Technology

Email and search continue to drive the most referrals to ecommerce sites, according to Q1 2013 data from website optimization company Monetate. But word-of-mouth through social media does influence purchases, despite a lack of last-click attribution for the channel. After analyzing more than 500 million online shopping experiences, the Ecommerce Quarterly report found conversion rates […]

Mozilla, maker of the Firefox web browser, must fix three areas within its third-party-cookie-blocking patch before it can be rolled out to users, according to Stanford graduate student Jonathan Mayer, who developed the patch. The problematic areas involve “underblocking,” i.e. inadvertently allowing unwanted tracking cookies past Firefox’s cookie blocking patch, Mayer explained in a blog […]

“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, SVP of Strategic Business Development at The Trade Desk. About three times a week, I hear the same question from presidents, media directors or technology directors of […]

Streaming audio player Pandora has increasingly focused on building ad revenues from the local level up but has met with some hurdles in trying to pry ad dollars from the $15 billion terrestrial radio market. This week it struck deals with two media buying and planning software providers, Mediaocean and STRATA , which Pandora hopes […]

Mozilla has postponed activating the third-party blocking feature on its latest browser, Firefox 22, according to an update on its developer page.  The blocking feature has been postponed “to collect data on the effect of blocking some third-party cookies,” according to the blog post. A Mozilla spokesperson provided the following statement: “Mozilla has been actively […]

Five years into the exchange-buying trend, attention tends to focus on what’s broken in agency/network relationships. Black-box algorithms, opaque margins, impression fraud, and a tendency to overpromise and underdeliver have damaged trust in digital ads and the platforms that traffic them. So the story goes. But for many agencies, these concerns are outweighed by the […]

Smartphones – and Apple’s iPhone in particular – may seem ubiquitous in the US (see AdExchanger’s Q1 mobile RTB report). Yet worldwide, Samsung beat out Apple and Android-based smartphone sales in the first quarter 2013, according to Gartner. Gartner found 426 million mobile phones were sold in the first quarter, up 0.7% from Q1 2012. Worldwide smartphone […]

Based in Beijing, China, Redpoint Ventures-backed Domob says that its mobile in-app ad network is booming and well-positioned to take over the Chinese mobile ad market, according to its co-founder and COO Zhang He.  Moreover, the company’s executive team is now in place, plucked from Chinese internet services companies Baidu and Sohu.com among others. But […]

Three years ago, AdExchanger covered FastPay, a startup offering credit lines to digital media companies. Since then, FastPay has raised about $35 million in credit and equity itself, expanded its clientele, and is about to launch a new product. FastPay steps in when an ad network owes money to a publisher but hasn’t yet been […]

Last month, BlueKai signed a deal to build a data management platform for MLB Advanced Media, the interactive business division of Major League Baseball, designed to connect the company’s 30 team websites for advertisers. MLBAM was the fifth publisher BlueKai has added to its client list this year. CEO Omar Tawakol tells AdExchanger that while […]

“Real-time bidding inventory has been lagging because of publishers’ concerns that giving buyers the ability to bid on every single impression will drive their yields down, when in fact it should make them less under-sold. We’re now seeing a change in the supply side where they’re enabling more and more of their inventory to be […]

Aol was able to maintain its hard-won profitability and ad sales gains Q1. But just as Aol was finally able to turn US display around with a decent growth of 6%, the usual powerhouse of third-party network revenues showed signs of slowing down. Read the earnings release. The company’s third-party network revenues growth slowed to […]

ValueClick announced after the stock market closed today that it has seen revenues grow 13% over Q1 2012 to $165.4 million on (GAAP) earnings of $0.34 versus $0.25 from a year ago. Read the release. Aol’s Daily Finance aggregated ValueClick earnings expectations before the release, saying that “the average [Wall Street] estimate for revenue is […]

Well, that was fast. Six weeks after making some News Feed ad inventory biddable to Facebook Exchange advertisers on a trial basis, Facebook is expanding the amount of that precious paid media space that it will expose to RTB demand. The News Feed trial was initially open to just three of Facebook’s 17 FBX partners. […]

