday, as senior marketers from Chrysler, Walmart, MARS and Coca-Cola showed off their favorite TV spots. Repeatedly. But while the raw storytelling power of television remains […]
There’s a new breed of social platform in town, with direct-to-consumer and merchant wherewithal. The group includes social startups like Wanelo, a uniquely searchlike experience for “all stores in one place,” and OpenSky, which combines the microblogging feel of a Twitter with the slightly more visceral look of a Pinterest. According to OpenSky CEO John […]
Walgreens is pursuing digital in a “deliberate and strategic way,” according to its CEO. “Sometimes I feel like a B-52 bomber where I’m clearing a path to a 112-year-old brick-and-mortar business,” Greg Wasson confessed to a packed room of retail brands and marketers today at the Shop.org summit in Chicago. “Digital wasn’t something Walgreens was […]
Adaptly is one of a handful of ad-tech companies serving as a preferred partner to both Facebook and Twitter, but it doesn’t see its induction into the latter’s API program as an extension. Although Twitter’s strategy has similarities to what Facebook did last year — including a retargeting exchange — Adaptly CEO Nikhil Sethi noted […]
California Gov. Jerry Brown set a precedent for privacy rights last week when he signed into law Assembly Bill 370. Under the bill, which amended a section of the California Business and Professions Code, websites that collect personally identifiable information (PII) about California residents must provide a privacy policy that identifies the type of PIIs […]
Designer apparel brand Tory Burch now sees 44% of its site traffic stemming from smartphones and tablets with more than 28% of sales attributed to mobile devices. During a keynote presentation this morning at the National Retail Federation’s Shop.org summit, Miki Berardelli, Tory Burch’s CMO, told an audience in the mid-thousands here in Chicago that […]
Did you notice? Experian just bought a cross-device ad tracking — ahem — fraud-prevention vendor. The credit-reporting and marketing giant laid out $324 million to nab 41st Parameter, a security and fraud-detection business that guards against unauthorized purchases, among other things. Importantly, 41st Parameter also runs an ad-tracking brand, AdTruth, that hawks the same basic […]
Keeping up with tech-savvy consumers who demand personalized experiences is a challenge for publishers and advertisers alike. Like other companies, health information provider WebMD realized it needed to revamp its advertising strategy with a greater focus on mobile devices and customizable features. Earlier this month, the company launched a new version of its app that […]
Notice how the cover-up of scandal is often worse than the original misdeed? The same is true when it comes to the appearance of a conflict of interest – if it looks like a conflict, you’ve got a conflict. That’s ultimately what led Starcom MediaVest Group CEO Laura Desmond to resign from the board of […]
“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 Eric Picard, CEO at Rare Crowds. There has been a quiet shift in the digital ad ecosystem over the past few years, although it isn’t clear to many people working […]
Automation Is Coming. In panel after panel at New York’s Advertising Week, publishers and agencies heaped hate on ad selling inefficiencies and delivered eulogies for their mutual adversary, the insertion order. The big questions: Which players will be first to seize the automation grail? And how long will it take? The holding company trading desks […]
Depending on who you ask, Rocket Fuel’s stunning IPO is either a new dawn for programmatic media investment or a scary bubble indicator. In either case, it clearly went better than the company and investors planned. For comparison, we looked at how its nearly $2 billion market cap stacks up against other big companies in […]
If I were to pick one person who could distill for today’s marketer the rapidly innovating, marketing technology ecosystem, the selection would be simple enough. Who knew I’d someday have the good fortune to work with that person, too? I am excited to announce that Joanna O’Connell has joined AdExchanger as our Director of Research. […]
Mobile commerce will reach new highs on Black Friday and Cyber Monday this year, and retailers are hastily preparing for the onslaught of traffic those devices will bring. Couple that with the fact that there are 26 days between Thanksgiving and Christmas, compared to last year’s 32, and retail marketers are working on compressed campaign […]
AOL finally answered the question “What is a programmatic upfront?” by saying it would put its money where its mouth is: starting in 2014, it will make its reserved, guaranteed inventory available through its automated platforms for the first time. The portal lined up an array of advertising partners, noting that five of the six […]
As marketers, ad-buyers and CMOs are increasingly asked to defend their spend, a “consistent data framework” that surpasses the boundaries of channel will be one way to help them win budgetary battles, according to one exec. Josh Herman, VP of partner and product strategy at Acxiom, joined executives from eBay, Datalogix and Nielsen Catalina Solutions […]
Spotify, the ad-supported music streaming service, has barely scratched the surface of its advertising capabilities, but the 7-year-old company is treading carefully. The streaming service is up to more than 24 million active users, a quarter of whom are premium subscribers, and earned $577 million in total revenue last year. Part of the Stockholm-based company’s […]
