Ad Operations Online » Ad Networks and Platforms

Millennial Media Launches Operations in Japan

Otilia Otlacan — Fri, 24 May 2013 13:00:18 +0000

Industry Veteran John Greiner Named Managing Director of Japan

BALTIMORE, Md. - Millennial Media (NYSE: MM), the leading independent mobile advertising and data platform, announced the official launch of operations in the Japanese market. John Greiner has been named Managing Director of Japan, and will lead the company’s operations out of the newly opened Tokyo office.

“Japan is an incredibly advanced and robust mobile market, and there is a tremendous opportunity for brands to reach and engage consumers over mobile devices”

“Following the opening of our Singapore office in 2011, expanding into Japan was a natural progression as we look to continue working with brands, agencies and developers across Asia,” said Mollie Spilman, EVP, Global Sales & Marketing, Millennial Media. “Our scale, innovative rich media capabilities and industry-leading data asset will allow us to bring a premium mobile advertising solution to the Japanese market.”

As the Managing Director of Japan, John Greiner will lead all operations in Japan and will be responsible for building relationships with developers and publishers, and working with premium brands and agencies to help them execute effective mobile advertising campaigns. Greiner was most recently the President of MonkeyPaw Games, and brings over 18 years of experience in the Japanese market.

“Japan is an incredibly advanced and robust mobile market, and there is a tremendous opportunity for brands to reach and engage consumers over mobile devices,” said John Greiner, Managing Director, Japan, Millennial Media. “Millennial Media has the technology and infrastructure in place to bring a unique, premium offering to the region, and we will be looking to immediately capitalize and generate scale.”

With the opening of the Japanese office, Millennial Media now has international offices in London, Singapore, Tokyo, Paris, Hamburg and Jakarta.

Millennial Media has over 350 employees worldwide and is aggressively hiring in both the United States and internationally.

About Millennial Media

Millennial Media is the leading independent mobile advertising and data platform. Our technology, tools and services help app developers and mobile website publishers maximize their advertising revenue, acquire users and gain audience insights. Our platform also enables us to offer advertisers powerful Mobile Audience Solutions (MAS) that utilize our significant scale, sophisticated targeting and uniquely engaging creative capabilities to deliver meaningful results.

New Kantar Solution Optimizes Campaigns Based On Impact

Otilia Otlacan — Thu, 23 May 2013 15:00:02 +0000

New Kantar Solution Gives Advertisers the Power to Go Beyond Reach and Optimize Campaigns Based on Impact

Compete, Dynamic Logic, DoubleVerify integrate audience, ad viewability, brand and behavioral data into a single measurement and optimization solution

Boston, MA – Leading digital insights and Kantar Group companies Dynamic Logic and Compete have teamed up with DoubleVerify, the pioneer in online media verification and viewability, to launch Advance™ − an integrated solution that provides marketers the insights needed to optimize digital media campaigns based on brand, behavioral and sales impact.

Advance is the only solution in the industry to combine exposure metrics (audience composition, reach and viewability) with effectiveness measures (brand, behavior and sales outcomes) into a unified reporting and optimization system.

The Advance platform addresses the measurement struggles advertisers, agencies and publishers face in aligning key data and increasing marketing ROI. Advance provides end users with more control over the data needed to make critical media selection, placement and creative decisions. Rather than being limited to basic measures of audience reached, media planners can now incorporate brand, behavioral and sales impact data as inputs into their optimization decisions. This new capability brings increased transparency to media planning and performance, enabling well-informed changes in real time and ultimately brand and sales lifts – the key drivers of marketing ROI.

“While digital media is thought to be more measurable than traditional media, there have been blind spots preventing advertisers from really understanding their digital media ROI,” said Yaakov Kimelfeld, Chief Research Officer of Compete. “Advance removes these blinds spots with a holistic tool that enables optimization focused not just on reach and impressions, but squarely on advertiser impact.”

