Looking at the 2012 holiday shopping season, retailers with ecommerce websites deployed more marketing technologies, including social plug-ins, than in 2011, according to data gathered from Evidon and analyzed by kbs+ Ventures, the investing arm of kirshenbaum bond senecal + partners. Kbs+ Ventures analyzed 20 retail brands including Best Buy, Old Navy, Gilt, Piperlime, Gap, […]
Google, AppNexus, and PubMatic are all talking up the convergence of guaranteed and non-guaranteed media. The first solutions designed to address this convergence were private exchanges, embraced by many sellers but fewer on the buy side. Now the companies are moving forward on the next wave of features. Among the favored approaches is so-called “holistic […]
Google executives have been banging the drum on “premium programmatic” for months now, calling out the false dichotomy between automated media buys and traditional direct selling. In a discussion with Steve Sullivan, the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s VP of Ad Technology, Scott Spencer, director of Product Management at Google, offered outlines for the company’s approach, including assurances […]
Since last fall, Google has shown a more aggressive stance in challenging Amazon’s dominance in e-commerce, particularly as Facebook has also been making its own significant maneuvers in the space. Google’s $125 million acquisition of Channel Intelligence, one of its four Google Shopping launch partners, is designed in part to develop more in-house capabilities to […]
Most media industry observers expect to see a another strong year in M&A for the Ad Tech sector. For example, a survey [PDF] of 231 top media/tech executives released last week from media investment bank Jordan, Edmiston Group, Inc. and Econsultancy shows an upward trend in organizations planning an acquisition in the next 12 months, […]
Google’s advertising business was “firing on all cylanders” during Q4 2012, in the words of SVP/Chief Business Officer Nikesh Arora, who pointed to healthy growth — even by the search giant’s standards and (some, if not all) analysts’ expectations — during the holiday shopping season. The company had just completed its shift from free product […]
Less than six months since Google decided to merge its paid Product Listing Ads and its “free” shopping-related results into a single paid image-ad format, about 35% of commercial searches now show PLAs in the results, up from 29% in Oct, says Jefferies & Co.’s analyst Brian Pitz. As Google Shopping now essentially requires retailers […]
Two trends dominated the paid search space during the holiday season of 2012: mobile impressions and spend, and Google’s new Product Listing Ads. Google transitioned its Google Shopping search from a free model to a paid one. The new PLAs work more like AdWords, with retailers and merchants providing Google with information about a product, […]
Since buying supply side platform Admeld last year, Google has rolled out tools and features designed to appeal to publishers who want to make programmatic work for them, without sacrificing their core direct sales offerings. The company’s pitch is that RTB buyers and sellers don’t have to give up the all-too-human process of negotiating on […]
The three days following Thanksgiving delivered a strong beginning to the online Christmas shopping season, several reports suggest. While sales figures will have to wait for Cyber Monday (Nov 26), Monday (Dec 3) and Green Monday (Dec 10) – the 3 heaviest online shopping days for 2011, according to Jefferies analyst Brian Pitz – all […]
“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 Brian Kaminski, President US of iProspect. In the battle for digital advertising dollars, Google is the established leader and Facebook is the scrappy newcomer. While Google offers an expansive […]
For the past few years, Google’s quarterly earnings have tended to be a day of celebration for the search giant. But its Q3 report, which was released a few hours before the company intended, contained some slight signs of weakness as profits and revenues missed analysts’ bullish forecasts. Read the earnings release. The misfired earnings […]
For several years, companies such as DoubleVerify, Adsafe Media and AdXpose (now part of comScore) have been verifying that buy-side, display ad commitments are being met on the sell-side. Over time, the sell-side has become a partner to these companies to a degree, too. Initially, Google appeared to take the stance that ad verification capabilities […]
With real-time bidding inventory expanding at an accelerated clip, the idea of coming up with “standard practices” for programmatic buyers and sellers could seem a bit late. But the Interactive Advertising Bureau, through its Network and Exchange Committee, has been trying to do just that since it formed in April 2011. This week, at the […]
Earlier this month, when Google decided to combine its paid Product Listing Ads and its “free” shopping-related results into a single paid format, digital marketer IgnitionOne was one of the first ad tech firms to say it would immediately integrate the new Google Shopping results into its own remarketing channels. We spoke with IgnitionOne CEO […]
