Technology

MSN.com has gone through a lot of changes recently, switching to a syndication-only content model a year and a half ago and having its ad sales move to AOL. To personalize MSN.com’s content and ad experience, Microsoft revealed Tuesday it had signed on with Taboola to bring native ads and personalization to the MSN site […]

The guillotine has fallen for Been Choice, the embattled in-app ad blocker that was allowed back into the App Store after being unceremoniously turfed out in October. As of Jan. 8, almost three months to the day after its first run-in with Apple, Been Choice was notified that it’s going to be removed from the App […]

Following its $21.5 million funding round to close out 2015, the Danish ad tech company Adform will test the dense US market. The market entrance was confirmed by Julian Baring, Adform’s general manager of North American business, who was hired last August to build out operations in Canada and the US. European data and advertising […]

Berlin-based Fyber is on a tear. On Friday, Fyber, an SSP for mobile app developers, and its parent company RNTS Media announced that they’ve acquired mobile ad network Heyzap for as much as $45 million. RNTS Media will pay $20 million in cash upfront, with an additional $25 million in cash and shares available down the […]

Q4 ecommerce sales were marked by a strong increase in transaction volume and a spike in mobile conversions, a smattering of retail reports shows. Among specific retailers, Amazon was the runaway winner (no surprise there) and brick-and-mortar players may emerge as losers, if an early glum report from Macy’s is any indicator. Amazon reported dramatic […]

Updated Oracle has signed an agreement to acquire AddThis, a social bookmarking startup that has since transitioned into a publisher audience platform, for an undisclosed sum. Oracle’s Data Cloud, which combines Oracle’s earlier acquisitions of BlueKai and Datalogix, will benefit the most. Making an acquisition has become a holiday-time tradition for the enterprise giant. “Oracle Data Cloud is the […]

Acxiom has released an addressable TV product, built from a segmentation platform it acquired in early December from the Allant Group. The tool, announced this week at CES, leverages Acxiom’s workflow automation software and its relationships with multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs). It’s not meant to execute on media buys. “We’re on a mission to […]

If 2014 was a year of big buys in ad tech, 2015 seemed more muted. While 2014 saw a run on attribution companies from big players like Google and AOL, massive consolidation among data management platforms and some big splashes from Oracle and Alliance Data Services, 2015 was about the quiet private equity exit. Sure, […]

For several months, IPG Mediabrands’ ad tech unit Cadreon has been testing Google’s cross-device measurement system, baked into DoubleClick advertiser products as of June. Krish Sailam, senior product manager of mobile for Cadreon, said the trading desk has run a few beta tests with advertisers, and noted conversion uplift has consistently reached the double digits. Cadreon […]

Advertisers, ad tech companies and publishers pay heed: The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released an enforcement policy Tuesday that outlines which forms of native advertising it deems acceptable and which it deems deceptive. A key thread in the guidelines is that the user needs to know if content is an ad before she clicks and/or consumes content. […]

“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 Jason Morse, vice president of mobile products at Criteo. Consumers spend an enormous amount of time on mobile, particularly with chat and messenger apps, such as Line, WhatsApp and Facebook […]

French performance marketing giant Criteo’s promotion of its president and COO Eric Eichmann to CEO, effective Jan. 1, recalls Rocket Fuel’s recent leadership change. Eichmann succeeds JB Rudelle, Criteo’s founder and longtime chief, who will move into an executive chairman role. So why is this happening? Generally speaking, Criteo is worth more than every ad […]

“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 Patrick Tripp, senior product marketing manager at Adobe. It’s easy to see why marketers would be enthusiastic about the ways data can be used to enrich the customer experience for […]

GroupM’s purchase of The Exchange Lab, a provider of marketing services and technology that connects multiple DSPs, comes at a time when agencies must tackle digital media fragmentation. While GroupM – WPP’s media-buying umbrella – faces walled gardens and siloed platforms, the Exchange Lab has a tool called Proteus, designed to provide a single interface […]

Ad-tech companies shed hundreds of employees from their payrolls in recent weeks. Turn, PubMatic, Collective and Centro all laid off workers, adding to the toll of Rocket Fuel’s large job cuts earlier this year. The cited reasons vary but often boil down to simple survival as ad tech companies position themselves for profitability in a tough market. […]

