ADVERTISER PLATFORMS
Moloco | December 01, 2022
Moloco, a leader in machine learning and growth solutions for performance marketers, has announced the appointment of Ben Jeger as Vice President of EMEA. With over a decade of mobile app marketing experience, he will focus on delivering the next stage of Moloco’s growth in the EMEA region.
Immediate priorities include increasing Moloco’s EMEA team of world-class talent to help businesses scale their performance ad campaigns, through Moloco Cloud DSP, which uses machine learning with Deep Neural Networks to optimise campaigns for the best return on ad spend. In addition, Ben’s team will support Moloco Retail Media Platform, which focuses on the unique needs of e-commerce marketplaces by enabling merchants to create ad campaigns that increase discoverability and sales through relevant ad placements to the right shoppers at the right time.
With a wealth of experience driving business growth in the region, Jeger most recently served as Managing Director of Central Europe at AppsFlyer, having previously managed operations for the marketing analytics and attribution platform in DACH and the Nordics since 2016. Prior to this, he was the Senior Director, Client Services for EMEA at Fyber (now owned by Digital Turbine), an app growth and monetisation platform. While at Fyber, he led the business exchange for the region and helped drive the company’s development of the mobile business.
“Ben joins the Moloco team at a significant time for the business. His regional leadership experience and exceptional business acumen will be of great value as we continue to grow our operations in EMEA,” said Sunil Rayan, Chief Business Officer at Moloco.
“Ben joins the Moloco team at a significant time for the business. His regional leadership experience and exceptional business acumen will be of great value as we continue to grow our operations in EMEA,” said Sunil Rayan, Chief Business Officer at Moloco. “Ben’s expertise in mobile app marketing and attribution gives him a unique insight into our offering as we look to deliver machine-learning solutions for app publishers and e-commerce marketplaces. We are delighted to have Ben onboard and look forward to his leadership in elevating our presence in EMEA.”
The Moloco EMEA business has been extremely successful in the mobile games space, where 70 out of the top 100 gaming apps are working with Moloco to drive their growth. With the appointment of Ben Jeger, Moloco can expand its reach to e-commerce, fintech, and delivery apps to deliver on its mission to enable businesses of all sizes to benefit from the power of machine learning.
“Moloco is not only considered to be the fastest growing DSP, it has proven that its advanced machine learning engine thrives in a privacy-first world by utilising Deep Neural Networks and first-party data to provide customers the best return on their ad spend”, said Ben Jeger, VP of EMEA at Moloco. “Moloco’s unique tech offering, paired with a highly experienced leadership team and strong values makes this the most desirable career opportunity for me. I’m thrilled to join such a talented team and to lead the growth of the EMEA business.”
About Moloco
Moloco’s goal is to make the digital economy more equitable and profitable by delivering advanced machine learning to companies of all sizes. With Moloco’s machine learning platform for growth and performance, every app publisher and online retailer can now unlock the value of their unique, first-party data. Moloco Cloud DSP enables performance marketers to scale user acquisition quickly and achieve greater lifetime value through battle-tested prediction models. Moloco Retail Media Platform enables online retailers and marketplaces to establish their own performance ad business. Moloco was founded in 2013 by a team of former Google machine learning engineers. Headquartered in Redwood City, Calif., Moloco has nine offices across the US, UK, Korea, China, Japan, and Singapore. For more information, visit www.moloco.com.
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PROGRAMMATIC ADVERTISING
Hivestack, Focus Media | November 24, 2022
Hivestack, the world’s leading, independent programmatic digital out of home (DOOH) ad tech company today announced a partnership with Focus Media, China’s leading offline advertising solution provider. Focus Media’s DOOH inventory across office building elevators will gradually be integrated into the Hivestack Supply Side Platform (SSP) allowing advertisers to activate large scale programmatic DOOH campaigns via Private Marketplace (PMP) deals across China.
Focus Media covers 2.6 million elevator terminals across China with a wide selection of interactive digital screens, including elevator screens and movie theater media networks through which advertisers can reach and engage with 300 million urban residents in China in over 230 cities on a daily basis. Integrating Focus Media’s inventory into Hivestack’s global SSP will provide unparalleled access to prime OOH media locations across China and will allow for advertisers from within China and from global markets outside to seamlessly plan, activate and measure programmatic DOOH campaigns and drive business outcomes.
