“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 Joshua Koran, managing director, DMP, at Sizmek. As the May deadline for GDPR compliance approaches, many companies have been asking how Google may react. So when Google recently announced as […]
YouTube will no longer support third-party ad serving on reserved buys in Europe beginning May 21, and it will assess whether to extend that policy globally, according to a memo obtained by AdExchanger. Google advised advertisers who aren’t currently using its ad server DoubleClick Campaign Manager (DCM) to host video on YouTube to “retraffic their […]
“The Sell Sider” is a column written for the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Mark Grether, CEO at Sizmek. We’ve all heard the saying, “Every company is becoming a tech company,” but it seems we’re moving past that notion, with every company now becoming a media company. It’s […]
Welcome to AdExchanger Talks, a podcast focused on data-driven marketing. Subscribe here. Mark Grether has held just about every marketing job you can imagine. He was an agency guy at WPP (where he cofounded Xaxis), a publisher exec in Germany, a client-side marketer in the retail industry and even a professor of marketing. Today he is CEO […]
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 […]
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. […]
Being proficient at programmatic means nothing if an advertiser can’t nail the ad-delivery basics, such as proper frequency caps. But the reality is that advertisers rely on myriad solutions, including DSPs, DMPs and ad servers, to execute a single campaign, and the lack of consistency in KPIs can hurt frequency management – the main culprit […]
Sizmek CEO Neil Nguyen will leave the company in the wake of the company’s $122 million private equity buyout by Vector Capital last year. The company’s board named former Xaxis global COO Mark Grether executive chairman, but has not identified a replacement CEO. Nguyen will stay on until the end of April to ensure a smooth […]
“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Mike Caprio, general manager of programmatic at Sizmek. Most of the buzz around Facebook’s entry into header bidding is about disrupting Google’s dominance across its publisher stack, but there is a bigger development that […]
Vivendi-owned Dailymotion is expanding its network of video demand sources and its programmatic presence in New York, despite reports of restructures and the closing of the French video platform’s Palo Alto, Calif., office. Dailymotion is partnering with the mobile DSP StrikeAd, owned by recently acquired Sizmek, to serve more rich media units and enable geo-based […]
Private equity firm Vector Capital has agreed to acquire ad tech company Sizmek. “Vector will acquire all of the outstanding shares of Sizmek common stock for $3.90 per share in an all-cash tender offer,” according to a release, which values the company at $122 million. Notably, Sizmek’s market cap, just prior to the acquisition announcement, […]
“On TV And Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in programmatic TV and video. Today’s column is written by John Douglas, director of product strategy at Sizmek. As the biggest walled gardens on the web, Google and Facebook have become enormously successful. A walled garden in this context is an ad-supported platform that […]
Mobext, the mobile arm of Havas Media Group, is hoping to get away from using pain-in-the-neck manual whitelists and blacklists to manage brand safety and contextual placements. Consequently, it’s been testing the fruits of an integration – revealed Wednesday – between Peer39, the brand safety and online semantic platform Sizmek bought in 2012, and StrikeAd, […]
Sizmek has rebuilt most of its ad tech stack into what it describes as a cloud-based modular suite. The rejiggered product is called MDX-NXT. Sizmek hopes the change will strengthen its position against the ad serving monster that is Google’s DoubleClick. (According to Alexa, Sizmek has the second most ad server market share – 9.8% […]
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 […]
Steve Jobs’ notorious open letter “Thoughts on Flash,” published in 2010, was considered the final nail in the coffin for its status as the go-to software for web and mobile development. But like the Internet’s most powerful zombie, Flash has continued to play a prominent role for developers and ad builders. HTML5, the solution listed […]
Acquisitions and earnings – Sizmek likes to multitask. On Thursday, the company announced its Q1 2015 results and its intention to buy mobile DSP StrikeAd for $11.7 million. Excluding StrikeAd, revenue from mobile formats, in other words HTML5-related revenue, was up 103% YoY in Q1 2015, while in-stream video revenue increased 10% in the same timeframe. […]
On Feb. 16, Lionsgate, media agency Mindshare and ad tech company Sizmek launched a campaign to promote the home video release of “Mockingjay Part I,” the third movie in the uber-popular “Hunger Games” series. The initiative, called Unlock Mockingjay, was both quick – lasting from 8:30am to 11am – and incredibly complex, beginning with a […]
Paris-based direct and programmatic ad platform Smart AdServer will break away from its parent company, the Internet portal AuFeminin, through a buyout by private equity firm Cathay Capital for $42.1 million, the companies said Thursday. “Smart AdServer is entering a new phase and the market is evolving very fast,” said Smart AdServer US General Manager […]
Sizmek’s earnings story quarter by quarter seems to be on perpetual repeat, but the company exceeded the pessimistic predictions of Wall Street analysts, posting Q4 2014 revenue of $48.9 million, a 3% YoY increase, and FY 2014 revenue of $170.8 million, a 6% YoY increase. The company suffered more expected declines in Flash-based rich media, which spiraled […]
Ad tech company Sizmek has appointed Liz Ritzcovan to whip the company’s disappointing revenues back into shape. Ritzcovan, who most recently served as Parade Magazine’s CRO, will officially start in Sizmek’s newly created global CRO position next Tuesday. She will report directly to Sizmek President and CEO Neil Nguyen. The addition of a CRO position […]
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 […]
This is the 12th and final installment in a series of interviews with vendors combating the problem of ad fraud. Read previous interviews with comScore, DoubleVerify, Dstillery, Forensiq, Integral Ad Science, Moat, PubChecker, RTB Asia, Telemetry, Videology and White Ops. Wasted delivery is not necessarily fraud – but all fraud is wasted delivery. In other […]
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 […]
Ad tech company Sizmek reported Q1 2014 revenues of $38.4 million on Tuesday, a 13% year-over-year increase. Neil Nguyen, president and CEO, emphasized that the company is expanding and strengthening key areas with an emphasis on mobile and video offerings. Mobile revenue increased 90% year over year. Sizmek continues to invest heavily in the channel. […]
Connecting consumers across devices is on every advertiser’s mind these days, and vendors are ramping up to accommodate. Add Sizmek to that list. The ad tech company plans to release during the second week of May Device Intelligence, an analytics feature designed to enable targeting and measurement of mobile ads. The analytics component is made […]
Viewability – the qualities that convey whether an advertisement was seen by its target audience – remains a contentious issue in the ad tech space. This is why associations like the Media Ratings Council (MRC) give accreditation to vendors offering viewability metrics, and why those vendors have scrambled for approval. One such company is Sizmek, […]
Sizmek, the company formerly known as Digital Generation (DG), reported Tuesday a full-year revenue increase of 15%, to $161.1 million compared to $140.7 million in 2012, capped off by Q4 revenue of $47.6 million, a 16% compared to the same period last year. (Read the release.) These figures reflect only Sizmek’s online business, and not […]
