Technology

When it comes to data collection, Apple is on the offensive… and, perhaps, the defensive. There’s no need to read between the lines of Tim Cook’s attack on the data monetizers of the world. As the Apple CEO stated in an open letter posted on Apple’s website Wednesday night: “We don’t build a profile based […]

How bad a problem is online ad fraud, and how should the buy and sell sides divvy the responsibility to combat it? This question formed the crux of the panel “New Methods For Defeating Fraud In The Programmatic Era,” moderated by WPP’s Team Detroit chief digital officer, Kurt Unkel, at Wednesday’s Programmatic I/O conference in New […]

Given the building momentum around native advertising and the growing number of publishers and startups seizing on the trend, it was only a matter of time before the 800-pound gorilla of ad technology threw its hat in the ring. While Google has yet to formally introduce its native offering, numerous AdExchanger sources with knowledge of […]

Chango’s new CRO, Keith Lorizio, has an ad tech CV as long as your arm – but it was only a short while ago that he became a convert to the gospel of programmatic. “I wasn’t a fan of programmatic about three years ago back when I was a rep with a big publisher working […]

Adobe’s fiscal Q3 was relatively strong as the company reported $290 million in revenue for its Adobe Marketing Cloud portfolio of products, up from the $254.9 million recorded in Q3 last year. Adobe Systems’ total revenue was $1 billion in the quarter. Overall, Adobe Marketing Cloud cited strong customer adoption in the third quarter, counting British Sky, Ford Motor […]

During a presentation at the AppNexus annual Summit last November, Microsoft’s Esco Strong made a promise to beef up its exchange inventory. As of Tuesday, Strong, director of programmatic managements, said that promise had been fulfilled in the form of new mobile inventory being made available in the Microsoft Advertising Exchange (MAX). Advertisers in the US, Australia, […]

Data juggernaut Alliance Data Systems (ADS) might keep a relatively low profile, but the multibillion-dollar company has its fingers in quite a few data pies. What it needs now is to connect the dots. And as ADS’ recently announced $2.3 billion acquisition of ad tech company Conversant (née ValueClick/Dotomi) for subsidiary Epsilon denotes, that’s exactly […]

Alliance Data Systems’ (ADS) intent to acquire Conversant (formerly ValueClick) for its Epsilon subsidiary might seem like a change in direction. R Ray Wang, principal analyst and founder at Constellation Research, described the intent to acquire as “the right move” to make Epsilon “a legit…tech company.” On a first gloss that seems like a pivot. Epsilon […]

Wondering about Conversant’s future? Wonder no more, as the ad network turned ad tech company will be acquired by Alliance Data for $2.3 billion in cash and stock. Conversant (formerly known as ValueClick/Dotomi) will be folded into Alliance’s marketing services division Epsilon. Alliance hopes to close the deal by the end of the year. From the release: […]

Using health data for advertising purposes is a hot potato and Apple’s not touching it. The jury’s still out on Google. Despite the upcoming release of the pulse-reading Apple Watch (available early 2015) and Apple pushing its HealthKit API with developers, advertisers won’t have any access to health data derived from related apps or devices. […]

Last month, Slate served 100 million impressions of native ads in 30 days. For the coming fourth quarter, 15 native campaigns are in development. Some are running for a few weeks. A handful of native campaigns involve publication of dozens of posts over a year. Despite that scale, until April of this year, Slate created and […]

Publicis Groupe will make Adobe Marketing Cloud technology available to clients across its agency portfolio, the companies revealed Wednesday. Under the deal, the Paris-based holding company’s agencies will package Adobe MediaOptimizer and Adobe AudienceManager as part of a solution with the name Publicis Groupe Always-On Platform. It’s not the first time the companies have worked together on a large […]

Considering Apple’s user-centric ethos, there’s a slim chance the watch’s tiny screen will ever be host to advertising in the traditional sense. It’s a move that would be “antithetical to the whole way that Apple works,” said Mark Yackanich, CEO of ad company Genesis Media.  “The question to ask ourselves is not a media-specific question, […]

Apple’s first contribution to the wearables market may not be about advertising today or ever – but it could be a step on the way to closing the online/offline gap. The Apple Watch, which fans had previously been referring to as the iWatch, was unveiled to the world Tuesday at Apple’s product launch in Cupertino, […]

An emerging theme at the Digital Marketing Exposition & Conference (DMEXCO) in Cologne, Germany – where 30,000 digital marketers are convening – is building for future cross-channel experiences. Amazon is no stranger to the concept. Although the ecommerce giant has, of late, been reportedly developing an ad platform to rival Google’s, the company maintains a […]

