Omnichannel

ChannelMix is InMarket’s fifth deal within as many years.

Advanced TV advertising company Cadent announced plans to drop $324 million to acquire the performance marketing company AdTheorent.

PubMatic’s total Q3 revenue grew 11% to $64.5 million despite an industry-wide downturn, but the company doesn’t have high hopes for the rest of the year. It expects that ad spend will continue to trend down in Q4. But although spending is decelerating due to recession fears, PubMatic is planning to capitalize on the eventual rebound by focusing on video, retail media and particularly CTV, which continues to grow.

The round was led by Play Ventures VC with participation from Heracles Capital, a $10 million fund focused on mobile investments that was launched in May by Mobile Dev Memo Founder and all-around mobile smartypants Eric Seufert.

Without an easy interface for clicking through to purchase, audio and video ads have, until recently, been best suited to upper-funnel brand-awareness campaigns rather than direct response. But now, tried-and-true technologies like retargeted display ads and QR codes are making audio and video formats more actionable.

Mar tech platform Zeta Global, or shall we say ZETA, became the latest unicorn to canter into the public market Thursday with its shares modestly priced at $10. Although Zeta’s stock came in at the low end of the pre-IPO anticipated range of $10 to $12, and the first trade clocked in at just over […]

Retail media networks are having a moment, because they’re positioned to add relevance in a cookieless world, says Luke Kigel, VP of Walgreens integrated media and head of the Walgreens Advertising Group (WAG). Walgreens put a bow on its retail media network, dubbed WAG, in early December. But the launch is part of a larger […]

Nielsen is developing an identity resolution solution to help advertisers measure audiences across platforms after third-party cookies and other mainstay identifiers go ta-ta. “We’ve been working aggressively on our cross-platform journey for the last couple of years,” said Mainak Mazumdar, Nielsen’s chief data officer. “But we accelerated this when we started to see what was […]

The CVS Media Exchange (CMX), CVS Pharmacy’s new ad network, launched in August. But it was in the works before COVID-19 hit. The pandemic makes for interesting timing, though. “Ecommerce and omnichannel shopping were already on the rise,” said Erin Condon, VP of front store and omnichannel marketing at CVS Health. “But in a post-COVID […]

Not everyone’s in the market for a trampoline. And with the rising cost of customer acquisition, it’s vital to get the jump on consumers who are serious about making what’s both a niche and pricey purchase. For that, you need unified data across channels, said Saugar Sainju, VP of growth marketing at Goba Sports Group, […]

Walmart launched a self-serve ad platform and an ads API marketing partner program on Friday to make it easier for marketers to buy search ads on its site. Previously, Walmart’s sponsored product ads were only available as a managed service through company reps. Although Amazon began beta testing its self-serve ad platform in 2017, Walmart has […]

Out-of-home (OOH) advertising is the only traditional media that’s still showing growth, but some advertisers are holding back, because the process of buying billboards and transit ads is like wrangling cats. To try and get more advertisers on board, AdQuick, a startup backed by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, is creating an online marketplace for buying […]

Placed has found a new home. Foursquare is buying the location-based measurement company from Snap. Separately, it raised $150 million in fresh funding courtesy of The Raine Group, some of which is going to fund the acquisition. The rest is earmarked for R&D. The deal, announced early Friday morning, comes less than two years after […]

Firefly is moving fast. On Thursday, the San Francisco-based startup, which places digital ad displays on the top of private rideshare vehicles and taxis and then splits the revenue with drivers, announced its expansion into New York City, the acquisition of digital ad company Strong Outdoor and $30 million in Series A funding. The round, […]

National advertisers don’t particularly covet college media inventory. The buying process is manual and clunky, and the ad is often just an image slapped onto a rudimentary webpage. And don’t even think about any meaningful ad verification. On the other hand, college media reaches a demographic that is very much coveted: affluent 18- to 24-year-olds […]

Spotify and TGI Fridays are hooking up with Foursquare as a preferred measurement partner. Solid measurement is what seals the deal with marketers, said Brian Berner, head of US sales at Spotify. “Many of our [brand] partners have a brick-and-mortar presence, so we’ve seen increased demand for measurement that showcases how our ad platform connects […]