Advance reports on the four critical aspects of a campaign in a single interface: Audience Target Reached, Ad Viewability, Brand Impact and Behavioral Impact. The platform includes a real-time analytics dashboard to provide planners with the ability to adjust campaigns “in-flight” and increase the efficiency and effectiveness of digital spend. In addition, a cost-analysis calculator enables planners to input media costs and compare Effective CPM, Effective CPP (cost–per–point), Viewable CPM rates and Cost-Per-Impact.

“Until now, optimization solutions have focused primarily on campaign delivery; but GRPs or TRPs alone are not sufficient,” said Michelle Eule, SVP of Digital Solutions at Dynamic Logic. “Advertisers and planners now have a more complete formula for evaluating the success of their campaigns using unique metrics such as Impacted Audience and Cost-Per-Impact to optimize how they reach their target audiences.”

“We’re excited to partner with Compete and Dynamic Logic to help solve the performance measurement gaps that exist in online marketing today,” said Wayne Gatinella, CEO, DoubleVerify. “Together we can build a better industry that enables brand advertisers and their agencies to achieve optimal media performance and insights.”

Additional benefits of the Advance solution include:

• Customizable demographic and behavioral audience definitions to pinpoint reach within the audience segments that advertisers value the most

• Verification and viewability technology that is accredited by the Media Rating Council (MRC), adheres to 3Ms standards and is used by more than two hundred Fortune 500 brands

• Streamlined tagging solution that leverages existing workflow and is already merged into most media buying platforms

• Normative insights for brand and behavioral measures; brand impact metrics are benchmarked against norms from thousands of other campaigns and correlate with changes in brand equity

• Customizable reporting and deliverables that extend client insights into cross-media, cross-device and cross-channel applications

“By bringing delivery, attitudinal and behavioral data together, Advance allows us to understand how optimizing against one metric is impacting the others in real time, which is critical not just for managing complex digital campaigns but for elevating the level of insights we provide for our clients,” said Hilary Kolman, Director, Analytics & Insight at MEC.

“In our client work we always focus on delivering a holistic view of metrics and KPIs so as to optimize and truly drive performance,” says Tommy Wiles, Associate Director, Strategy & Analysis, Digitas. “Advance’s dashboard has made the process of creating a full picture view easier by putting all of our reporting data in a single, easy-to-use interface.”

Live Webinar

The companies will introduce Advance and share insights in a webinar entitled “A New Formula for Optimization: Optimize Digital Ad Campaigns Based on Impact” on June 6th at 2 p.m. EDT. Please register for free at: http://success.compete.com/newformula.

www.compete.com/us/products/advance

About Compete
Compete (www.compete.com) provides digital insights that helps the world’s top brands improve their marketing based on the online behavior of millions of consumers. Compete’s offerings are fueled by the largest integrated online consumer behavior and survey panel in the industry. Consumer and media insights are interpreted by analytical experts in the automotive, entertainment, financial services, media, mobile, packaged goods, retail, technology, telecom and travel markets to deliver data and recommendations to create effective online experiences and highly profitable advertising campaigns.

About Dynamic Logic
Dynamic Logic (www.dynamiclogic.com) is the world leader in digital insights. Founded in 1999 as a pioneer of the digital revolution, Dynamic Logic helped establish the Internet\’s true marketing value to businesses by developing solutions that measure beyond click-through to quantify the full brand impact of online advertising. As part of Millward Brown, Dynamic Logic continues to lead the industry — developing innovations to optimize and track digital ad impact, specializing in emerging media platforms, and integrating insights across all digital and non-digital media. For marketers, agencies, and publishers alike, Dynamic Logic offers the most cutting-edge and adaptable solutions to make the most of every digital marketing dollar.

About DoubleVerify
DoubleVerify (www.doubleverify.com) is the world leader in online media transparency, accountability and effectiveness insights. MRC-accredited, DoubleVerify is the top choice of brand marketers, agencies, advertising networks, demand side platforms, exchanges and digital publishers looking to ensure quality advertising environments, campaign transparency and performance. DoubleVerify validates over 60 billion advertising impressions per month for hundreds of Fortune 500 brands, advertising networks and media platforms. DoubleVerify was conferred the World Economic Forum 2012 Technology Pioneer Award for being one of the most innovative stakeholders in the technology space. Headquartered in New York City, DoubleVerify’s investors include JMI Equity, Institutional Venture Partners, Blumberg Capital, First Round Capital and Genacast Ventures.

