Technology

Are programmatic media companies about to hit the wall? Ken Sena, managing director and Internet analyst at investment banking analyst firm Evercore Partners, is wary. Despite the exuberant expectations around companies like Criteo and Rocket Fuel, Sena sees a possible multifront threat on the horizon. In an Evercore report called “Questioning Competitive Barriers In Programmatic,” […]

During his three years at Kellogg Company, Bob Arnold became a poster child for programmatic buying at the brand marketer level. Arnold, who recently quit cereal to join Google, presented his rules for programmatic at the Association of National Advertisers’ Media Leadership Conference in Boca Raton, Fla., on Tuesday. His key message: Don’t let complexity […]

As consumer apps companies ramp up efforts in geo-targeted ads and hyper-local search, Foursquare has responded by turning check-in data into marketing services opportunities. Following a February announcement that Microsoft would invest $15 million in the location-savvy startup after its $35 million Series D in December, Foursquare’s revenue stream – and data reach – may get […]

Amazon’s rumored development of an ad-supported, free streaming media service, reported first by the Wall Street Journal Thursday, but subsequently denied by a company spokesperson, could solidify its relationship with FreeWheel. FreeWheel is a video ad platform used by Comcast and Amazon among others. When Comcast announced its intent to acquire FreeWheel earlier this month, […]

Despite the recent headlines generated around Newegg.com’s battles with patent trolls, the company is best known as an ecommerce retailer of computer hardware and software. The company is privately held, and has an estimated revenue of $2.8 billion. A large part of Newegg’s growth has to do with its continuous customer acquisition. At Adobe Summit 2014 the […]

Digital ad fraud has lately gained mainstream awareness, and many marketers at leading brands now realize the threat that fraud poses to their ability to track online advertising. A Wall Street Journal piece last week chronicled concerns at organizations like L’Oreal, General Motors and Verizon Communications. Fortunately for marketers, as the bad guys are shifting their […]

Video demand-side platform TubeMogul on Wednesday filed its S-1 registration document with the US Securities Exchange Commission, signaling its intention to raise $75 million in an initial public offering. Read the S-1. In the filing, TubeMogul stated, “For 2011, 2012 and 2013, our total revenue was $15.7 million, $34.2 million and $57.2 million, respectively, representing […]

With Tuesday’s announcement that SAP will resell Adobe Marketing Cloud, packaged with the analytics platform HANA and the ecommerce solution hybris, it’s fair to wonder what SAP’s role in digital marketing will be going forward. Will it, for instance, ever develop its own marketing cloud to compete with Oracle, Salesforce.com or IBM? Brian Walker, chief […]

Every couple of months, Adobe announces a new element of integration with its marketing automation and email product Campaign, the sixth and most recent addition to the Marketing Cloud. Last September, Campaign rebranded from Neolane, its maiden name before Adobe acquired the marketing automation company. In January, Adobe stated its intention to integrate Campaign with […]

MyBuys, a provider of personalized recommendations solutions for retailers, has rolled out a display ad offering called MyAds and rewired its product suite. CEO Bob Cell said the changes let marketers more easily measure across the full consumer journey. And just as larger vendors like Adobe have moved toward “customer profile” pricing schemas, so too […]

For anyone wondering what SAP AG is up to these days in digital marketing, an answer was provided at the Adobe Summit in Salt Lake City. SAP has a global partnership with Adobe to resell the latter’s Marketing Cloud along with SAP’s HANA platform and its hybris Commerce Suite. Read the release. Let’s back up […]

If Adobe’s Monday announcements at its annual Summit are any indication, the theme for the company’s Marketing Cloud going into 2014 is “Integration.” This theme manifests in new features Adobe introduced including: a customer data repository (Master Marketing Profile), the ability to evaluate online and offline marketing activities (Marketing Mix Planning), deeper integration with Adobe’s […]

Self-serve programmatic media buying is gaining favor with the in-house marketing set. That was a key trend that emerged at AdExchanger’s Programmatic I/O conference in San Francisco Monday, where approximately 500 marketers and data-driven tech companies convened to share how programmatic media buying is changing advertising. At the outset of the show, AdExchanger Director of […]

Tag-management systems (TMS) are ripe for acquisition. Enterprise tech firms with data-management platforms (DMPs) have commonly incorporated them into their stacks, either by building their own or, like Adobe, by buying a start-up shop. But last week’s acquisition of TagMan by rival firm Ensighten was unusual in that it was a tag-management firm acquiring another […]

