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Facebook is overstating the importance of its cookie-free ad server, but Google’s DoubleClick empire is facing its first serious threat in years. Advertisers and agencies should launch trials immediately, if for nothing else than Google pricing leverage.
When companies successfully design for online discovery, people are delivered the information they need before they realize they need it. But as Facebook’s newsfeed experiment reminded us, the challenge is to engineer a sense of serendipity without invading users’ privacy. Jay Patani, an analyst at EC1 Capital, imagines a path forward.
Social shopping site Polyvore has added a home design vertical in an effort to reach new users and expand its presence.
After two years of go-nowhere discussions over the creation of a Do Not Track policy for online advertising, a leading privacy advocate gave up on the process.
Why does LinkedIn care if you get your news there or anywhere else? The company knows the more news there is on LinkedIn, the more likely you are to visit, and you’ll keep the business cycle going.
Opponents of software patents suffered a setback as the Federal Circuit today said a patent for displaying content before a video should not be considered an abstract idea.
The growth in online video shows means more alternatives to TV than ever before — but advertising dollars are stubbornly sticking with the older medium.
Google’s published a blog post last week about “bad apples” in the ad industry. The meaning of the post is now clear: it was intended to rein in shady software, but also to send a message to other advertisers to clean up their act.
Congress and even some tech companies are promising to get serious about “Do Not Track” legislation, which will let consumers tell companies not to collect their personal information. But any meaningful change is unlikely.
Google’s Susan Wojcicki says the viral success of a Pepsi prank video shows how online ad viewing is becoming a voluntary experience where marketers strive to produce content viewers want to watch.
Facebook’s ad strategy is rapidly becoming more sophisticated. Marketers and investors are likely to love the results — but will Facebook be able to get it right without alienating users?
An investigation this week revealed that major brands are paying at least $6 million a month to serve ads to bots on 202 websites. Here are some more names and details.
Video remains the most promising ad format for publishers hoping to improve their ad returns. The industry is still in early stages but here are five winners of a contest to make video ads more interactive.
Google is making big changes to AdWords which is its main money machine and a major engine of online advertising. The company is framing the changes as a benefit — but they may shortchange advertisers and publishers.
Looking for the turnaround story of 2013? Stop looking at Yahoo — it’s AOL that’s the real deal. The company has quietly put in place a powerful strategy based on media, technology and advertising. And investors like what they see.
As we wrote last quarter, there may be a weakening of interest in consumer social media businesses. But social technologies are working their way deeper and deeper into enterprise computing, and social media is playing a bigger role across advertising and marketing sectors
Oprah Winfrey and sports site Deadspin had two of the year’s biggest stories this week and attracted millions of people to their websites. Too bad they didn’t have an ad plan in place.
The French ISP has been told by French digital economy minister Fleur Pellerin to stop blocking online ads, because she is ‘very attached’ to the open internet. However, she also hinted that she may not be entirely in favor of net neutrality.
Online video advertising is hot, and attracting some serious venture capital: Video ad platform Tubemogul just closed a $20 million Series C round of funding to pay for more hires and and expand internationally. The round comes after Tubemogul decided to focus exclusively on advertising.
Media ratings giant Nielsen is backing Pereg Ventures, a new venture capital firm that plans to invest in U.S. and Tel Aviv startups that help advertisers measure and market to audiences across multiple platforms.
As voters increasingly spend their leisure time with things other than newspapers and television, political campaigns need new methods of making sure their messages reach those people. Obama for America’s Rayid Ghani took to Facebook to find not just possible voters, but possible campaign workers.
Media companies are looking for new revenues through selling things. Meanwhile, more commerce sites are starting to publish. Is it easier for content to transform into commerce — or vice versa?
To a lot of observers, mobile’s ascendence spells inevitable heartache. But Victor Malachard, of Adfonic, says it’s very early days, and, in fact, our best ones are still to come.
San Francisco-based ad tech firm Triggit announced on Thursday that it had raised $7.4 million in Series B funding, led by Spark Capital and Foundry Group. The funding comes after months of growth driven in large part by its inclusion in Facebook’s ad exchange.
A study of Black Friday cyber-shopping said that social media advertising was a big bust with few people buying things in response to an ad from Facebook. The story is very different if you use other metrics to define “responded.”
