Technology

If you made it to AppNexus’ New York Summit on Wednesday, you might have come away feeling that the programmatic frontier has been largely colonized — at least as pertains to traditional display — and the remaining work to be done is along the lines of tree clearing and swamp draining. VC investment has slowed […]

What could be coined Amazon’s original advertising product, the Amazon Associates affiliate marketing program, connects advertisers to more than a million products in its marketplace. As standard affiliate models go, publishers can run traditional text links or customized image links, widgets with Amazon functionality or banner promotions and ads in return for an advertising fee […]

There are plenty of reasons, mostly technological, why integrated desktop/smartphone/tablet campaigns are tough to pull off for brand advertisers. Throw in an exchange-based ad strategy and the complexity goes through the roof. Ryan Christensen, AppNexus’ VP of product, teamed up with Julienne Thompson, VP for programmatic business at mobile ad network (and AppNexus partner) Millennial […]

Google’s product listing ads (PLAs) have positioned it for a strong holiday season, possibly at the expense of Amazon. Based on data compiled in the third quarter, search and digital marketing agency RKG found that among 500 online retail clients, Google search spending increased 18% year over year. In Q3 alone, Google PLAs drove 35% […]

French retargeter Criteo has officially gone public, and would seem to be riding the same wave of algorithmic enthusiasm that buoyed Rocket Fuel’s IPO last month. Within an hour of beginning trading on NASDAQ at $31 per share, CRTO jumped 33% to $41. The price puts its market cap is $2.26 billion — about on […]

Updated: Criteo went public Wednesday morning at $31, and is now trading at $41. On Monday we noted that Criteo’s underwriters had increased the target price for its upcoming IPO to $27-$29, exactly the range where Rocket Fuel debuted last month. Now comes word that the price has gone up again, this time to $31 […]

Some businesses see opportunity in flipping the assumption that Internet users are passive recipients of targeted advertising.  The idea that they should be able to control their data and decide which companies to share it with has given rise to “data lockers” — online accounts where people store their personal information and ideally provide more […]

The second big “ad-tech IPO” in as many months is upon us. French retargeting firm Criteo is now expected to price its public offering tonight, a couple of days earlier than previously planned. And the deal’s underwriters have bumped the target price from $23-$26 to $27-$29, suggesting strong demand in the wake of senior management’s […]

Most Facebook observers would be hard-pressed to find “negatives” in the evolution of the company’s ad products over the past year. Performance continues to improve, as detailed in a new report from Adobe. Mobile monetization is proceeding apace. And it has executed on programmatic selling, through its Facebook Exchange, Custom Audiences database match program and Partner […]

Method of delivery is apparently the new black in retail marketers’ holiday ’13 arsenal. And, it’s on the minds of the commerce masses. This week, after stumbling back from a Q3 earnings call that painted a somewhat stormy picture of its holiday ecommerce expectations (“deceleration” was the word used), eBay made a move to acquire […]

Location-based startups that allow advertisers to personalize their offers and provide other customized services are quickly becoming a highly lucrative space. Google recently bought Waze, the geography-based navigation application, for approximately $1 billion and Foursquare is exploring an IPO. Panelists Matt Turck, managing director of First Mark Capital, and Ben Siscovick, a former partner of […]

Amazon fielded two inquiries from analysts about advertising services on today’s Q3 earnings call, but CFO Tom Szkutak wasn’t biting. Brian Pitz, managing director at Jefferies & Co., asked Szkutak about domestic ecommerce trends, as well as the growth of Amazon Web Services and Advertising Services. (The company reports the groups together in an “other” […]

Google and Publicis Groupe’s MediaVest have signed an upfront agreement, with the media agency committing to spend a “significant amount” of ad dollars on YouTube and Google’s other display and mobile properties, including its ad networks. The deal is “open-ended” and simply involves the promise of spending a set amount in advance, perhaps up to […]

Microsoft has added a new unique identifier to Windows 8.1 to help app developers better monetize their apps, the company said today. “Specifically, in Windows 8.1 we include a unique identifier that can be used to improve the quality and relevance of advertisements displayed within Windows Store apps while providing other services such as analytics […]

In August, Amazon opened its longstanding Amazon Associates Web affiliate program to mobile developers looking to monetize in-app purchases. Using the Amazon Mobile Associates API, game and app developers could earn up to 6% in advertising fees on all Amazon product purchases they helped facilitate. And Amazon Appstore Developer Select launched in early October for […]

