Rubicon

Enjoy this weekly comic strip from AdExchanger.com that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem … 

On Thursday, the US district court in Alexandria, Virginia boarded a time machine back to April 18, 2019 – the day of a tense meeting between Google and publishers.

Starting last week and into this week, hundreds of court-filed documents have been unsealed in the lead-up to the Google ad tech antitrust trial – and it’s a bonanza.

The DMP is helping BDG target users it couldn’t reach before, in addition to packaging its audiences into more granular intent-based segments.

Ad verification company DoubleVerify has been busy. It followed up its $350 million investment deal last month with a new tool designed to help advertisers take a more nuanced approach to brand suitability. And last week, DoubleVerify – long associated with the buy side – launched the DV Publisher Suite, which aggregates data on one […]

Rubicon Project delivered a strong end to 2019 by increasing Q4 revenue by 17% to $48.5 million, the top end of its guidance to investors. The exchange also highlighted its growth in video as it prepares to close its merger with Telaria in early April. Video revenue soared 43% to $28.6 million in 2019. Video […]

Public sell-side ad tech companies Rubicon Project and Telaria said Thursday that they have agreed to merge in a stock-for-stock deal. The exchange ratio is 1.082 shares of Rubicon common stock per share of Telaria common stock. Read the release. Rubicon CEO Michael Barrett will take over as CEO of the combined companies. Telaria CEO […]

Late last year, Havas Media began formalizing rules for how it works with SSPs and exchanges. The rules required them to shed light on previously non-transparent practices, like publisher fees, supply quality, access to log-level reporting and auction dynamics. Havas wasn’t an outlier. Hearts & Science also runs a 50-point certification process with SSPs and […]

If you’re a mature marketing technology platform: Congrats. 2018 was your year and the future looks bright. But if you’re an ad tech company without a unique value prop that’s jonesing for an exit, apologies, the outlook remains fairly bleak. Although digital advertising is still growing – it’s a $100 billion market today – Google and Facebook […]

One year ago, Rubicon Project removed buyer fees from its platform, halving its take rate to 12.8%. The gutsy move occurred during a battle over take rates: Competitor AppNexus said its take rate stood at 8.5%, and its CEO called for a price war. Drastically cutting take rates forced Rubicon to use cash reserves to […]

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 […]

Rubicon’s CEO Michael Barrett will speak at AdExchanger’s upcoming Industry Preview conference on January 17 – 18, 2018 at the Grand Hyatt New York.  Rubicon Project is in the midst of a risky move – one that CEO Michael Barrett thought he could avoid when he joined nine months ago. Because of customer outcry, the company stopped charging […]

Want to tap News Corp.’s first-party data to target ads across all of its properties? As of Tuesday, you can, thanks to the release of News IQ, which is a managed service (for now) ad platform owned and operated by News Corp. News IQ unifies inventory from publications as varied as The Wall Street Journal, […]

Rubicon Project eliminated its buy-side fees Wednesday. “This ties directly to the commitment I made when I joined the company earlier this year to normalize our pricing and bring a higher level of transparency to everything we do,” CEO Michael Barrett said in a blog post released just prior to Rubicon’s Q3 earnings Thursday. Removing […]

LinkedIn on Wednesday launched the LinkedIn Audience Network, a platform enabling advertisers to serve sponsored content on sites and apps beyond its own feed. These properties include desktop placements on parent Microsoft’s properties like MSN and Outlook.com, as well as on third-party publishers through integrations to exchanges like MoPub, Google’s AdX, Rubicon and Sharethrough. LinkedIn […]

Story updated at 1:40 p.m.  Rubicon Project has acquired nToggle, a startup that builds infrastructure to streamline bid requests, for $38.5 million, the companies revealed Monday. NToggle’s technology uses machine learning to weed out impressions a DSP is better off not bidding on through a process known as “traffic shaping.” This capability is increasingly important […]

