StrikeAd and Celtra Join Forces to Offer RTB-integrated Rich Media Mobile Ads

StrikeAd, the London and New York-based mobile advertising specialist, this week announced they’re teaming up with Celtra, an industry leader for rich media advertising and analytics across mobile devices, to offer advertisers the ability to deliver rich media ads via RTB. The partnership will offer the opportunity to optimise ad campaigns based on which traffic responds well to each rich media ad.

StrikeAd's DSP uses RTB to bid across multiple exchanges and, as a result, can see which traffic works best for the rich media execution. The DSP can then buy more of the traffic that works well for that individual ad. The partnership follows predictions by Google that rich media ads will dominate the mobile ad space by 2015, and an additional advantage for the DSP in driving this growth in rich media is that advertisers will have a better understanding of which audiences respond best to specific components within the ad – whether that's video, social media sharing or games, etc.

Alex Rahaman, CEO of StrikeAd, comments: "Brand engagement that can drive uplift in the form of a game, competition or film trailer will certainly increase interaction and awareness. From our experience we have seen that RTB is an extremely effective way to run an ad campaign, and teaming this with Celtra's rich media capabilities will only serve to increase engagement with our clients' audiences."

Mihael Mikek, CEO and cofounder of Celtra, adds: "Rich media ads create value across the ecosystem, enhancing the consumer experience by delivering more meaningful advertising and improving ad engagement and campaign ROI for advertisers. Coupling Celtra’s rich media capabilities with the highly effective media buying impact of RTB increases the impact of high-yield rich media campaigns by allowing advertisers to better match their ads with the best performing inventory."

StrikeAd offers the world's first mobile-specific advertising Demand Side Platform (DSP). It allows media agencies to manage and optimise multiple global mobile advertising campaigns from multiple advertisers from a single platform. Advertisers can buy best performing inventory to provide effectively filtered and optimised sales leads.

Fabien Magalon Joins Criteo’s Paris Team

Criteo, a global leader in performance display advertising, announced this week the appointment of Fabien Magalon as European Director of RTB to further strengthen its Paris-based team. The announcement complements the recent addition of Meredith Goldman as Director of RTB for the U.S.

Jonathan Wolf, Chief Buying Officer at Criteo, comments: “Real Time Bidding is a highly sophisticated and technologically efficient solution: it will become an inevitable part of every large publisher’s adserving solution. Meredith and Fabien come from two of the leaders in the RTB Ad Exchange space, and we are delighted that having seen our scale and sophistication as buyers, they decided to join us. They bring a wealth of experience to a strong team, helping to strengthen our reputation as an industry leader. We believe that their understanding of the media buying landscape will only increase the performance that we can provide for our advertisers.”

Fabien Magalon joins from Rubicon Project, where he was Publisher Development Director, responsible for Rubicon’s entry and rapid growth in the French market. During his tenure, Fabien was responsible for the development and growth of many of Rubicon’s publisher partnerships. Prior to that, he was with Microsoft Media Network as Director of Operations for France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Holland. Today, Fabien will help to expand Criteo’s current platform and to further enhance its position as global leader, enabling Criteo to serve opportunities for RTB to its 2,000 clients in all 30 markets.

Fabien Magalon adds: “I am delighted to join Criteo, an innovative and forward-thinking company, a proven winner within the Real Time Bidding environment, and a leading driver of RTB’s growth in Europe. It’s an exciting time for our customers as we look at fully using the automation offered through the exchanges to further make display perform like search."

Blowfish Digital Announces Revenue Growth & Adds to Its International Management Team

Blowfish Digital, digital marketing services provider for brands including Reiss, TM Lewin, Laura Ashley, eBay and many more, announced last week record revenue growth of over 88% in 2011. Over £2m in revenue has come from international marketing. In addition, the company grew its team by 30% over the same period. Growth was fueled by the addition of new clients and added services for existing clients, including the Royal British Legion and TM Lewin. The company expects similar results in 2012 in support of the growing demand for search marketing, affiliate, mobile and social media services.

Farhad Koodoruth, MD of Blowfish Digital, comments: “Since 2005 we have consistently delivered outstanding results for our clients. Business growth last year has reflected this through the rise in demand for digital marketing services from our existing clients as well as the continued success of our new business division. We are continuing to evolve as a company, providing services in emerging markets such as social media and attribution.”

Blowfish Digital also announced key additions to its management team. Yekaterina Odintsova, a digital marketing specialist, has been appointed Operations Manager. She will focus on the company’s international services, delivering campaigns with geo targeted accounts including USA, Europe and Asia. Prior to joining Blowfish Digital, Yekaterina was senior SEM specialist at Kelkoo, where she was responsible for increasing revenue in the Scandinavian region.

Marco Felicio, has been appointed Account Manager. Marco, specialises in paid search, SEO, usability and social media. He brings a wealth of experience to the company, having worked with major blue chip companies. Marco will be responsible for Blowfish Digital’s social strategy development and implementation and its channel integration with SEO, display and search.

Swedish Eniro Chooses to Work with Group M's Much-criticised Xaxis

Programmatic buying has prompted several media outlets to react with anxiety and anger, arguing that media agencies are losing their objectivity, and that it damages the transparency that should apply to the media buy. Dagensmedia.se has several articles about the launch of Group M's Xaxis solution in the Swedish market.

Even Association of Swedish Advertisers’ CEO Anders Ericson is critical of Xaxis: “Clearly Xaxis moves the boundary around what is to be regarded as bulk purchases. I do not like their business model and do not see the long term benefit to us advertisers.”

According to dagensmedia.se, Eniro has now signed an agreement with Xaxis. After several reminders, for more than a week, Enrio answers dagensmedia.se's questions via email.

Mattias Wedar, CEO of Eniro in Sweden, writes: "We have no written contract with Xaxis. We have offered Xaxis the opportunity to buy ads on the same basis as other operators, so when we have space available, they may buy in the same way as other players. They have not called or contacted us actively to buy anything to date, however our shared ambition is to do business together."

Group M has previously defended Xaxis claiming the system is the "way of the future".