Technology

Google, AppNexus, and PubMatic are all talking up the convergence of guaranteed and non-guaranteed media. The first solutions designed to address this convergence were private exchanges, embraced by many sellers but fewer on the buy side. Now the companies are moving forward on the next wave of features. Among the favored approaches is so-called “holistic […]

AOL’s Q4 results had a number of positives, not least of which was a return to overall revenue growth for the first time in eight long years. And yet, Q4 saw the company’s display ad dollars slip further, with numbers in that segment flat globally and down 3% in the U.S. Read the release. For […]

Steve Katelman, EVP, Omnicom Media Group. took a slightly different tack with our round-up question on “When Is A Startup No Longer A Startup?” From his agency perch, Katelman opted for defining the startup. The “startup” company became famous in the late nineties during the dot.com boom/bust, and even though those days are long behind […]

Google executives have been banging the drum on “premium programmatic” for months now, calling out the false dichotomy between automated media buys and traditional direct selling. In a discussion with Steve Sullivan, the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s VP of Ad Technology, Scott Spencer, director of Product Management at Google, offered outlines for the company’s approach, including assurances […]

Since last fall, Google has shown a more aggressive stance in challenging Amazon’s dominance in e-commerce, particularly as Facebook has also been making its own significant maneuvers in the space. Google’s $125 million acquisition of Channel Intelligence, one of its four Google Shopping launch partners, is designed in part to develop more in-house capabilities to […]

Terence Kawaja, founder and CEO at LUMA Partners, has surveyed the past few week’s notable deals — demand side platforms MediaMath’s acquisition of Akamai’s Advertising Decision Solutions (ADS) unit (which his firm helped broker); exchange platform AppNexus’ $75 million venture capital funding; and the shuttering of adBrite’s exchange business. And he sees the clear formation […]

“The Sell-Sider” is a column written by the sell-side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Esco Strong, Director, Marketplace Strategy at Microsoft. If you’re a publisher managing a sizable direct-sold, guaranteed-delivery display ads business, you’ve almost certainly been tempted by the prospect of squeezing a few more dollars out of your […]

Most media industry observers expect to see a another strong year in M&A for the Ad Tech sector. For example, a survey [PDF] of 231 top media/tech executives released last week from media investment bank Jordan, Edmiston Group, Inc. and Econsultancy shows an upward trend in organizations planning an acquisition in the next 12 months, […]

Although the major internet ad players – e.g., Pandora, Spotify, Last.fm – all swear by their direct sales, Xaxis, WPP’s audience buying unit, is looking to leverage audio ads as a way to get more brand campaign ad dollars within its programmatic system. “The appeal [of internet radio audio ads] is that we want 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 Josh Dreller, Director Client & Industry Solutions at Visual IQ.  Most people aren’t fans of advertising — online or offline. They’re clutter. They’re distracting. And I’m not even talking […]

No AppNexus insiders will take money off the table as the RTB pure play soaks up a new $75 million investment led by Technology Crossover Ventures. Instead, funds from the series D round will be pumped into the company in the form of new features, marketplace quality improvements, and employee development. CEO Brian O’Kelley wrote […]

“Data-Driven Thinking” is a column written by members of the media community and containing fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Joanna O’Connell is Principal Analyst at Forrester Research. I stink at New Year’s resolutions. My track record is so bad I’ve all but given up making them in my non-work life. But as […]

Google’s advertising business was “firing on all cylanders” during Q4 2012, in the words of SVP/Chief Business Officer Nikesh Arora, who pointed to healthy growth — even by the search giant’s standards and (some, if not all) analysts’ expectations — during the holiday shopping season. The company had just completed its shift from free product […]

Less than six months since Google decided to merge its paid Product Listing Ads and its “free” shopping-related results into a single paid image-ad format, about 35% of commercial searches now show PLAs in the results, up from 29% in Oct, says Jefferies & Co.’s analyst Brian Pitz. As Google Shopping now essentially requires retailers […]

“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 Bob Walczak, VP Mobile at PubMatic. Do we split print media into magazine and newspaper? No, and in the same way, there is no reason to split digital into […]

