Technology

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 […]

Welcome to episode No. 10 of AdExchanger Talks, a podcast focused on data-driven marketing. Subscribe here. During The Trade Desk’s IPO road show, the company met with plenty of skepticism in meetings with more than 100 investment firms. No surprise there, given the market doldrums around ad tech stocks. “There was a lot of negative sentiment […]

Marketing automation is designed to push out messages, but it hasn’t always been great at incorporating pricing or product information. Datalogix vet Rob Holland recognized that reality when he served as an EVP at the Oracle Data Cloud – and he just jumped to ecommerce marketing startup Bluecore last week to help solve that problem […]

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. […]

Rik van der Kooi, corporate VP of Microsoft advertising sales and marketing, will take the stage Jan. 19 to share Microsoft’s full vision for the future at Industry Preview in New York City. Microsoft is betting on “screenless advertising.” As voice-activated personal assistants like Cortana improve, consumers will use them not only for information, but to buy […]

[pullquote][/pullquote]Zeotap is banking on 2017 being the year that telcos make their impact on the advertising world. The mobile data platform and telco data onboarder revealed its $12.7 million Series B (12 million euros) on Tuesday, bringing its total funding to $20 million. Zeotap, whose clients include a number of the top carriers in India, […]

It’s high time programmatic became available to the budding cannabis industry, which is projected to hit $8 billion by 2020, but regulatory hurdles have kept it from lighting up. Instead of examining the legal ramifications around cannabis marketing, many advertising platforms simply fall back on a blanket ban, said Paris Holley, chief technology officer of […]

Arun Kumar, global president at Cadreon, will take the stage Jan. 19 to share Cadreon’s full vision for the future at Industry Preview in New York City. Walled gardens are cropping up across the digital ecosystem. “It’s just the way the world is going to be for the foreseeable future,” said Arun Kumar, global president at Cadreon. […]

“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 Andrew Arnold, senior director of marketplace quality at The Trade Desk. The plague of invalid traffic (IVT) is well documented across the industry, particularly in recent weeks with the discovery […]

“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Jourdain-Alexander Casale, VP of strategy at Index Exchange. 2016 saw header bidding begin to move from display and mobile into video. On the buy side, the demand for premium content escalated, and publishers continued to […]

In 2016, Mashable got its programmatic house in order. When Chief Revenue Officer Ed Wise joined Mashable last spring, he immediately noticed that the tech publisher was missing out on a lot of programmatic revenue. Its viewability scores topped out below industry averages. Mashable sold inventory on the open exchanges blindly, hampering CPMs. And sales […]

Header bidding, make way: In the next year, more publishers will switch to server-side header bidding. The solution offers clear advantages – while introducing other disadvantages – with which the industry will grapple as publishers update their tech. Like with header bidding, publishers run a pre-auction before the ad server to create a level playing […]

Welcome to episode No. 9 of AdExchanger Talks, a podcast focused on data-driven marketing. Subscribe here. Since PubMatic President Kirk McDonald joined the company from Time Inc. five years ago, publishers have had to continuously react to market changes. Mobile, video, fraud and viewability have each disrupted and transformed the media seller’s calculus. But none of […]

This is the latest installment in “PII,” a series featuring the talent that makes the wheels turn in our data-driven advertising world. Read previous interviews with talent from Mindshare, Mediavest | Spark, Razorfish, Essence, INNOCEAN, Clear Channel Outdoor and Placed. Patricio Jaramillo is in a serious relationship with data. “My relationship with my wife is first, and then with data,” the […]

Like its competitors, IBM is acquiring and building a video stack. Instead of focusing on media execution, however, IBM is using Watson and data analytics to improve the relevancy of video content, ads and delivery models. “In ad-supported video, how do you make ultra-targeted ads tailored down to the individual for customer acquisition?” said David Mowrey, […]

Digital ad players from AOL to Facebook have given lead-gen ads a try, but one company built an entire business around it. Fluent has remained relatively quiet since it was acquired by information services company IDI, now Cogint, for $100 million in cash. The company was on a $140 million (gross revenue) run rate at […]

“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 by Stacey Hawes, president of data practice at Epsilon. No doubt, 2016 was the year of data. There was the good: Data-driven principles were at the forefront of conversations across industries, versus […]

Publishers like Bloomberg and The Washington Post have raced to roll out non-intrusive ad formats priced on attention and engagement metrics. The IAB’s efforts to curb disruptive ad experiences also reinvigorated the dialogue. Verizon-owned AOL is the latest to join the conversation. On Thursday, it dished up several new ad formats designed around consumer engagement […]

TV buyers are used to transacting on GRPs and Nielsen ratings, while digital buyers purchase targeted impressions. That has complicated the way advertisers plan, buy and measure their emerging cross-screen campaigns. Several companies have built tools to address the problem, but many have sold brand-direct or by way of the trading desk. RTL Group–backed VideoAmp […]

In a bizarre, unruly year for political advertising, an analysis of 2016 campaign, party and super PAC spending does reveal one consistent theme: the rise of targetable media. “It turned the page on what will happen in political spending moving forward, because targeted marketing absolutely replaced mass media,” said Kip Cassino, the executive VP of […]

Advertising trade groups are seizing the political moment in a bid to dismantle the Federal Communications Commission’s recently passed broadband consumer privacy laws. With the commission on the cusp of a Republican majority – Chairman Tom Wheeler has said he’ll step down on inauguration day – the writing could be on the wall for the FCC’s […]

When Bankrate decided to add header bidding late last year, it chose a server-side solution. “When we did our RFI [request for information], it became clear to me that server-to-server is a much better and more enhanced version of header bidding,” said Irene Kwak, VP of revenue operations for Bankrate. The financial publisher plans to […]

Joe Stanhope, VP and principal analyst at Forrester, will discuss the state of the marketing technology ecosystem – and what marketers need to do about it – at Industry Preview on January 18th, 2017, in New York City. Marketers face a complex ecosystem filled with thousands of vendors and redundancies. “There are way too many vendors doing […]

Addressable TV significantly expanded in 2016, both in terms of ad spend and the total size of the addressable market. In 2015, addressable TV ad spend reached $400 million in the US and grew to $890 million in 2016, according to eMarketer. That’s quadruple the spend flowing into the marketplace in 2014. Last year, more […]

Ad tech mergers and acquisitions (M&A) has been a roller coaster in recent years, and 2016 certainly didn’t let up. In 2015, public and private marketplace sentiment cooled, but 2016 saw a resurgence – albeit a much more cautious one than in years past. “Good businesses in ad tech will find owners,” said Tolman Geffs, […]

For the big six holding companies, 2016 was a year of acquisitions, restructures, reviews and leadership shakeups, centering expertise around data and digital. But they also engaged in strategies at odds with best practices and client interests. Faced with shrinking margins and rising technology costs, holding companies found new ways to eke revenue – methods […]