Technology

Location-based technology has come a long way from geofences. As mobile usage grows, location data has become more granular, providing marketers with greater opportunities to fine-tune their messages—but it has also created more complications. Apple, for example, switched on its iBeacon technology on Friday to send customers’ tailored messages depending on their exact location in […]

Both agencies and ad partners draw comparisons between Twitter’s launch on Thursday of retargeting product Tailored Audiences and Facebook Exchange (FBX). Just how technically similar they are remains to be seen, but the industry is buzzing about the ad product’s cross-channel targeting potential. We asked some Tailored Audience partners, media agencies and a beta tester to […]

“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 Jeff Green, CEO at The Trade Desk. Mozilla is no longer out alone calling for the end of third-party cookies; others such as Google and Microsoft have joined the fray in […]

After beta-testing retargeting capabilities back in July, Twitter rolled out Tailored Audiences globally Thursday. The offering includes website retargeting along with third-party audience segments, supported by an eclectic crew of ad partners. Advertisers can now “reach users on Twitter who have shown interest in your brand or category even away from Twitter,” wrote Twitter product manager Abhishek […]

Although Amazon has kept fairly quiet about its ad-services pitch to media buyers, analysts believe that marketing services will be a driving force in what sustains and propels the ecommerce giant in the years to come. “Amazon has to push into new areas,” writes David Farnoush, a media analyst for Harmelin Media, in a blog […]

One must forgive Scott Howe, CEO of big data solutions provider Acxiom, for gushing a little. “I’m kinda preaching here but I feel passionate about this, because I’m an agency guy, but I think the days of the silver bullet are done,” he told AdExchanger. He’s referring to advertising and marketing messages that adhere to […]

Back in August, San Francisco-based LiveRamp released GetOnboard, a CRM “data onboarding” software system designed to bridge the gap between marketers’ customer data and their online marketing efforts. By prepping massive amounts of data for every possible marketing service and destination, and by doing it quickly, GetOnboard has been selected by more than 200 customers […]

In 2007, that WPP Group made big waves with its acquisition of display media technology firm 24/7 Media, worth $649 million. By bringing a publisher-facing ad server and network in-house, the holding company had staked out a tech ownership strategy that continues today. Today that premise lives on at WPP, but the 24/7 Media brand does […]

French retargeting firm Criteo announced on Tuesday the launch of a mobile Web tracking solution designed to let marketers deliver targeted ads to consumers across mobile browsers. Criteo’s mobile Web solution (the company has said it is still in the process of developing a branded name for the product) allows marketers to serve personalized ads […]

With mobile accounting for more than 39.7% of all online traffic this Thanksgiving weekend – a 34% increase from Black Friday 2012, according to IBM’s Digital Analytics Benchmark – marketer investment naturally followed that growth curve. The mobile momentum continued Cyber Monday with IBM reporting that smartphones and tablets drove 30% of all online traffic […]

Enterprise software companies are racing to soak up marketers’ budgets by building out their marketing suites with acquisitions, partnerships and new products. Those players include Adobe, Salesforce.com, Oracle and IBM. As the year comes to a close, here’s a snapshot look at these companies’ marketing stacks and some of the gaps that each company has […]

Traffic accidents are more orderly than the backend of most websites. At any given moment, a multitude of information fires off a page — information about who a visitor is, where she came from, her operating system or device profile, which ads are being served up, which videos are being played, etc. This has created […]

The value that Salesforce.com’s solutions bring to marketers, customer experience managers, and sales staff is well-established. But what can Salesforce.com offer for online advertisers? Within the various acquired companies that constitute Salesforce.com’s ExactTarget Marketing Cloud — recently integrated with the Salesforce1 platform — is Social.com. Social.com was made possible when social media commerce company Buddy Media […]

Impression fraud has been a major industry problem for a while, but it’s only lately that buyers, sellers and vendors have sought to quantify and arrest it. Even at a roundtable discussion of more than two dozen online ad executives held by Integral Ad Science on Thursday morning, participants seemed resigned to the idea that […]

Mobile retargeting platform TapCommerce has raised $10.5 million in a Series A round led by Bain Capital Ventures with participation from RRE and Nielsen Ventures and existing investors. While Web-based retargeting historically focused on recent visitors who abandoned an onsite purchase, certain aspects of mobile behavior completely disrupt traditional retargeting practices. For instance, TapCommerce CEO […]