Aileen Ku, General Manager China, Hivestack said: “We are thrilled to be partnering with Focus Media, one of the world’s leading out of home (OOH) advertising companies. It is such an important addition on our supply side platform, which offers many boundless opportunities to expand and elevate our current inventory, enabling Chinese and global brands more accessible in the market to reach their target audiences with more precision.”
Andreas Soupliotis, Founder & CEO of Hivestack commented: “Our partnership with Focus Media represents a significant milestone for our business in China. We began this journey two years ago by replicating our tech stack behind the Chinese firewall to be able to power inside out opportunities for Chinese brands and also outside-in transactions, bringing overseas revenue to Chinese DOOH media owners. We are now ready for the next phase of Hivestack China - to power domestic transactions. With our Focus Media partnership, we now have incredible scale in China - enough to convince Chinese marketers to augment omnichannel budgets to include programmatic DOOH. China has been a big investment and commitment for us - we are so excited to see our vision bear fruit.”
Cindy Chen, Chief Strategy Officer, Focus Media added: “We are excited to announce this strategic partnership with Hivestack as we continue to develop our programmatic digital out of home (DOOH) offering across China. The way in which Hivestack has built their technology in China is extremely valuable to our business as Focus Media has been offering "targeted" premium ads to reach a subdivision of specific audiences. This can now be further empowered with advanced technology and data from Hivestack.”
Jason Jiang, Chairman & CEO, Focus Media said: “With the advantages of Focus Media’s centralized media resources and our strong brand exposure in the market, this partnership with Hivestack will help advertisers in China and globally to achieve rapid business growth.”
Jason Jiang, Chairman & CEO, Focus Media said: “With the advantages of Focus Media’s centralized media resources and our strong brand exposure in the market, this partnership with Hivestack will help advertisers in China and globally to achieve rapid business growth.”
Leveraging technology and data, programmatic DOOH is empowering brands to connect and engage with audiences outside of their homes in a more concise and measurable way than ever before. Media owners are increasingly leaning towards generating DOOH revenue via programmatic. Through this new partnership, Focus Media and Hivestack have created an incredible opportunity for advertisers to engage with 300 million mainstream consumer groups in China, bringing the OOH industry to new heights with new innovation and new business breakthroughs in China.
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ADVERTISER CAMPAIGN MANAGEMENT, SOCIAL MEDIA ADVERTISING, BRAND MARKETING
Neeva | December 14, 2022
Search engine Neeva has today launched in Canada to provide a safe, secure and ad-free web search platform alternative to Google; free of tracking, advertisements or affiliate links found in traditional search.
Placing the control back into the hands of consumers, Neeva allows users to customize their web search experiences without the sway of corporate bias. Many consumers have had no choice but to settle for search engines like Google, which sells customer data to advertisers and allows for third party tracking – Neeva never sacrifices privacy for quality, with a focus on transparent and personalized ad-free web browsing.
Founded by Sridhar Ramaswamy (ex-SVP of Ads at Google) and Vivek Raghunathan (ex-VP of Monetization at YouTube), Neeva is reinventing web search for good, challenging Google’s long-standing web-search reign. The company has raised over $80m from investors like Sequoia Capital, Greylock Ventures, Inovia Capital, and Neythri Futures Fund. Additionally, Neeva had a successful 2021 $40m Series B funding round.
Neeva’s Canadian expansion follows a successful launch in Europe in October 2022. Within 24 hours of launch, Neeva had over 30k sign-ups and was the third most searched term on Google. In light of the growing demand for digital identity protections in Canada, Neeva delivers honest results without ever comprising user data. Free from the standard influence of Big Tech and advertisers, Neeva users are empowered to select their information sources, such as news outlets, shopping, travel and others based on personal preference and relevance.
“The internet has evolved away from users and caters towards advertisers above all else. Canada has always been at the forefront when it comes to privacy, and we at Neeva are excited to officially bring our localized and private-first search engine to Canadians.”
Neeva CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy
To date, search alternatives have mostly offered stronger privacy but at the expense of diminished search quality. Since Neeva operates its own independent search stack (crawling, indexing and serving at scale), it never sacrifices accuracy for speed. Returning lightning-fast results with high levels of accuracy, drawing from an index of billions of web pages, all without ads. This unique independent search stack frees Neeva to rewrite the rules of the web search, developing user-first features with the sole principle of providing top tier results in the most efficient way possible, plus all with the strong privacy users should expect and demand from today’s internet experience. It’s easy for users to search across their most important personal documents while maintaining strict privacy controls, since Neeva enables connections to email, Dropbox, Slack, Figma, and others.
