Technology

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 […]

When Epsilon parent Alliance Data reported full-year 2016 earnings last Thursday, CFO Charles Horn said “the old ValueClick business” was “a three-point drag on Epsilon’s revenue growth.” Horn was referring to Conversant’s ad network business before it rebranded to pivot toward ad tech in 2014, said Epsilon and Conversant CEO Bryan Kennedy. “It’s probably 4% […]

Publishers contemplating a switch to server-side header bidding now have two more options. They can use AppNexus’ Prebid server-side wrapper, which will tap into Index Exchange’s demand. Or they can put Index Exchange’s wrapper on their page, which will make a server-side call out to AppNexus. “We are giving publishers choice, and a flexible, transparent solution,” […]

Advertisers will focus less on quantity and more on quality over the next five years. That shift in how they spend their marketing budgets will change the role programmatic – and media agencies – play in the marketing ecosystem. “The days of buying volume are going to reach a point of obsolescence,” said Forrester principal […]

More telecom-media merger mania! Verizon is considering a merger with cable company Charter Communications, according to The Wall Street Journal, just months after AT&T revealed its intent to acquire Time Warner for $85.4 billion. If Verizon and Charter combine, the magnitude would be massive in terms of infrastructure and audience scale, as well as in […]

As the United States ushered in its 45th president on Friday, Google quietly ushered in a number of updates to its ad platforms. But it was Google’s reduction of third-party cookies and pixels on YouTube, as well as the release of a cloud-based YouTube measurement system called Google Ads Data Hub, that had industry insiders […]

Google identified 1.7 billion ads last year that violated its policies by deceiving users, containing malware or forcibly redirecting users to app stores. That amount is double the number it flagged in 2015. “Five years ago, we were a lot more analog in terms of how to capture bad traffic,” said John Brown, head of […]

Update 1/27: MediaMath said some employees were let go in December, but insisted those layoffs were not related to the executive reorg. The company said 13 were released in total, and seven were hired. MediaMath’s executive shuffle Friday, originally reported by Business Insider, was meant to improve its ability to sell enterprise technologies and services, said CEO […]

Google is enabling  YouTube targeting based on search data, and will also release a proprietary YouTube measurement system. The company discussed the first development in a Friday blog post that went live just minutes before the US presidential inauguration. “Now, information from activity associated with users’ Google accounts may be used to influence the ads […]

Holding company trading desks this year are putting the focus on data and the ability to identify a customer across screens and platforms. That focus made owning data mission critical, and it’s shifted the focus away from programmatic as a silo and toward data management and activation across the board. As a result, “trading desk” […]

  Data management is like dental hygiene: No one enjoys doing it or even thinking about it, but you’ve got to stay on top of it or else the situation will get really messy really quickly. Joanna O’Connell, CMO of MediaMath, on Thursday moderated a panel about data management that felt like a good cleanse. […]

The Super Bowl used to be the one day when, thanks to the commercials, non-football fans would willingly watch the sport. Today, you can watch those spots well before the big game even airs, as the number of pre-Super Bowl ads on YouTube grew 200% since 2008, said Google. And the growing importance of online […]

The Chinese ad tech acquisition drumbeat continues. On Wednesday, Shanghai-based private equity firm Innotech bought data aggregator and discrepancy management company Ad-Juster. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but industry sources told AdExchanger the sale was well within the eight-figure range. Even at the potential high end, that doesn’t touch the astonishing deal prices […]

Extreme Reach, whose video software helps brands (Coca-Cola, GM, Ford) and agencies manage creative rights as well as TV and video ad delivery, has hired former Oracle sales VP Bill Bagshaw as CRO. Extreme Reach’s former head of client services and sales, Patrick Hanavan, will become chief client officer. Bagshaw’s responsibility will be to get […]