DataXu Introduces the Industry’s First Algorithm Marketplace

Otilia Otlacan — Thu, 23 May 2013 14:00:06 +0000

Programmatic Marketing Platform Employs Data Science to Drive Business Goals with Unprecedented Choice and Flexibility

Boston – DataXu today introduced the industry’s first Algorithm Marketplace, a major new addition to its enterprise programmatic marketing platform that leverages data science to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of digital advertising. The Marketplace is a library of algorithms created over time from DataXu’s experience solving clients’ complex marketing problems. For the first time, dozens of algorithms are available to users in one place, so brands and their agencies get complete transparency and control of their advertising investment strategies. Marketers can also continue to innovate and collaborate with DataXu to develop custom algorithms that address their business’ unique opportunities and challenges.

“The Algorithm Marketplace helps brands drive sales through data science,” said Mike Baker, CEO of DataXu. “We’ve worked with our clients to solve difficult business problems requiring advanced targeting rules and optimization techniques. We’re excited to codify our learnings and share them in a scalable, easy-to-use way. It’s like putting a data scientist at our customers’ fingertips – now they can confidently target and optimize digital ad investments based on real-time data to improve ROI.”

Marketers looking to capitalize on the programmatic aspects of digital marketing have been frustrated by the one-size fits all approach to targeting and optimization, forcing them to juggle multiple platforms and partners, which leads to higher staff and vendor costs, loss of data and reporting inconsistencies. The DataXu Algorithm Marketplace offers marketers a scientific “test and learn” methodology to continually refresh campaign models based on learnings acquired over time. The continuous cycle of testing, learning and executing plus the flexibility of the DataXu Platform gives marketers the ability and confidence to standardize on one platform that will meet their needs today and tomorrow.

The Marketplace also offers algorithms that tap into attribution and validation models from partners such as Adometry and Nielsen, and smart data sources from partners like eXelate. The intuitive user interface gives guidance on which algorithm is right based on a marketer’s channel, performance, targeting and delivery objectives.

The DataXu Algorithm Marketplace helps marketers:

Customize programs to achieve their own unique business goals
Engage consumers with relevant messages across multiple channels including display, mobile, video and Facebook Exchange
Integrate partner attribution and validation models for better audience insights and results
Apply a test and learn methodology that measures, models and optimizes every individual consumer interaction
Confidently standardize on one platform, avoiding duplicate fees and switching costs

For more information on the DataXu Algorithm Marketplace, a video demo is available.

About DataXu

DataXu is transforming the way companies build their brands in a digital world through the industry’s only fully integrated programmatic marketing solution. The DataXu Platform offers cloud based software that leverages data science to help enterprise marketers better understand and engage consumers, and optimally manage marketing investments for more efficient and effective customer acquisition strategies. With 11 offices in eight countries, DataXu services more than 700 brands across the globe. For more information, visit or follow us at twitter.com/dataxu.

Innovation in Action:

“Adometry solves a problem faced by the world’s top marketers every day—knowing and acting upon what truly influences customer conversions. The DX Algorithm Marketplace allows marketers to leverage Adometry’s best-of-breed attribution solution and their own algorithms in a single platform. The result for marketers will be increased ROI from media buys on DataXu as part of their overall omni-channel media strategy.”- Gad Alon, VP of Business Development for Adometry

“The Algorithm Marketplace combines eXelate’s smart data platform which provides accurate, actionable and agile consumer data and analytics with business rules that will achieve a Brand’s specific marketing objectives. Together, the two address a growing demand for programmatic marketing platforms that provide a single integrated solution for driving smarter marketing decisions that provide immediate top and bottom line impact.” - Mark Zagorski, Chief Executive Officer at eXelate

“Marketing in a digital world is evolving so quickly that one size fits all solutions can’t meet the demands of today’s brands. A solution like the Algorithm Marketplace helps us maximize ROI for each individual client based on their unique business goals and grow with them as their needs change.” – Scott Macdonald, Head of Display at Forward

appssavvy Answers the Industry’s Cries for Scalable, Standard Native Advertising

Otilia Otlacan — Thu, 23 May 2013 13:00:47 +0000

appssavvy’s Activity-Based Ad Units Employ IAB “Rising Stars” Canvasses for Brand Advertising Naturally in a User’s Activity Stream and Native to The Experience

