Google has snapped up Toro, a tool that helps developers market their apps on the Facebook platform. The deal appears to be an acquihire, since Toro employs fewer than 10 and has begun urging customers to seek out alternative partners to support their Facebook install campaigns. (Read the blog post.) Google declined to comment other than to […]
Google has a long history of working with agencies, but its push for premium video – resulting in more direct relationships with publishers – may alienate it from its longtime partners. A seeming point of contention is Google Partner Select, a video exchange established in 2014, promising exclusive access to 30 premium publishers. Typically, Google […]
If you’re looking for a deep dive into Google’s advertising business, you’re not getting it in an earnings call. Google reported FY 2014 revenue of $66 billion, up 19% YoY. Its Q4 revenue was $18.1 billion, all inclusive of traffic acquisition costs (TAC), which were $3.6 billion in Q4 (22% of ad revenue). Read the […]
Last week at CES, Google had a lot to say about video and viewability. But the company is not a viewability virgin. It’s had a viewable impressions tool called Active View in the market for well over two years and will soon extend viewability reporting across YouTube, Google Display Network and DoubleClick for both desktop […]
Google’s big video reveal this week included a significant update to its premium video exchange, Google Partner Select. At the time of its launch last June, it was unclear how many participants initially were involved in Google’s effort to “bring together the best of brand advertising with the best of programmatic,” Neal Mohan, Google’s VP […]
Hear that? It’s the sound of Google quietly mentioning that it plans to report on audibility for video ads at some point later this year. The audibility reference was buried as a footnote toward the end of a larger update on Google’s intention to roll out viewability reporting across all of its ad platforms, including […]
Just a few months after it hired Digilant COO Nathan Woodman to take charge of its demand-side business, IPONWEB has nabbed another well-known ad tech guy. The 13-year-old ad platform company has hired Bob Walczak, VP product at PubMatic, to oversee BidSwitch, its ad exchange-like product. At IPONWEB, Walczak will run sales and business operations for BidSwitch, a […]
Google spent the year branding YouTube as the de facto video partner for brand advertisers. 2014 was certainly active for Google’s video properties. Its ads and commerce chief, Susan Wojcicki, took the reins at YouTube as senior vice president, Google packaged the top 5% performing YouTube videos for brand buys in a program called Google […]
Google revealed on Wednesday key insight on how consumers see ads online, pooling data from its advertising platforms over June and July. The company compiled the results in a study called “The Importance of Being Seen: Viewability Insights for Digital Marketers and Publishers.” Get the PDF here. “We’ve had Active View available on the Google Display […]
It’s been nine months since Susan Wojcicki was named CEO at YouTube, clearing the path for Sridhar Ramaswamy to take full control of Google’s $50 billion-plus advertising business. As org changes go, it was a doozy. YouTube would get a proven leader to take it to the next level – by investing in talent and courting new […]
App developers are test-obsessed. They don’t spend a dime without knowing how it’ll turn out. That could be part of the reason why they haven’t done much spending on in-app mobile YouTube pre-roll. Until recently, Google Analytics provided developers with feedback on things like rate of install, AdWords performance, how often an app is opened, […]
What do telcos and YouTube talent have in common? Not a lot right now, but that will change once video and TV ad budgets converge. Consider the YouTube multichannel network (MCN), Google content partners that are responsible for both production and audience monetization and which get 55% of banner and pre-roll ad revenue. The digital […]
As fraudsters swarm like so many bees at the display advertising picnic, the industry is trying to blunt their stings with a combination of automated and manual solutions. Google has been among the most proactive ad platform players, hiring legions of real humans to review websites submitted to DoubleClick Ad Exchange. It recently acquired Spider.io, a […]
Considering two of the usual pure-play suspects in Forrester’s Cross-Channel Attribution Wave (Convertro and Adometry) were snapped up by AOL and Google on the very same day in May, its latest release Friday had all kinds of new implications – media neutrality and a platform mentality among them. The report, authored by Forrester analyst Tina […]
