Video buy-side platform TubeMogul missed its Q2 revenue forecast by 3%, partly due to slower-than-expected shifts in advertiser spend from desktop to mobile. Revenue in the second quarter reached $55.4 million, a 22% increase from the year before but still shy of analysts’ expectations of about $58 million. The company lowered its FY2016 guidance on […]
Japanese holding company Dentsu Aegis Network will acquire a majority stake in Maryland-based Merkle – a CRM and performance marketing specialist – and one of the largest independent digital agencies. It did $436 million in revenue in 2015, a 14% increase over the year prior. While terms were not disclosed, the deal values Merkle at […]
Salesforce has named CRM technology pioneer Bob Stutz as CEO of its Marketing Cloud, replacing outgoing CEO Scott McCorkle. McCorkle, a soft-spoken and well-liked exec, has for the past two years driven the marketing tech bus at Salesforce, a bus that has arguably been stuck in a fast idle since the company paid $2.5 billion […]
Vivendi-owned Dailymotion is expanding its network of video demand sources and its programmatic presence in New York, despite reports of restructures and the closing of the French video platform’s Palo Alto, Calif., office. Dailymotion is partnering with the mobile DSP StrikeAd, owned by recently acquired Sizmek, to serve more rich media units and enable geo-based […]
Header bidding is changing the industry and creating a new set of winners and losers. After a dismal earnings call, Rubicon Project’s stock fell 32% and lost $200 million in value Wednesday. Rubicon CEO Frank Addante said the company failed to respond quickly to the header bidding trend, sending its desktop revenue into decline. […]
K2 Intelligence spent eight months investigating questionable agency business practices for the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), culminating in a critical, groundbreaking report. Now the firm will help advertisers enforce and monitor transparency with their media-buying agencies through a new business unit. The practice, first reported by The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, will use […]
Private equity firm Vector Capital has agreed to acquire ad tech company Sizmek. “Vector will acquire all of the outstanding shares of Sizmek common stock for $3.90 per share in an all-cash tender offer,” according to a release, which values the company at $122 million. Notably, Sizmek’s market cap, just prior to the acquisition announcement, […]
WPP-owned ad network-slash-tech shop Xaxis has its first-ever Latin America CEO. Lucas Mentasti was promoted from the unit’s Latin America managing director to its chief. It’s a big step up from where he started in 2013, moving from Publicis-owned Starcom to head up Xaxis’ Latin America business. At that time, “head up” meant doing everything, […]
Many in the US digital media industry have cherished hope of a day in court against ad blockers. It’s a movement that began with a series of IAB summits last summer and which today is slipping along the spectrum from possibility to fantasy. A year ago, the most likely legal route focused on copyright infringement. […]
Google parent Alphabet finished out Q2 2016 with $21.5 billion in overall revenue, a 21% jump from Q2 2015. It’s also a notable acceleration of growth rate from that year-ago quarter, when top line revenue grew 11%. [Read the earnings release.] The company chalked up the faster growth to investments in mobile and video. “The strength of the quarter […]
Despite similar origins as Web 1.0 content portals, Yahoo’s inability to shake its roots and AOL’s decisive transformation into an ad tech company sent the two down starkly different paths, even as they both landed beneath Verizon’s big red checkmark: the communications giant purchased AOL for $4.4 billion last May and revealed its intention to […]
Verizon won’t complete its $4.8 billion acquisition of Yahoo until next year, but that hasn’t stopped speculation about which pieces of ad tech will come along for the ride. As Yahoo and AOL built their respective ad stacks to serve publishers and advertisers over time, obvious crossovers have occurred. So what’s complementary, what’s redundant and […]
It’s easy to forget, but Yahoo was once the largest and most promising digital media company – its stock a bellwether for the internet sector as a whole. By Q1 2017, regulatory hurdles permitting, that stock will stop trading as the company’s people, its portfolio of brands and its technology assets are absorbed into Verizon. To honor Yahoo’s important role in […]
Facebook wants brands to know that its live-streaming platform is more than a free-for-all for unfettered personal broadcasts. Publisher partners are finding value when they augment Facebook Live within a larger content distribution strategy, even if monetization as a whole remains in test mode. “Facebook Live is a form of branded content for us, and […]
It’s probably not a good idea to use Google Translate on legal language. Roughly two weeks ago, the Chinese government released online regulations that include new rules governing paid search results, embedded links, video ads and email advertising. A buried clause within the edict also seems to outlaw ad blocking – and when Adblock Plus realized […]
