Technology

Among the many concerns ad sellers and ad agency staffers harbor about the rise of automated audience buying is that all these advancements will ultimately put people out of a job. The ethos of doing “more with less” is a general worry that happens anytime an industry finds itself in the throes of technological change. […]

It’s been three years since Adobe embarked on the digital acquisition spree that would bring it a major analytics platform (Omniture), a DMP (Demdex) and a media buying platform (Efficient Frontier). How to measure its success to date? Financial results tell one story. In Q3 2012 the digital marketing suite delivered 40% growth in revenue, […]

Ad networks are alive and well when it comes to certain discrete, vertical markets. Jim Barkow can attest. He was CEO of shopper media/e-commerce ad network Longboard Media, up until early November when he — along with his company — were acquired by Bazaarvoice. (See the release.) Barkow, who will stay on as Bazaarvoice’s GM […]

With the ecosystem providing insights on “programmatic buying” and “programmatic selling” last week, we reached out to a new group of executives to define one of the key underpinnings of programmatic media – whether display, mobile, social, etc. – and asked: “What is Real-Time Bidding?” Click below or scroll down for more: Scott Spencer, Director […]

J.T. Batson is leaving his post at media buying workflow systems provider Mediaocean to become chief revenue officer at Cumulus Media, which is primarily known for running the former ABC Radio Network. Meanwhile, Mediaocean, which was the resulting brand from last year’s merger between Mediabank and Donovan Data Systems, will not be replacing Batson directly, […]

The three days following Thanksgiving delivered a strong beginning to the online Christmas shopping season, several reports suggest. While sales figures will have to wait for Cyber Monday (Nov 26), Monday (Dec 3) and Green Monday (Dec 10) – the 3 heaviest online shopping days for 2011, according to Jefferies analyst Brian Pitz – all […]

Media intelligence platform Aggregate Knowledge (AK) recently recently partnered with IBM to plug the AK platform into the IBM Digital Data Exchange. See the release. CEO Dave Jakubowski sees an overarching theme of “interoperability” in the deal as he says IBM marketer clients will be able to unlock what is going on with their website […]

The industry has made striking advanced in tracking the value and attributes of biddable online ad inventory, but the road ahead is long. That much was clear at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Ad Operations summit in New York. In a discussion of inventory packaging and pricing, Neal Richter, chief scientist at Rubicon Project, and Art Schram, VP of Glam […]

“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 Omar Tawakol, CEO of BlueKai.  Pricing a shared asset like data can be counterintuitive. Data is a non-rival good, like a toll road.  Even though people expect to pay for and […]

“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 Michael Oiknine, CEO of Apsalar. Every iPhone comes with an identification number — like a serial number – that’s used for connecting data to a specific handset. Until recently, the […]

Marketer integration is among the grand challenges facing the Data Management Platform space, according to a new white paper produced by Winterberry Group in partnership with the Interactive Advertising Bureau (download). Consider the top three “major hurdles” identified by the report’s 160 or so respondents: (1) “Internal Process & Marketing Ops Challenges,” (2) “No Clear […]

Facebook’s Exchange is in full swing outside the U.S. Speaking at the AppNexus Summit in New York this week, Facebook VP global partnerships Blake Chandlee noted FBX buyers can now access audiences in the Asia-Pacific region and in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. A spokesperson later confirmed the expansion and said Facebook is actively […]

“In the Netherlands we have a horrible privacy law. It requires us to ask for explicit consent before we can collect data or use cookies. That’s partly our fault. I think the US ad industry should really take a stand and inform both politicians and consumers.” -Kim Van Der Zande, Chief Strategy Officer of FlxOne, […]

AppNexus can be a tough company to draw a bead on. First, it’s not public and so isn’t required to disclose revenues, profits, or cash on hand. Second, it functions as a marketplace intermediary, sitting between media buyer and seller, and sometimes between other intermediaries. As such it’s not directly measured by the likes 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 Brian Kaminski, President US of iProspect. In the battle for digital advertising dollars, Google is the established leader and Facebook is the scrappy newcomer. While Google offers an expansive […]