Mediaocean, fresh from striking a collaboration with digital video rights manager FreeWheel for handling Aol’s ad inventory across TV and online, has just netted an even bigger assignment – Comcast. The media buying workflow software company will be in charge of processing ad buys for Comcast AdDelivery, the cable operator’s cloud-based tool for distributing spot TV. It’s […]

Having co-founded Collective in 2005, CEO Joe Apprendi has seen his company’s ad network reconfigured, if not entirely reimagined, as programmatic audience buying transforms the publisher ad network model. And as placement has given way to audience buying in recent years, Apprendi and his team have looked to keep pace with products such as its audience […]

“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 Picard, CEO of Rare Crowds. Take it from me: It’s easy to complain. I’ve been writing monthly articles in this space since 1999, which I think qualifies me […]

At yesterday’s Digitas NewFront, Huffington Post executives said they would offer their native advertising content distribution system exclusively to the Publicis Groupe interactive shop’s clients. While billed as “real-time,” the self-serve content system will post marketers’ content within a two-hour window of receiving the request. “We’re bringing our year-old BrandLive service to HuffPost that will […]

“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 Dina Zelikson, Digital Program Manager at Bluestem Brands. The word “programmatic” is a relatively recent entry to the ad industry vernacular, quickly joining buzzwords like “big data,” “data-driven marketing” […]

With digital marketing budgets expected to rise this year, customer relationship management (CRM) software vendors are ramping up their pursuit of paid media budgets. “Marketing is perhaps the hottest area in the customer-facing realm right now, and it is evident the place has multiple holes to fill and many approaches to take,” observed Paul Greenberg, […]

For all the glitz and glamour that surrounded Aol’s Newfronts programming preview on Tuesday, perhaps the most relevant news for advertisers came at the end of the showcase with a mention of the unsexiest of topics: back-office operations designed to support the thousands of hours of digital video, along with analytics. Following appearances by actors […]

Ad network Pulse 360, a subsidiary of Seevast, is on the brink of shutting down and may have closed its doors already, AdExchanger has learned. Pulse 360 issued a company-wide layoff in April and began looking for a buyer or new investor, according to a former employee who asked to remain anonymous. Pulse 360 founder […]

A year after Twitter opened its self-serve Twitter Advertising system to businesses on an “invite-only” basis, the microblog’s Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts products will be open to anyone in the US. Read the release. This news was mentioned as Kevin Weil, Senior Director of Product for Revenue at Twitter, participated on a panel with […]

WPP Group has shared some new details on revenue performance and strategy for its Xaxis trading unit. Xaxis grew its revenue by 28% during the first quarter, said Pivotal Research Analyst Brian Wieser in a research note. WPP had previously stated the business had 2012 media billings of $270 million and a headcount of 200. […]

Google’s offering in the ad viewability space has scored third-party accreditation from the Media Ratings Council. Google joins others who have wended through the MRC’s approval process – the respective viewability products from comScore, Double Verify and RealVu have been approved – so Google does not stand alone. But given its expansive relationship with marketers, […]

Using customer data to personalize or optimize individuals’ website experiences can increase conversion and customer satisfaction, yet a majority of digital marketing professionals do not prioritize it, according to two recent studies from Adobe and Econsultancy. As marketers leverage more digital tools, turning to real-time behavioral and existing customer data helps segment website visitors and […]

The New York Times Co. CFO Jim Follo reiterated a point he’s been making on earnings calls since last year, namely that “premium” digital advertising continues to be challenged by the rise of audience targeting and the infinite amount of digital inventory generated by social media. Read the release. During the Q1 earnings call, Mark […]

“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 John Ramey, CEO of isocket.  At the AdExchanger Programmatic I/O conference in San Francisco last week, while people schmoozed at the rooftop after-party, an unofficial meeting was held down the […]

MailOnline’s site is an endless broadsheet of breaking news, tabloid gossip and tawdry thrills (pictured: the money a stripper makes in just ONE shift – and it’s more than most people make in a month). Some might consider this publishing format tailor-made for real-time bidding. But the site, which has its own dedicated editorial and […]

Salesforce.com introduced today a new addition to its Marketing Cloud – Social.com, which allows marketers to apply their CRM and social listening data to their social ad campaigns. Creating targeted ads, marketers frequently run into the “silo issue” of being unable to connect their various customer data sources, noted Gordon Evans, VP of marketing at Salesforce.com. […]