Platforms

Rob Leathern, the CEO of Optimal Inc. who sold his company to Brand Networks last year for $35 million, is sailing for new shores. The serial entrepreneur and one-time research analyst told AdExchanger he has started work on a new venture that is aimed at consumers and is not ad-related. Leathern, whose title was chief […]

Shirlene Chandrapal, former director of Yahoo! Connected TV (CTV) in Europe, says connected television will connect advertisers with a highly engaged audience whose medium of choice is the Internet. Chandrapal now works for cross-channel advertising technology company Adconion Direct, where she’s tasked with driving CTV’s US expansion. She’s taking on a market where an estimated […]

Mobile ad platform 4INFO ties mobile ad campaigns to offline conversion rates by matching offline consumer data with mobile devices on a household level. Founded in 2004, the company started out as a SMS publishing company but pivoted to mobile advertising in 2010. Its client roster includes Macy’s, Target, Kraft, Campbell’s, Walmart and Southwest Airlines. […]

Social data analytics platform 4C released a study, commissioned by Facebook, ranking television show and genre popularity among consumers of various product categories. The research was the result of the company’s data science team combing Facebook for publicly available user behavior data. While some results were unsurprising — the strongest link for alcohol brand audiences […]

AOL Networks on Wednesday rebranded as AOL Platforms. As part of the rebrand, the company has rolled programmatic capabilities for video with Adap.tv, mobile and display with the AdLearn Open Platform (AOP) and its supply-side Marketplace product, into the development of platform “ONE by AOL.” IPG Mediabrands is the charter agency partner for ONE, which […]

A company already making waves in the insurance advertising world has taken the wraps off a “programmatic” approach to lead generation. Dubbed MediaAlpha Exchange, the demand-side platform vendor has already engaged with some of the biggest names in advertising— including Geico , Progressive and Esurance—to target audiences and acquire customers through custom bidding strategies for […]

Location data is a key component of many mobile ad strategies, but more is needed to make the ads relevant. Sportswear company Columbia wanted to reach people who were likely to be interested in its Omni-Heat jackets, but it knew that serving ads in cold climates wasn’t enough. Through the ad agency BSSP, Columbia tapped […]

One challenge of programmatic buying in the Asia-Pacific region is lack of data. Two Singapore-based companies, Seed and mediaQuark, are joining forces to provide more audience data solutions to Southeast Asia. The merger, announced today, brings together audience development from Seed and media trading technology from mediaQuark. The new company, simply called mediaQuark, to provide […]

Mobile ad startups take note: Opera Mediaworks is revving up its acquisition engine. Spun out from the Norwegian browser company Opera Software last year, Opera Mediaworks is made up of companies such as AdMarvel, Mobile Theory, 4th Screen Advertising and Handster. After integrating its various services into one suite, the company’s next goal is to […]

If all goes according to plan, Rubicon Project’s public offering will raise about $108 million ($77 million after expenses) in cash and give it a market cap of $671 million. In an update to its January S-1 filing with the US Securities And Exchange Commission, the company said shareholders will offer 6.8 million shares of […]

Mobile app retargeting firm ActionX is the latest company with a solution to help retailers target consumers across screens. ActionX’s Crossfire technology uses a set of pixels on a retailer’s app or website to track customers logged in to the site across a mobile device and desktop PC. “[Customers] roll up their cross-screen data and […]

Facebook and Google have emerged as the front-runners in the race to capture mobile ad dollars, with Google leading the charge. Facebook’s efforts to extend its mobile reach and rapid growth has made it a strong contender for first place, but can the behemoth social network overtake Google’s hold on mobile advertising? It is difficult […]

As brick and mortar giants like Walmart and Tesco do more to monetize their customer data, the question becomes – will they go it alone or maintain third-party partnerships? Tesco subsidiary dunnhumby’s rumored purchase of demand-side platform Sociomantic is the most obvious example of a seismic shift that’s occurring in the shopper data space. The […]

Display and search ad tech company IgnitionOne has acquired Knotice, a data-management platform (DMP) and email service provider with approximately 70 employees, AdExchanger has learned. The deal is the latest in a wave of consolidation in the DMP space that began with the October acquisition of Aggregate Knowledge by Neustar for $119 million, and also includes Oracle’s […]

China is one of the fastest-growing, largest mobile markets in the world. Two new studies from Forrester Research and mobile developer-services platform Umeng delve into the unique characteristics of this continuously growing industry, including how consumers deal with the lack of high-speed data service and how social sharing plays a role in many apps. According […]