Rubicon Project posted another quarter of significant declines as new CEO Michael Barrett attempts to turn around the business. Revenue declined 34% YoY to $46 million in the first quarter. Advertising spend declined 23%, to $191.5 million. Though the revenue slightly beat expectations, the stock slid a few percentage points in after-hours trading. Take rates […]

Rubicon Project founder Frank Addante has stepped down as CEO. Former AdMeld and Millennial Media chief Michael Barrett is Rubicon’s new CEO, effective immediately. Addante will switch to a strategic and advisory role as chairman of Rubicon’s board. Barrett has a history of turning companies around and getting them sold. As CEO of Millennial Media, he took a company […]

Rubicon Project has slashed its senior ranks, and the casualties include longtime president Greg Raifman. Is a sale to private equity next? Raifman and six other executives have been shown the door, according to two 8-Ks filed late Tuesday. Most of the departing executives had joined to build Rubicon’s buy-side business, which it’s now steering […]

If Rubicon Project officially goes on the selling block, what are its prospects? The company, which has hired Morgan Stanley to explore a sale, according to The Wall Street Journal, has suffered from tanking stock, layoffs and leadership changes over the past year, and it apparently isn’t the only company of its kind in play. […]

Who’s left at Rubicon Project? This year, a wave of senior executives left Rubicon Project, hollowing out the ranks. A company that prided itself on building a strong workplace culture in sunny Los Angeles now faces discontent with what some have described as product missteps and a lack of strategy at the top. Among the […]

Rubicon will lay off 19% of its workforce, totaling 125 jobs, completing the reorganization it began in Q2. The company is also lowering its guidance for Q4. It will be the third ad tech company with an SSP to make large cuts this year. PubMatic laid off 100 last December, and AppNexus laid off 150 […]

  Header bidding is changing the industry and creating a new set of winners and losers. After a dismal earnings call, Rubicon Project’s stock fell 32% and lost $200 million in value Wednesday. Rubicon CEO Frank Addante said the company failed to respond quickly to the header bidding trend, sending its desktop revenue into decline. […]

How do you crush it with organic views and shares in a sea of paid content? Raw humor and parody seem to be doing the trick for Someecards, the e-card site founded by former MRM and Avenue A/Razorfish creative VPs in 2007. As the self-described antithesis of the Hallmark greeting card, Someecards started out creating […]

Rubicon Project enjoyed a strong first quarter, growing overall advertising revenue by 26% year over year, while its cut of the revenue swelled even more. Non-GAAP net revenue reached $63.6 million, a 71% year-over-year increase. That’s largely because Rubicon Project acquired the DSP Chango a year ago to form its Buyer Cloud, causing take rates […]

A group of publishers is testing a header bidding solution from Rubicon Project that is compliant with Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages program. Tribune Publishing is among those who have implemented header bidding for AMP. It’s the first time header bidding functionality has been leveraged in support of the “platform publishing” craze that has lately seen […]

Rubicon Project’s full-year financials paint a picture of a growing exchange. The company’s managed revenue hit $1 billion in 2015. With a growing take rate, 22.6% for the year, that tallied up to $227.3 million, an 81% annual increase. The amount Rubicon takes from transactions on its exchange increased from 19.3% in Q4 of 2014 […]

Mobile now makes up more than a quarter of Rubicon Project’s revenue, according to the company’s Q3 earnings report Tuesday. Twenty-six percent of revenue comes from mobile, and 74% from desktop. That’s up from 22% last quarter and single digits in years past. President Greg Raifman called that channel growth the “tip of the iceberg.” […]

Rubicon Project-owned Chango recently poached customers from eBay Enterprise who were using a white-labeled version of Chango’s product, AdExchanger has learned. In what could be construed as a cautionary tale to any company bundling and reselling a partner’s technology, Chango sales reps approached the dozen or so retailers, some of them with significant media budgets, […]

Rubicon Project CEO Frank Addante has long expressed a vision to automate the buying and selling of all advertising. On Thursday, the company took the first step in expanding beyond digital by partnering with out-of-home trading platform BitPoster to bring inventory into Rubicon’s orders platform. “It’s the first foray into media outside of digital,” said Jay […]