Technology

Before Brazil defeated Croatia at Arena de Sao Paulo to open the 2014 World Cup, the Coca-Cola Co. unfurled across the pitch the fruits of its biggest marketing campaign in its history: a giant mosaic called the “Happiness Flag.” But this campaign, which ended on the soccer field, began online. Activated across 175 countries, the Happiness Flag […]

“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, co-founder and CEO at TripleLift. Despite being one of the most revered techniques in digital advertising, optimization remains a highly misunderstood concept. While everyone responsible for running a […]

Hulu, Condé Nast Entertainment and other members of the digital video and television industry laid out their measurement and monetization challenges on Wednesday at VideoNuze’s Online Video Advertising Summit. Brands and publishers are well aware of the growing popularity of applying programmatic to direct buys. Hulu for instance has reportedly beta-tested a programmatic exchange for more […]

When they write the history of programmatic advertising, June 2014 will go down as the month when you needed two hands to count the number of big advertisers running their machine-driven media buys in-house. Procter & Gamble, American Express and Mondelez all recently joined the small club of brands embracing exchange-traded media (existing members include Kellogg’s, […]

[X+1] has added a new component to its data-management platform (DMP) called Origin KeyChain to expand its offline targeting capabilities. “Prior to KeyChain, we could do offline targeting for our customers, but only for their customer IDs and not for prospects,” said CEO John Nardone. Here’s how it works. Generally speaking, DMPs gather user information […]

IZEA, a company that connects social media content creators with brands, recently rolled out a cloud-based “Sponsorship Marketplace” to help advertisers automate content distribution and measurement. IZEA’s network is comprised of over 50,000 registered advertisers and agencies. Some of the company’s agency partners include Mindshare, Starcom, Initiative, Ogilvy and Hill Holliday. Founder and CEO Ted […]

On Tuesday at the Cannes Lions festival, leaders of the world’s four largest agency trading desks participated in a panel hosted by Rubicon Project. The discussion touched on a wide range of topics, including deal automation, technology investment and transparency. One macro takeaway is that the so-called trading desks resemble each other less than they used to. […]

Amazon preluded its “big reveal” Wednesday (Fire phone) with a word to app developers: “We’re where you want to be.” The company also struck a deal Wednesday with BlackBerry to offer the Amazon Appstore as a lifeline to BlackBerry’s fledgling of an apps ecosystem. Amazon’s Appstore sits somewhere in the 240,000 app range, coming close to tripling its […]

When Xaxis released its proprietary data-management platform (DMP) last week, competitors backhanded the WPP-owned tech shop with compliments. On the one hand, $25 million is an impressive figure for a company to invest in technological innovation. On the other hand, what good is this technology if clients are scared off by Xaxis’ opaque business model? […]

Scott Ferris, GM of television and video at Microsoft Advertising, has been in the video biz for around three decades. For seven of those years, Ferris has been at Microsoft, heading up its video business group. Most recently however, he’s taken the lead role in what Microsoft calls its Content and Entertainment business group, which […]

GroupM made waves last week when Ari Bluman, chief digital investment officer for North America, said WPP Group’s media agencies will stop buying impressions in open auctions by the end of 2014. It turns out that’s not quite the case, as Brian Lesser, CEO of WPP’s Xaxis programmatic platform, made clear in public comments Tuesday […]

Adobe Systems’ fiscal Q2 numbers are in – quarterly revenue for the Adobe Marketing Cloud suite was $283 million, a 23% increase year-over-year. Adobe expressed strength in its outlook for Marketing Cloud, targeting 20% year-over-year future revenue growth. Adobe’s total fiscal second quarter earnings were strong, coming in at $1.07 billion with non-GAAP earnings at 37 cents […]

Why did Singapore Telecommunications’ ad tech subsidiary Amobee buy Adconion and Kontera for a combined $385 million? For Amobee CEO Mark Strecker, it was a matter of moving Amobee’s focus from mobile advertising to digital advertising. And the company needed Kontera’s technological assets and Adconion’s business organization to accomplish that. Once integrated, Amobee will have […]

Following its glitzy, star-studded digital NewFront in April, AOL got down to business. It closed in on marketing attribution vendor Convertro the same day Google grabbed pure-play competitor Adometry in early May. Then it went shopping again, snapping up TV audience-targeting platform PrecisionDemand. AOL’s acquisitive behavior is not entirely surprising. The company is constructing an […]

Yet another data-management platform (DMP) has hit the market, at least for clients of Xaxis, WPP’s trading desk. The DMP, called Turbine, is the fruits of a $25 million investment. “The strategy we designed with Xaxis was to develop the pieces of the ad tech stack that gave the most competitive advantage to our clients,” […]