Google’s Q3 revenue rose 20% year over year to $16.52 billion, though it continued to see click volume rise (17% YoY) and cost per clicks fall (2% YoY). Google sites comprised about two-thirds of revenue, for a total of $11.25 billion. Partner sites contributed $3.43 billion, or about 20%. Google’s O&O paid clicks (which include […]
Germany is leading the attack in the EU’s deepening privacy war against Google. Late last Tuesday, a legal ruling levied by Hamburg data protection commissioner Johannes Caspar required that Google obtain Germans’ expressed permission in order to access their data, or face $1.27 million in fines. “Our requirements aim at a fair balance between the […]
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 […]
CPG giant Mondelēz International, which made waves in the ad industry earlier this year by owning its deal with video demand-side platform TubeMogul, has entered another agreement designed to enhance its online video investments: a partnership with Google covering markets in North America, Europe and emerging markets in Eastern Europe, Latin America, the Middle East […]
Google’s betting the industry needs a hand making ads workable across devices. On Monday, it unwrapped two mobile display formats and a handful of desktop tools that aim to help advertisers optimize ads across multiple screens. Google will release the tools piecemeal over the coming months across the Google Display Network, the AdMob Network and […]
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 […]
How bad a problem is online ad fraud, and how should the buy and sell sides divvy the responsibility to combat it? This question formed the crux of the panel “New Methods For Defeating Fraud In The Programmatic Era,” moderated by WPP’s Team Detroit chief digital officer, Kurt Unkel, at Wednesday’s Programmatic I/O conference in New […]
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 […]
Using health data for advertising purposes is a hot potato and Apple’s not touching it. The jury’s still out on Google. Despite the upcoming release of the pulse-reading Apple Watch (available early 2015) and Apple pushing its HealthKit API with developers, advertisers won’t have any access to health data derived from related apps or devices. […]
Each day, 7 million fans tune in to YouTube to see bubbly video blogger Bethany Mota make breakfast or braid her hair. The breakout video star draws tweens eager for a taste of Mota’s fashion and beauty must-haves, averaging 100 million minutes of video watched per month. She’s equally attractive to brand advertisers, clinching campaigns […]
If cross-device tracking is a room, then Facebook and Google are the elephants – except Google is the only elephant that isn’t talking. Facebook hasn’t been shy about its cross-device intentions. At the time of the Atlas acquisition in 2013, its ads product director, Gokul Rajaram, noted that Facebook’s goal is to “be able to measure […]
Google and Amazon are going after each other. Google has ramped up commercial search and fulfillment, and Amazon is building a Google-like ecosystem around ads – a project involving an ad-buying platform to rival AdWords, according to The Wall Street Journal. And of course, both are investing heavily in video content and advertising. What is Amazon’s […]
“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 by Megan Pagliuca, VP and GM for digital media at Merkle Inc. It was penned in response to Rob Griffin’s recent piece, “The Death of the Third-Party Ad Server.” Rob Griffin’s […]
Demand Media has named a former Ticketmaster chief Sean Moriarty as its new CEO. The move follows a rough second quarter, when it revealed last Thursday that its revenue excluding traffic acquisition costs (ex-TAC) declined 10% year-over-year to $87.1 million. The company on Monday also acquired online art community Saatchi Online in a $17 million cash-and-stock deal. Moriarty […]
While Google has gotten really good at display – more than $4 billion in display ad revenue good – how about the rest of Google’s digital marketing stack? Like enterprise platform players Oracle, IBM, Adobe and Salesforce.com, Google’s ad and marketing tech offering is a sum of many acquired parts. Google followed its $3.1 billion […]
Comparison shopping site Shopzilla has a lot of data. About 20 years’ worth, to be exact. Shopzilla’s been around since 1996 and unbeknownst to some, still drives 50 million monthly unique visitors across its owned-and-operated network that includes consumer insights and merchant ratings site Bizrate. But the company will soon become primarily a marketing services […]
