Comedian and talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres on Wednesday introduced a new digital network that will integrate every aspect of her brand, along with new original programming and user-generated content, according to a report in Ad Age. Ellen Digital Network, a partnership with Warner Bros. TV Group, will combine properties including Ellentube, her YouTube page, "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" website, social media following and digital game "Heads Up!"-- all on one platform. The slate will also include a Snapchat series featuring the Internet phenomenon "Damn, Daniel"; "Ellen's Pet Dish," an animated series from Warner Bros. digital production studio featuring her pets; …

Web Financial Group, one of Europe’s largest providers of digital technology for the financial services sector, selected ad-tech provider PubMatic to run programmatic advertising across its desktop and mobile Web inventory. PubMatic will offer Web Financial Group its enterprise-grade wrapper solution that's designed to help it increase revenue on an impression-by-impression basis vs. the previously implemented "waterfall" approach. Web Financial Group will also use PubMatic to run its private marketplace.

Quantcast announced partnerships with four political data providers—Data Trust, i360, L2 and TargetSmart—to offer advertisers audience targeting ahead of the presidential election. The new political data partners will be integrated into Quantcast Audience Grid, which works by combining Quantcast's consumer data set with online and offline data from leading providers. The addition of the political data sets will enable Quantcast to target audiences based on their partisan, attitudinal and vote propensity characteristics in addition to their search behavior, purchase behavior, media interests and demographics.

Ad-tech firm Visible Measures, which focuses on video distribution and measurement, on Tuesday made the bold claim that its platform is fraud-free, a claim that few if any others would dare to make, according to a report in Ad Age.  The claim comes despite estimates that "billions of dollars are being wasted on ad fraud, in which bad actors charge marketers for ads deliberately served out of sight or to software routines simulating real people."  DataXu and TubeMogul offer refunds to clients for ad fraud that …

WPP's programmatic unit Xaxis hired Millennial Media vet Bob Hammond as its first CTO to help align its ad tech stack, according to AdExchanger. He's got some experience managing integrations: Hammond was CTO of Millennial after its 2013 acquisition of Jumptap, where he was also CTO. After Verizon-owned AOL bought Millennial Media last October, Hammond held the role of VP of engineering for mobile ad platforms at AOL Platforms. Earlier, Hammond was VP of engineering at Yahoo. AdExchanger speculates that if Verizon acquires Yahoo, Hammond will be in a good position to navigate the relationships on behalf of Xaxis. The …

Rubicon Project had a strong Q1, growing overall advertising revenue by 26% year over year while non-GAAP net revenue reached $63.6 million, a 71% year-over-year increase, according to a report in AdExchanger. The increase can be attributed to Rubicon's acquisition of demand-side platform Chango a year ago. This caused take rates to spike in year-over-year comparisons. Prior to the acquisition, its 2015 Q1 take rate was 18.6%, compared to 25.6% this Q1. Chango helped deliver high margins to Rubicon. The report points out that the high margins "aren’t sustainable, as awareness of the 'ad tech tax' and a push for …

The NewFronts are in full swing -- with nearly 40 companies like YouTube, BuzzFeed, WebMD, PopSugar and Hulu hosting dog and pony shows designed to showcase new offerings for advertisers and media buyers that will entice them to open their wallets a little more. The Wall Street Journal reports that the NewFronts, which began several years ago, "represent the digital world’s attempt to mimic the TV upfront selling season, when ad buyers and marketers are offered a glimpse at upcoming content in hopes they will lock down advertising deals in advance." The Journal asked some media buyers about their thoughts on …

Brands need to scale in order to compete with the likes of Google, Facebook and Amazon. One step they're taking is to pool their data, according to MarketingLand. "The competitive angst of giving your treasured customer data to competitors and potential competitors — even when it is anonymized and grouped into segments — is exceeded by the need to know what your visitors/customers are doing elsewhere." The pooled data can help target and retarget customers to understand what they're interested in buying, when they’re ready to buy and to identify which devices are owned by individuals or households. Pooling proprietary …

Ad-blocking software provider Adblock Plus is launching a feature that will allow users to pay Web sites for content, which could help those sites recoup some revenue from visitors who choose to avoid ads, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. In conjunction with a partnership with Sweden-based content-funding startup Flattr, "Adblock Plus users will be given an option to specify how much money they wish to contribute collectively every month to the websites they visit, Adblock Plus parent company Eyeo GmbH said Tuesday. The companies are calling the program 'Flattr Plus.'" The Journal reports that "Flattr and Adblock …

Writing on the Taboola blog, CEO Adam Singolda waxes prophetically about his enthusiasm for vritual reality. After delivering a keynote at LA Hacks, one of the largest Hackathons in the U.S., Singolda decided to launch the "Taboola Virtual Reality Challenge". The Challenge involves a space where people can enjoy Taboola's personalized video recommendations from publishers including NBC, CBS, The Atlantic and more. The site says: "It should be a world of discovery unlike any other! Where the forces of entertainment, information and personalization join together." The winner gets a week-long trip to Tel Aviv (Taboola's headquarters) to hang out with …