Among the recurring themes Wednesday at Dreamforce in San Francisco was the need to develop customer-centric experiences that are both channel-agnostic and measurable. Online job finder CareerBuilder and CPG giant Unilever were among the major brands that took turns on stage and dished about their digital priorities, best practices and thoughts around their marketing investments. […]

Denise Colella joined sell-side pricing and inventory manager Maxifier two years ago and quickly climbed the ranks from CRO to president before taking on the CEO’s role in October. Colella replaced Anthony Katsur, who held the post for less than a year and is now an advisor for the programmatic direct marketplace iSocket and Involved […]

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer remained relatively unfazed onstage Tuesday at the Dreamforce conference as a pack of protesters disrupted an otherwise smooth Q&A session with Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff. Despite the larger-than-life mural of Mayer’s mug and echoing shouts protesting her seat on Walmart’s board of directors, the fireside chat between the two CEOs covered […]

A new report from Neustar’s Aggregate Knowledge notes the strong performance of advertising in social channels in terms of reach (58% better than exchanges) and the ability to deliver more high-quality buyers than ad portals, networks and exchanges. According to Aggregate Knowledge President Rob Gatto, this portends a shift in the role of social advertising […]

After General Motors yanked all its paid media spend from Facebook in mid-2012, GM’s chief marketing officer at the time, Joel Ewanick, suggested in a Wall Street Journal interview that Facebook is simply not a great place to advertise cars. But GM eventually returned and Facebook has since doubled down on the auto category. In […]

Over the past year, MediaMath has just about doubled its staff to 306, as the company works to broaden its identity from being a demand-side platform to being viewed as an end-to-end enterprise solution. The company also created a new role—the “chief commercial officer”—in which it hired former McKinsey & Co. executive Michael Lamb. As […]

As throngs of conference-goers flocked to downtown San Francisco for this week’s Dreamforce show, enterprise platform company Salesforce.com posted its Q3 earnings, citing 36% growth year-over-year to $1.08 billion in revenue. Of that total, $81 million was attributed to the Salesforce.com ExactTarget Marketing Cloud, according to Salesforce.com CFO Graham Smith, a figure that was “stronger” […]

Google has agreed to pay $17 million to settle charges it dropped cookies on Safari Web browsers in defiance of the browser’s privacy settings. According to the settlement, from mid-2011 to early 2012, Google rejiggered DoubleClick coding to get around Apple’s default blocking of third-party cookies in Safari. When the charges were first publicized last […]

In its first earnings disclosure since going public, French retargeter Criteo cited vertical expansion beyond its heritage of retail and travel retargeting client base. CEO Jean-Baptiste “JB” Rudelle noted “major” US client wins in the financial and auto verticals helped the company post revenue growth of 57.8%, increasing from 72.1 million euros in the third […]

Millennial Media reported Q3 earnings after business close today, including updates on its acquisition of competitor Jumptap, its new mobile ad exchange, and Omni Measurement tools. The mobile ad network’s new exchange product, Millennial Media Exchange (MMX), was created through a partnership with AppNexus. More than two dozen buyers including DSPs, agency trading desks and […]

Omnicom is going “all in” with a singular Data Management Platform offering that will support audience segmentation and ad optimization across its two key media agencies, OMD and PHD. Driving the platform consolidation is a deal with Aggregate Knowledge, a DMP recently acquired by Neustar for $119 million. Like many agencies, Omnicom already supported DMP functionality, but […]

Long paramount to the performance marketing strategies of online display advertisers, retargeting is still subject of a great debate. From a user standpoint, the most obvious form of “abuse” is the all-too-familiar feeling of being followed by an ad or brand across the Web. And then there’s the question of how much spend is wasted […]

Online ad creativity – or the perceived lack thereof – is one area that brands, agencies and publishers frequently complain about. But the fixes tend to involve vague plans about working with Adobe or Google to develop cross-screen creative. Flite, the Condé Nast-backed ad platform developer, has released a free, browser-based software called Design Studio, […]

As programmatic buying in China continues to pique marketers’ interest, demand-side platforms working in the country are growing in revenue and importance. Internet market research firm iResearch recently released an excerpt of its China DSP Market Trends Report 2013, including the market size of DSP display advertising in China, or the amount of ad spend […]

Transacting advertising through real-time bidding and other automated methods is gaining ground with publishers and advertisers alike, but questions remain about how to leverage the technology as it continues to change. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) gathered executives from Google, CatalystDesk at Condé Nast, and Varick Media Management to hash out these issues with moderator […]