Technology

AT&T’s plans to acquire satellite and pay TV provider DirecTV for an estimated sum of $49 billion, revealed Sunday, gives the carrier more reach – but it also could help the carrier scale its addressable TV initiatives. “AT&T and DirecTV combined will have a massive base of customers to market to, and that is a […]

“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 Kirk McDonald, president at PubMatic. To hear the business pages tell it, ad tech is a category very busy growing up: With high expectations for the industry’s major players, and […]

There are many differences between programmatic buying in China versus the United States. Among them is that companies in the United States are often very focused, creating more fragmentation than you see in China. iClick Interactive, a DSP in China, sees itself as a unified platform that offers advertisers support throughout many phases of the digital media […]

Google is developing a content management system (CMS) that would unify editorial, advertising and perhaps commerce activities for media companies, AdExchanger has learned. Beginning in 2013 Google started talks with some big publishers about offering software to help manage content and advertising in a holistic way, multiple sources said. Among the executives involved in some of those early discussions […]

Demand for location-based ad inventory is rising and PubMatic, the supply-side platform (SSP) provider, is one of the latest companies to boost its location-enabled inventory. PubMatic teamed up with location-based ad network xAd to create a programmatic marketplace of location-verified inventory, the companies said Friday. “Location is critical from a mobile standpoint,” said Bob Walczak, […]

Matching offline data with online data is a key element to getting what marketers like to call “the 360-degree view of the customer.” That’s the core component of LiveRamp’s business, which is why it had such close relationships with data marketing companies. The sponsor list for its 2014 RampUp conference is a who’s who of data […]

The line between enterprise software and digital agencies is blurring. As the merger between Publicis and Omnicom came to a screeching halt last week, the growing demand for data and tech prowess within the agency environment was all too apparent. In the case of computing giant IBM, developing an in-house agency has been a (lesser-known) […]

“Marketer’s Note” is a weekly column informing marketers about the rapidly evolving, digital marketing technology ecosystem. It is written by Joanna O’Connell, Director of Research, AdExchanger Research.   Today marks the release of AdExchanger Research’s inaugural State of Programmatic Media report. Based on data gleaned from more than 450 completed surveys and a range of in-depth […]

Data management firm Acxiom will acquire LiveRamp, provider of a data onboarding software used by many in the advertising industry to match offline data to digital audiences for ad targeting and measurement. The deal is worth $310 million and is expected to close mid-summer, the companies said. Taking up with Acxiom will let LiveRamp scale its product and expand […]

When IBM acquired email and marketing automation platform Silverpop, industry watchers wondered if this meant IBM, too, was building its own marketing cloud. What integration plans did IBM have for Silverpop? What technological gap, specifically, did the acquired company fill? Bill Nussey, Silverpop’s president and CEO, who has since joined IBM, spoke with AdExchanger at the […]

If Oracle will flaunt the tight integration of its Marketing Cloud, so too will Adobe. The company, at its Digital Marketing Summit EMEA in London Wednesday, revealed (among other Marketing Cloud enhancements) tighter integration between its Media Optimizer and Analytics applications. In so doing, Adobe seems to be in the early stages of positioning itself as a […]

Forrester Research’s Wave report on Web analytics providers positioned Adobe Analytics Premium as the clear winner. The report prioritized vendors’ ability to serve enterprise clients. Lagging just behind Adobe in the “leader” category were IBM, Webtrends and AT Internet. Google was a “strong performer” and SAS Institute was a “contender.” No vendors were classified as […]

Programmatic and real-time bidding capabilities are quickly emerging as differentiating factors in the native advertising landscape. But as more companies enter the space offering similar features, telling them apart becomes increasingly challenging. Nativo and TripleLift are two such native ad companies that both offer programmatic capabilities. Here’s a snapshot look at how they differ. For […]

Rocket Fuel intends to release a free anti-fraud product in June called Bot Or Not – available to advertisers regardless of whether they’re clients. (Update 5/27: The company has settled on the name Botfinder.) CTO Mark Torrance announced the product’s existence at the Rocket Fuel Summit in New York City on Tuesday and shined a little light into […]

As if taking a cue from tech counterparts uniting their point solutions onto a single platform (like Salesforce1, Neustar’s PlatformOne and AOL’s ONE), enterprise giant IBM Tuesday rolled out IBM “ExperienceOne,” a cloud and on-premise tech portfolio that is a culmination of its acquisitions and services. These include Sterling Commerce, DemandTec, Tealeaf, Unica and Xtify. It will be […]

