One of Dentsu’s main programmatic advocates, Wayne Blodwell has left the agency to launch his own consultancy, The Programmatic Advisory, according to PerformanceIN. "In addition to his latest role as head of programmatic product activation at the media network’s trading desk, Amplifi, Blodwell’s resume includes overseeing the technology at another Denstu subsidiary, iProspect U.K. With first-hand knowledge of how advertisers are taking to automated ad buying, Blodwell plans to leverage his expertise to address the ‘education gap’ surrounding the technology," the publication reported. Blodwell earlier told the publication: 'The people who sign off the marketing budgets do not understand the …

London ad tech firm Ogury has raised $15 million in a Series B round led by Idinvest Partners, according to Tech City News. "Existing investors Ventech, CoVent Partners and ACG also participated in the round, bringing Ogury’s total funding to date to more than $20m. The company said it will use the funds to accelerate international expansion and to invest in technology, R&D and recruitment. It aims to become the world’s largest mobile data platform and works to solve the problem of irrelevant advertising. The startup’s device-level data collection technology is integrated in over 10,000 apps. This means, as soon …

Recently, BuzzFeed told employees that it was formally dividing its news and entertainment divisions. Video will play a large role in the reorganization, according to a New York Times report. "Video represents more than 50 percent of BuzzFeed’s total revenue, compared with 15 percent at the end of 2014. In the next two years, BuzzFeed expects that video will generate up to 75 percent of its advertising revenue, according to a person briefed on the company’s operations. The move also reflects a broader shift at media companies that are increasingly turning to video and entertainment news to lure a younger …

An April 2016 survey from MyersBizNet shows that click fraud and bot traffic were the two most cited concerns about media buying and planning among U.S. media agencies and brand marketers, at 78% and 63%, respectively. Viewability was the third most cited concern, cited by 71% of brand marketers and 70 percent of media agencies.

"Other than reaching the younger crowd, it’s been difficult for advertisers to make a business case for Snapchat, but that is changing as it continues to overhaul its advertising offering," reports The Drum. "As brands enter the honeymoon phase with the messaging app, it would seem they’re planning to spend more, and do more, within Snapchat’s walls. At the start of this year, advertisers were approaching Snapchat with a sense of trepidation, quietly creating accounts to toy with 'Lenses' and 'Geofilters' – fast-forward nine months and this apprehension has been replaced with excitement as brands shift more ad spend into …

Ad fraud activity is highest on certain browsers made by Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc.'s Google, according to research by ad fraud detection company FraudLogix as reported in the Wall Street Journal. To conduct its research, FraudLogix examined a sample of 135 million individual online ad impressions over a seven-day period in July, and analyzed the browsers to which the ads were served. The company also tracked the portion of those ads its technology deemed as delivered to “non-human” or “bot” traffic. "The browsers in which the most fraudulent impressions loaded were versions of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser …

Rubicon Project announced the launch of Guaranteed PMPs (private marketplaces) at its U.K. Automation Summit with the hope of removing barriers between traditional direct buying and programmatic media trading. "The ad tech outfit used the summit, where it gathers both the buy- and sell-side of the industry, to announce what it is dubbing a major step in how direct deals will be executed, and what it believes will be another ‘chink in the armour’ to 'waterfalling.' Rubicon Project claims the offering will help bridge the gap between the traditional goals of direct buying, with the potential scale of ad tech …

This year, just 25.1% of U.S. executives said their company's current use of predictive analytics could be described as mature but 45.1% said their company was in a deployment phase last year which suggests more respondents might have expected successful deployments a year later. But it hasn't happened this year. This year, nearly a third of U.S. executives said their company was in the building phase for predictive analytics, down from last year, according to research from Deloitte. Last year, nearly half of US executives said their company was in the …

Caitlin Dewey's report in the Washington Post reminds us that Facebook knows what you're doing and what you like. The social network giant recently revamped its ad preference settings, make them easier for users to understand. “We want the ads people see on Facebook to be interesting, useful and relevant,” a Facebook spokesperson told the Post. Here's what targeting options Facebook advertisers have: Location, Age, Generation, Gender, Language, Education level, Field of study, School, Ethnic affinity, Income and net worth, Home ownership and type, Home value, Property size, Square footage of home, Year home was built, and Household composition. That's …

Facebook wants advertisers to speed up their mobile Web sites and plans to limit where and when ads appear across its service if they point users to slow-loading sites, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. "Advertisers might soon find their ads aren't delivered to mobile users with slow internet connections, for example, if their websites load slowly when users tap on those ads." In a post published to its Business News page on Wednesday, Facebook outlined a number of ways advertisers could technically improve their sites for better load times. "It suggested improving their sites for …