NEW YORK, NY – “Scale” and “standard” are two question marks that often arise about native advertising. appssavvy (www.appssavvy.com) continues to answer these questions with its activity-based advertising platform. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is encouraging adoption of the IAB Rising Stars, new canvasses for brand advertising on digital platforms, but these are too often delivered in a non-native manner. appssavvy fixes this through its activity-based web and mobile ad units.

“Delivering ads in natural placements within the user activity flow is the Holy Grail for advertisers — as is engaging, creative experiences. Using the IAB Rising Stars in-stream delivers a new standard ad unit that is native to the experience and demonstrates the next generation of digital brand advertising,” said Peter Minnium, Head of Brand Initiatives at the IAB.

appssavvy’s activity-based advertising technology platform focused on people’s native activities, reaches an audience of 103 million unique users per month. appssavvy delivers a Full Page Flex mobile “Rising Star” ad unit featuring a full screen experience with interactive functionality. These ads, which are similar on the web, except that they are 600×300 in size, are triggered by people performing activities, such as creating and consuming content, or communicating. Each of these activities, which, today, appssavvy delivers against more than 4 billion per month, provides a natural break within the user flow resulting in better timing, as well as context based on the activity, to drive scalable, standardized native advertising.

“The IAB’s Rising Stars initiative is in lock-step with our vision to rethink the delivery and reception of advertising,” said Chris Cunningham, co-founder and CEO of appssavvy. “As people’s behavior has shifted from page-based media to activity-based, both on the web and mobile, so should how we think about advertising. Through our, now, IAB standard, activity-based ad units native to the digital experience, we’re making advertising better by empowering leading web publishers to get smarter about their inventory and what it’s worth through data and insights, and brands to reach people within natural breaks and when they are most receptive, all in real-time.”

To learn more about the IAB’s Rising Stars, visit: www.iab.net/risingstars.

About appssavvy
appssavvy (www.appssavvy.com) is a technology company with the mission of rethinking the delivery and reception of advertising. Focused on activity, appssavvy redefines how brands reach consumers, creates native ad experiences for publishers, and most importantly, improves advertising through data and insights about real-time behavior. For more information, visit www.appssavvy.com, on Facebook (www.facebook.com/appssavvy) or follow us on Twitter @appssavvy.

BIM Hires Dr. Paul Barford as Chief Scientist to Focus on Ad Optimization and Traffic Quality

Otilia Otlacan — Thu, 23 May 2013 12:00:00 +0000

UW Computer Science Professor, founder of Nemean Networks, is Expert in Internet Traﬃc Measurement, Large Data Analytics and Internet Security

MADISON, WI - Broadcast Interactive Media (BIM), whose evolving suite of Web, video, and mobile publishing tools help increase client revenues by attracting more traffic and improving ad delivery, today announced that Paul Barford, PhD and Professor of Computer Sciences at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, has joined the company as Chief Scientist, a newly created position. Dr. Barford will direct the development and operation of a new BIM platform that assures its network of local publisher sites can identify and avoid invalid traffic which is now costing the online ad ecosystem over $10 billion in wasted ad spending.

While teaching at Wisconsin (Madison) Professor Barford was the founder of network security company NemeanNetworks, an Internet security company focused on commercializing next-generation intrusion detection technology. Nemean was acquired by Qualys (NASDAQ: QLS) in 2010. Dr. Barford is also founder and director of the Wisconsin Advanced Internet Laboratory, which receives funding from the National Science Foundation, the Department of Homeland Security, the Army Research Office and Cisco Systems. He was also part of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, a public transdisciplinary research institute and “skunkworks” focusing on the interfaces of computation, laboratory science, the humanities and entrepreneurship.

