Ad tech companies are buying gaming companies, and gaming companies, like Zynga, are buying ad tech. In May, Zynga, maker of FarmVille and Words With Friends, spent $250 million to acquire in-app monetization platform Chartboost. But don’t call Zynga a “content fortress,” says Scott Koenigsberg, Zynga’s chief product officer.
Most mobile user acquisition (UA) managers, like the ones who work at LA-based mobile game studio Jam City, are highly analytical creatures whose job is to dig into the data, analyze ad spend and manually adjust bids. But there’s increasingly less and less for them to do. Facebook and Google are systematically introducing more and […]
In less than two years, The Meet Group managed to diversify its revenue from a near total dependence on programmatic advertising to a healthy mix of ads, in-app purchases and subscriptions. “I’d say 90% of our revenue was ad-driven before we started to shift,” said Geoff Cook, CEO of The Meet Group, which owns a […]
Header bidding-like tech is starting to pick up steam on mobile, but it’s still mostly SDK-based, which brings added latency along with the revenue bump. On Thursday, mobile monetization platform PubNative released a hybrid server-side/client-side header bidding tool to help publishers bring in more dough without messing up the UX. Dubbed HyBid, the solution allows […]
Mobile ad network and Indian unicorn InMobi paid $90 million for mobile video monetization platform AerServ in a bid to build a header bidding solution for apps. The deal, announced Wednesday, will bring together their respective programmatic exchanges to create “fair auction dynamics for in the in-app space,” said Abhay Singhal, InMobi’s CRO and co-founder. […]
Breaking into the China market requires feet on the ground painstakingly building direct relationships with local players, a fair amount of intestinal fortitude and patience. It also helps having a Chinese parent. Mobile ad exchange Smaato is capitalizing on its affiliation with Spearhead Integrated Marketing Communications Group, the Beijing-based offline marketing service provider that acquired […]
Ericsson is taking the wraps off its DMP for telcos. On Thursday, the Swedish networking giant announced the global launch of Emodo, a mobile ad platform that lets carriers monetize their subscriber data programmatically. The release of Emodo follows Ericsson’s surprising intention to enter the ad tech space, which it announced in March at Mobile […]
Cheetah Mobile’s been on the prowl for ad tech since 2015, when it paid $58 million for French mobile performance marketing company MobPartner. The MobPartner acquisition is the cornerstone of Cheetah’s plan to transform itself from utility app publisher into a mobile ad vendor with global chops. Cheetah’s vision became clearer when it took the […]
Regardless of their size, carriers are actively looking for new ways to monetize – selling text-and-talk plans alone isn’t cutting it anymore. Mega telcos are clearly cooking up plans for incremental ad-related revenue, as evidenced by Verizon’s multibillion-dollar acquisitions of AOL and Yahoo. But small, specialized telcos like Life Wireless are also turning to advertising to […]
App publishers are paring down the number of software development kits (SDKs) they use to monetize their ad inventory. On Wednesday, German mobile marketing outfit glispa tossed its hat in the ring with the launch of Ampiri, its mediation solution. Ampiri is built from technology glispa acquired from MoneyTap, a St. Petersburg, Russia-based company with […]
