Technology

Yavli joined the emerging fray of ad-blocking technology solutions for publishers with its public launch on Wednesday, following an 18-month stealth period. Its technology gives users who have downloaded an ad blocker sponsored content suggestions. If the user clicks on the piece of sponsored material, the publisher charges the brand. “The idea behind it is […]

Beginning this fall, advertisers will be able to programmatically buy Hulu video inventory in a private marketplace across desktop, mobile and connected TV via Facebook’s LiveRail supply-side platform. In its Tuesday announcement, Hulu said it will also use Oracle’s data-management platform (née BlueKai), through which marketers can enrich their buys by combining their anonymized first-party […]

Classified ads were quick to move online, with Craigslist, online job boards and real estate sites blossoming in the Internet’s first decade. But then a certain amount of stagnation kicked in: While the format itself was quick to go digital, programmatic advertising hasn’t significantly tapped into this local market. Enter Densou Trading Desk, a Copenhagen, Denmark-based […]

The director of ad technology for Netflix, Tony Ralph, and director of marketing for Abe’s Market, Michelle Goldstein, will appear at AdExchanger’s Omni.Digital conference on Sept. 10, an event designed to educate marketers on advanced solutions for building seamless cross-channel brand experiences. Cross-channel attribution will be one topic discussed at the conference. As Netflix’s director of […]

Under Armour has muscled up since its origin as a supplier of compression tees, thanks to its work connecting channels like mobile and email to physical stores. Under Armour is now more than an apparel provider. One of its biggest data assets comes from its community Connected Fitness, which has grown 30% year over year […]

Kahuna, a mobile marketing automation startup going against Adobe, Oracle and Salesforce.com, revealed Wednesday it had raised $45 million in Series B funding. The round, led by Tenaya Capital, Sequoia and SoftTech, will be used for product development and to expand Kahuna’s team of 80. Kahuna’s clients like Dollar Shave Club, Overstock.com, The Weather Channel […]

A number of ad tech vets made Inc. Magazine’s annual 500/5000 revenue survey this month, but there were also some notable new additions and absentees following acquisitions last year. Inc.’s survey, which was released late last week, features the revenues and employee growth figures of independent companies considered to be among the fastest-growing in the […]

Although Apple’s App Store is seven years old and has a worthy competitor in Google’s Play Store, the app store search and discovery ecosystem is stagnant, say many app store optimization (ASO) platforms. “When we look at the landscape, we see it like the early days of Internet, when search and discovery were a mess,” […]

In his four years as Havas NA’s SVP of marketing analytics and data consulting, Leon Barsoumian has worked to marry programmatic and analytics. From a programmatic standpoint, the French holding company has two key offerings, Affiperf and Artemis. In 2010, Havas debuted Affiperf, a global trading desk that Havas calls a “Meta DSP” and is […]

“Premium video” is Google’s code for “brand budgets.” Its decision to remove YouTube inventory from the DoubleClick Ad Exchange (AdX) by the end of the year is one more way it hopes to clinch a piece of TV’s $70 billion portion of the overall brand budget. Platform providers were understandably upset when Google revealed the […]

There are myriad reasons why location data can be defective – and fraud is just one small piece of that growing problem. Growing because the lack of industry standards around the collection and use of location data leads to a fair amount of misunderstanding, unintentional discrepancies and widespread inaccuracy. “Location fraud is the easy part,” said […]

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 […]

One of Google’s themes, when it announced it was dividing its core advertising business from its more experimental endeavors by restructuring into the holding company Alphabet, was “transparency.” Specifically, in the words of Alphabet CEO Larry Page, “improving the transparency and oversight of what we’re doing.” What that means, however, is anyone’s guess. We asked […]

Video demand-side platform TubeMogul reported that more than 20% of global spend running through its platform in the second quarter came from mobile, programmatic TV and display ad formats. Mobile ad spend drove 10-15% of spend, programmatic TV constituted between 5-10% and less than 5% came from display. “We think this is significant, given our […]

Adobe and PageFair, a Dublin-based ad-block solutions provider, on Monday unveiled new research that claimed there are almost 200 million active ad-block users, representing a projected loss of $21.8 billion globally for online publishers in 2015. The caveat is that industrywide ad-blocking numbers can be misleading given strong variances both geographically and demographically. That skew […]