“I am exceedingly lucky to have Paul Barford join our team. He is an industry and academic leader in network security and data analytics,” says Timur Yarnall, CEO of BIM. “For more than 10 years we have been working with high demand local media and pure play publishers focused on interactive mobile, display, and video inventory. Since we have been seeing roughly 500 million monthly impressions from over 40 million unique visitors we have been able to see a wide swath of traffic and identify the kinds of irregularities that point to fraud for both brands and publishers.”

Dr. Barford’s research interests have been in measurement of Internet traﬃc and topological structure; large data analytics and Internet security including detection of traffic anomalies and identification of malicious attacks and intrusions. More recently, his interests have turned to challenges in online advertising. Dr. Barford was a visiting professor at the University of Cambridge, an EPSRC Visiting Fellow in 2011 and has been a consultant on Internet measurement and security issues to a number of companies. He also served as Chief Scientist at Qualys.

Author of many highly-cited research papers, Dr. Barford also served on numerous panels, organizing committees, and program committees (ACM SIGCOMM ’13 TPC co-chair, ACM SIGMETRICS ’10 TPC co-chair, and ACM IMC ’06 TPC chair). He had served as an associate editor for IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, on the board of directors of the National Lambda Rail, and on technical advisory boards of companies. He is an NSF CAREER award winner and senior member of the ACM and IEEE. Dr. Barford received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Boston University.

“I am very pleased to have a chance to work with the fantastic customer base, talented developers, and team at BIM, “ said Dr. Barford. “I’m certain that the application of big data analytics to our large network of publisher sites will yield immediate results.”

Broadcast Interactive Media (BIM) (www.broadcast-interactive.com) is a leading digital ad network and data services provider of revenue and technical solutions to online publishers and remains a trusted resource for hundreds of local broadcasters and media sites worldwide. Core products are the BIMLocal Digital Network, BIMvid video CMS, MediaStarSuite of program scheduling tools, and TitanTV.com Guide Data Services. Customers include ABC, Belo Corp., Capitol Broadcasting, CBS Television, Fox Television, Gannett Broadcasting, Hearst-Argyle, NBC Owned Television Stations, Scripps-Howard, and the Telemundo Station Group. BIM is based in Madison, WI, with offices in New York City, San Francisco, Cedar Rapids, IA, and Austin, TX.

ChoiceStream’s May Audience Cost Calendar Finds Travel Segments on Top in Online Advertising

Otilia Otlacan — Wed, 22 May 2013 12:00:08 +0000

BOSTON – ChoiceStream, the top choice for brand advertisers interested in advanced target optimization and programmatic buying, today announced the next installment of its Audience Cost Calendar — a monthly aggregation of impressions traded on digital ad exchanges. The Audience Cost Calendar was created to help media buyers and marketers understand trends in the cost of various online audiences. This month looks at April’s data and highlights the top traded audience segments, including Careers, Travel and Holidays & Events. Once again, Careers: Customer Service remains the top performing segment with a 40 percent increase above the average price for that targeted inventory.

“In previous Audience Cost Calendar reports it seemed that specific audience segments changed specific to cyclical trends”

Five of the top ten best performing segments based on month-over-month increased cost of the targeted inventory include:

• Travel: Italy – 11 percent increase in price since March

• Holiday & Events: Anniversary – 11 percent increase in price

• Travel: Greece – 8 percent increase in price

• Travel: Spain – 6 percent increase in price

• Travel: Europe – 6 percent increase in price

“In previous Audience Cost Calendar reports it seemed that specific audience segments changed specific to cyclical trends,” said Bill Guild, vice president, product management and marketing at ChoiceStream. “However, for the past two months, the top ranked segment, Careers: Customer Service, remained consistent. Hopefully this is yet another indication that the economy and job market are recovering. Another indication of a recession turn around is the increased interest in travel and destination specific inventory. Eight of the top ten segments were travel destinations with Italy and Greece in the number two and three spots, respectively.”

Vacation and Travel
With the summer travel season approaching, it’s not surprising to see that eight out of the top ten ranking segments in April were travel related. Leading the May Audience Cost Calendar in relative cost was Italy and Greece segments, followed by the South Pacific and Spain. Other spikes in the travel segment include warmer destinations including: Australia & New Zealand, Mexico and Central America.

