Monday marks the unofficial end of summer, and even though the dog days are coming to a close, there was no shortage of news in the programmatic space these past few months. From IPOs,
to mergers and acquisitions, to new partnerships, and plenty of Hyperbabble in between, this post takes a glance at the programmatic summer of 2013.
The Big Moves
- PubliCom. Wait, this happened only a month ago? With the amount of things that have happened since Publicis and Omnicom announced a merge, it seems like a long time ago. The impact of their tech
stacks meshing remains to be seen.
- The Magna Consortium. After naming Adap.tv their primary automation platform for TV and video inventory, Interpublic struck deals to automate
transactions across TV, radio, out-of-home, mobile, online video, and display. The agreements are with A&E Networks, Cablevision, Clear Channel, Tribune, and AOL. Dubbed "The Magna
Consortium."
- AOL buys Adap.TV. In early August, Adap.TV was purchased by AOL to the tune of $405 million dollars. The acquisition completes AOL's video stack as they push more
inventory toward programmatic.
- News Corp.'s global programmatic exchange. In launching a global programmatic exchange, News Corp. is bringing everything in-house and nixing
third-party ad networks they've worked with. Could it act as a catalyst for a premium publisher private exchange trend?
The IPOs
We saw several
IPOs this summer relevant to the programmatic space (and, more specifically, programmatic video).
- YuMe filed for a $65 million IPO just before Independence Day. It closed its IPO at a
public price of $9 a share with approximately five million common stock shares available.
- Tremor Video filed for a $86.3 million IPO just days before Memorial Day. 7.5 million
common stock shares were available at $10 per share at the end of June, below the $11-$13 price per share analysts had predicted.
- Rocket Fuel filed for a $100 million IPO in
mid-August. In addition to filing the IPO, the company disclosed an accumulated deficit of $35.5 million as of June 30, 2013.
- Marketo filed for an IPO this morning. It will be
traded on Nasdaq under the ticker MKTO. Pricing has not been disclosed, but an expected six million shares of common stock will be available.
The Trends
All of the below data comes from Rubicon Project's real-time marketplace app.
- May: U.S. impressions down 8%, spend up 10% (compared to April)
- June:
U.S. impressions down 3%, spend down 1% (compared to May)
- July: U.S. impressions down 7%, impressions down 13% (compared to June)
- Q2 improved on Q1. There
was a 21% increase in spend and a 7% increase in impressions when comparing the two quarters.
The Hyperbabbles
From May 14 through August 30, there
were a total of 22 Hyperbabbles posted by RTM Daily. You can click here to view all of them, but
below are some of the most Hyperbabblicious.
- "'…which dovetails perfectly with [Company]'s media-agnostic and results-driven approach to empowering advertisers through applied
advertising sciences. [New Hire]'s also highly-respected for baking problem solving and innovative solutions into all of the businesses she builds, which echoes what the team does here, in both
interpreting and immediately optimizing campaigns based on the data that we leverage in both local and global markets, so that clients can directly and quickly benefit from not only our leading-edge
technology, but also the deep marketing expertise of our collective [Company] team.'"
- "A modern, open system that fosters experimentation and innovation, [A] turbo charges the
speed of the [B] marketing optimization engine with [C], a key component of its high-performance big data analytics capabilities. [C] provides powerful algorithms that allow greater efficiency,
scalability and reduced time-to-market with actionable analytics. It enables [D] to create client-specific customized models to analyze specific data in an accelerated manner before decision logic is
pushed into production and executed in real time."
- "[New Offering] harnesses cross-enterprise and cross-channel data and is engineered to integrate with existing marketing
and database systems. The data-driven, cloud-based solution is equipped to deliver thousands of campaigns per second and billions of customized messages per year, around the globe. It also features an
adaptable architecture and modern user interface designed to boost creativity, collaboration and individual productivity for enterprise digital marketing teams."