Late last year, with the end of the pandemic hopefully in sight, Luma was beginning to see investor confidence return. If anything, that cautious optimism was understated, as this Spring, Luma saw the best quarter in deals that it had ever seen. This week on The Big Story, we welcome back Conor McKenna, Luma director […]
When we last checked in with Google for its quarterly earnings in Q3, it was printing money. And in Q4, it printed some more – because advertisers are coming back. Read the release. Google’s 2020 Q4 revenues hit $56.9 billion led by YouTube and its search business. That figure is up 23% YoY from $46.1 […]
The more the merrier. App attribution company AppsFlyer has a late breaking addition to its $210 million investment round, which closed in January: Salesforce Ventures. Although Salesforce is only taking a small percentage of AppsFlyer as part of the round extension – less than 1% of the company, according to AppsFlyer CEO and co-founder Oren […]
Amazon reported a record Q3 that was driven in part by a 51% increase in advertising revenue and buoyed by a surge in ecommerce due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The online retail giant’s accelerated push into advertising netted $5.4 billion in revenue – up from $3.6 million a year ago – with the company telling […]
This week on the Big Story, we look at trust in the market as cataloged by LUMA Partners, and the antitrust case against Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon, as cataloged by a House Judiciary subcommittee. LUMA VP Conor McKenna swings by to lead us through Q3 M&A activity in a wide-ranging conversation that looks at […]
It seems everyone wants a piece of AppLovin. Private equity firm KKR bought a $400 million minority stake in the app marketing and discovery platform on Tuesday, lifting AppLovin’s valuation to around $2 billion from $1.4 billion just eight months ago. Bank of America Merrill Lynch advised AppLovin on the investment, adding a new wrinkle […]
You gotta give credit to MediaMath. At least, Goldman Sachs did. MediaMath said Tuesday that it had received a $175 million credit facility led by the finance giant. Santander Bank also partnered. CFO Stacey Bain said MediaMath’s previous debt facility was coming due, and the company will use its new line of credit to refinance […]
Acxiom’s 2017 Q4 performance was better than expected, as CEO Scott Howe’s plans to turn the company into a data infrastructure provider started to take form. Read the release. That transformation was evident in the company’s 2017 Q4 and full-year earnings report, released Tuesday. Acxiom earned $225 million in quarterly revenue, which was flat compared […]
Can Rocket Fuel return to growth following 2016, which was characterized as a “transitional year” by CFO Stephen Snyder during the company’s Q4 and FY 2016 earnings call Tuesday? Read the release. Rocket Fuel’s nascent platform solutions business has expanded nicely in recent quarters and helped the company end Q4 on a decent note. Its […]
IPG plans to boost investments in data analytics and coordinate its database across all its agencies, CEO Michael Roth said Friday during the holding company’s Q3 earnings call. Read the release. “That will be a key focus for us in 2017 – to make sure all the agencies at IPG have a consistent offering in […]
After two years as director of mobile for North America at Essence, Jeremy Sigel is pleased that his position has become obsolete – and he has advice for mobile chiefs at other agencies. “Don’t hold onto mobile,” said Sigel, who stepped down as head of mobile on Tuesday and stepped up as global director of […]
2015 wasn’t the best time for an ad tech company to tap the public markets. And 2016 seems like it will be equally uncertain – one need only look at the strange ongoing saga of AppNexus to see that. But it’s an overstatement to say that all ad tech companies are in trouble, according to […]
Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are thriving in the red-hot technology industry, particularly in the United States, according to a spate of research reports released Thursday. In many pockets of the industry, there are fewer deals but the value of those deals has skyrocketed. The investment bank JEGI said the number of transactions in the database […]
Once again, a private equity firm has bought a majority stake in a marketing tech company. Email marketing solutions provider StrongView will get a strategic growth investment from private equity firm HGGC. The deal is expected to close in 30 days, and financial terms weren’t announced. Read the release. HGGC has a solid background in […]
Sizmek has gone through some seismic changes to its sales staff and some of its product offerings. So despite a 9% YoY decline in Q2 revenue to $40.2 million, CEO Neil Nguyen’s word to investors during Sizmek’s earnings call Wednesday was: “Look for efforts to match our results in the second half of the year and even more […]
