US music-streaming giant Pandora opens programmatic audio marketplace

One of the United States’ most popular music-streaming services, Pandora has joined the programmatic audio arms race, opening up the largest set of ad-supported listeners in the country to targeted, audio-based advertising.

The announcement marks an opportunity for brands to access the largest addressable audience in the streaming audio space - the California-based music recommendation service owns the largest inventory of its kind in the US, while 92% of its audience is...

31 July 2018 | Advertising Technology

Benefit or buzz: IAB looks to gauge true value of blockchain in digital advertising

Few industries have escaped the hype around the transformational, nay, revolutionary, benefits of blockchain technology, and the digital advertising community is certainly not exempt.

Owed to its fundamental blueprint of distributed ledgers, enabling secure, public and decentralised transaction records data, documents, and of course, currency, blockchain has been widely touted as a transparent and less expensive solution to the “murky” world of ad-trading, among a host of...

20 July 2018 | Advertising Technology

MediaMath seals $225m financing for AI ad tech and tactical mergers

MediaMath, a long-time pioneer in programmatic advertising, has announced $225m (£170m) in new financing, courtesy of Searchlight Capital Partners.

The windfall brings the ad tech company’s total funding to over $607m (£458m), according to Crunchbase.

Delivered in two tranches, this will provide the “strategic growth capital” needed to accelerate the expansion of its DSP (demand side platform) - which allows brands to buy ads using automated...

11 July 2018 | Advertising Technology

AT&T snaps up AppNexus in billion-dollar ad tech bid

US telecoms firm AT&T has bought ad tech giant AppNexus in a deal expected to be worth in excess of $1bn (£753m).

While the value of the transaction hasn’t been disclosed by the two companies, Wall Street Journal expected a possible deal could reach $1.6bn (£1.2bn). The announcement follows just a week after AT&T’s $85bn (£64bn) acquisition of Time Warner.

As reported by Marketing Tech last week, AT&T has been eyeing AppNexus’...

25 June 2018 | Advertising Technology

AT&T eyes programmatic giant AppNexus for $1.6bn

US telco AT&T is reportedly in talks to snap up ad tech firm AppNexus for a possible $1.6bn (£1.2bn), according to Wall Street Journal, in a move that would equip it with firepower enough to take on the likes of Facebook and Google in the advertising space.

The news emerges just a week after AT&T’s $85bn (£64bn) acquisition of Time Warner, while a bid for the New York programmatic specialist would likely be backed by the complete buyout of Otter Media, a...

21 June 2018 | Advertising Technology

Oath brings virtual reality ads to the programmatic marketplace

Verizon’s media powerhouse Oath, the umbrella for companies including AOL and Yahoo!, has brought VR (virtual reality) to programmatic ad buying.

While not quite transporting audiences to virtual new worlds, and perhaps better described as ‘extended reality’ (XR), Oath’s new ad experiences allow brands to layer on rich and immersive content to product ads, adding an extra layer of detail and dimension. 

Companies already experimenting with the...

20 June 2018 | Advertising Technology

IBM and MediaOcean’s blockchain pilot to combat ‘ad-tech tax’ for major brands

IBM’s digital agency network IBM iX has coupled up with ad-world software provider MediaOcean to pilot a blockchain network, in efforts to clear up the murky media supply chain and hack away at “ad tech tax”.

The network, which is set to trial with media deals for top-flite brands including Unilever, Kimberly-Clark Corp, Pfizer, Kellogg and IBM Watson, is aimed at improving transparency, combating fraud and getting deals done quicker.

Ultimately, though, and...

20 June 2018 | Advertising Technology

Buzzfeed sheds further 20 staff in continued move towards programmatic

Buzzfeed is reportedly laying off a further 20 of its staff in part of a reorganisation of its business, as it looks to recover from a loss-making 2017.

The announcement follows the publisher severing 100 employees last year - or 6% of its workforce - when it reported a £3.3m loss, owed in large part to its move away from native advertising.

The company will in turn be hiring a further 45 employees to its business team equipped with the necessary skills and “diverse...

8 June 2018 | Advertising Technology

Breaking the mould: Viewability and creativity in the digital economy

If you visited HotWired.com on October 27 1994, your eye would have probably been caught by an unusual flashing banner emblazoned across the top of your screen. Standing at 60 pixels tall and 468 pixels wide, the internet’s first advertisement was garish, tacky and the nemesis of exasperated dial-up connections worldwide - but it was a massive success.

The advert itself was a part of AT&T’s You Will campaign, which was accompanied by a TV ad in which a narrator...

5 June 2018 | Advertising Technology

Brand safety doesn’t mean restricting your reach – it increases the return on your spend

'Brand safety' is one of those unrelenting industry phrases that seems to be spouted ad nauseam, with brands and agencies alike contributing their two cents in every possible publication. The irony of that statement is not lost on me doing it again!

We all claim to care about brand safety, but many brands have yet to address their own accountability. We jump blindly into programmatic black holes and user generated content minefields, running across lengthy site lists with...

3 May 2018 | Advertising