After years of courting the demand side with all sorts of tools aimed at marketers, small businesses and media buyers, Google is paying a little more attention to its publisher partners on the supply side. The latest offering is Audience Extension from DoubleClick For Publishers and was announced by Google’s Neal Mohan at yesterday’s Ad […]
Google is poised to shake up e-commerce to an even greater degree as the company merges its paid Product Listing Ads and its “free” shopping-related results into a single paid format. The process started in the U.S. two months ago and is expected to be completed by the beginning of October, with Asia and Europe […]
Facebook now holds a secure place behind YouTube as a video content property as online streaming continues to grow, according to the latest comScore rankings. Read the release. A year ago, comScore’s July 2011 video rankings had Facebook in the number three spot, behind video music site Vevo. Google Sites, as comScore identifies YouTube along […]
App marketing is often about incentivizing downloads, with little thought given to post-installation engagement. For obvious reasons that’s not workable for free or “freemium” app developers who make their money after the install. Apsalar is trying to address this. The two-year-old firm began with a mobile analytics platform that later became the foundation for a […]
Facebook has certified DoubleClick for ad impression tracking, ending an unofficial policy against Google technologies on its platform. Sources tell AdExchanger Facebook’s decision went into effect in the last two weeks. It’s undoubtedly good news for DoubleClick and its customers, who will now be able to track and attribute Facebook campaign impressions alongside their other […]
In Q2, as it has for the past year, AOL’s third party network revenue rose by double digits, while U.S. display dollars remained flat. Read the earnings release. During the earnings call with investors, who once again saw their low expectations exceeded by AOL’s performance, CEO Tim Armstrong batted back questions about the advertising challenge […]
Google offered very little that was new on the display business during its second quarter earnings call, and analysts didn’t press for details. Instead they hammered execs with questions on the newly acquired Motorola business and mobile search monetization. But a handful of details do jump out with links to display and video ads… During […]
Having lost its display dominance last year to Google and Facebook, Yahoo has turned to high-profile Google veteran Marissa Mayer to help reverse the company’s decline. Read the release. In making the choice, Yahoo has decided to replace widely respected digital ad sales veteran Ross Levinsohn, who had been serving as CEO on an interim […]
Bob Arnold, associate director, Global Digital Strategy at the Kellogg Company, got a huge round of applause during a talk about the cereal marketer’s approach to programmatic buying when told the crowd at the IAB’s Advertising Technology conference not to talk to bring up the topic of banner ad clicks in a meeting with him. […]
A couple of weeks ago, Google announced its new Doubleclick Digital Marketing platform which further integrates DoubleClick ad products and begins to offer the promise of efficient cross-channel buying across media channels such as display and search. Many in the industry, particularly privately, see an inevitability in Google corralling much of the data-driven, display ad […]
Google has 1,000-plus engineers globally working on display advertising, and now – to hear display ad product chief Neal Mohan tell it – all their hard work is about to pay off. In a presentation to DoubleClick customers today, Mohan will outline imminent plans to consolidate DoubleClick’s fragmented menu of advertiser-facing technologies into a single […]
Google has agreed to buy hosted IM platform Meebo in a deal that signals its growing eagerness to wrap its head (and pocketbook) around social and “earned” media– including how to monetize content-driven brand connections. The purchase price was not disclosed, but in an earlier report about talks between the companies, AllThingsD claimed the price […]
Today, on the Doubleclick Publisher blog, Google released a new report showing a range of display ad trends for publishers using its DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) ad server, the DoubleClick Ad Exchange, and Google AdSense network. For example, not unexpectedly, Google’s Jonathan Bellack, Director of Product Management, Display Advertising, states, “Sell-through rates (the percentage of […]
Little Rock, Ark.-based Acxiom is the original data management platform. The 42-year-old company has arguably done more than anyone to blend online and offline data sources – for instance by helping automakers compile leads from their own branded sites, car research sites, dealer walk-ins, and other sources. Customers in financial services, media, CPG, and tech, […]
Google has upped the ante in display ad measurement with products in two categories that appear to be gaining traction with large brand advertisers. The new technologies enable campaign reporting based on “viewable” impressions and GRPs, and are baked into DoubleClick’s ad management suite as part of a new product initiative called Brand Activate. The […]