Moreover, Neeva is leading a new frontier search by leveraging in-house LLMs and refined training models with its full system search stack to bring authentic real time AI search to the masses. NeevaAI solves two significant shortcomings of the current AI tools such as ChatGPT which are 1) the lack of references or citations associated with answers and 2) the failure to provide real time information.
“Neeva is ready to challenge the corporate bias of Big Tech, giving consumers a long overdue improved searching and browsing experience,” said Mr. Ramaswamy. “The modern-day internet has become heavily ad-dependent for no reason other than Big Tech’s self-serving exploitation of consumers' data and privacy. With recent legislation and proposals in Canada that prioritize user privacy and limit Big Tech’s power over consumers, we’re excited to give Canadians an alternative option with Neeva.”
About Neeva
Neeva is the world’s first user-first private search engine. Neeva takes search back to its roots by focusing entirely on the user, delivering high quality results without any ads, giving users control over their sources, and protecting user privacy by blocking trackers. Neeva’s independent search stack offers rich visual experiences, integrates community forum content, and search over personal applications. Neeva also leverages in-house LLMs and refined training models with its independent full system search stack to deliver authentic real time AI search.
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MOBILE ADVERTISING, AD NETWORKS, ADVERTISER CAMPAIGN MANAGEMENT
Estrella Media, Inc. | December 15, 2022
Estrella Media, the transformative Spanish-language media company serving a diverse multiplatform Hispanic audience in the US, today announced that it has partnered with FreeWheel, a global technology platform for the TV advertising industry, to expand its connected TV (CTV) advertising business. The partnership will enable both companies to elevate and support the enormous growth of Hispanic CTV across the valuable Estrella Media platforms thru EstrellaTV, Estrella News, Cine EstrellaTV, Estrella Games and the EstrellaTV App. Estrella drove over 1.33 billion streaming minutes of its original content in November with a third of it on CTV, including the hit reality series Rica Famosa Latina, the venerated Premios de la Radio Regional Mexican music awards, the scripted Latin comedy Norteados con Don Cheto and five daily news shows on Estrella News including 24 Horas.
While more and more households across the US consume CTV, there has also been a critical consumption shift within Hispanic households. According to Nielsen research, Hispanic households over-index on CTV consumption compared to the average US household. Per Horowitz Research, seven in 10 Hispanic TV content viewers watch Spanish-language programming, up 11% from last year. Furthermore, the share of Hispanic TV content viewers who rely only on streaming has continued its upward trajectory: 38% of Hispanic only subscribe to streaming services and not to an MVPD.
Today, Estrella is one of the largest US producers of Spanish-language video and audio content for multiplatform distribution worldwide, with a library of over 20,000 hours of original video content. By leveraging FreeWheel’s advanced technology, the media company is on track to accelerate its growth into the valuable CTV space across FAST and AVOD.
"Our passionate audience is watching more CTV than ever before,” said René Santaella, Chief Digital & Streaming Officer. "We need to make sure they get an excellent free ad-supported experience surrounding the content they love. FreeWheel is helping our ad sales operation achieve better ROI on CTV so everyone wins.”
FreeWheel will power Estrella’s comprehensive revenue strategy for direct and programmatic monetization to reach Hispanic audiences, including all CTV and OTT inventory.
"As audiences fragment across screens, programmers and advertisers need solutions that can help them find and scale this viewership across CTV. Estrella is seeing significant growth with the important US Hispanic market across its CTV audiences. We're thrilled to be a key partner to help the company drive and monetize this business.”
Katy Loria, Chief Revenue Officer at FreeWheel.
About Estrella Media, Inc.
Estrella Media is a leading Spanish-language media company and one of the largest US producers of Spanish-language video and audio content for multiplatform distribution worldwide, with over 20,000 hours of original video content.
Estrella Media's content studio feeds all its digital and linear media platforms, including EstrellaTV, its national broadcast television network that is seen in over 60 million US households on 16 owned or operated stations and 33 affiliated stations, as well as through cable and satellite providers and digital streaming platforms; Estrella News, the first 24/7 Spanish-language multiplatform digital news network in the US; and Estrella Games, the first 24/7 curated Spanish-language game show channel in the US In 2021, Estrella Media's digital content surpassed one billion viewership minutes.
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