“The Sell-Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Bob Walczak, general manager of mobile and video at PubMatic. When it comes to publishers, premium is the operative word, a designation that, like VIP access to any major event, opens up a whole new […]

If all goes according to plan, Rubicon Project’s public offering will raise about $108 million ($77 million after expenses) in cash and give it a market cap of $671 million. In an update to its January S-1 filing with the US Securities And Exchange Commission, the company said shareholders will offer 6.8 million shares of […]

Facebook and Google have emerged as the front-runners in the race to capture mobile ad dollars, with Google leading the charge. Facebook’s efforts to extend its mobile reach and rapid growth has made it a strong contender for first place, but can the behemoth social network overtake Google’s hold on mobile advertising? It is difficult […]

“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 Matt Scharf, manager of display media operations and analytics at Adobe. The topic of viewability has infiltrated our lives. Viewability vendors flood the marketplace as marketers take steps to measure […]

As brick and mortar giants like Walmart and Tesco do more to monetize their customer data, the question becomes – will they go it alone or maintain third-party partnerships? Tesco subsidiary dunnhumby’s rumored purchase of demand-side platform Sociomantic is the most obvious example of a seismic shift that’s occurring in the shopper data space. The […]

Adobe’s fiscal Q1 (Oct to Dec 2013) delivered healthy demand for its six-product-strong Marketing Cloud suite, which includes Media Optimizer, Social, Analytics, Target, Experience Manager and the newest entrant to the pack, Campaign. “When we look at prospects for Marketing Cloud, we are optimistic,” CEO Shantanu Narayen said during Tuesday’s earnings call. Customers licensing Marketing Cloud products in Q1 include […]

Are brick-and-mortar retail chains setting their sights on demand-side platforms (DSPs)? The rumor that Tesco’s customer insights subsidiary, Dunnhumby, will acquire Sociomantic, a DSP provider, adds fuel to the possibility. And whether or not the rumored acquisition is true, industry experts expect to see more retailers working with DSPs. If the deal occurs, Dunnhumby will […]

Ex-Googler Graham Cooke believes that just as the data-management platform (DMP) space has evolved and entered a period of consolidation and attracted new cash injections, so too will the tag managers. Prior to founding Qubit in 2010 with Emre Baran, who spent four years in product management on Google AdWords and AdSense, and two other former Googlers, […]

Programmatic buying is becoming increasingly important to the China advertising industry. But in recent weeks, executives, including Publicis’ Maurice Levy, have shared how a dip in the luxury market in China has affected their business. We reached out to several industry executives in China with the following question: How is the slowdown in the China […]

Skullcandy knows that getting consumers to buy multiple designer headphones and earbuds can be a tough sell. After issuing an initial public stock offering at $20 a share in 2011, the Park City, Utah-based company’s stock fell as low as $4.80 last May and hovered at $9.54 on Friday. The company has vowed to turn […]

The repercussions of cable heavyweight Comcast’s planned acquisitions of Time Warner Cable and video ad-serving platform FreeWheel are still unknown. One of the biggest questions for ad industry insiders is the extent to which the preexisting relationship between Amazon and FreeWheel, announced in early February, will continue. Although neither Amazon nor FreeWheel have confirmed whether […]

Microsoft has added new ad formats to Skype’s “connection hub,” the screen users see before and after placing calls and while instant messaging each other. The new placements are a logical way to boost Skype’s monetization. The company hopes connection hub ads will generate an at least 20 billion additional impressions per month for advertisers. […]

The term “programmatic” is contentious even among its faithful adherents. Not only does it inadequately describe a range of ad-buying activities, it also implies that everything is done automatically, as if robots are replacing a human sales staff. But a panel during the Premium Programmatic 360 summit (presented by Sonobi and MediaMath) held Wednesday in […]

Traditional radio as a hotbed for ad tech? Well, not really – or at all – but this is precisely the problem Jelli co-founder and CEO Mike Dougherty recognized when his company launched on Wednesday a platform, called RadioSpot, designed to enable programmatic buying for radio advertising. “Radio is a little more simple [than digital […]

Israel-based performance network Matomy on Monday signaled its intent to go public in a letter filed with the London Stock Exchange. As we noted earlier, the company aims to raise $100 million at a valuation of around $400 million. The filing also revealed Matomy has 388 employees, and more than 1,500 clients. Matomy’s business is […]

Although Google is the $4 billion darling of the US display ad space, players like AOL, Amazon and Facebook are closing in on that share. Most noticeably, Facebook, which for the first time last quarter served more ad impressions on mobile devices than on the desktop, experienced a 50.5% increase in US digital display ad […]