Ad Tech and Martech
Business Wire | October 03, 2023
PMG today announced the acquisition of Camelot Strategic Marketing & Media, one of the largest independent agency buyers of video, OTT, and CTV, and leaders across business and marketing transformation for more than 40 years. Headquartered in Dallas, TX, Camelot, whose marquee customers include Intuit, Charter Communications, Experian, Michaels, and Whole Foods, will join PMG, an independent, global full-funnel marketing and technology company headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas.
According to PMG’s CEO and Founder George Popstefanov, Camelot is a perfect complement to PMG’s hyper-focus on the customer. “As the landscape evolves rapidly, customers require agency partners that deliver a data-informed, tech-enabled, integrated solution obsessed with outcomes, not outputs. The acquisition of Camelot brings advanced expertise in CTV, OTT, traditional media, and measurement to further PMG’s full-funnel, fully integrated model.” He adds: “Camelot has built an unrivaled video practice leading the industry. Their commitment to innovation and furthering the video industry is well aligned with PMG’s technological advancements, automation, and innovation.”
The acquisition of Camelot is further evidence of PMG’s philosophy of always changing for the better.
With the addition of nearly 160 Camelotians, PMG continues to invest in transformation that drives material impact for our customers across media, strategy, analytics, creative, all enabled by technology. Our customers push us daily to help them solve their biggest business challenges. Our commitment to heightened accountability and driving business impact has allowed PMG to work side-by-side with the C-Suite of top brands to transform for the future, says Popstefanov.
The synergies between PMG and Camelot continue when it comes to employees. PMG has been named to AdAge Best Places to Work for eight consecutive years and touts a 90 percent employee retention rate over the last five years. “PMG’s commitment to people and culture was one of the first things that caught our eye. Doing the right thing is never easy, but it’s clear that PMG has prioritized its values even when it was difficult. Camelot has always believed that a happy workplace environment leads to consistently satisfied clients, and we are excited about the bright future ahead and what it means for our people and our customers,” says Sam Bloom, CEO of Camelot. Camelot has also earned top recognition for its workplace culture and commitments, including AdAge Best Places to Work, Inc. Best Workplaces, and Top 100 Places to Work by The Dallas Morning News.
The company integration begins immediately, and clients' needs will drive the timing of specific synergies across teams and capabilities. George Popstefanov will be the CEO of the combined company, driving the vision and ambition of nearly 700 PMGers worldwide.
About PMG
PMG is a global independent digital company that seeks to inspire people and brands that anything is possible. Driven by shared success, PMG uses business strategy and transformation, creative, media, and insights, along with our proprietary marketing intelligence platform Alli, to deliver Digital Made for Humans™. With offices in New York, London, Dallas/Fort Worth, Austin, Atlanta, and Cleveland, our team is made up of over 500 employees globally, and our work for brands like Apple, Nike, Best Western Hotels & Resorts, Gap Inc., Kohler, Momentive, Sephora, and Shake Shack has received top industry recognitions including Cannes Lions and Adweek Media Plan of the Year.
Named to AdAge’s 2023 A-List, MediaPost’s 2023 Independent Agency of the Year, and Adweek’s 2021 Breakthrough Media Agency of the Year, PMG has grown through commitments to continuous improvement, business integrity, and cultivating dynamic relationships. We are proud to be named among Fast Company’s Best Workplaces for Innovators, Fortune’s 2023 #1 Best Places to Work, and Best Workplaces for Women, and to be the only company named to Ad Age’s Best Places to Work eight years in a row. For more information about PMG, visit www.pmg.com.
About Camelot
Trailblazing through 40 years in the media and marketing industry, Camelot Strategic Marketing & Media, is a Dallas-based independent agency with over 150 employees in cities across the U.S. – including New York, Los Angeles, and Baltimore. They partner with intellectually curious, want-to-get smarter leaders from the world's biggest brands – from TurboTax to Whole Foods to Michaels – to provide media-agnostic, transparent, insight-driven media and marketing strategy and execution that drives stellar results. For more information on Camelot, visit camelotsmm.com.
