rocket fuel

Shopify checkout might be coming to ChatGPT; private equity builds a French ad tech stack; and how Meta turning off news in Canada is affecting news access ahead of this month’s election.

On Monday, UK programmatic buying company MiQ acquired SaaS compliance platform Grasp. Grasp will continue to operate as a standalone unit.

Ad tech saw almost 1,500 M&As between 2020 and 2021. So is this consolidation trend here to stay? It looks like it’s a resounding yes, writes Matthew Papa, SVP of business and corporate development at Captify.

A weekly comic strip from AdExchanger that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem…

Ad software provider Viant Technology Inc. filed an S-1 on Friday with the US Securities and Exchange Commission ahead of an initial public offering as the company positions itself for future growth. The company anticipates a boom in the growing programmatic advertising market, particularly across linear TV, CTV and mobile. Viant, which was founded in […]

Subscribe to AdExchanger Talks on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher, SoundCloud or wherever you listen to podcasts. This week on AdExchanger Talks, product veteran Bridget Bidlack tackles big questions: Is ad tech mature? How do creative types tap into programmatic? And is the industry moving fast enough on gender equality? On the maturity of ad tech, the SVP of product at […]

Sizmek will sell its data management platform, which it acquired with Rocket Fuel, and its demand-side platform to the marketing technology cloud Zeta Global on Friday in a deal worth up to $36 million. If the deal is approved, Zeta will pay $5 million in stock and $10 million in cash, with another $20 million […]

Sizmek filed for bankruptcy Friday night, ending the private equity-backed effort to integrate Sizmek and Rocket Fuel into a cohesive buy-side tech stack, and possibly ending the Sizmek brand. Sizmek’s bankruptcy filing estimates its assets between $100 million and $500 million. Though its liabilities are in the same range. Sizmek’s four largest outstanding debts are […]

This year’s theme was transparency. Marketers wanted transparency so they could make better decisions. Marketers, agencies and DSPs showed increased interest in the programmatic supply chain. They wanted to know the rules of programmatic auctions and the fees involved in advance, not find out hidden practices afterwards. They also wanted to know where to tread […]

The Big Story is a breezy podcast featuring a roundtable of AdExchanger editors talking about the biggest stories from the past week. It is available wherever you subscribe to podcasts. The Wild West days of ad tech are over. Any new startup that wants to stick around must show it can be a business first, […]

How Questionable Data-Sharing Practices And A Healthy Dose Of Hubris Helped Bring Down One Of The Most Well-Known Players In Ad Tech The Rocket Fuel brand is dead and buried, the founders long gone, its tech sold off to Sizmek for a song and the code completely rewritten. An ad tech unicorn that courted top […]

Less than two years after Vector Capital sealed its $122 million deal to acquire Sizmek, the private equity firm is already looking to divest. Multiple sources with direct knowledge told AdExchanger that Vector has been shopping Sizmek, possibly as early as April, and just a year and a half after the deal closed. Vector denied […]

While ad tech companies have been accumulating VC funds and growing their stacks – and sales orgs – for a while, many took pains to rightsize over the past year or so. For some, the intent was to recapitalize or to prep for a sale if an IPO was a no-go. For others, it was […]

As it finalized its $145 million acquisition of Rocket Fuel on Wednesday, Sizmek named Mark Grether to take over as CEO. Simultaneously, the company said it would sunset the Rocket Fuel brand and integrate its DSP and DMP assets into a single demand-side stack under the Sizmek name. A co-founder and former COO of WPP […]

For the independent demand-side platform (DSP) market, it is the best of times, it is the worst of times. On the one hand, it’s unlikely any new scaled DSPs will enter the market. The costs to build a competitive platform – nine digits off the bat and another eight digits per year in operational costs […]

As with matrimony, the road to acquisition is paved with dalliances – some serious and some … less so. For evidence, look no further than the DSP Rocket Fuel’s impending sale to Sizmek for $145 million, announced on July 18. That deal is expected to finalize in days, after Rocket Fuel’s 30-day “go-shop” deadline, during […]