Christopher Wong is VP of strategy and product management for IBM Commerce Marketing Solutions. He will discuss IBM’s digital marketing strategy at the upcoming Industry Preview 2016 conference in January. The old adage of “If you build it, they will come” has been replaced with newer notions around “empathy mapping” and anticipating customer needs prior […]

The native ad specialist TripleLift recently finished testing and hit the market with a cinemagraph format, in which there’s an instant of motion within a static image. The cinemagraph format has existed for years, but its utility as an online advertising vehicle is just starting to permeate from social media platforms to the broader publishing community. […]

In campaign speeches, TV appearances and public statements, Donald Trump frequently boasts about his campaign’s low ad spending. “I’ve spent no money and I’m No. 1,” he said recently on the “Today” show. “Other people have spent tens of millions of dollars and they’re floundering and doing poorly.” Unfortunately for his opponents, this statement – […]

True[X], the video ad platform Fox acquired last December, partnered Tuesday with Comcast’s TV ad-serving platform FreeWheel to bring more “engagement-based” video ads to broadcasters. The deal will give True[X] greater sell-in among FreeWheel’s base of media and entertainment brands, which include NBCUniversal, Turner Broadcasting, Viacom, Sky, DirecTV and ABC. True[X] creates interactive video ad […]

Header bidding is coming to mobile apps, via a solution Rubicon Project is beta testing with 20 publishers. Early results for the product, FastLane, saw CPM increases of up to 300%. Rubicon will release the product more widely to publishers in Q1 of next year. Unlike the mobile web or desktop, mobile apps bring in […]

Programmatic email platform LiveIntent has acquired Mojn, a Copenhagen-based data onboarding company, following LiveIntent’s recent acquisition of the European recommendation engine AVARI. Terms were undisclosed. All 12 of Mojn’s employees, a majority of whom are data scientists, will join LiveIntent, said Matt Keiser, LiveIntent’s founder and CEO. The acquisition will support LiveIntent’s international expansion, an […]

Sell-side platform PubMatic has dismissed more than 100 employees, AdExchanger has confirmed. The layoffs, affecting 20% of the company’s global staff, follow an 8% reduction in October. The combined cuts have reduced PubMatic’s workforce from 600 to about 450. Additionally the company lost two key leaders on the publisher and demand side: Evan Adlman, VP of publisher […]

If you’re a large brand and you want 10 million guaranteed impressions, you’re not going to find it in episodic TV – yet. Adobe and Videology, through new over-the-top video ad sales and the yield management system Adobe Primetime TV Media Management, hope to solve this problem. The solution was released Tuesday during Videonuze’s programmatic […]

AskMen is firmly in the pro-platform camp among publishers. The men’s website, born during the dot-com boom, now looks to platforms, not SEO, as a way to gain audience and increase recognition. The king of those platforms is Facebook, where video posts earn the publisher millions of views. AskMen, which is owned by Ziff Davis, […]

The digital supply chain is a morass and is losing the advertising industry about $8.2 billion a year, according to a joint study released Tuesday by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Ernst & Young. The price tag includes losses and waste due to piracy, malware and invalid traffic, a trifecta that comprises what EY partner […]

Ad tech might not be as sexy a buy as it was just a few short years ago, but that didn’t stop Israeli performance advertising company Perion from buying American ad net Undertone on Tuesday for up to $180 million in cash. Of that sum, $91 million is payable at closing and the remaining $89 […]

When Forrester released its Wave assessment for video ad platforms Monday, the ability for each demand-side platform (DSP) to buy cross-screen – including linear TV – was a key factor. “The biggest thing large advertisers are struggling with is how to use digital video and TV in combination, not just digital video by itself,” said […]

With turkeys almost in the oven, retailers and ecommerce companies are hoping the investments they’ve made all year long in audience segmentation, mobile tech and cross-channel measurement will pay off in the make-or-break holiday season. Ecommerce in particular is looking to benefit from the maturation of ongoing retail and ecommerce trends – such as offline […]

Rocket Fuel is speeding up the rollout of its device graph. Starting in Q1, the programmatic platform company will make cross-device targeting the default mode for marketer and agency clients of its self-serve DSP. Those customers include Microsoft, which does its own US digital ad buying in-house. Microsoft’s top B2B marketing exec in the US, […]

Six out of 10 marketers would reallocate their media spend if digital media owners failed to supply sufficient third-party measurement, according to new findings from the Association of National Advertisers (ANA). In an ANA survey of 154 members conducted this summer, 90% of marketer respondents also said they are “not fully confident” that their working […]