Technology

Digital ad spending in the first half of 2013 grew 18% year over year, according to the 2013 Half Year IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report. The increase marks the fifth consecutive year of double-digit growth in the first half. The IAB report, conducted by Pricewaterhouse Coopers, tracks and analyzes US Internet ad spending. Mobile is […]

While the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act registration is at the center of the US government shutdown and has faced criticism over technology glitches this week, healthcare-oriented contextual ad network Precision Health said its expansion into real-time bidding and “audience extension” through AppNexus has gone off without a hitch. Precision Health’s work with AppNexus has […]

Mike Nolet has stepped down from AppNexus, where he has served as CTO since the company’s founding six years ago. He will remain an advisor but vacate his board seat, which will be filled by President Michael Rubenstein. Nolet is a foundational character in the programmatic story, having helped build the world’s first ad exchange […]

There’s an ever-growing opportunity for advertisers on Amazon, the commerce marketplace maven every retailer hopes to emulate (and simultaneously fears). The company has nearly doubled its global ad revenues since 2011, from $420 million to an expected $835 million this year, eMarketer estimates. If true, this puts it ahead of publishers like Pandora, Twitter, LinkedIn and […]

IBM is continuing to sharpen its focus on building its enterprise-based approach to mobile commerce and advertising with the acquisition of Xtify, a company that manages mobile messaging for brands. Read the release. The deal, terms of which were undisclosed, is part of IBM’s expansion of its “smarter commerce” program that promises to bring together […]

However much click tracking, psychographic surveying, and big data analysis marketers do, few have a solid understanding of how their customers engage with social marketing content — or how those customers’ behavior differs between commercial and non-commercial interactions. To address the knowledge gap, Forrester Research has come up with a “Social Technographics Score,” a model […]

Twitter’s IPO filing is no longer “confidential” as the microblog released its full S-1 document with the SEC that details its plans to sell $ 1 billion worth of stock. Twitter, which recently acquired mobile supply side platform MoPub and unveiled its own version of an ad exchange with several API partners, will trade under […]

Chinese search engine Baidu is one of Google’s biggest competitors. The company recently bought China’s largest Android app distributor, 91 Wireless, for $1.9 billion and launched its own smart TV. And it is reportedly developing a wearable computing product, a la Google Glass. Baidu reported $1.2 billion in revenues for this year’s second quarter, representing […]

Facebook is once again experimenting with a mobile ad network that would place ads on non-Facebook mobile apps and sites based on the social network’s data, the company confirmed. Business Insider first reported the news. “We’re currently running a second test to show Facebook ads off Facebook in mobile apps and on mobile sites. Our […]

Figuring out how to leverage the overwhelming amount of data they collect is a critical challenge for advertisers, and one that spans industries. To shed some light on big data issues, real-time ad platform Rocket Fuel invited Forrester Research analyst Mike Gualtieri, Visible Measures CEO Brian Shin, Morpheus CMO Shenan Reed, and Verizon marketing and […]

Depending on who you ask, Rocket Fuel’s stunning IPO is either a new dawn for programmatic media investment or a scary bubble indicator. In either case, it clearly went better than the company and investors planned. For comparison, we looked at how its nearly $2 billion market cap stacks up against other big companies in […]

“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, general manager of mobile and video at PubMatic. For those of us in the digital advertising community, there has arguably been no development that has inspired so much […]

Clearly Criteo is feeling no pressure to “go quiet” following its-F-1 filing last week. President Greg Coleman appeared at Advertising Week yesterday for a rapid-fire session with marketers. At the outset of the panel discussion, it was made clear “there won’t be any questions [taken] about Criteo going public.” Coleman was accompanied onstage at the […]

Video is a big part of the programmatic ad discussion taking place at New York’s Advertising Week. A recent look at the landscape by Jeffries & Co. finds that early players like Tremor and YuMe have certain advantages in the short term. But the time is nearing when the majority of video advertising will be […]

With Amazon’s August rollout of Collections, the commerce giant appeared to go head-to-head with Pinterest on an offering affording merchants a direct link to products consumers “like, want and recommend.” Now, Japanese ecommerce company Rakuten appears to be working on its own image-centric platform following its $100 million investment in Pinterest last year. Yesterday’s launch […]

