Ad tech firm BrightLine wants to make ads on smart TVs work more like digital advertising. "The company is teaming up with Nielsen Marketing Cloud, the media research firm’s marketing software division. The deal will potentially enable advertisers to tap into Nielsen’s 60,000 different audience segments, which can be used for ad targeting purposes on connected TVs, as well as other devices," according to a Wall Street Journal report. The goal of the partnership "is to help make TV ads shown on over-the-top streaming apps on devices like Apple TVs or Rokus more interactive and more targeted. Media companies such …

What made the Asian telecom giant Singtel acquire Turn for $310 million this week? The move signals the firm's ambitions in the ad-tech sector at a time when the sector is undergoing major consolidation. "On the one hand, the deal may be a good sign for the growing pool of ad tech firms now looking for exits or strategic partnerships in that it may offer evidence of a wider pool of potential suitors beyond just marketing and technology companies," the Wall Street Journal reports. Singtel acquired Amobee in 2012, which has become a subsidiary. The Journal reports that "Turn had …

Amobee, a marketing tech platform, has agreed to acquire ad tech company Turn for $310 million. No surprise there. Turn, a data management platform provider (DMP), has been struggling with its focus in a consolidating ad tech sector for some time. Amobee was formerly a mobile ad startup before its 2012 acquisition by Singtel, where it remains a subsidiary. Singtel and Amobee have made other acquisitions on the digital ad side, including Gradient X, Adconion, and Kontera. Turn continues to run a DMP and a demand-side platform for ad buyers. The company  raised more than $150 milliion in equity funding from …

In a conversation on Gartner's blog, Martin Kihn profiles Megan Pagliuca, CEO of Omnicom Media Group’s Accuen and characterizes her as "'inspiring the next evolution of programmatic' by focusing on open pricing, automation, elevating machine-driven media from a line item into a strategic plan." Pagliuca recalls her days at Right Media before it was acquired by Yahoo in 2007. "At Yahoo, I took over deploying the SSP to Yahoo globally for Yahoo’s own inventory. They had bought us, but we all spent a lot of the time convincing them why they wanted to be …

Alphabet's Google will undergo a series of audits of its YouTube property by the Media Rating Council (MRC), an industry audit firm, according to a Wall Street Journal report. A couple of weeks ago, Facebook said it had agreed to have some of its ad metrics audited by the MRC. This news comes at a time of intense scrutiny by advertisers of ad measurement tactics and the transparency of those tactics, as well as concerns about where advertisers' ads are appearing and how. "Google said the MRC will audit the way that three independent metrics companies—Moat, Integral Ad Science and …

Facebook has agreed to undergo audits of its metrics and measurement practices via the Mediia Rating Council (MRC) The social media giant has come under scrutiny in recent month over its measurement practices from advertisers, publishers, media agencies. The upshot is that "more Facebook data will be vetted by independent third parties, which advertisers can then use when evaluating media buys on the platform," according to a Wall Street Journal report. Facebook will undergo MRC audits to help reassure marketers that it's complying with MRC measurement practices and standards. It's unclear as to whether Facebook is seeking MRC accreditation. …

While Twitter’s latest earnings report wasn't too great--it missed its revenue target and the stock declined down more than 12% after the earnings announcement, CEO Jack Dorsey sees a silver lining--machine learning. On the earnings call he said:“As I look into 2017 and we look at what we can do, I just think the superpower we really provide the world is we can break news and get information to people faster than any other service in the world." Dorsey said he's "excited about really making sure that we apply artificial intelligence and machine learning in the right ways and that …

The swirl around Snap's impending initial public offering has hit a fever pitch and now new information is coming out about its board of directors. It seems that in its S-1 filing in preparation for its IPO, there is new information about the lack of diversity on its board. It seems that Snap has just one woman on its board, Hearst Magazines chief content officer Joanna Coles. The filing indicates that Ms. Coles earned the least in 2016 of any of the five directors who are paid; she was paid $110,866 in total compensation including a $35,000 salary retainer. While …

The Interactive Advertising Bureau Singapore and eMarketer teamed up to offer a digital ad spending forecast for Southeast Asia that projects 20.4% growth this year across six markets: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. The eMarketer forecast projected that digital ad spending in Singapore alone would reach $376.5 million this year which represents 23.8% of overall media dollars--a substantial percentage. That percentage is expected to grow, according to eMarketer's forecast, to 30.8% by 2020, and further, eMarketer projected that mobile will comprise four of every five digital dollars spent.

Facebook is starting to open its Facebook Audience Network up a bit. "It has begun selling Instant Articles inventory separate from the rest of Audience Network, offered to provide some ad buyers lists revealing a portion of their ad placements and held talks about enabling private marketplace deals within Audience Network," according to Marketing Land. "But it remains to be seen whether those concessions would be enough to satisfy larger advertisers and whether they would risk alienating publishers." Facebook is being challenged by media buying agencies. For example, "GroupM advises its clients and the agencies within its network against buying ads on …