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Advertiser Platforms
Business Wire | September 14, 2023
Wurl, the leader in data-driven solutions for CTV, today released How to Turn CTV into a Performance Marketing Channel for Growth, a new report developed in partnership with leading marketing platform AppLovin (NASDAQ: APP). With CTV ad spending projected to reach over $25 billion in 2023, and more and more viewers moving away from traditional cable, the report highlights the significant role CTV advertising plays in reaching new audiences and driving revenue.
“CTV advertising is bringing the performance power of mobile user acquisition into the world of television, unlocking unprecedented ROI for streamers, content publishers, and mobile marketers alike,” said Katie Jansen, Chief Marketing Officer, AppLovin. “Whether operating in the dynamic world of mobile apps, or as a streaming app delivering engaging content, CTV is driving incremental and profitable growth for performance-minded marketers.”
Marketers can now leverage data-driven targeting and measurement, providing a clearer understanding of campaign outcomes. The report details how to:
Drive incrementalityby expanding reach to previously untapped audiences and acquiring net-new users and subscribers.
Keep the right viewers engaged, targeting promos individually across CTV, mobile, and desktop.
Drive deeper engagement through dual-screeningwhen users are engaging with their mobile phones while watching CTV, and searching for information about the product or service.
Measure and optimize with a full-funnel, cross-channel mindsetensuring a holistic understanding of CTV's role in driving down-funnel actions.
Inspire engagement with CTV adsthat leave a lasting impression and feature a clear call to action that motivates users to take the next step.
The report also features real-world case studies from apps that increased their install rates with AppDiscovery campaigns tapping into Wurl’s premium CTV supply. Picsart, the number two top-downloaded photography app, tripled its spend after achieving high install rates and tremendous scale, and popular credit building app Kikoff decreased its cost-per-engagement (CPE) by 27% and increased its install rate by 3X.
“We know that nearly half of viewers discover new content to watch through ads during other TV shows,” said Ron Gutman, Chief Executive Officer, Wurl. “With performance-driven advertising, streamers and publishers can leverage CTV as part of their marketing mix to attract high-value viewers, increase engagement, and, in turn, boost retention. All campaigns are 100% measurable through Wurl’s ContentDiscovery solution, allowing advertisers to effectively transform their marketing efforts from a cost center to a revenue driver with the ability to immediately see their ROAS and down-funnel metric performance.”
Learn more about Wurl and read the full report, How to Turn CTV into a Performance Marketing Channel for Growth, here.
About Wurl
Wurl leads the CTV industry in helping content publishers and streamers reach millions of viewers worldwide. The company's market-leading solutions enable publishers and streamers to maximize their revenues, grow their CTV viewership, and strengthen their brand value. Wurl is owned by AppLovin (NASDAQ: APP). For more information, visit www.wurl.com, and follow us on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and Facebook.
About AppLovin
AppLovin makes technologies that help businesses of every size connect to their ideal customers. The company provides end-to-end software and AI solutions for businesses to reach, monetize and grow their global audiences. For more information about AppLovin, visit: www.applovin.com.
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Ad Networks
Business Wire | September 28, 2023
LiveRamp (NYSE: RAMP) and FreeWheel today announced that they have partnered to introduce a new solution that enables advertisers to buy a greater amount of addressable advertising inventory in the connected television sector.
This is a new global partnership. The core offering includes FreeWheel incorporating support for LiveRamp’s identifier, RampID, powered by LiveRamp’s Authenticated Traffic Solution publisher partners into FreeWheel’s TV platform. The result is a new capability that allows marketers to more accurately reach and target audiences in the fast-growing CTV space using first-party data and addressable advertising.
For marketers, one of the solution’s main benefits is the enhanced personalization capabilities in a soon-to-be-cookieless age.
This partnership utilizes two LiveRamp solutions, which work in tandem with FreeWheel’s technology:
LiveRamp’sAuthenticated Traffic Solutionconnects first-party user data with LiveRamp’s RampID to enable advertising on authenticated inventory in a privacy-centric manner. One of ATS’s key benefits is the ability to unlock addressable inventory without third-party identifiers, enabling the ecosystem to build and plan sustainably. RampID covers every touchpoint in a customer’s journey, enabling brands to generate better insights into exposures and conversions when using RampID to track impressions. RampID also unlocks further benefits for brands in the data collaboration space, including measuring media buys, and powering collaboration and insights with other brands.
