“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Meiry Vaknin, VP of partnerships at YouAppi. After this exclusive first look for subscribers, the story will be published in full on AdExchanger.com tomorrow. The mobile gaming market is set to grow 4.4% in 2021 to […]
Mike Brooks, WeatherBug’s SVP of revenue, is a mobile programmatic evangelist. “We’ve seen a huge positive impact from adopting a unified auction, and we like to be vocal about it,” Brooks said. “We talk about programmatic to anybody who will listen, because this is the way of the future.” In early 2018, the weather app, […]
Ad networks are on the outs in the desktop world, but they still have a stranglehold on the mobile app ecosystem. That’s beginning to change, though. Mobile app publishers are transacting more of their impressions through programmatic auctions in a setup that mimics header bidding on desktop. The momentum has been growing over the past […]
Mobile programmatic is in the seventh-inning stretch: It’s come a long way, but there’s still a lot of work to do, says Rick Welch, head of programmatic advertising at Flipboard. In the three years since Welch joined the mobile news aggregation app from Condé Nast in late 2016, more open exchange-oriented players have hit the […]
Former AppLift CEO Tim Koschella is launching a company called Kayzen to help app marketers bring their programmatic ad buying in-house. Kayzen, which came out of stealth Tuesday after several months in beta, is powered by a bidder that Koschella purchased from AppLift through a management buyout last year. It positions itself as a self-serve […]
AdColony laid off roughly 10% of its US workforce late last week amid struggles to gain a foothold in the app-install space. Headcount now stands somewhere around 350. The cuts were across sales, IT, finance and product, including the chief product officer position. AdColony confirmed the layoffs, but not the exact number. The beleaguered mobile […]
Mobile programmatic is poised to dominate digital display ad spend this year, but there are still a heck of a lot of kinks to work out. The No. 1 headache for publishers: buyers that try to apply desktop tactics and standards to mobile and then wonder why it’s not working out. Even some of the […]
Location marketing platform Verve is angling for a piece of the growing programmatic mobile video pie with the acquisition of in-app video ad vendor Receptiv (formerly MediaBrix). The deal, announced Wednesday, opens up a rich new seam of inventory for Verve, said CEO Tom Kenney, who declined to share terms other than to say the […]
AdColony’s Q4 revenue is expected to drop 5-10% more than it did last quarter and CEO Will Kassoy is out, effective immediately. The news caps off a “disappointing” year for AdColony, according to a release late Thursday from parent company Otello Corp. (formerly Opera Software, which rebranded to Otello on Monday). Kassoy, who joined Otello/Opera […]
Mobile programmatic pricing is about to have its hockey stick moment, set to grow more than 45% by 2019, according to a projection released by programmatic agency Goodway Group on Tuesday. Mobile prices will increase incrementally, just under 4% month over month throughout the coming year, including for mobile display and mobile video ads served […]
AdColony will lay off more than 20% of its workforce and exit the mediation and ad-serving game in a bid to focus its business on programmatic. The mobile video ad company said Monday that it will shutter most of AdMarvel, the mobile ad tech company it acquired in 2010. The ad exchange portion of AdMarvel […]
MoPub, Twitter’s mobile ad exchange, is looking to get stickier with the buy side. On Thursday, after five months of beta testing, it launched a solution that aims to help marketers aggregate inventory types based on performance and to target them programmatically. Advertisers that want a lot of installs, for example, can take advantage of […]
After years of will they/won’t they, MoPub is finally going to take better advantage of Twitter data. The mobile exchange, acquired by Twitter in 2013, is testing so-called audience packages in the form of audience segments powered by proprietary data coming from Twitter. The product is in alpha with a select set of partners. “The Twitter […]
When YP Canada quietly acquired programmatic mobile ad platform JUICE Mobile for $35 million on March 17, its main concern was to assuage any potential investor concerns that the directory and listings behemoth wouldn’t be able to make its debt payments. YP Canada was $1.7 billion in debt and teetering on the brink of bankruptcy […]
There was a time about five or 10 years ago when “media buyers couldn’t get arrested,” quipped Omnicom Digital CEO Jonathan Nelson at the Mobile Media Summit on Monday, part of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Now the media-buying function sits at the heart of the programmatic revolution happening inside the holding companies. “It’s the […]