Demand-side platform (DSP) DataXu has recruited Ed Montes, CEO of programmatic trader Digilant, to lead its sales and marketing operations as chief revenue officer. Montes helped found Digilant in 2009, back when it was still called Adnetik and operated as the trading desk unit of French agency conglomerate Havas. Later, when Adnetik was spun off […]

Although the performance-based pay-per-call model is not new, there is renewed interest from publishers due to the ubiquity of mobile and new experimentation in ad formats. Twitter last week, for instance, revealed plans to serve direct-response marketers through beta tests with brands for click-to-call functionality, as first reported by Digiday. At its most basic, the […]

Data management platform (DMP) Lotame has acquired AdMobius, a company that identifies audiences across devices for ad targeting purposes, AdExchanger has learned. Terms weren’t disclosed for the deal, which comes two weeks after we first reported on talks between the companies. With the purchase, Lotame accelerates its ability to use non-cookie methods to find users […]

Mobile analytics firm Kontagent has rebranded itself with a new name – Upsight – through its merger with mobile monetization platform PlayHaven, the companies said Monday. The rebranding comes a month after Kontagent and its competitor, HasOffers, were booted out of Facebook’s Mobile Measurement Program (MMP). Upsight also launched a new mobile analytics platform that shares the […]

Media agency MediaCom launched a partnership with mobile ad creation and analytics platform Celtra on Wednesday, a year after the two began working together. The two companies hope to develop solutions that simplify the management, observation and delivery of mobile advertising. Traditionally, these steps required clients to work with individual publishers and multiple tools. In […]

Despite Bitcoin’s volatility, businesses are beginning to experiment with the peer-to-peer payment system. One such company is Vungle, which helps mobile app publishers promote through 15-second in-app video trailers distributed through its ad platform. Vungle said Thursday it’s giving publishers the option to be paid in bitcoins, though its advertising clients cannot pay with the digital […]

Microsoft has added new ad formats to Skype’s “connection hub,” the screen users see before and after placing calls and while instant messaging each other. The new placements are a logical way to boost Skype’s monetization. The company hopes connection hub ads will generate an at least 20 billion additional impressions per month for advertisers. […]

Marc Landsberg knows agencies. Landsberg previously served as the former EVP at Leo Burnett and president and CEO of Arc and MRM Worldwide. As the current CEO of Chicago-based social agency socialdeviant, he says the traditional media-buying process has been turned upside down and the players flipping the tables aren’t the platform providers. Comcast’s planned […]

Marking up cheap Facebook inventory has been a lucrative business for a range of companies in its Preferred Marketing Developer (PMD) ecosystem. And Facebook is fine with that practice, just so long as it’s clear to advertisers just how big of a cut their partners are taking. But do advertisers know, and do they care? […]

Traditional radio as a hotbed for ad tech? Well, not really – or at all – but this is precisely the problem Jelli co-founder and CEO Mike Dougherty recognized when his company launched on Wednesday a platform, called RadioSpot, designed to enable programmatic buying for radio advertising. “Radio is a little more simple [than digital […]

Although Google is the $4 billion darling of the US display ad space, players like AOL, Amazon and Facebook are closing in on that share. Most noticeably, Facebook, which for the first time last quarter served more ad impressions on mobile devices than on the desktop, experienced a 50.5% increase in US digital display ad […]

Kargo, a mobile ad platform, has undergone several transformations and is about to make another one. Following the 2001 dot-com crash, Kargo pivoted from providing wireless operators with software and services to helping media brands launch mobile ad campaigns. The New York City company now has a client roster that includes CBS, Univision, Meredith and […]

Add another vendor to the Marketing Cloud fray. Teradata on Tuesday updated its marketing products, revealed a partnership with Urban Airship and officially began calling its stack the “Integrated Marketing Cloud.” Teradata isn’t a newcomer in the field of marketing tech. The company’s VP of marketing, Wes Moore, emphasized the company has been providing marketing […]

If you’ve ever shortened or shared a link on a social platform, chances are you’ve used Bitly. “We are so ubiquitous, but at the same time, people gloss right over us,” said Mark Josephson, CEO of URL shortening service Bitly. He joined the company six months ago from AOL, where he served as SVP of […]

RelayRides knows that mobile devices are an essential channel for reaching new and current customers. The San Francisco-based car-sharing service lets private car owners rent out their vehicles. It serves more than 1,900 US cities including 270 airports, connecting drivers with car owners who post photos and information about their vehicle on RelayRides’ website. When […]