When Google revealed plans Thursday to exile YouTube ad inventory from the DoubleClick Ad Exchange (AdX) by the year’s end, many in the ad industry felt betrayed. Google’s reasoning for this change isn’t clear, even to its partners. Its stated motivation is that it wants to devote more resources to developing other video ad products. […]

The writing was on the wall. Google revealed late Thursday it will no longer sell YouTube inventory through the DoubleClick Ad Exchange (AdX). Neal Mohan, VP of video and display advertising at Google, said in a blog post that the tech giant is yanking YouTube inventory from AdX to focus its development efforts on “the formats […]

Digital automation may increase the volume of video ads initially, but improvements in targeting and cross-screen frequency caps will drive more relevancy while ultimately reducing the overall ad load. It’s no surprise that data and technology are upending the upfront TV buy. Following a two-year slump in advance upfront commitments, Forrester expects advertisers to combine scatter, […]

The story of Acxiom is one of constant evolution. Consequently, it’s also in what seems like a perpetual growth phase. With the development of its data-management platform Audience Operating System and its acquisition of data onboarder LiveRamp, it seemed to become a neutral infrastructure provider, the pipes facilitating the flow of information across its clients’ […]

For Hootsuite, it used to be all about text links on Twitter. Not so, anymore. The early Twitter client on Tuesday revealed native support for Instagram. So now, users can promote content on Instagram as well as across previously supported platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google pages. It also introduced recently link-to-buy functionality within […]

“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 Eric Berry, CEO at TripleLift. Every major ad exchange uses second-price auctions, yet almost no major ad exchange really uses second-price auctions. Sell-side platforms have created yield-enhancing technologies, such as […]

“The Sell Sider” is a column written for the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Andrew Casale, president and CEO at Index Exchange. The economics of publishing have pushed media companies toward sensationalism to drive traffic and scale. Journalists are increasingly incentivized to produce stories that drive clicks at […]

French performance marketing company Criteo turned in a solid second quarter, growing its revenue ex-TAC by 65% to €110 million (US$120 million), up from €67 million (US$73 million) last year. Criteo continued its client growth streak, adding 730 net new advertiser clients in the last quarter to total about 8,500. It claims those clients are spending more, too, resulting […]

Carriers are looking for additional sources of cash (see the AOL/Verizon merger), and zeotap, a Berlin-based platform that helps mobile network operators monetize their data, is angling to capitalize on that need. To do that, the company will use the majority of its $6 million in Series A, announced Tuesday, to fund international expansion into […]

Publishers seeking to create more competition and access for programmatic buyers have embraced header bidding over the past year. AppNexus first brought header bidding technology to market in 2009, back when RTB first started, but not many of its customers used it. Now it’s seeing increased demand from publishers adding its header bidding (or pre-bid) […]

Media quality verification company Integral Ad Science revealed Friday a new $67 million investment. The round is a mix of debt and equity financing, which CEO Scott Knoll described as an “optimal” blend for the 6-year-old company. Knoll also said the company’s revenue will surpass $100 million this year. The company had raised about $49.8 […]

Ad tech partnerships are fast and frequent, as vendors move to establish a presence in disciplines where they were formerly lacking, or to bolster their inventory pool. Certainly, these integrations are easier with the emergence of standards like openRTB, but there’s still more to it. “Now that everyone can support openRTB, you have to do […]

Performance marketing agency Merkle is one of the first agencies to use Google’s cross-device measurement platform, as well as an early strategic partner with Facebook’s Atlas cross-device product. As such, it has unique insights into what company CSO John Lee refers to as Facebook’s and Google’s “distinct pros and cons,” with the caveat that it’s […]

“Marketer’s Note” is a weekly column informing marketers about the rapidly evolving digital marketing technology ecosystem. This week it is written by Joanna O’Connell, Lead Analyst forAdExchanger Research. I read this recent WSJ CMO Today piece, which explored the proud anti-ad tech stance a number of young digital publishers are taking, with a mix of […]

“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 Kirk McDonald, president at PubMatic. Many in the programmatic world shamelessly borrow strategies, tactics and even language from the world of finance. Some companies have “tickers” on their websites that […]