Chris Swanicke
Articles By Chris
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How Dentsu's Posterscope And Vistar Media Are Bringing RTB To Digital Outdoor
The out-of-home market will get a little more data-rich next quarter as some big digital billboard networks embrace location analytics courtesy of Posterscope and Vistar Media. Posterscope, a London-based OOH agency owned by Dentsu Aegis Network, will use Vistar Media’s location data to support an bidding platform for ad delivery to signs owned by Lamar Advertising and […]
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FASTG8 Offers A Data Leg Up To SmartWool And Other Outdoor Lifestyle Brands
Outdoor lifestyle brands have plenty of room to grow their digital sales, but many hold back for fear of cannibalizing brick-and-mortar distribution, according to ad tech veteran Tyler Moebius. Moebius hopes to help these marketers – companies like SmartWool and POC – overcome that paradox with FASTG8 (“fast gate”), his data-driven marketing company based in Carbondale, […]
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Digital OOH Sellers Automate, But Resist RTB
Digital out-of-home (OOH) ad sellers are looking for a boost from ad tech, but obstacles remain if the marketplace is to ever resemble online advertising. Digital billboard advertising today is reminiscent of the early days of ad tech in online advertising, according to industry veterans, with ad tech vendors making inroads with sellers such as […]
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Orchard Platform Applying Programmatic To Loan Market
As the ad tech industry consolidates, some veterans of the space are looking to apply their skills to new fields. One result is Orchard Platform, founded in November and led by CEO Matt Burton, formerly sales engineer for AdMeld. The platform facilitates direct lending, bringing together institutional investors, loan originators and consumers. Most of Orchard’s […]
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Adobe’s 'Project Iceberg' Looks Beneath The Surface Of Attribution
Adobe has tweaked its approach to attribution, removing out-of-view ads from its attribution model in an effort dubbed “Project Iceberg.” The project has allowed the company to analyze the viewability of sequences of ads served to individual users, as part of its larger evaluation of how well those ads drove subscriptions for its Creative Cloud product […]
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Citi Targets Small Publishers For Fresh Ad Inventory
Citi is aiming smaller to get bigger results with its digital marketing campaigns. The bank enlisted the help of CJ Affiliate, the affiliate marketing network formerly known as Commission Junction and part of Conversant (formerly ValueClick), to target ads beyond aggregators of credit card offers. Those aggregators are a staple of credit card marketing campaigns, […]
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OpenX Plays A Game Of Inches For SSP Supremacy
Supply-side platforms (SSPs) such as OpenX, Rubicon Project and PubMatic are under heavy pressure to increase value for publishers who pay a premium to use their technologies. “The fact that SSPs are positioned on the sell side after much of the transaction value has been extracted by other intermediaries puts more pressure on their margins […]
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LeadiD, A Tag-Powered Lead Tracker, Overcomes Publisher Reticence
This is the second in a series on evolution in the lead gen space. Read our earlier story on social media lead generation. What’s in a lead? Between aggregators reselling leads, marketers deciding where to focus their sales efforts, and the myriad of marketing platforms supporting both, it can be hard to judge the quality […]
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Forrester And Shop.org Study: Attribution Still Confounds Retailers
Complex attribution remains a work in progress for retailers, and most still rely on last-click attribution models, according to Forrester Research and Shop.org’s State of Retailing Online 2014 study. The survey found “attribution modeling is very early and very imprecise,” said Sucharita Mulpuru, Forrester analyst and author of the report. Part of the problem is […]
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For Social Media Leads, Automation Begets Automation
The proliferation of customer relationship management (CRM) platforms and marketing automation platforms has allowed business-to-business (B2B) marketers to focus higher up the sales funnel and seek out vendors to automate lead gathering. At the same time, the growth of social media has provided a wealth of data on potential customers. It’s led some marketers to […]
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Media and Marketing M&A Values Rise, Small Deals Abound
Investment bank Berkery Noyes’ first-half report for 2014 shows total value for mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in the media and marketing industry up on a half-year basis, from $45.8 billion to $49.8 billion. Total value of M&A in the industry had a sharp 70% increase compared with the first half of 2013, which had a […]
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Another Firm Exits Free Ad Serving
Free ad serving might be bad business for all but the biggest players in ad tech. AdZerk, an ad-selling platform for publishers, sent a notice to its free and self-service customers that it’s shutting down that part of the business to focus on its enterprise clients. The company will complete its exit Aug. 31. The […]
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Kenshoo Hires Brand And Agency Vet Doug Chavez To Help It Transcend Search
Search and digital marketing platform Kenshoo has hired Doug Chavez as global head of marketing research and content. Chavez will lead a group analyzing data from the Kenshoo platform and producing insights on the search and mobile advertising space. Chavez, previously SVP of emerging media at Universal McCann Worldwide, VP of marketing at RadiumOne, director of marketing […]
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Kantar Confirms Ad Sector Strength, Display Surged 13% In Q1
TV and digital are the twin wunderkinds of the ad industry. A report by WPP Group’s Kantar Media indicates a healthy 5.7% increase in total advertising expenditures to $34.9 billion for Q1 2014, led by big-brand advertisers’ TV ad buys for the Winter Olympics. Internet display ad spending meanwhile grew 13% for the quarter, which […]
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Dynamic Yield Raises $12M Series B; Plots US, European Expansion
Dynamic Yield, a yield optimization platform that has positioned itself as a quasi-ad server for content, has raised $12 million in Series B funding led by Marker L.L.C. The Tel Aviv-based company has plans to grow its sales and operations teams in New York and London. Also joining the round as a distribution partner is […]