  “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 Paul Gelb, Head of Strategy at MoPub. Apple’s new Identifier for Advertising (IFA or IDFA) was not mentioned during last month’s launch events for iOS 6 and iPhone […]

Speak the name iProspect and what’s the first thing that comes to mind? If you were around during the first wave of online marketing, the answer is certainly “search.” The agency was one of the first independent search marketing agencies to go global with offices in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere before its 2004 acquisition by […]

Back in 2008, Perfect Audience‘s Brad Flora started a Chicago-specific social news website called Windy Citizen. Though the audience grew, the ad revenue lagged which led to an investigation by Flora into the world of dynamic creative optimization (DCO). Soon, with a little help from tech incubator Y Combinator among others, his growing startup created […]

Last week PaidContent gave us an update on Sambreel Holdings, a fast-growing purveyor of browser plugins and other software that can alter ad space on premium websites. Some of Sambreel’s products work by displacing ad positions on sites like About.com, Google.com, NYTimes.com and other publishers, and then inserting new ads that Sambreel sells through its […]

PubMatic‘s 5th annual Ad Revenue Conference took place today in New York City. Fifth annual. Like the event, the industry has matured over time. It was only 2010 when RTB was the theme for Ad Revenue. Today’s opening keynote from PubMatic CEO Rajeev Goal stressed “holistic” sales management as technology guides yield management over all […]

Having grown an ad network business in two years to a nearly $30 million run rate in 2011, most ad technology executives would have been satisfied.  But, CEO Andy Monfried saw another future for his company, Lotame, and decided to focus on being a data management platform (DMP) only for publishers and marketers to manage data. […]

This past week, home furnishings shopping site One Kings Lane kicked off its first national brand advertising under the tag, “Design is Never Done.” The ads, which were created by Wieden+Kennedy, are intended to complement the San Francisco company’s extensive use of internet advertising, which includes a heavy dose of display, search, retargeting and social […]

Today at Salesforce’s Cloudforce conference in New York, CEO Marc Benioff said CMOs are like “fighter pilots without a cockpit” when it comes to social campaign management. “They’re going to want all the analytics, the ability to listen, place media, test media, run A/B tests,” he said in response to an AdExchanger question. “They’re going […]

Digital marketing has expanded well beyond the realm of paid media, yet the old label “ad tech” persists as a blanket descriptor of this maturing industry. Are we good with this? We asked a handful of execs to answer the question: If the phrase “ad tech” did not exist, what would you call the space […]

For the past few years, Google’s quarterly earnings have tended to be a day of celebration for the search giant. But its Q3 report, which was released a few hours before the company intended, contained some slight signs of weakness as profits and revenues missed analysts’ bullish forecasts. Read the earnings release. The misfired earnings […]

Berlin-based Sociomantic Labs hit the U.S. in a big way last month with the hire of Jason Kelly, Admeld’s former chief revenue officer, as its new CEO (AdExchanger story). The company positions itself as a “performance DSP” with an e-commerce focus, competing with the likes of Criteo and traditional demand side platforms. It has global […]

For several years, companies such as DoubleVerify, Adsafe Media and AdXpose (now part of comScore) have been verifying that buy-side, display ad commitments are being met on the sell-side. Over time, the sell-side has become a partner to these companies to a degree, too. Initially, Google appeared to take the stance that ad verification capabilities […]

When it comes to reaching consumers with mobile advertising, is there really a difference between an Apple iOS user and Android users? A poll commissioned a few weeks ago by mobile real-time bidding operator AdTheorent suggests that there is. Conducted by Quinnipiac University, the survey found that while Android-based smartphones were the most widely used […]

Top dogs from the four dominant agency trading desks took the stage at the BB King Blues Club this morning. They hit on a bunch of topics new and old, including “education” fatigue, incursions made by DSPs, and making audience trading part of the “fabric” of all agencies. We’ll present this one lick-by-lick in honor […]

With real-time bidding inventory expanding at an accelerated clip, the idea of coming up with “standard practices” for programmatic buyers and sellers could seem a bit late. But the Interactive Advertising Bureau, through its Network and Exchange Committee, has been trying to do just that since it formed in April 2011. This week, at the […]