According to a new report from eMarketer, real-time bidding could account for a quarter of all digital ad spending by 2015. Among other factors, Facebook’s new ad exchange, FBX, is expected to drive much of that growth.
Tumblr is enjoying explosive traffic growth and jaw-dropping valuations. But so did a similar community site, GeoCities, a decade ago before it quickly imploded. Investor Fred Wilson says this time is different.
According to a report released Thursday by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, Internet ad revenue reached $17 billion in the first half of the year, but the rate of growth declined from 23 percent between 2010 to 2011 to 14 percent between 2011 and 2012.
Vibrant Media, the company behind many of the in-text ads on the web, is on Wednesday rolling out a redesign meant to make its advertising more transparent and interactive for users.
According to a new report from research firm eMarketer, Google is expected to lead the US display ad market in 2012, after losing the top spot to Facebook last year. The search giant also dominates in mobile and search advertising.
On Thursday, Facebook is announcing that its new real-time bidding platform, the Facebook Exchange, is coming out of beta. While it’s still early days, the social network’s advertising partners give the new platform high marks.
To help advertisers figure out when consumers actually intend to purchase a product and when they’re just making a wish list of fantasy items, mobile ad network Jumptap’s new ad targeting approach links mobile behavior, web behavior and offline data.
Over the past few months, as the future of Yahoo itself has been unclear, some have speculated that the company might sell its ad exchange Right Media. In a mini media blitz on Thursday, the company said it is sticking with Right Media.
Facebook’s second quarter earnings report – its first since going public in May – just matched Wall Street analysts’ expectations. The company also said it had 955 million monthly active users as of the end of June.
The latest hires in the digital media and tech industry.
New York-based 33Across, an ad tech startup that uses vast amounts of social data to target audiences, has raised an additional $13.1 million from Pelion Ventures, Flybridge Capital, Greycroft Partners, First Round Capital and others.
Chances are, you’ve had an experience like this: you check out a product on a retailer’s site and then an ad for it follows you around the Web. Get ready to see more retargeted ads for gaming, sporting events and movies.
Between its CEO search and patent war with Facebook, the past few months have been especially rocky for long-beleaguered Yahoo. But, on schedule, the company today announced that it is rolling out its big data ad tool Genome.
Under the gun to show that it can make big money in mobile, Facebook is reportedly planning to unveil a new product that will target ads based on the apps a consumer has on his phone.
One lackluster IPO later, Facebook holds a market valuation that’s impressive but well shy of the $100 billion most expected. A large factor in that shortfall has been a concern that the company isn’t generating as much advertising revenue as it should be, and it’s fair to say a huge proportion of Facebook’s theoretical value depends on its solving its ad revenue problem. Can the company show that socially driven advertising is superior to traditional ad methods? And more important, can it do so before the market loses interest?
The social network said Wednesday that it plans to launch Facebook Exchange, a real-time bidding platform, in the next few weeks.
A new Google report looks at trends in the display advertising business, including growth by geographic area and content vertical.
In the mid-1990s, DoubleClick co-founder and CEO Kevin O’Connor developed a platform for data-driven advertising. With his latest startup, FindTheBest, he’s aiming to do the same thing for content.
Privacy is a bit like the weather — everyone talks about it but no one does a damn thing about it. Sure, it’s creepy that these companies track you and munch your personal information. But are you really going to ditch Facebook and every other online convenience of modern life?
There is a big connection between Facebook’s large and growing infrastructure budget and advertising, the latter of which is the primary culprit behind many privacy concerns. The gist is that ad-supported web platforms such as Facebook have to spend lots of money on infrastructure in order to maintain adequate performance levels and power new features. However, that means every dollar spent on infrastructure has to add up to even more money brought in by advertising. Simply put, the true costs of building new infrastructure take a huge bite from a company’s bottom line — in more ways than one.
It looks like Facebook wants to address the big weaknesses in its mobile business model before it has to deal with nagging questions of its investors. According to FT, Facebook plans in March to include sponsored posts in its mobile news feeds.
Almost a year after it angered users with its ‘quick bar’ advertising, and several months into its new Promoted Tweet service, Twitter’s ad platform seems as shaky as ever. Is targeted advertising a myth, or can Dick Costolo and team turn it around?
