Posts made in May, 2016

on May 31, 2016

By Rebecca Stewart London-based creative group Cubo has acquired a significant stake in culture marketing agency Inkling. While it will continue to operate as an autonomous unit, Inkling’s 16 staff will move into Cubo’s headquarters to help the business provide “a fully integrated” offering and extend its services further into experiential. Inkling counts Bluewater, EA games and Wagamama among its account roster. Co-founders Will Parkinson and David Proudlock will continue to run the five-year old agency. The deal will see the firm work with Cubo on projects for group clients, which include SeaWold and Paddy Power. Additionally, the pair will collaborate on earned Read full story › Source: The Drum...

on May 31, 2016

By Doug Zanger Cloud-based marketing software company Marketo has been acquired by Vista Equity Partners, a private equity firm, for approximately $1.79bn (£1.23bn) in cash, chief executive Phil Fernandez said in a statement today (31 May). The company has been publicly traded since 2013 and this marks a return to private ownership. According to CNBC, the $35.25 (£24.28) in cash per share represents a 64 per cent premium to the company’s 9 May closing price. Vista Equity Partners will own 100 per cent of the company and the transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of this year. “After careful consideration and deliberation, our Read full story › Source: The Drum...

on May 31, 2016

By Jennifer Faull Mondelez International has formalised plans to make media investments on apps, videos and content partnerships generate money under a “fearless” media strategy it hopes will ensure that 10 per cent of all those investments break even or turn a profit by 2020. ​The Oreo-maker believes this tact could be a potential revenue source as it looks to push its media budgets harder amid company-wide cost-cuts. Mondelez has made no secret of its desire to bring media and commerce together to fuel this growth, but hired Laura Henderson as its first global head of content and media monetisation last year in Read full story › Source: The Drum...

on May 31, 2016

By Stephen Kenwright Attendees at Google Performance Summit (the search engine’s annual event for customers of its AdWords and Analytics platforms) were party to a few surprises last week – although arguably nothing that many won’t have seen coming (or at least made perfect sense in hindsight). The most significant change for most AdWords users covered device-level bidding, giving advertisers much more freedom on the bids they set on mobile devices. Advertisers will soon be able to set individual bid adjustments for desktop, mobile and tablet; a big deal particularly on tablets, which have previously been slimmed down desktop searches. In a blog post announcing Read full story › Source: The Drum...

on May 31, 2016

By Mike Kerans In 2008, we were working to help scale revenue for a US-based social media platform. The site built conversations around vertical areas of interest it seeded with specialists from that content area. Ocean sailing off of the coast of Maine. Childbirth at home. You name it. On this day, I had set a meeting with the head of digital investment at one of the GroupM agencies for C.R.O. at the social media platform. We had our eyes on a top 10 US advertiser at that agency. We went though our presentation, focusing on the deep engagement that the site offered. The agency Read full story › Source: The Drum...