Technology

Boom and pop. One is the sound of VC money pouring into the ad tech industry. The other is the sound a bubble makes when it bursts. Ad tech has been notorious for heavyweight funding rounds and even larger, some might say bloated, valuations. And companies that were flying high before they went public – Rocket […]

Microsoft has reversed its approach to Do Not Track (DNT) and will no longer make it the default setting on the Internet Explorer browser and IE’s eventual replacement, Spartan. In a Good Friday blog post, Microsoft Chief Privacy Officer Brendon Lynch said the decision was made in order to comply with the World Wide Web […]

Although Oracle’s acquisition of Datalogix hasn’t officially closed yet, some industry insiders have speculated the deal underscored Oracle’s interest in identity-based marketing. Marketers need richer audience profiles that include known and anonymous attributes, meaning platforms should include, but also go beyond, cookie syncing, Kevin Akeroyd, SVP and GM of the Oracle Marketing Cloud, told AdExchanger. “The CMO […]

“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 Picard, vice president of strategic partnerships at MediaMath. Media buying and selling have been on a slow evolutionary course since the late 1990s. With real-time bidding at the forefront, […]

M&A activity in marketing services and tech declined in Q1 2015, compared to the same period last year, in volume and value. Investment bank Jordan, Edmiston Group Inc. (JEGI), which released its Q1 2015 M&A Overview on Thursday, noted 128 deals in Q1 2015, compared to 154 in Q1 2014 (a 17% decline). Value of […]

Many publishers don’t know – or don’t want to know – what kind of fraud occurs on their sites. But it’s a reaction not dissimilar to how brands approached fraud before shocking numbers – like the 17% of programmatic ads and 23% of video ads determined fraudulent in the ANA/White Ops study last year – […]

Oracle is rallying behind a product called Oracle ID Graph, announced Wednesday at Oracle Modern Marketing Experience in Las Vegas. It’s not a cross-device ID – the enterprise cloud company recognizes big consumer platforms like Facebook, Google and Apple are up to the task. Instead, ID Graph is designed to make the “unique identifiers” associated […]

Facebook violates EU law by tracking users for targeted advertising, a European privacy panel said Tuesday. The report was commissioned by the Belgian Privacy Commission, which sits under the EU’s European Commission, and is an updated version of an initial draft that surfaced in February. A key development of the update claims that Facebook cookies […]

After Oracle bought data-management platform and exchange BlueKai last February, it essentially split the company in two. The Oracle Marketing Cloud reaped the benefits of BlueKai’s DMP while BlueKai’s Audience Data Marketplace formed the basis of the Oracle Data Cloud. Still, there’s overlap. “We have a very rich history with these two lines of business working […]

For a holding company, WPP is an aggressive buyer of ad tech – most of which winds up within its GroupM unit Xaxis. Since Xaxis absorbed 24/7 Media in December 2013, the programmatic media company’s investments in tech, most of which are acquisitions, have been methodical. The most recent occurred Monday, when Xaxis revealed it […]

“Limited opportunities for creativity” – 44% of marketers surveyed by the IAB and research firm Ovum cite it as one of the key challenges they face when it comes to mobile advertising. That may be the perception, but it’s not the reality, as Showtime demonstrated at the IAB’s Mobile Marketplace conference in New York City on Monday. […]

With digital audio consumption on the rise, advertiser expectations about targeting and buying advertisements are also growing fast. These concerns surfaced Thursday during Mediaocean’s “Radio Reinvented” panel in Manhattan. Panelists included executives from Pandora, Spotify and Triton Digital. The panelists revealed there are 143 million monthly online radio listeners in the US, representing 53% of […]

Rubicon Project hopes a partnership with video ad platform Virool, unveiled Wednesday, will help shore up more video supply. Rubicon will exclusively sell Virool’s new InLine format through all business lines, including auction-based and guaranteed and non-guaranteed orders. It’s difficult for third-party sellers and marketplaces like Rubicon to access more video inventory, since most premium […]

Facebook is working with a dozen mobile ad networks to better track installs beyond mobile media it directly controls. Millennial Media, InMobi and AppLovin are among the networks to sign on for the beta program, but Facebook’s biggest competitors predictably aren’t playing along. The feature is part of a product called Analytics for Apps that […]

Facebook ad partner Nanigans is lining its coffers with $24 million in fresh funding. The Series B round, announced Wednesday, is being led by Chinese software company Cheetah Mobile, with participation from Avalon Ventures and Wellington Management Company LLP. Nanigans’ total funding now stands at just under $33 million. A good portion of the money, […]