Ad-targeting company 33Across is acquiring link-tracking specialist Tynt Multimedia, resulting in a combined user graph spanning 1.25 billion users. Both are storing and analyzing billions of transactions daily, and they will use that data to help publishers compete on ad sales against mega sites like Google.
Google SVP of ads Susan Wojcicki said on the company’s earnings call that 60 percent of all video ads that appear on YouTube are TrueView ads, meaning that viewers can skip it and move on to the video if it’s not relevant or interesting.
Rich media ad firm Medialets is launching Medialets Private Marketplace, a buying platform that lets advertisers directly plan, buy and execute on Medialets’ collection of top publishers. The marketplace reflects the emergence of private exchanges in mobile and the growing maturation of mobile advertising.
A breathless report says Facebook is going to use its new Timeline feature to appeal to advertisers. But is this really surprising? Like most free web services, Facebook has always relied on advertising — and adding social elements to advertising is the future of the medium.
Long a big force in online media, Yahoo and its once-successful online portal business model is struggling. So we decided to ask GigaOM readers what they thought Yahoo should do, and we published the results in a flash analysis on GigaOM Pro.
Adchemy, the six-year-old online ad technology company, has raised $61 million in a Series E funding round led by Microsoft. This round brings the total venture capital invested in Adchemy to $116 million, Adchemy CEO Murthy Nukala told me in an interview on Tuesday.
Thanks to a new product from Nielsen and Facebook, the Internet could be on the cusp of become a first-class citizen in the advertising world for good. But there’s just one problem: Do Facebook users want to be part of a Nielsen family?
How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying is making a big push on Facebook, with a contest to find its biggest fan by asking users to record video testimonials. Those testimonials become great word-of-mouth advertising for other potential theater goers.
Microsoft’s online business lost $2.6 billion for its fiscal year, mainly due to its investment in search. Yet even with Yahoo’s outsourced…
Pixazza, a digital ad platform that embeds e-commerce links to items within online photos, has renamed itself Luminate. The newly branded company is broadening its services, turning into a platform for apps that generate in-photo links for a wider array of categories beyond clothing and accessories.
The future of coupons is moving toward digital and mobile, something that startup SavingStar is taking full advantage of. The company told me it has hit half a million users since it launched its ecoupon product in April, putting it on a faster pace than Groupon’s.
Yahoo reported another disappointing quarter, with core revenues down 5 percent to just over $1 billion. Its display advertising business was up…
A month after its debut as a public company, LinkedIn isn’t resting on its laurels, and Wall Street is reacting positively. Several new initiatives unveiled this month suggest the professional social network might have the steam to compete with the Googles and Facebooks of the world.
Analysts at Wall Street’s major financial firms initiated wholesale coverage of LinkedIn (s LNKD) on Tuesday, putting forth their opinions of the company’s future growth prospects and estimates for how the stock should perform. Wall Street’s predictions for LinkedIn, in a word? Bullish.
It looks like rumors of display advertising’s death were greatly exaggerated. Nearly all the tech industry’s largest players are expected to report growth in their display ad businesses for 2011, with Facebook leading the pack. Why are display and banner ads on the upswing?
Online advertising platform startup Taykey officially launched out of stealth mode Thursday with the announcement of a $9 million funding round led by Sequoia Capital. The round officially serves as the two-year-old company’s series B funding and brings Taykey’s total investment to $11 million.
Strong demand for U.S. display advertising, especially video and banner ads, is helping pump up projections for the overall online advertising market, which is now set to grow by 20 percent this year to $31.3 billion, according to revised estimates from eMarketer.
Among reports that it was having trouble unloading $1 billion worth of shares at a very rich valuation, Facebook last week tweaked an existing advertising…
Last week, the bipartisan Kerry-McCain bill proposed legislation on a Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights that would put the FTC in charge of policing the online collection, sharing and use of personal information. That has far-reaching implications for the online media business.
Could Facebook’s social search patent mean that it is building an alternative to Google? If so, the social media giant will have to set itself apart in a field already crowded with big players and some innovative upstarts.