Facebook’s barricade against Google held up a long time, but the wall had to fall: Google wanted the audience, marketers wanted the interoperability and Facebook wanted the demand. As we reported Friday, after giving Google the cold shoulder for more than a year, Facebook has decided to let DoubleClick Bid Manager bring its buying clout […]

Amazon, the ever-silent commerce stalwart, may be next in line to join the Facebook Exchange party, according to AdExchanger sources. Today, Facebook finally granted (long-awaited?) access to Google’s demand-side platform, DoubleClick Bid Manager, to enable DoubleClick advertisers to dish up retargeted ads on the social network through integration to FBX. A number of DSP partners like […]

It’s been a busy third quarter on the mergers and acquisitions front. Yahoo has been the most active acquirer of online and mobile companies in 2013, closing seven deals in the third quarter alone. A vast majority of its recent deals were in the mobile and social space, including AdMovate, Hitpost and Rockmelt. Other notable […]

More than a year after Facebook opened its exchange, Google is finally being integrated into the retargeting service through its demand side platform, DoubleClick Bid Manager (fka Invite Media), the company said in a blog post. The integration comes a day after Google posted Q3 earnings that demonstrated the slowing of its paid click growth […]

“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 Brian Stempeck, senior vice president of strategic business development at The Trade Desk. Editor’s note: This is an updated version of a previously published column. Quick! Name a single 30-second […]

Google turned in another reliably strong quarter in Q3, as revenues were up 12% over the previous year. But despite its status as a display ad leader battling it out with Facebook for dominance of the space, network revenues made up a smaller share of the search giant’s total sales. Read the earnings release. The […]

Supply-side platform PubMatic has created an advisory unit as it looks to differentiate itself from other publisher technology providers. As CEO Rajeev Goel tells it, publishers’ use of programmatic is expanding in a variety of ways and many want to take more control with a “do-it-yourself” sensibility. “Our industry is at a tipping point, as […]

Oracle has acquired cloud content marketing platform Compendium for an undisclosed sum. Oracle, which bought marketing automation company Eloqua for $871 million last December, has since formalized that deal into the Oracle Eloqua Marketing Cloud and has plans to improve “top-of-the-funnel” customer engagement with its acquisition of Compendium, according to the company. These moves are […]

The convergence of creativity and technology is shifting the dialog between consumers, agencies and brands. An on-stage discussion at the DMA 2013 conference in Chicago attempted to chart that shift by answering the question, “Does data drive the big idea or vice versa?” On the panel were Doug Bryan, a principal engineer at RichRelevance; Ben […]

A significant update to Adobe’s Analytics suite seems almost on cue from Google, which recently formalized data-driven attribution modeling for Analytics Premium users. One new feature, Anomaly Detection, helps users identify statistical anomalies in their marketing data —  useful for incident detection or to expose new areas of opportunity. “The more advanced feature we’re announcing […]

Analytics provider Metamarkets has named Criteo Managing Director Jacob Ross as chief revenue officer, a new position as the company has doubled its staff in the past year. Jacobs’ hire, which gives Metamarkets 40 employees, comes after two other additions at the executive level in August, when the company brought in Rubicon’s Ron Claypool as VP […]

“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 Anand Das, co-founder and chief technology officer at PubMatic. It’s only October – way too early for end-of-year summaries – but one thing is already certain: 2013 marks the beginning […]

MAGNA GLOBAL Research has issued a new report this morning chock full of data that shows robust growth in programmatic buying of digital media. For starters, the company says that in the U.S. programmatic inventory (display, mobile, social, video) will hit $7.4 billion this year. Of that, $3.9 billion will be real-time biddable, which $3.5 […]

In the past week, Integral Ad Science and DoubleVerify – two companies whose aim is to ensure that brand advertisers get the kind of exposure and inventory they expect – unveiled their respective tools designed to limit, if not eliminate, the waste caused by fraudulent traffic – namely “bots.” The new tools, as outlined by […]

Alibaba Group, the Chinese equivalent of Amazon, has invested $206 million in ShopRunner, a member-only subscription ecommerce platform connecting consumers to hundreds of retail brands (like Toys R Us and Tommy Hilfiger) and a plethora of perks — like free, two-day shipping and express checkout for $79 a year or $8.95 a month. Alibaba, in […]