ExchangeWire rounds up some of the biggest stories in the European digital advertising space.

1. Criteo issues first quarterly earnings post-IPO

In its first financial filing since it launched its initial public offering (IPO) last year, France-based Crieo reveald its closed 4Q 2013 with revenues increasing 57% year-on-year to hit €135.9m; and revenue for fiscal year 2013 also increasing 63.3% annually to €444m.

JB Rudelle, Criteo's co-founder and CEO, described the performance as a “record” performance that “exceeded expectations”, with its number of clients increasing 50% year-on-year to surpass 5,000.

Rudelle also used the company’s debut earnings call to stress how he saw the company’s recently launched in-app mobile display ad service as crucial to its service going forward.

He pointed out that although the company formally launched the service last month, it has been trialling the service since late last year with the product generating approximately 2.5% of company revenue in September; rising to 10% in December.

This is in addition to Criteo’s acquisition of the Ad-X mobile app installation and tracking platform in July last year.

The performance will serve as an example to fellow ad tech companies Rubicon Project and PubMatic, which both revealed plans to IPO in recent weeks.

2. AOL pledges further ad inventory

This week ExchangeWire spoke with AOL UK MD Noel Penzer who pledged that the online ad giant would make more premium advertising inventory available to advertisers via its programmatic channels.

In fact this strategy is already under way with the company working alongside agency trading desks, using its AdLearn Open platform to increase the amount of premium inventory available to advertisers, including cooperation with agency trading desks.

He adds: “We’re already working with agencies and brands, and while we may not be first to the market, we’ve seen that because we’ve opened up the tech to partners, it has enabled us to be more successful.

“We’re giving some advertisers first look at inventory before it goes into the exchanges… and a real big focus is to make even more available.”

In a sign that the battle for further brand advertising dollars is heating up, this comes the same week as ComScore and Google announced an agreement to integrate a deal to give advertisers improved real-time insight into how ad campaigns booked on its DoubleClick ad platform are performing across screens.

This deal will see Google integrating Comscore’s Validated Campaign Essentials (vCE) ad measurement product into its DoubleClick offering, which improves advertisers ability to optimise campaigns as they happen.

However, Yahoo’s chances of reversing its decline took an extra blow this with news of the defection of Stuart Flint (who was unveiled as its UK managing director, just 10 days after the exit of predecessor James Wildman), to join Microsoft as its UK sales director. Yahoo is currently looking for a successor to Flint, who will stay on for a number of months due to contractual stipulations.

3. Advertisers demand more clarity from programmatic

The self-appointed ‘Voice of UK Advertisers’ ISBA this week called on ad tech provider companies to make their propositions clear or else risk losing further investment from brands.

Speaking at an automated trading conference held in London earlier this week, the trade body, which represents hundreds of the UK’s top advertisers, made a plea for more transparency.

Bob Wotton, ISBA, director of media and advertising, said: “There is a strong appetite from advertisers for much more information about how their money is being spent in this increasingly complicated supply chain.

“It’s interesting to hear how real-time programmatic buying works, but there’s still questions, not least how can advertisers extract more transparency from the agencies they employ.”

The boy will now publish a whitepaper with Infectious Media further shedding light on the world of programmatic advertising, which many marketers readily admit they know little about (and then shy away from).

The closer collaboration with the programmatic ad industry is the latest move in a widespread bid to increase knowledge and understanding of the sector.

4. Integral Ad Science acquires mobile analytics firm

Media valuing service Integral Ad Science this week announced its purchase of London-based mobile analytics firm Simplytics for an undisclosed fee.

Integral Ad Science now claims the acquisition positions it as the only company to offer ad verification across all digital channels: display, mobile, and video.

Bryan St. John, Integral Ad Science, SVP international, says: “Simplytics adds to the Integral proposition with superior technology and advanced, built-in analytics for mobile advertising including metrics such as unique users, engagement time and full device breakdown. Together with the roll out of advanced viewability metrics for video we can provide deeper insights into consumer engagement with video ads.”

The move also represents Integral’s first acquisition post its recent $30m investment and further underlines the importance of generating mobile revenue streams.

In-app advertising is expected to reach $17 billion by 2018, according to a report released by Juniper Research in January, making it the fastest growing sector of the mobile advertising market. However, it is frequently cited as difficult to scale and measure accurately due to lack of measurement and verification solutions.

5. English FA signs up programmatic player in RadiumOne

England’s Football Association (FA), the oldest in the game, has penned a deal with RadiumOne that will see the programmatic advertising company help serve audiences with more intelligently targeted ads.

RadiumOne’s technology will help filter masses of data to serve visitors to FA websites – over 18 million web users a month, 760, 000 Twitter users and 2.8 million Facebook fans – to help the FA understand which content drives the best engagement with audiences in real-time. This insight can then be shared with the FA’s commercial partners.