CBS Sports SVP and GM Jason Kint will as of May 27 serve as the new CEO of the Online Publishers Association (OPA), a non-profit trade organization representing the interests of premium online publishers like The New York Times, NBCUniversal and the Associated Press. Current OPA president Pam Horan is stepping down after 10 years. […]

When ad tech company IgnitionOne acquired data-management platform (DMP) Knotice, did it become a marketing cloud? CEO Will Margiloff would say the company was one even before. In the most literal sense, he’s right: “We decided back in 2011, well before anyone talked about marketing clouds, that you need to integrate the disparate pieces of […]

Tremor Video’s management this week hammered on the company’s embrace of programmatic video and talked up plans to roll out a supply-side platform (SSP) for premium publishers later this year. (Read the earnings release.) Tremor posted a top-line revenue increase of 40.8% year over year, to $34.9 million. CEO Bill Day emphasized during Tremor’s earnings call the company’s […]

Jonathan Becher has a lot on his mind this week. As CMO of global German enterprise software company SAP, which employs 67,000, he spearheads the messaging for a multi-billion dollar public business. And on Sunday, that business announced the departure of Vishal Sikka, one of its product pioneers who tirelessly evangelized SAP’s high-speed-everything engine HANA. […]

After AOL’s and Google’s respective acquisitions of Convertro and Adometry, the space held by independent marketing attribution vendors immediately shrank. Remaining companies include Visual IQ, C3 Metrics, DataSong, DC Storm, and Encore Metrics. But what is the future of these attribution pure-plays as enterprise stacks invest in cross-channel technologies? “I see a complete collision course with […]

Following Google and AOL’s acquisitions of multitouch attribution vendors Adometry and Convertro Tuesday, several questions arose. The first, and perhaps easiest to answer: What was the driving force for the purchasers and how will the technologies plug into their existing platforms? “The macro rationale for both of the acquisitions seems to be the growing need […]

Marketing attribution and device fragmentation continue to prevent advertisers from further investing in mobile advertising, said MasterCard and Chrysler executives in a panel discussion at the Mobile Marketing Association’s New York Forum on Tuesday. Bob Arnold, digital strategy and media lead of North America at Google, moderated a discussion with Benjamin Jankowski, group head of […]

Digital marketing attribution is in vogue. AOL will acquire attribution vendor Convertro for approximately $101 million, the company announced Tuesday afternoon. This comes on the heels of Google’s move earlier in the day to snap up competing attribution pure play vendor Adometry for an undisclosed sum. Customers will have access to Convertro in a couple […]

Salesforce.com released Tuesday the Radian6 + Buddy Media Social Studio, indicating new life for a string of social acquisitions the company has made in recent years. “For the first time, you can listen, publish content, and track it through to results all as part of a stack that also includes email, Web, and mobile,” said […]

Google will scoop up Adometry, a marketing attribution firm whose product is designed to assign value to incremental media impressions. Some industry watchers, like research firm Forrester, consider Adometry’s solution superior to Google’s home-grown technology. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Austin, Texas-based Adometry and its approximately 130 employees will eventually be incorporated into the Google Analytics […]

Big box retailer Walmart’s software and technology accelerator @WalmartLabs has acquired Adchemy, the developer of a SaaS platform that essentially makes retail product search smarter. Silicon Valley-based @WalmartLabs, which employs 2,100 people, was founded three years ago as a way to develop and scale technology to tap into online buying patterns of the store’s 245 […]

Since going public in Q4 2013, Criteo has had an easier time signing new advertisers – especially in Europe, where the business environment is more cautious overall and advertisers carefully examine credentials when making vendor selections. In the first quarter of this year, the French ad tech company’s business wins in the EMEA region included […]

Video search engine Blinkx has acquired Lyfe Mobile, a 3-year-old startup that delivers targeted ads based on geographic data and other location-based analytics, in an all-cash transaction, the companies said Tuesday. Based in Santa Monica, Calif., Lyfe Mobile offers audience-targeting features using GPS data combined with other data points such as weather, traffic and population […]

TubeMogul, whose IPO is expected soon, saw revenue from direct users of its demand-side platform (DSP) ramp up dramatically in the first quarter of the year. According to an updated S-1 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, total revenue for Q1 2014 grew to $22 million, 130% more than it made the first three months […]

Google is walking the walk when it comes to promoting YouTube personalities. After hearing from agencies that it was not acting swiftly enough to tout its own programming, the video platform embarked this month on a “massive” TV, print and out-of-home campaign starring several of its high-profile personalities (YouTube calls them creators) that target Millennial […]