by Mark Walsh on Sep 27, 6:16 PM
Facebook on Thursday launched a new service allowing people to send tangible gifts to friends on the social network. The gifts, which include like things like cupcakes, sunglasses and stuffed animals, are delivered to a recipient’s home or workplace after they receive a notification via Facebook. People can send gifts along with birthday greetings, post a it to a friend’s timeline or send it privately. Recipients can also preview the gift and swap it out for a similarly priced item if they want. Gift-givers can pay by credit card up front or after their friend provides shipping information.
Facebook …
by Mark Walsh on Sep 27, 3:31 PM
Mobile rich media provider Celtra on Thursday unveiled its first
quarterly report looking at results from 60 mobile campaigns across the automotive, finance, entertainment and retail categories. The company’s AdCreator platform allows clients to build, run and track rich media ads using HTML5 technology. It works with 35 premium publishers as well as scores of ad networks, mobile exchanges and DSPs. Among the highlights of its quarterly report: --Among ad formats, more than 2/3 (67%) were expandable banners, making it the most popular ad format. The remaining 1/3 of the ads were split between interstitials (21%) and banners (12%). …
by Steve McClellan on Sep 27, 1:14 PM
Brent Poer has been promoted to President SMG LiquidThread North America, the branded content division of Publicis Groupe's Starcom MediaVest Group. Poer will continue to report to SMG's three media agency CEO's in the U.S.--Brian Terkelsen (MediaVest); Lisa Donohue (Starcom), and Chris Boothe (Spark). Previously Poer was executive vice president and executive creative director, SMG LiquidThread North America. His promotion to NA President fills a gap left by the elevation of Terkelsen earlier this year to the MediaVest CEO position. Previously Terkelsen had been global head of the LiquidThread division, overseeing both North America and the expansion of the operation …
by Nina Lentini on Sep 27, 1:05 PM
Accelerate Worldwide, a commercial management firm co-founded by former CEO of AOL Europe Kate Burns and UK executives Anne Macartney, Pat Nelson, Nimeshh Patel and Anthony Webb, has opened the doors to its offices in London and New York.
by Mark Walsh on Sep 27, 12:04 PM
The Interactive Advertising Bureau today announced the release of the final version of its API standards for mobile rich media ads following a comment period. Called
MRAID 2.0 (Mobile Rich Media Ad Interface Definitions), the set of technical specifications is designed to allow agencies to run creative across different mobile applications rather than having to be rewritten for every app or network. The
initial MRAID framework was introduced a year ago. “With these new specifications, the IAB Mobile Center aims to encourage and facilitate rich media and creative advertising adoption for mobile ad units,” said Joe Laszlo, senior …
by Karl Greenberg on Sep 27, 9:54 AM
It's Texas State Fair time in Dallas, which means a mess of pickup trucks. Today at 10 a.m., Dodge will do a live web stream of its unveiling there of the new Ram truck line. It's here, in case you're not there: http://www.ramtrucks.com/en/2013/previews/ram_hd_cc/
by Joe Mandese on Sep 26, 3:31 PM
St. Petersburg, FL-based consumer research and marketing giant Catalina is dramatically expanding its presence in Boston. The company, whose Boston team has been developing personalized digital media marketing technologies for retailers, such as New England's Stop & Shop grocery chain, announced that it will triple the size of its team.
by Mark Walsh on Sep 26, 3:22 PM
BlueKai has extended its Data Activation System to the mobile realm, allowing marketers to tap into first- and third-party mobile data for ad retargeting. The company launched the system, which combines its Data Exchange and Data Management Platform with its Audience across Media (AxM) media insights tool in July. BlueKai says its expansion to mobile will help fill the analytics gap caused by the lack of traditional browser-based cookies in mobile for tracking and measurement. As part of its effort, the company has also partnered with AdTruth to create a standard for tracking and recognizing audience anonymously across the mobile …
by Mark Walsh on Sep 26, 9:47 AM
A new
eye-tracking study suggests the leaderboard banner is the most likely to command users’ attention regardless of device. The research by Tobii Technology in Sweden and Mediative in Canada found leaderboard ads on the iPad outperformed other units, with people fixated on them 44% longer than the next best ad type. The leaderboard also held users’ attention 22.5% longer on the iPad than on the PC, but the unit was viewed twice as fast on the PC as on the iPad. For both devices, the leaderboard proved the most effective at grabbing people’s attention compared to other display …
by Mark Walsh on Sep 26, 9:25 AM
The worldwide market for connected devices-PCs, smartphones and tablets--reached 267.3 million units shipped in the second quarter, up 27.4% from a year ago and 2.8% from the first quarter, according to a new IDC estimate. On a revenue basis, the total increased 16.3% to $131.5 billion from a year ago, but fell 2.7% from the prior quarter. In the U.S., rapid adoption of smartphones and tablets has started to slow as overall economic conditions and a degree of saturation begin to affect the market. U.S. shipments of connected devices in Q2 dropped 5% to just under 47.4 million units, …