Google and Amazon are going after each other. Google has ramped up commercial search and fulfillment, and Amazon is building a Google-like ecosystem around ads – a project involving an ad-buying platform to rival AdWords, according to The Wall Street Journal. And of course, both are investing heavily in video content and advertising. What is Amazon’s […]
“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 by Josh Herman, vice president of partner and product strategy at Acxiom. Addressable television has arrived, but where is it taking us? With a reach of more than 40 million households and […]
Just days shy of its IPO, Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba Group reported Q2 revenue of $2.54 billion, a 46.4% increase over last year, while net income skyrocketed to $1.99 billion. The company could raise close to an additional $20 billion out of the IPO based on an average valuation of $168 billion. In a revised […]
Monetate, a platform primarily known for landing page optimization, has expanded well beyond the A/B test. Appointing long-time board member and entrepreneur Lucinda Duncalfe as CEO on Tuesday, the Philadelphia-based company says it’s tackling a “multi-billion dollar” market opportunity: digital personalization. While Monetate’s early product strategy around website targeting and optimization drove early growth for […]
Refinery29 started out as a fashion blog, but it’s since expanded its vision: It plans to be the go-to source for millennials on the subjects of beauty, travel and points of view on subjects ranging from dieting to news coming from Ferguson, Mo. It’s also a high-growth company. The digital publication has 15 million monthly uniques, according […]
After committing $100 million to develop original video content this quarter, Amazon has invested a whole lot more in the medium, swooping in Monday with $970 million in cash to acquire the video gaming platform Google had been eyeing: Twitch Interactive. Read the release. Variety first reported news of Google’s interest in May, citing sources claiming it […]
Startups built on programmatic technologies are among the fastest-growing companies in the United States, as reported Monday in Inc. Magazine’s annual 500/5000 revenue survey. Among the notable entries in this year’s list: Demand-side platform MediaMath’s revenue in 2013 reached $310.8 million, representing 490% growth over three years. Its competitor DataXu also made significant revenue strides for the second […]
“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 by Megan Pagliuca, VP and GM for digital media at Merkle Inc. It was penned in response to Rob Griffin’s recent piece, “The Death of the Third-Party Ad Server.” Rob Griffin’s […]
This is the fourth in a series of interviews with vendors combating the problem of ad fraud. Other companies participating in this series include White Ops, DoubleVerify, Moat,Telemetry, Asia RTB and Integral Ad Science. Read previous interviews with Forensiq, Integral Ad Science and Videology. To combat ad fraud, many in the industry have been looking to technology that detects […]
Ever since his company, Automated Insights, announced a partnership with the Associated Press (AP), CEO and founder Robbie Allen says it’s been a bit of a whirlwind. The idea that his Durham, N.C., firm’s technology could automate what reporters do with the appropriate data inputs clearly has larger implications. As The Washington Post and Poynter, among […]
Adobe has tweaked its approach to attribution, removing out-of-view ads from its attribution model in an effort dubbed “Project Iceberg.” The project has allowed the company to analyze the viewability of sequences of ads served to individual users, as part of its larger evaluation of how well those ads drove subscriptions for its Creative Cloud product […]
The independent ad tech company that powers more than 30 billion ad impressions per day through its platform is now, officially, a $1 billion-plus business. AppNexus revealed Monday it has closed a $60 million investment round from an unidentified Boston public equity and asset management firm, valuing the company at about $1.2 billion. At the […]
“Remember, I’m on day five,” Greg Coleman said on Friday. The former president of Criteo, which went public earlier this year, recently hopped aboard BuzzFeed, where he’ll serve as president and on the board of directors. The switch reunites Coleman with many of his old co-workers at Huffington Post, including BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti. Shortly […]
AOL is both a technology company and a publisher, a fact that works in Gravity’s favor. Acquired by AOL in January, Gravity’s 45-person team is a part of AOL’s 4,800-strong workforce and its content personalization engine now powers internal links to AOL’s content repository, which sees 4,000 to 5,000 new articles every day. Gravity’s engine […]
Mobile ad revenue is on growth hormones. New estimates from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), IAB Europe and IHS Technology clocked global mobile advertising at $19.3 billion in 2013 — nearly doubling 2012’s $10.1 billion (the IAB’s previously reported 2012 figure was $8.9 billion, but IAB has since updated it to reflect actuals instead of estimates and different exchange […]
In what IgnitionOne claims to be more than just an acqui-hire, the search and display tech company has snapped up mobile demand-side and data-management platform Human Demand. The deal, which officially went down Wednesday, was completed for somewhere between high seven to low eight figures, according to an industry source close to the matter. IgnitionOne […]
AdStage, a cross-platform campaign automation tool as well as a Facebook and LinkedIn ads API partner, has raised $6.25 million in Series A financing from Verizon Ventures and myriad other investment firms. This brings the company to $8.78 million in total funding since its founding less than two years ago. AdStage will predominantly use the […]
