Google will move to first-price auctions for Google Ad Manager, its publisher exchange and ad server, by the end of 2019. At that time, it will also run a single, unified auction and remove last look, ceding a key advantage Google held in a second-price world. Google Ad Manager will be the last major exchange […]
Sizmek needs another investment round after facing setbacks and revenue shortfalls in 2018, and it won’t find new funding with Vector Capital, the firm that backed the acquisitions and integration of Sizmek and Rocket Fuel. Sizmek is working with Cerberus Capital Management, the PE firm that financed the debt on Vector’s deal for Rocket Fuel […]
Xandr just can’t deal right now, according to sources. When AT&T hired Brian Lesser to run its new targeted advertising business and acquired AppNexus as its anchor asset, the company signaled it might move quickly on more acquisitions. But the appetite for mergers has faded since then, and the company now plans to hold off […]
Zach Rodgers and Allison Schiff contributed. Comcast is looking to enhance its targeted advertising business by acquiring more ad tech assets, and is evaluating a group of companies that includes Cadent and dataxu, AdExchanger has learned. Comcast is motivated by a range of factors, including stiffer competition from AT&T and its Xandr ad unit as […]
Targeting on TV with the same precision as digital is becoming a reality. Hulu, Roku and other over-the-top (OTT) providers offer advanced audience and behavioral targeting capabilities like CRM onboarding, while companies such as Xandr and NCC Media are applying unique data sets to make the linear TV landscape more addressable. But just because marketers […]
The Trade Desk shocked many observers last May when shares jumped from around $50 to $90, and then again in August when the stock leapt to about $130. Now shares are trading at almost $200. But what’s behind The Trade Desk’s monumental growth in the past year? The company benefits from a smaller field of […]
Ad buyers need to be on the lookout for a new problem called “declaration fraud,” where buyers paying for full-screen mobile video ads instead get itty-bitty versions that take up less than 5% of the screen. The trick takes advantage of the same loophole sellers used to spoof domains prior to ads.txt. Here’s how it […]
Kraft-Heinz’s $15 billion write-down on Kraft and Oscar Meyer last week shows that underinvesting in marketing and brand hurts long-term growth. “It indicates investment in innovation and branding is essential,” said Martin Sorrell, CEO of S4 Capital. “In addition to being frugal, you have to invest in product or service innovation and marketing. You’re throwing […]
The programmatic video ad tech provider Telaria earned $55.2 million in 2018, up 26% from the year before, with total profits up 20% to $16.8 million, the company disclosed in its earnings report on Tuesday. Telaria shares were up more than a third during the day and have now recovered from the company’s earnings report […]
Facebook wants that upfront money. On Tuesday, Facebook said it will start letting TV buyers purchase inventory in specific programs hosted on Watch. This offering, called Showcase, resembles an upfront buy, as the inventory will be priced against Nielsen-validated demos and sold in advance at fixed prices. This content includes programs like “Sorry For Your […]
Marketers’ push for viewability, ads.txt and GDPR eventually led to the Chapter 7 bankruptcy of RockYou, an ad network and media holding company, on Feb. 13. The bankruptcy filing listed $14.9 million in liabilities to 738 different ad tech companies and publishers. Most notably, RockYou owed $2.1 million to Facebook, where it likely paid to […]
Once upon a time, direct-to-consumer startup Parachute sold high-quality sheets online, touting efficiencies by cutting out middlemen. Five years later, Parachute sells sheets, towels, mattresses, bathrobes and baby blankets to consumers online and in five stores on each coast. “Bedding was a vehicle to gain customer trust, but it was never the end goal,” said […]
If Xandr wants to live up to its promise and create a programmatic marketplace for the TV industry, it’s going to have to convince agencies to buy what it’s offering. The AT&T-owned company recently hired Jay Askinasi for the job, and he joined Xandr in early February as VP, head of digital and agency partnerships. […]
Marketers are reacting differently to YouTube’s latest brand safety flare-up compared to 2017, when scores of global brands suspended YouTube campaigns over ads monetizing violent or offensive videos. There’s certainly some déjà vu, with Disney, Nestlé’s and McDonald’s halting YouTube spending after YouTube creator Matt Watson showed them advertising on a video that had a […]
The Trade Desk’s growth streak shows no sign of diminishing, with revenue of $477 million in 2018, a 55% increase from the year before, according to the company’s earnings report on Thursday. Shares of The Trade Desk were up more than 10% in after-hours trading. The company raised eyebrows last year when its stock went […]