The U.S. isn’t the only government knocking on Twitter’s door right now, it turns out. Officials on the other side of the Atlantic are also casting their eyes over the site — if for very different reasons. Their focus is on disclosing paid Tweets.
Yahoo really isn’t in the “check-in” game, which means it has to find other ways to bring advertisers together with local users. One attempt is the new Yahoo Local beta which delivers hyper-local content from local publishers through the web in 30 initial locations.
eMarketer, a New York-based research firm estimates spending on U.S. internet advertisements, will grow 13.9 percent to $25.8 billion for the full year. It expects a 10.5 percent increase in U.S. online ad spending in 2011, followed by double-digit growth every year through 2014.
Kindsight’s efforts to pair deep packet inspection for PC security with targeted behavioral ads will serve as a good test to see how well it can utilize the controversial DPI technology and make it attractive to consumers concerned about maintaining their privacy.
When it comes to selling advertising on online video, two different approaches are becoming clear: longer and broader, or shorter and targeted. YouTube’s current strategy reflects the latter, but studies show audiences are ready for a higher ad load. Is one strategy superior to the other?
Groupon is growing faster than virtually any other tech-related company in history, including Google and Facebook, and is expected to close the year with revenue of more than $500 million. What then, are the lessons retailers and other companies can learn from the such incredible growth?
Ad platform TidalTV has released a study comparing click-through and video completion rates on both 15-second and 30-second ads on streaming video. In terms of click-throughs, the results find that targeted ads perform better than untargeted ads — even when they’re longer.
Recent studies show that online viewers hit by a higher load of ads aren’t dropping off the way they might. In fact, they may be able to watch more ads on content — perhaps as many as those on television — especially if ad formats continue to evolve.
AppNexus has stepped up its fundraising, bringing in $50 million for its real-time display advertising platform from existing investors as well as Microsoft. The company has now raised $65.5 million over the last three years from investors including Venrock, Kodiak Venture Partners and First Round Capital.
Every startup fears than an established brand will one day acquire a rival or build a similar offering and instantly become the industry gorilla. But there is mounting evidence that suggests online ad categories are not cornered by deep-pocketed brands, but by new market entrants.
UPDATED with new data from Trendrr, TiVo and GoDaddy. Who would have thought that passing the ball to the wrong guy can…
[qi:109] U.S. web users tripled the amount of time they spent on social networks in August from the same month last year,…
Everyone — from app developers to startups such as AdMob to Google — are feeling bullish about the megabillion-dollar potential of mobile…
Traffiq, whose online advertising marketplace connects buyers and sellers of online media, said today that it’s received $10 million in Series B…
The founders of Viddyou, the small site that focused more on the creator than the video, are exploring options to get out…
The marginal cost of delivering web-based content is approaching zero, so while some publishers continue to charge for it, they are the…
Confirming early reports from last week, Sony (s sne) just announced a machinima tool for use in PlayStation Home, the virtual world…
Traffic Marketplace, a Los Angeles-based ad network, has acquired fbExchange, an ad network focusing on Facebook and social media applications, for an…
Microsoft’s (s msft) earnings announcement and its unprecedented decision to cut around 5,000 employees has dominated the news today. Experts have already…
We know things are bad in the ad world. It is just that things are even worse for folks who were too…
[qi:011] In what is a sign of the times, online ad network Exponential has cut nearly eight percent of its staff as…
[qi:114] So much for the Obama bump. The markets have resumed their downward spiral, making clear that our economic conditions aren’t going…
The advertising network business is going to go through a gut-wrenching shakeout, and its just about getting started. The Wall Street Journal…
Late last week, my partners and I here at Polaris Ventures hosted a summit for all of our portfolio companies in and…
Jobs on Apple TV: Still a “Hobby;” during earnings call Apple CEO says the whole digital living room category is still a…
A note from UBS Internet analyst Ben Schachter advises that deteriorating economic conditions are likely to impact online advertising, not just in the short-term but in the long-run as well.
PubMatic, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup focused on online advertising, just released its PubMatic AdPrice Index based on data from over 3,000…
Update: The buzz on Sand Hill Road these days is all about online advertising plays. Never mind the fact that most of…
Kara Swisher got her hands on a memo sent out to AOL (TWX) employees earlier today from CEO Randy Falco. Here is…