Mobile commerce will reach new highs on Black Friday and Cyber Monday this year, and retailers are hastily preparing for the onslaught of traffic those devices will bring. Couple that with the fact that there are 26 days between Thanksgiving and Christmas, compared to last year’s 32, and retail marketers are working on compressed campaign […]

As marketers, ad-buyers and CMOs are increasingly asked to defend their spend, a “consistent data framework” that surpasses the boundaries of channel will be one way to help them win budgetary battles, according to one exec. Josh Herman, VP of partner and product strategy at Acxiom, joined executives from eBay, Datalogix and Nielsen Catalina Solutions […]

AdExchanger asked industry leader and Mediaocean CEO Bill Wise his “take” on today’s Initial Public Offering (IPO) for real-time ad platform and services company, Rocket Fuel. The IPO netted Rocket Fuel $116 million and valued the company at approximately $1.8 billion at market close (stock quote). Bill Wise: On Rocket Fuel doubling and worth nearly […]

Rocket Fuel is living up to its name in its first hours as a public company. After going public at $29, the high end of its range, the share price more than doubled to $62 by late morning. Since then it has fallen back to $55.50, as of noon EST, a 91% gain. The running […]

Advertising across devices and bridging the gap between online and offline campaigns should be key components of every marketer’s strategy, according to Lisa Utzschneider, Amazon.com’s global VP of sales, who outlined the ecommerce giant’s marketing tactics yesterday at the Dmexco conference. Amazon’s customer strategy is based on three rules: “Start with the customer and work backwards, […]

By Kelly Liyakasa, John Ebbert, and Zach Rodgers It’s a big week for the “programmatic IPO.” Rocket Fuel begins trading publicly tomorrow on NASDAQ under the ticker FUEL. French retargeter Criteo meanwhile has filed its F-1, with detailed information about its financials. Since the performance of these two IPOs could set the tone for ad tech […]

This year’s Dmexco conference in Cologne, Germany, has drawn roughly 26,000 attendees, vendors and other visitors. Yesterday they streamed into the standing-room-only Congress Hall to listen to a panel with Criteo President Greg Coleman, Aegis Media Americas CEO Nigel Morris and Google’s managing director of media platforms for northern and central Europe, Damian Lawlor. Rounding […]

Mobile ad network Millennial Media announced late yesterday afternoon that it has teamed up with the real-time bidding platform provider AppNexus to create a new mobile ad exchange that the companies are calling the Millennial Media Exchange. Through the partnership, AppNexus’ clients will receive access to Millennial’s sales inventory and its Jumptap buying platform. It […]

French retargeting specialist Criteo has been planning its IPO filing for the better part of a year and it’s finally taking the plunge. The company filed an F-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission that details its financial performance and other particulars about its business. The company hopes to raise $190 million from the stock sale, though […]

Todd Haskell began his new job as Hearst Magazine Digital’s chief revenue officer less than a month ago, joining the publisher of magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Elle and Good Housekeeping to manage the business side of the 28 related websites and 14 mobile properties. He previously served six years as the group VP of […]

“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 Ramsey McGrory, CEO at AddThis. The formula used to be simple: In order to drive a transaction, you needed a combination of compelling creative and a clear message delivered […]

The major reorg that retiring Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer engineered two months ago  is resulting in the end of its portal MSN producing original content. As detailed by Romenesko, MSN freelancers were told in a mass email that their services would no longer be needed and that the budget for original content was “zero” for […]

Is big data “too big” a challenge for marketers? This was a question posed to panelists today at the Financial Times’ Future of Marketing Summit, where a crowd of brand advertisers, agency execs and marketing and ad-tech vendors converged at The Metropolitan Club in New York to talk industry trends. “There’s never too much data […]

IBM’s launch today of a 100-partner-strong Digital Marketing Network will secure access to a slew of ad-related platforms for IBM Digital Marketing Optimization users. Certified digital marketing partners include a number of DMPs, DSPs and search marketing providers like BlueKai, Criteo, Turn, Marin Software, DoubleClick Search and x+1. This appears to be a move on […]

Twitter’s acquisition of mobile supply-side platform MoPub this week could pave the way for more activity and something close to standard business models in the nascent mobile exchange space. Established desktop exchange players like the Rubicon Project and PubMatic, which have expansive networks on the sell side, have struggled to retrofit their existing platforms to […]