Each day, 7 million fans tune in to YouTube to see bubbly video blogger Bethany Mota make breakfast or braid her hair. The breakout video star draws tweens eager for a taste of Mota’s fashion and beauty must-haves, averaging 100 million minutes of video watched per month. She’s equally attractive to brand advertisers, clinching campaigns […]

Facebook and Twitter are keen to build more commerce functionality into the social stream. Earlier this summer Facebook began working with select commerce brands to support direct transactions on its platform, and Twitter has been expected to produce something similar after sharp-eyed users spotted a semi-functional “buy” button on the site in July. Well, now that other […]

Men’s Health is selling mobile native advertising campaigns directly to advertisers using Sharethrough. The move is part of an expansion in Sharethrough’s business from an in-feed native ad exchange to a facilitator of native deals sold directly via SFP (Sharethrough for Publishers). As of today, all publishers will be able to sell native directly through […]

Berlin-based app attribution provider adjust is planning to use half of its new $7.6 million Series C infusion to expand into US, China and Asia. The round, led by Active Ventures, also included existing investors Target Partners, Iris Capital and Capnamic Ventures, who collectively sank $4.5 million into adjust during a previous funding event. Although […]

Apple is laying down the law for app developers through a set of new rules, which are slated to take effect in conjunction with its long-awaited iPhone release on Monday. Apple’s alterations restrict developers’ access to data from HealthKit, its factory-installed fitness monitoring app, and third-party app extensions. The new stipulations will likely apply to the next-generation […]

“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Will Doherty, senior director of business development at Index Exchange, a division of Casale Media Inc. For four years, I oversaw business development for a programmatic buying platform that integrated supply sources and data […]

Following a $50 million infusion of cash Thursday, mobile location vendor xAd appears to be sitting pretty. The money is a combination of equity and debt financing. XAd is not publicly disclosing the split. According to CEO Dipanshu Sharma, the company doesn’t “have any immediate plans for the funding,” which came courtesy of Institutional Venture Partners, […]

Few publishers can match the scale and reach of The Huffington Post’s 86 million monthly global uniques. The AOL-owned property also has a highly international and social audience, said Tessa Gould, senior director of native advertising at the HuffPost Partner Studio. The studio, created last June, helps brands conceptualize, execute and evaluate native campaigns. “Being […]

No rest for LiveRamp. The Acxiom-owned data onboarding company announced a new partnership Thursday with enterprise tag-management provider Ensighten – the third such alliance in just a little over a week. Prior to the Ensighten deal, LiveRamp joined up with video firm Eyeview and location-focused mobile ad company xAd, both examples, said LiveRamp CEO Auren […]

A year-long effort to redesign About.com and ramp up native ad formats forced the publisher to take a hard look at itself. On the plus side, there was no dearth of content onsite. “We make 6,000-7,000 new pieces of long form content every month and we have a corpus of over 3.5 million articles,” Neil Vogel, About.com’s […]

When the privacy app Disconnect, designed to let consumers control what information other apps can access, was kicked out of the Play store last week, Google charged it with unauthorized interference with other apps, a violation of Google’s developer agreement. From Google’s perspective, Disconnect damages the functionality and health of other apps in the Play […]

Triton Digital, which builds ad tech for digital and broadcast radio, unveiled its supply-side offering, Triton Advertising Platform (Tap), available in two flavors: one for traditional broadcasters and an on-demand offering for Internet-based radio stations. Over the next 18 months, Triton is going to onboard its roughly 6,000 stations in the US, EMEA, LATAM and […]

Coming from the agency world three years ago, Alexa Christon brought creative rather than media experience to her evolving role at GE, where she is now head of media innovation. And, with responsibility for GE’s US media today and an eye toward what her mega-corporation can produce globally, she’s helping to push the envelope of more […]

If cross-device tracking is a room, then Facebook and Google are the elephants – except Google is the only elephant that isn’t talking. Facebook hasn’t been shy about its cross-device intentions. At the time of the Atlas acquisition in 2013, its ads product director, Gokul Rajaram, noted that Facebook’s goal is to “be able to measure […]

It wouldn’t be the first summer weekend French agency holding company Publicis Groupe sent shock waves through the advertising ecosystem. Close to the anniversary of the infamous ad merger of equals that never quite materialized as Publicis Omnicom Group (POG), French pub Boursier reported on a rumor the holding company could be close to extending […]