With the support of ATS and RampID, FreeWheel’s integration will soon allow 85+ RampID-enabled demand side platforms to directly transact on LiveRamp’s pseudonymous, people-based identity. The integration enables brands to onboard their audiences into FreeWheel‘s TV platform and transact direct deals with premium CTV publishers. Brands can now leverage their first-party data in conjunction with LiveRamp’s RampID and activate on FreeWheel’s premium video supply. One key benefit is that every impression can now be measured, resulting in better measurement and ROI for marketers.
“Premium addressable CTV inventory is the new must-have for every advertiser,” said Travis Clinger, SVP, Activations and Addressability, LiveRamp. “FreeWheel’s integration to support LiveRamp’s addressability will power more accurate, people-based marketing across some of the world’s leading streaming publishers, enabling marketers to drive the business outcomes they need.”
With third-party identifiers such as the cookie on the decline, we teamed up with LiveRamp to create a new solution for marketers to reach and engage with relevant audiences, said Matt Clark, VP, Strategic Partnerships, FreeWheel.
“The end result is a much needed new offering that combines the strength of LiveRamp’s identity framework, FreeWheel’s expertise and scale in premium video, and the benefits of addressable advertising. We’ve designed, built, and are introducing this new solution with a focus and commitment to privacy, so that advertisers can get ahead of and succeed in today’s evolving media landscape.”
“We are pleased to extend our longtime ATS implementation into the ad-supported version of AMC+ coming this October and this important new inventory,” said Scott Keating, VP, Audience and Data Platforms, AMC Networks. “This capability will drive our leadership position in delivering addressability for our partners while extending scale of high-quality audiences rooted in authentication.”
“Paramount Advertising is steadfast in delivering the most advanced and flexible offerings for marketers to reach their target audiences across our leading portfolio of networks and streaming services,” said Todd Bender, SVP, Ad Platforms, Paramount. “LiveRamp has been a longstanding partner as a key member of the Paramount Identity Framework, and this partnership with FreeWheel will enable us to further enrich bid requests and unlock even more powerful opportunities for advertisers across our EyeQ footprint of more than 90 million full-episode viewers.”
Through this global partnership, FreeWheel and LiveRamp are bringing a privacy-focused solution to CTV publishers, enabling publishers to create audience-based targeting for buy-side platforms on authenticated publisher inventory. LiveRamp’s ATS is the standard for post-signal connectivity and leads the way in interoperability with Google Display & Video 360’s PAIR, The Trade Desk’s UID 2.0, and Publicis’s CORE ID. Publishers working with LiveRamp and FreeWheel will now be able to benefit from increased demand and CPMs on their ATS inventory.
This new industry solution will be available in market beginning in Q4 2023.
About LiveRamp
LiveRamp is the data collaboration platform of choice for the world’s most innovative companies. A groundbreaking leader in consumer privacy, data ethics, and foundational identity, LiveRamp is setting the new standard for building a connected customer view with unmatched clarity and context while protecting precious brand and consumer trust. LiveRamp offers complete flexibility to collaborate wherever data lives to support the widest range of data collaboration use cases—within organizations, between brands, and across its premier global network of top-quality partners.
Hundreds of global innovators, from iconic consumer brands and tech giants to banks, retailers, and healthcare leaders turn to LiveRamp to build enduring brand and business value by deepening customer engagement and loyalty, activating new partnerships, and maximizing the value of their first-party data while staying on the forefront of rapidly evolving compliance and privacy requirements. LiveRamp is based in San Francisco, California with offices worldwide. Learn more at LiveRamp.com.
About FreeWheel
FreeWheel empowers all segments of The New TV Ecosystem. We are structured to provide the full breadth of solutions the advertising industry needs to achieve their goals. We provide the technology, data enablement and convergent marketplaces required to ensure buyers and sellers can transact across all screens, across all data types, and all sales channels, in order to ensure the ultimate goal – results for marketers. With offices in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, London, Paris, Beijing, and across the globe, FreeWheel, A Comcast Company, stands to advocate for the entire industry through the FreeWheel Council for Premium Video. For more information, please visit freewheel.com, and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.
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