Technology

Think of IBM and you’re likely imagining heavy technologies managed by an expensive services division. But IBM Chief Digital Officer Bob Lord emphasizes that’s the old company. He’s here to help IBM reinvent itself and, most importantly, its way of doing business. “What I’ve loved doing throughout my career is helping a company pivot,” Lord […]

Welcome to episode No. 16 of AdExchanger Talks, a podcast focused on data-driven marketing. Subscribe here. The mainstreaming of programmatic has forced marketers to get serious about quality – both the quality of overall customer experience and individual ad impressions. In a recent report, Forrester Research said this issue could lead marketers to scale back on […]

Roku generated nearly $400 million in 2016 revenue, mostly from standard hardware sales around its devices. But $100 million of its revenue was attributed to Roku’s media licensing and advertising businesses, which are expected to be its biggest growth drivers. The real MVP of Roku’s media and licensing segment may be the set-top box manufacturer’s […]

Snap Inc. is expected to go public on Thursday, leaving many to wonder how the most anticipated tech IPO since Facebook will be treated by investors on Wall Street. While Snap described itself as a camera company during its roadshow, investors know that its success hinges on its ability to monetize successfully as an ad […]

Although Verizon’s appetite for ad tech was the main driver behind its acquisition of AOL, it’s content that really sweetened the deal. “Our content is a differentiator for Verizon amidst all of the other telcos,” AOL CMO Allie Kline told AdExchanger. But there’s a lot knocking around under the AOL umbrella – everything from ad tech […]

Spanish-language broadcaster Univision’s media sales arm has been busy the past six months. In addition to packaging Univision Digital inventory more holistically with sister portfolio properties like The Root, Fusion and The Onion, Univision has tweaked its programmatic stack on the back end. That overhaul is one of the agenda items for Dave Katz, who joined Univision […]

The Israeli startup Shine is rebranding to Rainbow as it abandons its ad-blocking roots in favor of ad-targeting and verification services, the company revealed Friday. “We have been really trying to identify a path forward and the commercialization opportunities for the base technology,” said CRO James Collier, who joined the company last July. Shine (ahem, […]

Another independent demand-side platform (DSP) has found its big enterprise home. Amobee, a digital marketing firm owned by Singaporean telco Singtel, has agreed to buy Turn at a $310 million value. Read the release. Stakeholders expect the acquisition to close within 45 days. Amobee, known for its mobile capabilities, had worked with numerous buying platforms before, said […]

Criteo closed 2016 on a high note. FY 2016 revenue was up 37% to $730 million, excluding traffic acquisition costs. Criteo’s cash flow for the fiscal year also increased 16% to $159 million. The company credits two new products – Predictive Search and Criteo Sponsored Products (formerly Hooklogic, which Criteo acquired for $250 million in […]

The Media Rating Council (MRC) will audit YouTube’s third-party measurement partners, Moat, Integral Ad Science and DoubleVerify, Google revealed Tuesday in a blog post. While the MRC has audited several parts of Google’s ad-serving and search functions for years, YouTube wasn’t historically included, said George Ivie, the council’s CEO: “This will be a first-time audit […]

The Verizon-Yahoo marriage is still on and will close “as soon as practicable” in Q2, the companies announced Tuesday. The companies have jointly amended the terms of their purchase agreement by $350 million, shaving 7% off Yahoo’s original sticker price of $4.8 billion. The agreement puts an end to a monthslong game of “Will they, […]

The Trade Desk broke the $1 billion mark in gross ad spend on its platform in 2016, generating $75 million in net profit, the company disclosed Thursday afternoon in its fourth quarter earnings report. The demand-side platform (DSP) touted the growth of its omnichannel offerings. In 2016, display ad campaigns made up less than half […]

Time Inc. is bullish on digital, even as its print business deflates. The company – which has lately been the object of acquisitive interest from Meredith and other suitors – expects $600 million in digital revenue next year. “We see a path to $1 billion over [our strategic] plan,” said CEO Rich Battista during Time’s […]

Product placements aren’t new, but with the rise of subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) services – and a reduction in cable networks’ commercial loads – branded TV content is primed to take off. That said, it’s hard to credit a sale of a bucket of KFC chicken to Jimmy Kimmel peddling it on his late-night show, so one company […]

Ghostery has decided not to have its cake and eat it too. On Wednesday, the company announced that it’s been acquired in an all-cash deal by Cliqz, a German privacy-focused browser that plans to use the ad-tracker tool to help expand its user base. The companies did not disclose a deal price. Hubert Burda Media, […]