Anniversary Segment Highlights Spring Wedding Season

The Holiday and Event: Anniversary segment jumped to the number eight spot on the list, potentially predicting an early shopping season for summer wedding gifts or a shift to earlier season weddings from the more common June time frame.

To view the full infographic, complete dataset and the most active categories for the month of April, take a look at ChoiceStream’s Audience Cost Calendar located on the company’s newly relaunched website that can be found here.

About ChoiceStream
ChoiceStream improves ad relevance and digital campaign performance by programmatically selecting optimum advertising opportunities based on a dynamic understanding of consumer’s active preferences. With an extensive first and third party data network enhanced by proprietary data, ChoiceStream can target and convert the most valuable consumers in real-time. ChoiceStream is headquartered in the Innovation District of Boston and works with industry leading brands and their agencies. For more information on ChoiceStream, please visit www.ChoiceStream.com.

Nanigans Expands to Europe with New London Headquarters

Otilia Otlacan — Mon, 20 May 2013 16:00:50 +0000

Leading Facebook® Strategic Preferred Marketing Developer to accelerate Facebook performance advertising in key market

LONDON - Nanigans, Inc., the lifetime value based advertising technology company, announced the opening of a European headquarters to support their rapidly growing international business. The expansion reflects the company’s passion for unparalleled customer service as well as its interest in pursuing growing opportunities from companies operating in the region.

“We’ve gained valuable insights into our customers throughout the path to purchase, which has enabled us to better understand the impact of our Facebook advertising investment.”

“With our industry-leading position in the United States, expansion into Europe is a natural progression,” said Ric Calvillo, CEO of Nanigans. We’ve seen strong demand from clients across multiple sectors in the region, from retail to gaming. Of course it is very important to Nanigans that we provide the same level of expertise and support for our European customers, which has been at the core of our success in North America.”

The London office opening follows a series of key milestones for Nanigans since its inception in 2011 including a recent round of $5.8 million in Series A.1 funding, a 120%, increase in headcount, a doubling of its customer base and a 6x expansion in revenues.

Nanigans is offering its unique Facebook advertising platform to marketers across all European countries. The company has scaled complex global Facebook advertising campaigns with spend as high as one million dollars a day. The London office will enable the company’s ad operations and client services teams to provide in-person platform training and optimisation expertise to help clients focus and scale on revenue. Nanigans manages Facebook ad campaigns for more than 200 companies across the globe including Fab, Social Point, Vistaprint and Wooga.

“Nanigans’ Facebook advertising solution allows the Vistaprint team to effectively find and acquire profitable customers at scale,” said Matthew Trattles, head of online display and social media at Vistaprint. “We’ve gained valuable insights into our customers throughout the path to purchase, which has enabled us to better understand the impact of our Facebook advertising investment.”

The company’s expansion into Europe will be led by Will Ashton, a 10-year veteran of digital media and social advertising platform technology companies. Will has previously managed successful operations in Europe for Google’s search advertising group and for social media advertising company, Alchemy Social, later acquired by global credit and marketing services giant, Experian.

Nanigans offers the only advertising platform that measures, predicts and optimises ad spend for lifetime ROI. By harnessing the power of lifetime value to inform more intelligent and efficient media buying, the company is moving the industry away from buying on a cost-per-click and cost-per-action basis to a true ROI basis.

To learn how licensing Nanigans’ lifetime ROI-based advertising platform can help your company acquire profitable customers, contact us.

® Facebook is a registered trademark of Facebook, Inc.

About Nanigans, Inc.

Nanigans’ Ad Engine software platform helps advertisers maximize the effectiveness of their social and mobile advertising by appointing ROI (return on investment) and predictive LTV (lifetime value) based algorithms to advertising campaigns at scale. Founded in 2010 and backed by Avalon Ventures, Nanigans manages over 9-figures of annual ad spend across 200 advertisers. To learn more, visit: http://www.nanigans.com

Univision Begins Rolling out RAMP for Content Search

Otilia Otlacan — Mon, 20 May 2013 14:00:00 +0000

Integrated search across all content types – video, audio, text and image – drives enhanced navigation and user engagement across 96 Univision online properties

BOSTON - RAMP, the industry’s leading provider of next-generation video and search experiences for major online media publishers, announced that Univision Communications Inc. has selected RAMP to deliver search across 96 Univision web and mobile properties. Univision began its rollout last week.