As of Tuesday, Pandora has made all its smartphone and tablet display inventory available for programmatic buying. The announcement expands on its programmatic display business, which has been generally available since January, and formally takes Pandora’s mobile programmatic solution out of beta. The solution first surfaced in March and has since been trialed by a […]
Mobile ad tech platform Millennial Media reported fourth-quarter and year-end earnings on Monday – with revenues down in Q4 but up from 2013’s full-year total. Q4 2014 revenue dipped to $86.4 million from $96.7 million in Q4 2013, while year-end revenue rose from $259.2 million in 2013 to $296.2 million in 2014. Read the earnings […]
Pandora will leverage its data assets and introduce mobile programmatic capabilities later this quarter for its iOS and Android platforms, CEO Brian McAndrews said during the company’s Q4 and year-end earnings call Thursday. “Advertisers are looking for high engagement on mobile,” McAndrews said. “In terms of digital revenue opportunities, we are positioning Pandora to lead the […]
Adelphic has mobile programmatic on the brain – which makes sense for a mobile DSP. The company said Wednesday that it had closed its Series B to the tune of $11 million in a round led by Blue Chip Venture Co., Google Ventures and Matrix Partners, bringing its total funding to $23 million. Adelphic – which […]
As smartphone penetration increases, especially in Asia, advertisers are looking to tap into global app audiences – and InMobi is looking to get ahead of the trend. The mobile ad network said Tuesday that advertisers and agencies will be able to buy mobile app segments in 36 countries via programmatic-direct deals on the InMobi Exchange. […]
There are a plethora of reasons why it makes sense for Publishers Clearing House (PCH) to double down on mobile – the biggest one being its ever-growing trove of first-party data. To that end, PCH Digital, the company’s digital and advertising arm, announced Wednesday that it has acquired mobile programmatic company Plethora Mobile as part […]
Nexage is the cherry on top of Millennial Media’s multiscoop technology sundae. Millennial’s acquisition of Nexage, first announced in September, officially closed on Thursday evening. “Not to sound like Jerry Maguire, but the Nexage deal completes us,” said Matt Gillis, president of platforms at Millennial Media. Millennial has been actively acquiring tech since early last […]
While Apple arguably can do whatever it puts its hand to, its recent move to bring programmatic to iAd doesn’t have everyone impressed. JUICE Mobile president and CEO Neil Sweeney didn’t mince words: “They should have done this five years ago.” And that, Sweeney said, begs two related questions. One, Is Apple going to be […]
Apple CEO Tim Cook might have called iAd a “very small part” of the company’s business in the past, but Apple is starting to take programmatic seriously and the partners are piling up. Following Wednesday’s announcement of Rubicon partnering with iAd on the demand side, seven more names are officially on the list: Tapsense, The Trade Desk, […]
Like last quarter, Millennial Media’s revenue is up – and profits are down. The mobile ad tech platform, which has been vocal about it’s desire to expand its programmatic capabilities, is clearly still in a period of transition. Though Millennial Media clocked a 24.4% YoY increase in revenue in Q3 2014 to $69.8 million, the […]
By now it’s a cliché to say that fraud follows the money – but it’s true. And with consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies slated to represent $4.2 billion in digital ad spend this year – a number eMarketer predicts will hit more than $7 billion by 2018 – bots, and their human creators, are starting […]
CPG brands are starting to shell out more on mobile programmatic and the second quarter of 2014 seems to be the burgeoning proof. Mobile ad exchanges Smaato, Millennial Media and Nexage all saw noteworthy upticks in CPG mobile spend in Q2. A report released Tuesday based on global data gleaned from the Smaato exchange found […]
It ain’t easy being a standalone mobile ad network/exchange these days, especially with Facebook, Google and Twitter breathing down your neck — and Millennial Media is feeling the burn. While Millennial reported $67.3 million in revenue in Q2, up 18% from the same time last year, the number needs to be taken with a grain of […]
Tweak the phrase “water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink,” and you have the situation facing advertisers considering what to do with their mobile spend. Smartphone users are highly engaged but ad spend doesn’t match. Whether or not you agree with the scope of Mary Meeker’s now infamous report on the gap between […]
Mobile programmatic in China is having a turn in the spotlight, and mobile DSP Madhouse says it’s ready for the challenge. Founded in 2006, the company started around the same time US mobile networks AdMob and Millennial Media came on the scene, said CEO Joshua Maa. “We all shared the same vision,” Maa said of […]
