ExchangeWire rounds up some of the biggest stories in the European digital advertising space. In this week’s edition: Sky and DataXu partner; AppNexus launches PriceCheck; Facebook adds mobile web to Audience Network; WPP's multi-billion ad spend on Google; Alliance between Rubicon Project and AdMore; and ISBA's Bob Wootton to step down. 

Strategic investment into DataXu by Sky

UK-based pay-TV provider Sky has made a USD$10m (£7m) investment in analytics provider DataXu. "This investment will help us develop a deeper understanding of programmatic advertising, and play our part in shaping the market as it progresses", says Jamie West, deputy MD at Sky Media.

No doubt, Sky will be a strong partner for DataXu, based on market share of the pay-TV giant alone. But the investment is a strategic move on Sky’s part too: Sky will be using DataXu’s ad tech for its own services, making use of daily digital advertising opportunities that amount to over 100 billion, according to DataXu.

Specifically, Sky Media is set to benefit from the close cooperation with DataXu: Sky’s advertising sales division is hoping to extend the reach of their own advertising product, as well as simplifying the programmatic buying process for advertisers.

Including previous investment rounds, DataXu has now raised more than USD$75m (£52.4m) in funding. Meanwhile, Sky Media’s new programmatic platform for advertising sales, developed in partnership with Videology, is expected to launch early this year.

AppNexus facilitates mobile header bidding

With the launch of its own header bidding solution, PriceCheck, ad platform AppNexus is hoping to give publishers more control – and monetisation power – over their inventory.

Effectively letting the publishers choose which advertiser to provide ad space for, by comparing bid prices, PriceCheck is not an SDK, but accessed via an API making it a more lightweight solution that processes ad requests and provides real-time insight into ad impressions.

"The most important step mobile publishers can take to improve the monetisation of their inventory is to know what it's worth", said Ryan Christensen, SVP & GM, Publishers, AppNexus. "PriceCheck, which provides impression-level price transparency, helps publishers drive demand density and increase yield. It's the end of the black box for mobile advertising yield management.”

PriceCheck is available for banner, video and interstitial ads.

Facebook expands Audience Network to mobile web

In a bid to challenge Google’s AdSense, Facebook is expanding its Audience Network to support mobile websites, giving advertisers a new playing ground for brand messages that reach from mobile apps to mobile websites.

The ad network, previously only available for in-app advertising, is taking on Google with its foray into native advertising on the mobile web. Its main point of leverage is the massive amount of targeting data from users of the social network. According to Facebook, native advertising already accounts for 80% of impressions on Audience Network.

With the inclusion of mobile websites, Facebook reacts to growing demand from publishers, as well as increasing media consumption via mobile web: Between 2013 and 2015, digital media consumption in mobile web browsers grew 53%.

WPP spent USD$4bn (£2.79bn) for advertising on Google

Google and Facebook are the biggest fish in the advertising pond when it comes to WPP’s ad spend. The bulk of WPP’s ad spend goes to Google, WPP’s CEO Martin Sorrell told Business Insider. WPP paid USD$4bn (£2.79bn) for advertising with Google, a figure that was up 38% from the USD$2.9bn (£2.03bn) spent by WPP in 2014.

While showing stronger growth, in terms of WPP ad spend, Facebook garners only a quarter of the ad expense that Google can claim: USD$1bn (£700m) went to the social network’s advertising arm in 2015, up 56% from USD$640m (£477m) in 2014.

Other media are reduced to 'also ran': Twitter scrapes at USD$150m-225m (£105m-157m) , AOL made between USD$100m-125m (£70m-89m) and Yahoo received between USD$400m-430m (£279m-300m). But none of them are seeing the growing demand for WPP advertising that Facebook and Google reap – ad spend with AOL, Twitter, and Yahoo has flatlined in the last year.

Rubicon Project partners with AdMore

Rubicon pushes into TV advertising. The ad tech company has announced a strategic partnership with programmatic TV ad platform AdMore, which opens the TV marketplace to Rubicon’s Guaranteed Orders platform.

The idea behind the alliance is to unite audience targeting and buying across all formats, from desktop via mobile and OOH to TV. "Our partnership with AdMore helps to solve the media fragmentation challenge for advertisers looking to reach local and national audiences across linear television”, comments Jay Sears, SVP marketplace development, Rubicon Project. To that end, Rubicon will have access to AdMore’s TV affiliates, targeting 100 million Nielsen-rated homes.

“[The] announcement is a direct response to the rapidly increasing demand for programmatic TV solutions”, says Brendan Condon, CEO of AdMore.

With AdMore sales handled through Rubicon's Orders market, the companies are hoping to enable a  more efficient and effective convergence of programmatic digital and linear advertising through automated audience targeting.

Industry veteran leaves ISBA

After 20 years of service for ISBA, Bob Wootton is stepping down from his position in the ranks of the industry body. The current director of media and advertising is leaving 22 April, 2016.

“During Bob’s time guiding ISBA’s media agenda with our members we have seen some serious achievements on traditional media; and, importantly, refocused advertisers on the issues arising from the fast-changing digital media ecology”, says Mike Hughes, ISBA Director General.

"Media consolidation remains one of the key considerations advertisers face, alongside the various issues of ad blocking, ad fraud, brand safety, viewability and data ownership in the digital space. Bob’s clear leadership has helped ISBA members navigate an increasingly complex media landscape.”

While Wootton is going to apply his expertise to new endeavours (and his guitar collection), ISBA is looking to fill his role with a successor.