Though video ad company YuMe held to last quarter’s promise that it would release a programmatic ad stack, it did little to improve its Q2 2015 financial performance. “We had a disappointing quarter,” said Jayant Kadambi, co-founder and CEO during a Monday earnings call. YuMe’s Q2 2015 revenue was flat – $40.4 million in Q2 2015, […]
ComScore’s partnership with Google, which integrates the former’s Validated Campaign Essentials (vCE) measurement into the latter’s DoubleClick products, has come out of beta. The partnership was first revealed in February 2014. During a Q2 earnings call Tuesday, comScore CEO Serge Matta noted that “vCE is the first independent measurement system to be directly integrated into Google […]
Neustar is banking on growth in its marketing services division, the primary point of conversation during its Q2 2015 earnings call. That the company will likely lose a major contract that supplies number portability services to the United States might be a financial hit, though CEO Lisa Hook was adamant that it won’t affect Neustar’s growing marketing […]
Alliance Data Systems CEO Ed Heffernan isn’t thrilled with data marketing unit Epsilon’s 5% top-line performance, he said during Alliance Data’s Q2 earnings call Thursday. “That isn’t an acceptable long-term number,” he said, adding he thinks its potential is 7% or 8%. Getting to that potential will require double-digit growth in Epsilon’s tech offering – […]
Change or die. The smart brands acknowledge this. It’s one of the reasons why ad tech cabanas and beach houses have taken over the sandbars surrounding the Cannes Lions festival, and why ad tech yachts almost exclusively line the port. “It’s important to us to understand what will change in the future and what will […]
Programmatic ad tech companies aren’t properly estimating their total addressable market, said BMO Capital Markets equity research analyst Dan Salmon. Salmon presented a report Thursday at Programmatic I/O in San Francisco that pointed to two areas where these estimates tend to get thrown off. First, most ad tech vendors don’t factor in take rates – the […]
The ad tech industry isn’t going anywhere, but 2014 exhibited some of the financial shakiness that dogged public ad tech stocks through much of 2013, especially for companies that went public in the last 12 to 15 months. “The only slight surprise for me and many others [in 2014] was the sudden switch in sentiment […]
Sizmek had another disappointing quarter, with Q3 revenues increasing only 3% YoY to $39.5 million – results that “were lower than we had expected,” according to company CEO Neil Nguyen. The decline was driven by the company’s faltering rich media business, which decreased 35% YoY. The ad management company found a silver lining in its […]
Amazon remained tight-lipped about its developing ad network during the company’s Q3 earnings call, about which CFO Thomas Szkutak only said: “There’s not a lot I can say there.” Amazon’s “Supplemental Revenue” category, which includes advertising, Web services and co-branded credit cards, raked in $1.3 billion in Q3, up 40% YoY from $960 million. Amazon’s supplemental revenue […]
The value of a marketing cloud, as Forrester Research pointed out Tuesday, is in the level of its integration. But Portland, Oregon-based startup Lytics takes the position that whatever level of integration the big-name marketing suites offer simply isn’t enough. The company, which started in 2012, made its “marketing activation platform” generally available on Wednesday […]
Alliance Data Systems (ADS) reported Q3 2014 revenue of $1.3 billion, a 20% YoY change, mostly driven by the company’s private-label credit card services division, which saw 17% YoY revenue growth to $622 million. ADS has steadily increased its outlook with each earnings call, and it did so again in its Q3, raising its core […]
Adobe’s fiscal Q3 was relatively strong as the company reported $290 million in revenue for its Adobe Marketing Cloud portfolio of products, up from the $254.9 million recorded in Q3 last year. Adobe Systems’ total revenue was $1 billion in the quarter. Overall, Adobe Marketing Cloud cited strong customer adoption in the third quarter, counting British Sky, Ford Motor […]
Dentsu reported steady quarterly earnings Tuesday both in Japan and abroad. The Japanese holding company saw Q2 revenue rise to $1.3 billion, a 9.8% increase YoY. The company saw 10.6% organic growth in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, 4.7% in the Americas and 14.8% in Asia-Pacific. The modest growth was driven by new client […]
Sizmek’s Q2 2014 revenues disappointed, with a meek 7% YoY increase to $44 million. In addition, the company said it had acquired Aerify Media for $6.25 million in cash (not reflected in Q2 revenue). First, the revenues: Despite double-digit growth in LATAM and EMEA, Sizmek struggled due to what CEO Neil Nguyen singled out as “lower-than-expected performance […]
Since Conversant rebranded from ValueClick and redefined itself from an ad network to an ad tech company, the choppy waters it once rode have calmed. But last quarter, CEO John Guiliani warned Q2 2014 wouldn’t be as great, particularly due to the possibility of losing – or getting reduced business from – two of its […]