To maintain transparent relationships with their agencies, brands must consider significantly investing in things like staffing, continuing media education and legal counsel, according to ANA and Ebiquity. In their most recent report, ANA and Ebiquity issued a long list of recommendations that also included hiring a “chief media officer” to manage agency relationships. It’s a […]
Like many companies, outdoor lifestyle brand Columbia Sportswear was no stranger to using 15- and 30-second YouTube videos as a complement to TV. Because consumers weren’t necessarily going to YouTube for “conversion-based” content like product reviews, Columbia experimented with 360-degree video to make its content more immersive. Columbia sent its production crew out with US […]
Deterministic data from set-top boxes is changing how linear TV is bought and valued. Like the Nielsen ratings panel, set-top box data connects to a physical address and household. But unlike Nielsen’s 40,000 families – which provide a “truth set” for TV viewership – set-top boxes reach millions of households, allowing marketers to overlay […]
Political ad dollars, even more so than brand budgets, have conglomerated around a handful of major players. Of the more than $1 billion analysts predict candidates and super PACs will spend online this election, “half will go to Facebook and Google, Pandora – those are the big ones – and Twitter,” said Jordan Lieberman, politics […]
Advertisers are willing to pay a “substantial premium” on nonmobile video ads, according to a ZenithOptimedia video ad spend forecast issued Monday. Despite the fact that more consumers watch video on their mobile devices, video ad spend hasn’t grown with quite the same gusto. “Mobile is the dominant platform for consumption, but it won’t become the […]
Deals fall through all the time. But the failed acquisition of Opera’s ad business could be a signal that China’s western buying spree is liable to hit a few regulatory snags. In February, a consortium of Chinese companies, which comprises mobile game maker Kunlun and security software provider Qihoo, announced its intention to buy up all of […]
The Association of National Advertisers’ crusade for greater agency transparency entered phase two on Monday, when marketing analytics firm Ebiquity and its subsidiary, FirmDecisions, released an anticipated set of guidelines for advertisers on how to maintain transparent relationships with their agencies. The overarching message: Agencies may have crossed a few lines, but the onus is […]
Advertisers’ concerns around viewability and fraud are slowing down spend on digital advertising, said Daryl Simm, chairman and CEO of Omnicom Media Group during the holding company’s Q2 2016 earnings call on Thursday morning. “While [advertisers] are continuing to grow their digital budgets, there is a tap at the brakes in that space as some […]
Google’s programmatic video revenues are growing fast, thanks in part to its decision to turn on exchange-based monetization of YouTube’s TrueView ad formats. Just how fast they’re growing can be seen in figures obtained by AdExchanger as well as in data released by Google directly. Google claims programmatic buying on YouTube via its demand-side platform, […]
Early Wednesday morning, a week after the initial US launch of Pokémon Go, a small milling crowd formed outside Barney Greengrass, an iconic Upper West Side Jewish deli and a “PokéStop” – a real-world location anchored in the augmented reality game interface. It’s not unusual for queues to form for bagels and smoked fish, but […]
Reynolds Consumer Products signed a 2-year deal with Meredith, under which the food- and home-focused publisher will develop upper-funnel and lower-funnel content for Reynolds’ brands, including Reynolds Wrap and Hefty. Upper-funnel content will feature tips for entertaining or cooking designed to inspire or drive awareness, said Meredith SVP Marc Rothschild. The publisher’s 2015 acquisition of […]
Augmented reality seems to have hit its mainstream stride with the runaway popularity of Pokémon Go, and users are having a blast – but location-based marketers are also getting pretty stoked. “This is like the best high-profile marketing campaign for location intelligence that anyone could ask for,” said Foursquare president Steven Rosenblatt. For those living under […]
Cadent, a media network and data platform for pay TV providers, has rolled out a TV targeting tool that taps into TiVo’s data sets. Available initially as a managed service, the product is Cadent’s first since its acquisition last August of addressable and video on-demand ad platform BlackArrow. GroupM’s advanced TV specialist Modi Media is the first […]
In spite of the upheaval from Brexit, Time Inc. acquired Collective’s UK ad network business for an undisclosed sum on Tuesday. Unlike Collective’s US ad network business, the UK business’ bottom and top lines are growing, said CEO Joe Apprendi. Focused on brand advertisers, the UK business provides creative services and ad formats that differentiated […]
Congress is starting to pay attention to ad fraud – and it’s looking to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for answers. To be precise, Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) drafted a letter to the FTC on Monday calling for the commission to take a closer look at the negative economic impact of digital […]
