Native Advertising

Sharethrough, the native video advertising company, today announced that it has raised $5 million in a Series B round from existing investors North Bridge Venture Partners and Floodgate. The new funding will be used to expand the adoption of the Sharethrough Sponsored Video platform by premium publisher sites and to accelerate development of its technology platform. Sharethrough currently distributes native video ads for 50 percent of the top 100 brands and over 85 percent of the top U.S. media agencies, and is quickly becoming the go-to source of native video monetization products and technology for publishers. The company is reporting 87 percent revenue growth over the past year.

Adobe Systems Incorporated (NASDAQ:ADBE) announced significant updates to Adobe® AdLens™, its cloud-based, media optimization technology. AdLens, the first integrated platform to manage and optimize search, display and social advertising as a unified campaign, now offers seamless data integration with Adobe SiteCatalyst®.

Social advertising company 140 Proof today announced that it has expanded its leadership team with the appointment of two senior executives. Sean Cowan has been hired to fill the newly created position of Vice President of National Sales. Michael Cascio has been promoted to the newly created position of Senior Vice President of Business Development and Strategy.

Ace Metrix®, the new standard in analytics for television and video advertisers, today announced the top tablet ads year-to-date, a list dominated by Samsung, who introduced two new ads in the last two weeks that both achieved Ace Metrix “Ad of the Week” status. These two new ads further seal Samsung’s dominance of the tablet Ad of the Year ranking thus far, in which Samsung holds six of the top 10 spots; Google’s Nexus 7 holds two; Kindle holds two; and iPad is conspicuously absent.

The global online advertising industry is on the brink of a revolution. Around the world, real-time bidding (RTB) is transforming the business of display media by allowing marketers to bid for individual online users’ ad impressions in real time while paying only what they want. Leading the charge in Japan is So-net Media Networks, an arm of So-net Entertainment Corporation, which offers of one of the country’s leading advertising distribution services.

KissMyAds, the mobile performance marketing network in Cologne, Germany, introduces a new sophisticated technology to target mobile advertising. With the new system called 'KMA Track', mobile advertising campaigns can be precisely targeted directly to the mobile devices of consumers around the globe. "With 'KMA Track', we boost the already strong conversion of mobile offers by only providing the customers with relevant offers", says Florian Lehwald, Founder and CEO of the Cologne-based mobile marketing specialists, KissMyAds.

Global marketing communications agency MPG has named Lori Hiltz Chief Executive Officer of the North American network. In addition, she will lead Havas Media North America as CEO. Previously, Lori headed the MPG Chicago office as EVP, Managing Director. In her new role, she will oversee all the offices of MPG and Havas Media in North America.

M&A firm AdMedia Partners today announced that it acted as exclusive financial advisor to BLiNQ Media LLC, a leading social engagement advertising media and technology company, in its acquisition by Gannett Co., Inc., an international media and marketing solutions company.

PubMatic (www.pubmatic.com), the digital media platform for publishers, and Shiny Ads, the leading premium inventory automation advertising technology company, today announced that PubMatic has made available the Shiny Ads’ self-serve advertising platform to PubMatic publishers through PubLink, PubMatic’s enterprise app marketplace. The addition of the Shiny Ads platform in PubLink will give top publishers a fast, easy to implement solution for making premium ad inventory directly available to advertisers on a self-serve basis.