mobile video

Outbrain is trying to shed its chumbox rep by bringing social media-style vertical video to mobile publishers on the open web.

When private equity firm Blackstone announced its plan this week to acquire video-focused mobile ad network Vungle, multiple sources pegged the deal at $750 million – a remarkably large price tag for a company that only raised a little over $25 million. The question is, why so high? Mobile gaming is massive For one, Vungle has […]

AdColony further trimmed its executive ranks this week in an effort to streamline the business and get to profitability. The mobile video ad network did away with at least five senior and mid-level roles in North America. AdColony’s former VP of performance, Tim O’Neil, who joined AdColony less than a year ago, was let go […]

AppLovin is one of the most well-funded indie ad platforms out there – and it’s growing like a weed. The mobile ad network last year received $841 million in debt financing from Chinese private equity firm Orient Hontai Capital. In 2014, AppLovin raised just $4 million in seed funding. Originally, Orient Hontai had intended to acquire a majority […]

AdColony’s Q4 revenue is expected to drop 5-10% more than it did last quarter and CEO Will Kassoy is out, effective immediately. The news caps off a “disappointing” year for AdColony, according to a release late Thursday from parent company Otello Corp. (formerly Opera Software, which rebranded to Otello on Monday). Kassoy, who joined Otello/Opera […]

Growth Catalyst Partners (GCP), a mid-market private equity a private investment firm, and PSP Capital, backed by former US Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker, have acquired a majority stake in mobile video ad platform Beachfront Media. The companies declined to disclose the deal terms. As a result of the transaction, Beachfront co-founder and CEO Frank […]

AdColony will lay off more than 20% of its workforce and exit the mediation and ad-serving game in a bid to focus its business on programmatic. The mobile video ad company said Monday that it will shutter most of AdMarvel, the mobile ad tech company it acquired in 2010. The ad exchange portion of AdMarvel […]

Buffalo Wild Wings is leveraging interactive mobile video to extend its TV advertising efforts – and give consumers a chance to play with their food. The casual dining and sports bar chain worked with mobile video ad company AdColony to develop a game-like video ad experience featuring “Foodoo,” a voodoo doll with carrots for its […]

Facebook is giving advertisers a bit more control over how they buy in-stream video ads within the news feed, through Audience Network and on Watch, its newly launched video tab. In the past, advertisers that wanted to purchase in-stream placements delivered into ad breaks were required to run them in the news feed. Starting Thursday, […]

Traditional video metrics aren’t really cutting it for advertisers, especially on mobile. Moat is making the attempt with its Video Score metric released in late November. Predicated on the notion that not every viewable impression is created equal, the metric aims to help properly measure digital video exposures across platforms by looking at how much […]

Snapchat is credited with jumpstarting the vertical video trend earlier this year, but now the format is really starting to hit its stride. That’s out of necessity, said Ari Brandt, CEO and co-founder of mobile ad platform MediaBrix, which on Thursday rolled out a new version of its SDK that supports vertically shot in-app video […]

The numbers are still being tallied, but Monday night’s presidential debate is likely Twitter’s largest live stream ever, according to Adam Bain, the company’s chief operating officer. Not that Bain wants to be braggadocious. It’s still early days for measurement, but Twitter is seeing audience growth. Twitter’s deal with the NFL to stream Thursday night […]

Quiznos is working to connect the dots between digital ad exposures and store visitation. After emerging from bankruptcy in 2014, Quiznos reduced its brick-and-mortar presence. With fewer stores, each location had to work harder. So Quiznos changed its media mix to support its new retail footprint. Although television used to be a focal point for […]

It’s video FTW for Opera Mediaworks. Reporting earnings under Opera Software for the final time – the sale of Opera’s consumer-facing browser business is expected to close by the end of September – Opera Mediaworks on Wednesday cited a 23% increase in Q2 revenue year over year to $114.4 million. That number represents the lion’s share of […]

MoPub is Twitter’s secret weapon – secret because the mobile exchange rarely comes up during Twitter’s quarterly earnings calls. On Friday, MoPub introduced native video mediation to enable publishers to filter their ad requests through whichever native ad network SDK they want, including the Facebook Audience Network and the more than 175 DSPs integrated with the […]

News Corp.’s acquisition of video ad platform Unruly last month is already bearing fruit. Unruly has rolled out a new in-article video format priced on cost-per-completed-view (CPCV). Out of News Corp.’s roster of publications, MarketWatch, The Sun and News.com.au in the UK and Australia will be first to deploy the format. Unruly will also sell the format directly to […]

We hear about TV budgets being reallocated to digital, but how much budget exactly? According to an AOL survey of 300 brands, agencies, and publishers, nine out of 10 of those buyers push 10% of their TV budgets to digital. While that’s good news for online publishers, it creates additional burdens around how data can […]

Pandora knows sound. Now the music streaming service is experimenting with sight and motion in its quest for new users – and mobile is the central battleground. More than three-quarters of Pandora’s roughly 80 million monthly active users listen on mobile. “We want to acquire and engage high-quality listeners – aka users who actively use the app […]

When Jun Group was founded in 2005, its bread and butter was serving desktop video ads and ads in social and mobile games, rewarding players with virtual currency when they opted in. But the video ad platform has its sights on bigger things today: mobile brand advertising dollars. And it’s using a $28 million investment […]

Pandora took its Sponsored Listening product out of beta on Monday. The mobile ad format lets brands sponsor an hour of uninterrupted listening for Pandora users in exchange for 15 seconds of engagement with an ad. “Advertisers are hungry for a model that lets them buy attention and we’ve seen really great interest from the […]

Mobile monetization platform Supersonic is looking to help developers get more flexibility around rewarded video with an ad placement-testing tool, which came out of beta on Tuesday. The feature, part of Supersonic’s video mediation SDK, allows developers to test where in their app to serve video that rewards people for watching, and what specific offers […]

Travel is a tricky category. It’s generally one of the top things people want to spend their money on – but it’s also not something most people get to do on a regular basis, said Sam Shank, CEO and co-founder of last-minute hotel booking app HotelTonight. “In theory, people can use an app like GrubHub to […]

Mobile is big and video is big – and putting the two together presents a gargantuan advertising opportunity that Verizon will be primed to capture if it closes on AOL. “Verizon has been trying to figure out how to grab a bigger share of the ad tech pie, so the move makes sense strategically on […]

Specs and standards aren’t that sexy, but industry experts say the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s recent video addendum to rich media standard MRAID could be one of the keys to unlocking more programmatic mobile video dollars. MRAID is a mobile standard, used by many publishers and app developers, to render and serve mobile rich media programmatically. […]

Pangia Games doesn’t have money to waste. What app developer does? Monetization and user acquisition are tricky for anyone – although it certainly helps to have extra cash to throw at the problem. But the smaller devs out there, like Pangia, need to get creative. “We’re a team of two,” said Nick Barbato, managing partner at […]

While it would be wrong to say that advertisers aren’t spending on mobile — they are, to the tune of $7.1 billion in 2013, a 110% year-over-year increase, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau — it wouldn’t be wrong to say that they are spending at a rate not commensurate with mobile consumption. Mary Meeker and […]

As mobile traffic grows, the stakes for advertisers also climb. This is especially true for a publisher like Time Inc., where mobile traffic increased 35% in six short months – from 39 million unique views in December to 53 million unique views in June. As more traffic shifts to mobile, “being able to provide more […]