“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 Jessica Luterman Naeve, Managing Director at DeSilva & Phillips Media Investment Bankers. 2012 was a big year for social media – big multiples and headline deals – a testament […]

Two trends dominated the paid search space during the holiday season of 2012: mobile impressions and spend, and Google’s new Product Listing Ads. Google transitioned its Google Shopping search from a free model to a paid one. The new PLAs work more like AdWords, with retailers and merchants providing Google with information about a product, […]

Earlier this week, Thrillist Media Group, publisher of a young men’s local lifestyle guide network and e-commerce app, brought in digital ad sales vet Todd Anderman as the company’s president of sales, marketing and operations. Most recently the chief media and revenue officer of mobile ad targeter Jumptap, Anderman spent much of the past decade […]

“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 Rob Leathern, CEO of social advertising platform Optim.al.  Like many in our industry, I have a love/hate relationship with advertising. Even though I’m an ad technology entrepreneur, I actively […]

Skinected is a young company, and small, with just five employees. But the pain point that spawned the business goes back some 15 years, and has plagued legions of media brokers and buyers. Co-founders Chip Meyers and Stefan Kosel began trying to integrate non-standard ad formats into movie websites in the late ’90s, beginning with […]

It’s been nearly a year since ad sales workflow systems provider Mediaocean was given the regulatory green light to form the merger of Mediabank and Donovan Data Systems. While Mediaocean picked up the mantle of both entities’ attempts to bring online media buying methods to traditional TV, Mediaocean CEO Bill Wise tells AdExchanger that the […]

As a WPP Group agency, MediaCom works closely with the holding company’s Xaxis trading desk to execute data-driven media strategies. In such relationships between agencies and trading desks, it can be hard for a client to know where the desk stops and the operating agency begins. That creates a tricky problem, since first party data […]

While advertising spending was depressed across Europe as a result of the ongoing debt crisis, the resilient German economy represented the best growth aspects for the ads space. And as the sense of doom and gloom ebbs a bit in Europe, there is a sense that real-time bidding, and its promise of efficiency, has received […]

Ken Allen, Managing Director, The Blackstone Group, commented on today’s acquisition of Eloqua by Oracle. “There is currently an arms race among Enterprise Software players seeking to build out integrated marketing stacks / clouds. We have seen increased M&A activity in the sector for some time now among CRM vendors such as Oracle and Salesforce.com, […]

Having acquired social marketing software-as-a-service company Vitrue in May, Oracle continued its acquisition of marketing tech companies today with B2B SaaS marketing provider Eloqua for roughly $810 million. Read more. From the release about the acquisition: “The combination of Oracle and Eloqua is expected to create a comprehensive Customer Experience Cloud offering to help companies […]

It’s been a little over a year since Anthony Katsur joined sell-side pricing and inventory manager Maxifier as COO from demand side platform MediaMath, and the former DoubleClick executive is moving up to the CEO seat. He replaces Jonathon Shaevitz, who steps down from the post just two years shy of taking it. The move […]

AdBrite morphed into an ad exchange platform four years ago after shifting gears from its ad network beginnings, but the company was never recognized for making the full leap. Back in May, its board decided it was time for a change and brought in former Yahoo/Right Media executive Hardeep Bindra to make the evolution complete. […]

In 2012 major publishers’ wariness of programmatic advertising began to thaw. As part of our 2013 predictions series, we  asked Kristine Welker, Hearst Digital Media’s Chief Revenue Officer, what she expects from coming next year. In essence, she sees the promise of brand dollars emerging more visibly as publishers help push the boundaries of exchange-based […]

As part of our year-end coverage, AdExchanger is publishing a variety of perspectives on a single question: “What will happen next year in marketing and advertising that hasn’t happened before?”  The below response is from Michael Lazerow, Chief Marketing Officer of Salesforce Marketing Cloud and CEO of Buddy Media. Buddy Media’s sale to Salesforce.com in […]

Programmatic media arrived in force this year, and brought with it a few surprises. (Facebook Exchange anyone?) To get a sense of what might be waiting in 2013, we’ve reached out to a number of industry all-stars to answer a single question: “What will happen next year in marketing and advertising that hasn’t happened before?”  […]