Technology

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 […]

Mobile attribution remains a critical challenge for advertisers. Through a partnership with Verizon (which has struck similar deals with BlueKai, BrightRoll and Turn) the demand-side platform (DSP) provider Run is tackling the challenge of deterministic measurement and mobile attribution via its solution Device Connect. AdExchanger spoke with CEO Seth Hittman and product manager Kim Glaser. […]

Following a March launch of its first programmatic platform Video Reach, video ad tech company YuMe showed 40% growth in revenue year-over-year, totaling $37.3 million for the first quarter. While some might say YuMe is late to the programmatic party, cofounder and CEO Jayant Kadambi said the company is methodically building out a diverse set […]

Datalogix nabbed $45 million in Series C funding, led by Wellington Management Company. This latest round brings its total to $111.5 million, according to CrunchBase. The company intends to use the funds to build out its product and attract more clients. The company’s main business is linking online consumer activity with offline shopping behavior. It is one of […]

Mobile app analytics is an increasingly competitive space, as reflected by two acquisitions unveiled Wednesday. Mobile app analytics firm App Annie acquired its competitor, the mobile analytics company Distimo, and Microsoft also bought a mobile app analytics startup. Based in San Francisco, App Annie’s services include app-ranking data, app store SEO tools and marketplace intelligence. […]

David Cooperstein, a darling of the digital marketing analyst ecosystem, has exited Forrester Research to join Simulmedia, a company that harnesses data on how some 50 million Americans watch TV everyday. He’ll be Simulmedia’s chief marketing officer, the company revealed Wednesday. Simulmedia has 85 employees. Cooperstein spent close to five years at the analyst firm, […]

FreakOut, a Japanese demand-side platform (DSP), received the green light to issue an IPO on the Tokyo Stock Exchange’s Mothers Index on June 24. The estimated initial offering price is $19 per share, or about $120 million. AdExchanger spoke with Yugo Asato, CEO and co-founder of the mobile DSP Dobleas (a FreakOut spin-off in 2012), […]

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) welcomed direct marketers and data companies back from the holiday weekend with a 100-plus page report (called “Data Brokers: A Call for Transparency and Accountability”) and a recommendation that Congress enact legislation to ensure industry transparency and customer control over how their data is used. The report singled out nine […]

AdChina, an advertising technology company for both the supply and demand side in China, is expanding its mobile side of the business to incorporate a mobile data management platform (DMP), in addition to the mobile ad network and mobile DSP that the company offers. “Most of our competitors are either PC-only and trying to expand […]

This upfront season, a number of media conglomerates flirted with programmatic TV. ABC, for instance, is beta testing data-driven ad sales via video ad server FreeWheel’s new FourFronts Programmatic tool. Likewise, NBCUniversal’s ad sales chief Linda Yaccarino has spoken of opening up portions of premium network inventory to programmatic sales. As marketer and media company interest […]

German enterprise software giant SAP’s intention to acquire Boston-based behavioral marketing startup SeeWhy sheds light on the former’s future in the marketing tech landscape. As per SAP’s plans, SeeWhy will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of SAP; the initial integration point will be SAP’s commerce platform hybris. “SeeWhy and other investments we’re making are […]

App install ads may be a lucrative product for Facebook, Google and other vendors, but they’re becoming too expensive for app developers, especially since scaling is still a problem for the units. “We found it difficult to acquire new users on mobile devices because it’s super expensive,” said Kenny Rosenblatt, founder and CEO of Arkadium […]

As AdExchanger reported Friday, Google is working on a CMS, likely with its own ad server baked in. The solution is expected to unify the functions of a content management system with the DoubleClick for Publishers toolset – ad serving, sales management, yield optimization, and so on. Google has declined to comment on or confirm the […]

One sign pointing to the maturation of programmatic ad buying tech is the growth of brand messaging. Whereas just last year, ads bought programmatically were 100% direct-response due to retargeting capabilities, the splits now are around 20/80, said Andrew Casale, VP of strategy at supply-side ad tech provider Casale Media. “We speculate that marketer offerings […]

Just a few years ago, brands needed to be educated around the messaging and measurement technologies available in the digital age. That imperative has since shifted as marketing departments try to figure out how they take that technology and maximize results. As a side effect, the line between data and marketing services providers like Experian […]

There’s a new guy in charge at Essence, the 9-year-old agency best known as a key partner to Google on its programmatic and other marketing activities. London-based Essence has promoted Christian Juhl, previously in charge of its North American operations, to run the company as global CEO. With his promotion, founder and previous CEO Matt […]

Rubicon Project is the latest ad tech company to support automation of direct deals. Its first product in this area, called 49bc, will focus on mobile inventory only. Later this year it expects to add support for desktop and video to the toolset, which is still in private beta. Rubicon is one of about 10 […]

Supply-side platform (SSP) provider PubMatic acquired Mocean Mobile (formerly Mojiva), a mobile ad server, for an undisclosed sum, the companies said on Monday. Mocean Mobile’s ad-serving capabilities and its ad network extend the mobile capabilities PubMatic gained from its 2012 acquisition of mobile development tech startup Mobiprim, according to PubMatic President Kirk McDonald. “We launched […]

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 […]