Nielsen’s move into addressable TV planning and measurement starts with the smart TV. About a week after Nielsen bought Sorenson Media for $11.25 million in a bankruptcy auction, the measurement company has formally launched a new unit: the Nielsen Advanced Video Advertising Group. That group consists of Gracenote, which was acquired in 2016 for $560 […]
Oracle has uncovered an ad fraud operation it calls “DrainerBot,” which siphoned off ad dollars and monthly data packages. Oracle’s internet infrastructure business Dyn originally discovered the operation after it picked up suspicious activity among some mobile apps using an SDK from Tapcore, a Dutch mobile monetization company. The apps obscured web data with proxy […]
US digital ad spend in 2019 will surpass all traditional advertising for the first time, growing to $129.3 billion this year, according to eMarketer’s latest forecast. Digital advertising is being driven by mobile, which is now more than two-thirds of the digital category, and by TV dollars moving to streaming and online video. Oh, and […]
How can a brand take advantage of the 5G revolution today? Actually, that’s a trick question. The next evolution of wireless technology after 4G LTE, 5G-enabled devices won’t be available until at least 2020, despite limited test deployments in large cities and a fair amount of boasting from the big telecom companies. But what will […]
This article is sponsored by Prebid.org. 2018 wasn’t the year header bidding first began disrupting how exchanges and publishers thought about monetizing their inventory, but it may be remembered as the year it reached an inflection point. According to the ServerBid Header Bidding Industry Index, nearly 75% of the U.S.’s top 1,000 websites had adopted header […]
Another executive with a data and technology background is taking a big leadership role at Omnicom. Erin Matts, former North American CEO of Annalect, was named US CEO of Hearts & Science on Tuesday. Matts will succeed Scott Hagedorn, who was promoted to CEO of Omnicom Media Group on Thursday. Omnicom has not yet named […]
Normally, when Kellogg’s launches a new product, it goes all out with national marketing and big TV budgets. But Kellogg’s broke all its own rules when its 12-person “speed team” created and brought to market two new products in less than a year: Joybol, a protein-packed smoothie bowl, and Happy Inside, a prebiotic and probiotic […]
Walmart, Nike, Amazon, Dell, Honda, Lowe’s – all brand advertisers you can trust, until a bad actor steals their ad creative to use as a vehicle for spreading malware. The problem grows during periods of higher traffic, like the holidays, said Maggie Louie, CEO and founder of DEVCON, a cybersecurity startup focused on fraud detection. […]
Video ad platform Ooyala is slowly being disassembled and sold piece by piece. On Thursday, Ooyala revealed it had sold its online video platform to Brightcove for $15 million. The deal is expected to close in mid-2019. Brightcove, founded in 2004, provides a similar cloud-based video distribution solution as Ooyala. Its clients include Acorn TV, […]
Six-year-old women’s underwear brand ThirdLove considers data critical to its whole business, not just its marketing plan. The direct-to-consumer company was founded by husband-and-wife team Heidi Zak and David Spector, who both hail from Google’s advertising business. “The biggest thing I learned [at Google] was about testing and optimization,” Zak said. “Even if something didn’t […]
At agencies, data-driven talent is rising to the very top. Hearts & Science CEO Scott Hagedorn was named CEO of Omnicom Media Group (OMG) Thursday after 15 years with the company. Hagedorn succeeds Page Thompson, who will retire after 40 years at Omnicom. Omnicom has not yet named a replacement for Hagedorn at Hearts & […]
Data transparency is all the rage in digital advertising, but data companies themselves still exist in a world of black boxes and inscrutable spreadsheets. Highland Math was founded last year to help address the issue, by creating a consortium of data providers that pool their own returns to create a market research data set. The […]
Martin Sorrell’s S4 Capital acquired the programmatic agency MightyHive last December to marry hands-on-keyboard expertise with dynamic creative expertise from MediaMonks. The acquisition kicked off a formal working relationship between S4 CEO Sorrell and MightyHive CEO Pete Kim – who are bonding over their similar Type A personalities. Sorrell’s reputation for all-hours emails and constant […]
Remember when WPP CEO Mark Read said he wanted the holding company to be known for creative transformation? That need to evolve has finally hit Triad, a company WPP acquired in 2016 that sells paid media on ecommerce sites. On Tuesday, Triad rebranded from Triad Retail Media and launched a consultancy to help brands increase […]
LiveRamp has added connected TV IDs to IdentityLink, its cross-device identity graph, the company said during its Monday Q4 2018 earnings report. Connected TV IDs are tied to a home IP address, and are used to distinguish households by companies that serve ads over smart TVs or OTT services, including some smart TV manufacturers, multichannel […]