TGI Fridays has a growing appetite for artificial intelligence (AI) and personalization. AI tech is a strategic investment area for the casual dining restaurant chain this year, said James Washington, TGIF’s product manager for digital platforms. Top-of-the-agenda use cases include improving the dining experience and enhancing the brand’s cross-channel messaging strategy, both of which hinge […]

Starting Thursday, Facebook will let advertisers retarget based on what people do in the real world. “Reporting on the impact of ads is great, but other companies provide something similar,” said Gabriel Francis, global product marketing lead for the offline sales group at Facebook. “We’re letting people actually do something with those reports.” Google’s offline […]

IPONWEB might have made its name building ad tech for other vendors, but it’s increasingly hoping to directly service agencies, brands and publishers. An expanding 35% of IPONWEB’s business comes directly from media buyers and owners, and in late February, the company brought on Rubicon Project and Spotify vet Jana Jakovljevic to build out its […]

Fragmentation is to the buy side what agita is to a stomach: upsetting. “Data is perhaps the most important asset we have as an advertising agency,” said Mauricio Sabogal, global CEO of WPP’s Kinetic Worldwide, during the Modern Marketing Summit at the Mobile World Congress on Monday in Barcelona. “There are too many companies managing […]

Brian Andersen, a partner at LUMA Partners, will read the tea leaves on marketing clouds and omnichannel marketing at Industry Preview on January 18 in New York City. Remember when everyone kept predicting the seminal year of mobile, year after year, until the question became moot because mobile was everywhere? The same thing is happening […]

Swisscom is an example of how telcos like AT&T, Verizon or Singtel might evolve. In April, the Swiss telco combined its mobile phone and set-top box data with digital, print, radio and TV content from 85 media brands. The joint venture, called Admeira, reaches 95% of the Swiss market and lets advertisers precisely target their […]

Push is generally the purview of mobile apps, but Vizury wants to give ecommerce players the ability to take advantage of browser-based notifications. The Bangalore, India-based digital CRM company released a tool out of beta on Thursday that segments and retargets users with messages informed by a blend of in-app behavior and website visit data. […]

Kirthi Kalyanam will speak at AdExchanger’s Omni.Digital conference in Chicago on September 8. A lot of marketers are struggling with retargeting. According to a recent Millward Brown Digital poll of 300 senior brand, agency and media execs, 55% of them aren’t confident in their company’s grasp of the customer journey. “Historically, the advertising industry has […]

It’s possible to sync radio ads and digital billboards to reach drivers with cross-channel messaging – but scale, targeting options and measurement are roadblocks to adoption. For one, there’s just not that much inventory available programmatically yet. “It’s nascent,” admitted Mark van de Crommert, CEO of Mediasynced, an Amsterdam-based TV/online syncing company that recently released […]

There was a problem with 2nd Time Around’s paper-based loyalty program. No one was using it. “It was an inconsistent experience, it wasn’t trackable and we didn’t get any data out of it,” said Kristin Kohler Burrows, president and CEO of 2nd Time Around, a fashion consignment retailer that operates more than 40 stores across […]

Local merchants selling CPG products and home appliances don’t have the resources to prioritize marketing, especially in digital channels. That’s a problem for CPG brands and appliance manufacturers, who know that some of the biggest buys happen in-store. Enter Netsertive, which in 2009 set out to bridge the gap between brands and local distributors. It […]

A couple of partnerships have popped out of RampUp, a Tuesday conference centered around Acxiom’s data onboarding service, which has since been integrated into a unit called Connectivity. The common theme – probably not surprisingly – is the ability to do one-to-one matching. Adobe Audience Manager: From Device Matching To Individual/Household Matching First, Adobe and […]

There have been some significant organizational shifts within Acxiom in recent years. While the company was mostly known as a seller of third-party data sets – at least, by lawmakers in Washington – or as a builder of large, complex databases, Acxiom now wants to be considered a data infrastructure provider. That is, it wants […]

The technological problem with the Internet of Things (IoT) is that various connected devices, household appliances and vehicles all have different operating systems with different communication or data collection methods. This means they can’t talk to each other because they don’t speak the same language. “Information isn’t valuable without an infrastructure to make it actionable […]