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Should Mobile DSPs and Analytics Mix? 1-800-Flowers Says No
When mobile analytics company Apsalar started telling its demand-side platform (DSP) customers a few months ago that is was exiting the DSP business, some took it as welcome news. Having a dedicated mobile DSP isn’t a priority yet for some marketers, and by taking their DSP off the table, Apsalar seemingly removed the conflict of […]
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VigLink Raises $18M to Grow Native Link Exchange
Link monetization platform VigLink has raised $18 million in Series C funding. The round was led by RRE Ventures and will go toward building out its new VigLink Exchange, which launched in October, as well as new tools for advertisers. The deal brings VigLink’s total funding to $25.3 million. San Francisco-based VigLink was founded in […]
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Are You A Human Packages The 'Real Person' Data Set
User authentication company Are You a Human started in 2007 with its CAPTCHA replacement tool, PlayThru, which fights back against fraudulent impressions and bots that have become increasingly effective in mimicking real users. The tool uses interactive visual tasks – say, dragging a virtual ball into a bucket – that are more difficult for bots to fool. […]
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Placed Lands $10M In Series B Round
Location analytics startup Placed announced today $10 million in a Series B funding round led by Two Sigma Ventures, bringing its total to $13.4 million. Seattle-based Placed’s founder and CEO, David Shim, said the investment will go toward hiring data scientists and engineers over the next year to enhance Placed Attribution, a feature launched last […]
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Travel Republic And Criteo Play The Dangerous Game Of Trading Impressions For Conversions
Ad retargeter Criteo has expanded its engine to analyze conversion performance rather than simply clicks – a change intended to let marketers more selectively target impressions. The change looks good at face value, but for many companies, optimizing impressions means reducing them, which runs the risk of cutting off a nice revenue stream. Nevertheless, Travel Republic, a […]
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Twitter Acquires Native Mobile Ads Startup Namo Media
Twitter has snatched up mobile native advertising provider Namo Media, adding technology to enhance exchange-based monetization for app developers. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, and Twitter declined to comment. Namo Media has roughly eight employees, and will merge its product into the MoPub platform. The company’s SDK helps mobile app developers integrate native advertising by […]
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Marin Software Acquires Perfect Audience For $23M
Online advertising-management provider Marin Software has acquired retargeting platform Perfect Audience for $22.8 million. The deal adds to Marin’s social media and display advertising retargeting arsenal and to the flurry of funding rounds, IPOs and acquisitions in the retargeting space over the past year. San Francisco-based Perfect Audience was founded under the Y Combinator seed accelerator program […]
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Dynamic Yield Builds An Ad Server For Website Content
Software-as-a-Service yield optimization platform Dynamic Yield has taken a top-down approach to yield optimization, landing big-name retail and publishing clients in the midst of a move from Tel Aviv to New York this year. After landing $2 million in funding in 2013 from investors such as The New York Times and Eric Schmidt’s investment firm, […]
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CPG Brands Lead Carefully With Programmatic Video Buys
Consumer product goods (CPG) ad spending is in flux, as shown by the public comments of marketers like Kimberly-Clark and technology shifts such as the matching of offline data with online users to track the effectiveness of digital ads. The impact of this shift may be most visible in the area of digital video. In a […]
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Danish Publisher Network Develops Targeted Job Ads
Jobzonen, a Danish job-search website, has begun using first-party data to tailor its display ads with listings geared towards “high-value” candidates. The solution, Track & Trace, is a project of the Danish Publisher Network (DPN), a consortium of 11 publishers, including Jobzonen, using data-management platform (DMP) Krux. It’s what DPN believes is the first step towards […]
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Forrester Crowns Adobe In Web Analytics Wave
Forrester Research’s Wave report on Web analytics providers positioned Adobe Analytics Premium as the clear winner. The report prioritized vendors’ ability to serve enterprise clients. Lagging just behind Adobe in the “leader” category were IBM, Webtrends and AT Internet. Google was a “strong performer” and SAS Institute was a “contender.” No vendors were classified as […]
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PHG Targets $10B Affiliate Management Market
Performance Horizon Group (PHG) is an affiliate marketing campaign management provider whose clients have included Sony and T-Mobile. Started in 2010 with seven employees, the company now has nearly 60 on staff in offices in London and Newcastle, England, New York and Sydney. The company is led by some of the founding members of Buy.at, […]
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Essence Hires Oscar Garza Of EA To Develop Programmatic Buying Offerings
Digital agency Essence has hired Oscar Garza, formerly of Electronic Arts (EA), to lead a new effort to bring programmatic buying solutions to clients in North America. Garza started this week as director of programmatic and audience, tasked with building a new team based out of Essence’s San Francisco office. As director of acquisition for […]
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Opera Mediaworks Acquires Apprupt, Eyes German Mobile Market
Mobile advertising platform Opera Mediaworks has acquired Apprupt, a German mobile advertising service provider. The move was billed as allowing Opera Mediaworks greater access to Germany’s mobile ad market, which the company said it expected to reach $1.8 billion by 2017. “If you look at global ad spend . . . Germany is a top […]
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AdRoll Raises $70m, Turns To Mobile, International Markets
Retargeting platform AdRoll announced a $70 million funding round, led by Foundation Capital. The San Francisco-based company, which had previously raised $19 million, has expanded rapidly since launching in 2007 and become a leader in the retargeting space. AdRoll plans to use the investment to beef up its existing platform for mobile, and expand hiring at […]