The ad tech rollup is real, and its name is Sizmek. On Tuesday, the 18-year-old company revealed its intent to buy public ad tech company Rocket Fuel for $145 million. If the purchase finalizes, Sizmek’s acquisition spree (excluding the earliest iterations of its evolving stack) will round out to about five companies acquired in less […]

Sizmek said Tuesday it intends to buy ad tech company Rocket Fuel for $2.60 per share in cash, valuing Rocket Fuel at $145 million. That’s a long way from where Rocket Fuel was valued when it IPOed in 2013 – going public at $29 per share at a roughly $1 billion value. Read the release. […]

Faithful followers of Rocket Fuel’s saga will recall that the company hoped to get cash-flow positive in 2016 and return to growth sometime in 2017. While CEO Randy Wootton declined to tell AdExchanger when exactly he expected that to happen, Rocket Fuel is banking on three things to bring it back: growth in its platform […]

Seven independent ad tech companies debuted a programmatic consortium on Thursday that pools their supply- and demand-side cookie IDs into one shared identity asset. The consortium is helmed by AppNexus, MediaMath and LiveRamp, which provides the data matching. Other launch partners include Index Exchange, Rocket Fuel, LiveIntent and OpenX. And it’s a shot across the […]

When it comes to how buyers perceive the data management platform (DMP) market, it’s Oracle BlueKai’s game to lose, according to a new Advertiser Perceptions report. The research firm’s Programmatic Intelligence Report for Q1 2017 surveyed more than 1,000 decision-makers from agencies, advertisers, publishers and tech providers. Oracle BlueKai led the pack in brand recognition: […]

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 […]

Rocket Fuel has made organizational changes, resulting in laying off 11% of its headcount – 93 services and admin positions – which will save $20 million in operating expenses. It is the second round of cuts affecting more than 10% of Rocket Fuel’s staff. In April 2015, the company let go of 11%, or 129 staffers. The […]

Agencies often select a few “preferred partners” instead of dealing with numerous demand-side platforms (DSPs). While agencies, barring a client preference, should choose a DSP that can access the best inventory at the best rates for a given campaign, many buying platforms offer volume-based discounts. And because agencies feel the squeeze on margins, they might […]

Ad tech companies flocked to Washington, DC, during the recent election cycle in pursuit of political ad budgets, but many were disappointed. Rocket Fuel was the most aggressive newcomer, adding approximately 15 people to its DC office for political business development beginning last summer. But the company dismissed most of those hires in the week […]

“AdExchanger Politics” is a weekly column tracking developments in the 2016 political campaign cycle.  Today’s column is written by JC Medici, national director of politics and advocacy at Rocket Fuel.  The idea of a third-party vendor is nothing new, especially as new technologies are developed and attention spans shrink. Every day, more options materialize to […]

Workflow management software provider Mediaocean will integrate with four demand-side platforms (DSPs) to automate programmatic account management and billing for its agency partners, the company announced Wednesday. The program, announced at AdExchanger’s Programmatic I/O conference in New York City and called Connect Programmatic, launches with DSPs TubeMogul, The Trade Desk, Rocket Fuel and MediaMath on […]

While Rocket Fuel’s Q3 revenue missed its guidance, CEO Randy Wootton emphasized the company’s continued transition from an ad net into a platform solutions provider. Rocket Fuel’s Q3 non-GAAP revenue of $62.3 million was down 8% compared to last year, while its GAAP revenue of $109.7 million was 2% lower year over year (YoY). Read the release. […]

  Artificial intelligence (AI) is surging in ad/mar tech land. Or resurging, depending on how good your memory is. IBM continues to push Watson, and, in the run-up to their respective conferences, Salesforce and Oracle talked up their own AI initiatives. Also, Google, Facebook, IBM, Microsoft and Amazon banded together to create best practices around […]

“AdExchanger Politics” is a weekly column tracking developments in the 2016 political campaign cycle.  Today’s column is written by JC Medici, national director of politics and advocacy at Rocket Fuel.  Disagreement inside political party lines is nothing new. Someone is always on the outside, such as Reagan and Ford’s neck-to-neck battle for the Republican nomination […]