“The ability to present the right content to the right user is a critical component of maximizing the value of premium content across a network of sites.”

RAMP’s award-winning universal search solution enables users to easily and quickly find all relevant content on the site across all formats – video, audio, text and image. RAMP’s topic page publishing solution identifies and publishes thousands of user-friendly and SEO-friendly topic pages for easy navigation across Univision’s content collection.

“Given the footprint of Univision’s digital properties, we needed to identify a solution that could scale to our requirements while being easy to build, launch, and maintain,” said Kevin Conroy, president, Digital & Enterprise Development, Univision Communications Inc. “RAMP allows our Univision content to be easy to find and discover while helping us deliver on our ROI.”

RAMP’s MediaCloud platform continuously ingests all of Univision’s content and creates rich metadata, including time-coded transcripts and tags for video content, and automated tagging and indexing of text and image content. This indexed content is then deployed across all of Univision’s online properties using RAMP’s template search results pages, which also include searches for specialty Univision content types such as recipes and featured keywords.

“RAMP’s Universal Search solution is unmatched in the market in terms of delivering a comprehensive search experience for major media companies like Univision,” said Tom Wilde, CEO, RAMP. “The ability to present the right content to the right user is a critical component of maximizing the value of premium content across a network of sites.”

About RAMP

RAMP has developed the next generation of search & video experiences to make video more valuable. Using RAMP, clients are able to fully leverage the value of all of their video content by driving increased discovery across search and social sites, enhancing user engagement through dynamic search and publishing solutions, and maximizing revenue through sophisticated advertising capabilities.

Leading media companies and enterprises using RAMP include Thomson Reuters, FOXNews, ABCNews, NBC, Dow Jones, Meredith, Citibank, and others. For more information visit RAMP.com, or contact us at info@RAMP.com.

Chitika Announces Agreement with Yahoo! to Monetize Desktop and Mobile Search Marketplace

Otilia Otlacan — Mon, 20 May 2013 13:00:02 +0000

Chitika to provide Mobile Ad Serving Monetization and Off-Network Search Syndication

WESTBOROUGH, Mass. - Chitika announced a multi-year extension of its relationship with Yahoo!. Chitika, a leading online and mobile ad network, delivers advertiser and publisher solutions in the areas of search, mobile and local. The multi-faceted agreement with Yahoo! includes; off–network search syndication, monetization of Yahoo! owned and operated properties, and mobile ad serving and monetization. This deal allows Chitika to continue to provide world-class monetization solutions to its partners and helps Yahoo! extend its search marketplace.

“Yahoo! has a proven track record of capitalizing on strong, successful partnerships, helping the organization meet and exceed its business goals”

Since 2006, Chitika has been working with Yahoo!, syndicating Yahoo!’s search feed across Chitika’s expansive online network of over 250,000 websites, providing high quality traffic to Yahoo! advertisers.

Additionally, Yahoo! has tapped Chitika to help monetize its owned & operated properties. Yahoo! currently licenses Chitika’s proprietary ad targeting technology to serve sponsored search ads across select Yahoo! properties. Chitika’s ad serving technology allows Yahoo! to better monetize its desktop traffic while enhancing the overall user experience.

“Yahoo! has a proven track record of capitalizing on strong, successful partnerships, helping the organization meet and exceed its business goals,” said Venkat Kolluri, Chitika’s CEO. “Extending and expanding our relationship with Yahoo! reaffirms our commitment to deliver innovative online and mobile ad technology solutions, which will help contribute to the growth of Yahoo!’s search marketplace.”

Chitika’s mobile ad serving technology is now included in the renewed partnership, and will become a key piece in Chitika’s mission to develop a unified, user-friendly integration of online and mobile advertising.

For examples of Chitika ads on Yahoo! properties, please contact press@chitika.com.

