Technology

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. […]

It’s been almost a year since Microsoft first pledged to default-enable Do Not Track in Internet Explorer 10, setting off an urgent debate about the future of third-party ad tracking which continues to this day. The company has endured attacks both withering (“paternalistic,” said Evidon) and mild (“absolutely not helpful,” offered IAB CEO Randall Rothenberg), […]

Last week, Ford Motors kicked off its latest long-term ad campaign, dubbed “And Not Or,” with a theme that could also apply to its digital strategy. The spots, which began running on TV and have heavy online video components, touch on concepts that people expect to naturally go together; consumers are asked to choose between […]

Minneapolis’ Star Tribune has been a relatively early and aggressive adopter of programmatic ad sales. The newspaper site has just finished a re-installation of Google DoubleClick’s DFP system as part of a wider effort to expand its own Advantage program, which covers real-time biddable inventory and targeting. The basic promise of Star Trib’s Advantage is […]

Google is pushing even more “premium” and direct-negotiated media deals through its programmatic pipes. This week it added a new sell-side Private Auction bid type to DoubleClick Ad Exchange. Google calls this an evolution of Preferred Deals, first offered last year as a means for publishers to negotiate direct deals with buyers and then transact […]

And the results are in! According to its Q1 2013 results, the GOOG made about $3.5 billion in profits, depending on your accounting principles. Get the release here. From the release: “Google Revenues (advertising and other) – Google revenues were $12.95 billion, or 93% of consolidated revenues, in the first quarter of 2013, representing a 22% […]

Epsilon, a data-focused direct marketing company, is seeing continued growth not from its data or technology businesses but from its agency side, after acquiring digital ad agency Hyper Marketing Inc. (HMI) in late 2012. The companies focused on integration during the first quarter, said Charles Horn, CFO and EVP of Alliance Data Systems Corporation, Epsilon’s […]

Last October, European social gamer Spil Games began shifting away from direct sales to completely programmatic by automating ad buys across its 46 local gaming sites network. The company is attempting to grow its business in the rest of Europe, Russia and Asia as well as the US, claiming an average active user base of […]