If you’re looking for a last-minute hotel in Times Square, who ya gonna call? Google hopes you’ll simply do a quick search. The company has updated its Google Hotel Ads format, an AdWords product first launched in 2011, to include greater searchability on price and location, user reviews, mobile compatibility and high-res images. Hospitality giant […]

Is traditional advertising dying in the US? Not for midsize advertisers, according to research from Kantar Media. However, while smaller and midsize advertisers are spending more on “traditional linear media,” the largest US advertisers are redirecting those budgets to digital forums. “The growth of the ad market is on two different tracks right now,” said […]

There are a number of reasons programmatic buying has yet to permeate the digital audio space, a growing area that would seem ripe for automation. Among those reasons is a lack of standards. The IAB’s first stab at standardization was the Digital Audio Ad Serving Template (DAAST), which surfaced some six months ago. But according […]

AppNexus has acquired Yieldex, whose platform provides publishers with analytics, forecasting and sales management tools. The deal might help strengthen AppNexus’ relationships with media sellers at a time when direct deals between marketers and publishers represent a growing portion of the programmatic ad pie. The Wall Street Journal placed the deal’s value at approximately $100 million in cash and […]

As it nears its fifth birthday, Nielsen Catalina Solutions (NCS), a joint venture between Nielsen and Catalina, is making moves to marry shopper marketing data with mobile ads to determine the sales impact. “Mobile is a huge area for us and we expect it to be 50% plus of digital media buys in the future, […]

Podcast consumption swelled from 29 million monthly users in 2014 to 46 million in 2015, according to findings from an ongoing study by Edison Research and Triton Digital. The popular podcast “WTF? With Marc Maron” is happily riding the wave. “We’re benefiting from the shifting media landscape,” said the podcast’s producer, Brendan McDonald. “There is […]

In 2008, NBC Universal released a system called TAMI – the Total Audience Measurement Index. Despite the promise of its name, it did not revolutionize TV measurement. In fact, it wasn’t even a system. “It was a spreadsheet that someone updated manually,” recalled Julie DeTraglia, the network’s SVP of digital research, during a Thursday panel […]

Jet.com, the stealth upstart from Marc Lore, the man who sold vertical ecommerce company Quidsi – parent of Diapers.com, Soap.com and BeautyBar.com – to Amazon for $545 million in 2010, wants to remake the commerce model. Primed to launch in late spring, Jet.com seeks to democratize the Amazon marketplace model. Buyers who subscribe for $49.99 […]

The only certainties in life are death, taxes and multiple definitions of “viewability.” The Media Rating Council (MRC) defines a video ad as viewable if half of that ad is in-view for a minimum of two consecutive seconds, but others, like media agency GroupM, are demanding all pixels be in-view with the sound on for at least 50% […]

To power native placements, Condé Nast’s Food Innovation Group selected TripleLift as a technology provider. It will sell native placements directly and through private native marketplaces. In-feed article previews for branded content, such as a recipe, will appear across the Food Innovation Group’s sites. The group reaches 50 million uniques a month across its portfolio, […]

All of La Quinta Inns & Suites’ 2015 insertion orders specify that it will pay for human traffic only. “As a brand that strives to do the most with our resources, and as a challenger brand in the space, it matters when our media dollars aren’t going to real people,” La Quinta director of media […]

So-called marketing clouds have commonly focused on enabling outreach to known customers, which is why they lean heavily on email marketing, CRM and campaign management – while paid media remains an afterthought. But Adobe, whose annual summit began Monday in Salt Lake City, is diving into ad tech with an upgrade to its Media Optimizer […]

“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. Many wines taste delicious despite only making a quick trip from barrel to bottle to glass. Others, however, need time. A really fine wine improves with […]

Ad verifier Integral Ad Science has acquired video analytics startup Veenome in a deal the two companies claim will kick video measurement up a notch. Veenome’s product premise is that advertisers should know the context of the video content around their placement, not simply that they hit their demo targets. Advertisers undoubtedly want to know […]

Facebook made waves two weeks ago when it delisted more than 15 companies from its Facebook Exchange (AdExchanger story). Going forward, only 12 companies will be allowed to trumpet their access to the desktop news feed and right rail ad space that comprises the FBX inventory pool. But that doesn’t tell the whole story. Even […]