About Chitika

Chitika is an online ad network that caters over four billion strategically targeted ads each month to a network of over 250,000+ sites, making it the second largest network of its kind. Chitika ads are known across the industry for their ability to perform unlike any other, leveraging its proprietary targeting and optimization technology – a delicate blend of “Art + Science”- to ensure delivery of intent driven ads to the right user, at the right time and in the right place. Chitika’s advertising partners include; Yahoo!, Superpages, yellowbook, ServiceMagic and Shopzilla, and are leveraged by publishers in the network to drive audience engagement and boost revenue. For more information, visit www.chitika.com/presscenter.

Consumers Responding to Social Call-to-Action in Online and TV Advertisements

Otilia Otlacan — Mon, 20 May 2013 12:00:17 +0000

Consumers, specifically women, are interacting on social media via advertising cues to show support for favorite brands

BURLINGTON, MA - Burst Media, (http://burstmedia.com), a leading online media company and wholly owned subsidiary of blinkx PLC (LSE AIM: BLNX), released the results of a survey revealing how and why web users interact with brands via social media. Conducted in March among 2,577 U.S. online adults aged 18 or older, the study found that the effectiveness of social cues in advertisements varies by the medium the ad appears in. Among respondents who recall social media prompts in advertising, digital ads (61.0%) and television ads (58.7%) are most effective at driving interaction with a brand’s social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. These are followed by print ads (52.4%), radio ads (41.5%) and outdoor ads (39.4%).

Notably, two-thirds (67.6%) of 18 to 34 year-old respondents—including 73.9% of 18 to 34 year-old women—say digital ads that feature prompts to social media assets are effective at inspiring them to take action.

“We found that marketers who use social sharing and action prompts within advertisements create authentic interactions that drive further engagement,” said Mark Kaefer, marketing director, Burst Media. “On the digital front especially, display, mobile and sponsored online content campaigns that include social media prompts can virally and exponentially extend campaign reach through consumer status updates, likes, tweets, pins and more.”

Survey Highlights

Web users interact with brands on social media for a variety of reasons.

· More than one-half (53.8%) of women and 44.1% of men who interact on social media via cues in advertising cite “to show my support for a brand that I like” as a reason for doing so.

· The gender divide is even wider with the next most-cited reason, which is to access special offers, coupons and/or promotions: 53.2% of women versus just over one-third (35.5%) of men cite this as a reason.

· Notably, two-thirds (66.7%) of 35 to 44 year-old women cite the access to offers/coupons as a reason to interact with a brand’s social assets.

The majority (65.4%) of all survey respondents have at least one social media account set-up for personal use.

· Facebook—at 53.0%—is by far the leading provider. Google+ follows a distant second, with one-quarter (25.6%) of respondents reporting they use the up-and-coming platform.

· Three-fifths (58.6%) of respondents with social media accounts use them at least once a day, and another one-fifth (22.3%) check accounts at least once per week.

Interestingly, Pinterest and Instagram—as image and photo-driven social platforms—skew towards a female audience.

· One-fifth (21.9%) of all female respondents have a Pinterest account, versus only 4.8% of men. The disparity of Pinterest use between the sexes is even greater among 18 to 34 year-olds: 1-in-4 (25.5%) women in this segment have a Pinterest account, versus just 3.6% of men this age.

· Instagram’s audience also skews more female than male—10.4% versus 5.8%, respectively. Again, the gender gap is biggest among respondents aged 18 to 34, as 20.8% of women this age have Instagram accounts, versus 8.4% of men.

Download the full “Expanding the Conversation: Leveraging Social Media for Brand Interaction” Online Insights report (PDF) at http://burstmedia.com/pdf/burst_media_online_insights_2013_04.pdf.

About Burst Media
Founded in 1995, Burst Media represents thousands of independent web publishers. Through a select group of vertical channels, built around areas of specific interest, Burst connects advertisers with audiences across the web’s most dynamic communities in a social, engaging way. A wholly owned subsidiary of blinkx PLC (LSE AIM: BLNX), Burst is headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts, with sales offices throughout the United States and in the UK.

Visit us at http://burstmedia.com or call +1 (781) 852 5200 for more information.

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