Demand Media has named a former Ticketmaster chief Sean Moriarty as its new CEO. The move follows a rough second quarter, when it revealed last Thursday that its revenue excluding traffic acquisition costs (ex-TAC) declined 10% year-over-year to $87.1 million. The company on Monday also acquired online art community Saatchi Online in a $17 million cash-and-stock deal. Moriarty […]
While Google has gotten really good at display – more than $4 billion in display ad revenue good – how about the rest of Google’s digital marketing stack? Like enterprise platform players Oracle, IBM, Adobe and Salesforce.com, Google’s ad and marketing tech offering is a sum of many acquired parts. Google followed its $3.1 billion […]
Marketers hunger for native ads and publishers, spurred by the format’s lucrative cost, are happy to feed it to them. Yet while most publishers – 93% according to a survey conducted by the Online Publishers Association – claim to have a native offering, 47% of marketers said they were unsatisfied with their ability to distribute […]
This is the second in a series of interviews with vendors combating the problem of ad fraud. Other companies participating in this series include White Ops, DoubleVerify, Forensiq, Moat, PubChecker and Telemetry. Read last week’s interview with Videology. When it comes to detecting and preventing ad fraud, Integral Ad Science is the middleman. That is, […]
Comparison shopping site Shopzilla has a lot of data. About 20 years’ worth, to be exact. Shopzilla’s been around since 1996 and unbeknownst to some, still drives 50 million monthly unique visitors across its owned-and-operated network that includes consumer insights and merchant ratings site Bizrate. But the company will soon become primarily a marketing services […]
“Programmatic ads grew at over 100% year-over-year, and we’re growing faster than the programmatic field overall,” AOL CEO Tim Armstrong told investors looking over the company’s second-quarter results. “Programmatic [ad revenue] has grown from 5% to 34% of our business in a year, which is part of a large industry shift and the biggest shift […]
Supply-side platforms (SSPs) such as OpenX, Rubicon Project and PubMatic are under heavy pressure to increase value for publishers who pay a premium to use their technologies. “The fact that SSPs are positioned on the sell side after much of the transaction value has been extracted by other intermediaries puts more pressure on their margins […]
France-based ad tech company Criteo crossed into the black in the second quarter, recording net income of $3.2 million. During the same time period last year, the company lost $7.5 million. The retargeting-focused display advertising company charges on a CPC model for performance-focused clients. (Earnings release) The solid momentum comes as President Greg Coleman exits to join BuzzFeed as […]
Programmatic ad network Rocket Fuel will acquire [x+1], an older ad tech company with a dual demand-side platform (DSP) and data-management platform (DMP) offering. The estimated value of the deal is $230 million. The acquisition brings Rocket Fuel a strong direct-to-advertiser capability – an area where it is seen as lacking and where [x+1] has strength through client relationships with […]
Media and audience measurement company comScore reported on Tuesday a 14.5% YoY revenue increase for Q2 2014 to $80 million, up from $69.9 million last year. Although comScore renewed its preferred strategic partner deals with agency GroupM and consumer packaged goods company P&G for audience delivery measurement, the company recognizes there is room for improvement […]
After a $25 million Series E injection, mobile ad exchange Smaato — a play on the word “smart” in Japanese — plans to focus on mobile acquisition and building out the self-service side of its automation platform. Smaato began rolling out its self-serve functionality about a year and a half ago. “Too many players are […]
Popular audio-recognition app Shazam, which has amassed 475 million users to date, set its sights on TV Tuesday with the release of a network sales platform called Resonate. Initial launch partners include: A&E, AMC, FUSE and dick clark productions. Kevin McGurn, the company’s chief revenue officer and former SVP of sales for Hulu, said television […]
“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 Terri Walter, chief marketing officer at PubMatic. If you hang out with publishers and others in the media business long enough, you’re going to hear one question come up for discussion […]
Chrome is introducing new metrics that give advertisers and publishers a more data-driven picture of what users actually experience on ad-heavy sites.
The Trade Desk is less than a third as valuable as it was a year ago. It retains about one-tenth of its high-water market cap from December 2024, when the company was worth almost $70 billion. Why did investors lose the faith?
McGrath left Prebid in June following five years as board chairman after stepping down as SVP of product management at Magnite. But now, overseeing Prebid will be his full-time job.
Telly, the startup that gives away free smart TVs in exchange for data and ad exposure, is making its home screen ads available for brands to buy programmatically – and pushing for industry standards to help attract more spend.
L’Oréal adopted creative AI platform Springboards to generate creative ideas that led to a collaborative, ongoing ideation process.
Google won’t have to break up its ads business after being declared an online monopolist. Meanwhile, Amazon faces a lawsuit from the FTC alleging that it charged advertisers more than necessary for ecommerce ads.