  Billboards are lighting up with the promise of programmatic. Out-of-home (OOH) is projected to grow almost 12% in spend by 2020 – faster than any other traditional media – thanks to opportunities in digital, according to the Outdoor Advertising Association of America. Digital OOH accounted for $2.7 billion in ad spend in the US […]

 Martin Kihn, Research VP at Gartner, will speak about the state of mar tech and ad tech at Programmatic IO on April 5 in San Francisco. Ad tech and mar tech may not converge after all. Two years ago, Gartner analyst Marty Kihn predicted that owned media (mar tech) and paid media (ad tech) technologies would come […]

Since iCrossing entered the market as a search agency in 1998, digital spend has expanded to social, display and mobile, all of which are table stakes. As a result, iCrossing expanded into a full-service agency, eventually getting acquired by Hearst in 2010. Since then, it’s snagged AOR accounts for clients like Bayer, Church and Dwight and […]

Veteran Tremor Video CEO Bill Day has resigned, effective immediately, and will serve as a special adviser to the company through June. Paul Caine, the non-executive board chairman for Tremor since 2014 and former Bloomberg Media CRO, will step in as interim CEO and lead the search for a permanent replacement, the company said Thursday. […]

Direct mail has always performed well for Citibank. But like most advertisers, if the company wants to push more dollars into digital, top brass expects marketing to prove the impact on short-term revenue growth. With digital, it can be technically easier to prove – in near real time – what drove a conversion rather than […]

The Association of National Advertisers voted “transparency” as 2016’s marketing word of the year. Although this year is still young, “crap” is shaping up to be 2017’s word. “The reason why so much of digital marketing doesn’t work is because it’s basically crap optimized on crap,” Rishad Tobaccowala, strategy and growth officer at Publicis, said […]

TripleLift is throwing its hat into the server-side header bidding ring. On Tuesday, it rolled out its wrapper, Apex, which lets publishers bring in demand for their in-feed native ad placements. TripleLift will run a first-price auction among all participating partners, a shift from the OpenRTB spec of a second-price auction that could result in […]

In his second week as Marketo’s CEO, Steve Lucas walked away from his first board meeting with a mandate from investors to hire 50 developers, add 100 more salespeople and to “go fast.” Marketo’s first order of business was to re-engineer its marketing automation software from the ground up – a continuing overhaul that includes […]

Andrew Bruckner, VP of equity research at RBC Capital Markets, will share the Wall Street POV on programmatic at Programmatic IO on April 5 in San Francisco. There’s room in the digital advertising ecosystem for more than just the duopoly. “I do see an opportunity outside of Facebook and Google,” said Andrew Bruckner, VP of […]

By Kelly Liyakasa and Alison Weissbrot Snap Inc. brought in $404.5 million in revenue in 2016, six times the $58.7 million it made in 2015 and higher than some investors had estimated, the company disclosed Thursday in its long-anticipated S-1. The popular photo, video and messaging app company aims to raise $3 billion in an […]

For the first time since 2009, H&R Block has bought a 60-second Super Bowl spot – just in time for tax prep. The big buy follows a soft 2016 tax season when tax returns filed using H&R Block’s service declined 4.5% due to competitors like Intuit’s TurboTax, which “took share from all major branded competitors,” […]

Collective promoted its COO Kerry Bianchi to CEO Thursday, as the 12-year-old startup continues to evolve out of the traditional ad network business. Joe Apprendi, Collective’s founder and now its former CEO, will remain on the board as executive chairman. Since 2015, Collective has reshaped its business to meet what Bianchi described as the next […]

Pinterest introduced its first search ad offering Wednesday, almost seven years after the company launched. “Now we believe we’re at a place where we understand how people are leveraging the platform and using it to plan their lives,” said Michael Akkerman, head of Pinterest’s marketing partners program. The new search functionality comes via Kenshoo, an […]

Snapchat parent Snap Inc. added partners to its Ads and Custom Audience Match APIs on Tuesday and introduced a new API category for Creative. It also did something marketers have been wanting for a while: letting them license Ad Partners’ tech for self-serve buys. Before the update, buyers could only purchase Snap Ads via a managed service, which was basically […]

The IAB creates standards for its industry but is running into a problem: The digital media ecosystem isn’t embracing those standards. Agencies and advertisers have set viewability definitions that are all over the map. Publishers must run slow, tag-ridden ads because buyers don’t follow the IAB’s LEAN spec. Platforms advocate for alternative standards that apply […]