Apple caused a stir this week when news broke that the upcoming mobile operating system iOS 8 could deliver a blow to location-based trackers by scrambling the MAC (Media Access Control) address. Despite the name, the MAC address is not Apple-specific. Apple began restricting access to MAC addresses last September, when its release of iOS […]

Singapore Telecommunications’ intent to acquire cross-channel ad platform Adconion (at a $235 million valuation) and ad network Kontera (at a $150 million valuation), on behalf of its mobile ad solutions subsidiary Amobee, is yet another example of a telco diving deeper into ad tech. SingTel’s announcement arrives less than a month after news broke of […]

Independent media agency Harmelin Media, whose clients include BET and Blue Diamond Almonds, is constructing its own in-house trading desk. Working with TubeMogul, Harmelin, which used to work with a dozen vendors, will commit programmatic video buys to a single platform. Harmelin is doing this so it can be a better steward of client campaigns. […]

Tealium became the latest tag management system (TMS) provider to pivot away from pure play TMS on Wednesday when it released a tool designed to help companies link their various standalone marketing technologies. This puts Tealium on the same path as other TMS providers (like BrightTag, which renamed itself Signal and rolled out an Open […]

Tag management technology company BrightTag changed its name to Signal on Tuesday and rolled out an “Open Data Platform” for marketers to link disparate data collection sources such as CRM, email, DSPs and DMPs. This comes on the heels of a small acquisition the company made just days ago of Signal, an email and SMS marketing […]

Monetizing apps in the iOS environment means playing by Apple’s rules, and occasionally adapting to changes in how those rules are enforced. Sometimes those changes can impact the way ads are served and tracked, as happened back in February when Apple (briefly) put a barbed wire fence around the use its Identifier For Advertising for […]

Since demand-side platform (DSP) SiteScout’s $40 million acquisition by Centro in last November, the company has evolved its business model from a pure self-serve platform to managed services. Shawn Riegsecker, Centro’s CEO, hinted at the time of acquisition the company might acquire a data-management platform to extend its biddable media offerings. Matt Sauls, cofounder and […]

WPP-owned Kinetic Worldwide accounts for the planning and buying of more than 40% of all digital out-of-home media (DOOH) around the globe. The UK-based company contracts with more than 50 domestic, regional and global clients, including Vodafone, Molson Coors, Warner Bros. Pictures and Tesco. The Outdoor Media Center, Institute of Practitioners in Advertising and Route use Kinetic’s software. […]

Millennial Media is beefing up its location data prowess. The mobile ad network is rolling out an audience location ad suite dubbed “Point” and is teaming up with mapping and geo-analytics mainstay Esri. Point unifies three location-based products: Point Audience Frames, powered by Esri, which lets advertisers use hyper-local data to build campaigns; Point-Fencing Route, […]

The world’s largest independent ad tech company broke character this week. Before snatching up Paris-based ad viewability firm Alenty, as AdExchanger was first to report, AppNexus had been historically inclined to build rather than buy owing to its strong engineering culture. But that may be changing as bargains present themselves in the form of mature […]

When Google poached former L’Oréal CMO Marc Speichert last month, the advertising world wondered about the search giant’s evolving branding goals. Over the last few years, many of Google’s recruits came from brands. It’s likely not a coincidence that Google is advertising itself in more traditional forums. It’s running a campaign that places its YouTube […]

Companies face a paradox. Consumers want to be rewarded for their loyalty to a company or brand, but recoil when asked to share their personal data. At the same time, companies risk losing their competitive edge by not personalizing their offerings and acknowledging loyal customers. Marketers toss around terms like “value” and “transparency” when explaining […]

The road to “programmatic premium,” once a cow path, has become a highway (OK, maybe a county road) cutting through the heart of ad land. And Google can’t take its foot off the gas pedal. The company on Wednesday rolled out a programmatic video marketplace called Google Partner Select and announced support for direct deals through the DoubleClick platform. The […]

Two months after the Media Ratings Council (MRC) green-lighted viewable impressions as a viable metric for transacting display ads, real-time bidding platform AppNexus has acquired French viewability vendor Alenty for an undisclosed sum. The deal closed Monday, AppNexus confirmed to AdExchanger. Paris-based Alenty was founded in 2007 by CEO Laurent Nicolas and CTO Nicolas Thomas. It claims to […]

MediaMath received $73.5 million in Series C funding, led by Spring Lake Equity Partners, bringing its total to $175 million. The ad tech company will devote the funds to honing its flagship TerminalOne Marketing Operating System product and for global expansion into EMEA, APAC and LATAM markets. This infusion is MediaMath’s first round of funding […]