Bloomberg Radio: Kawaja on Digital and Streaming Competition
Terence Kawaja, CEO of LUMA Partners talks about growing digital and streaming competition with Bloomberg’s Lisa Abramowicz and Paul Sweeney.Keep Reading
Beet.TV: Privacy Outcry Means Uncertainty But Recovery
SANTA BARBARA — The marketing industry has been thrown into turmoil by a collection of digital privacy scandals and regulatory responses that have changed the nature of ad targeting. But it will recover as one which executes similar opportunities on a different basis. That is according to one of the arch dealmakers responsible for stewarding billions of dollars in ad-tech M&A activity in the last few years.Keep Reading
Modern Retail: ‘It’s safer to sell pickaxes than mine for gold’: New infrastructure companies are capitalizing on the DTC boom
Direct-to-consumer brands were born out of — or so founders say — a desire to do everything, cutting out middlemen like retail partners and establishing direct connections with customers that create a feedback loop of insight-fueled product development. The goal was to build better brands with fewer hands in the pot. But online growth has proven to be far from limitless.Keep Reading
Talking Stack: LUMA Digital Brief 2019 + Why Data Activation Matters | 50
Talking Stack identifies LUMA’s Digital Brief 024 — Market Report Q2 2019 as the “Report of the week”. Podcast team David Raab, Chitra Iyer, and Anand Thaker talk about the rise and rise of the customer data management space as well as how the need for improved data activation and platform integration is going to impact the space; the need for a D2C expert on the Talking Stack and other little nuggets from the report.Keep Reading
ExchangeWire: Digital Decisions’ Ruben Schreurs on the ICO, Global Ad Spend, and LUMA’s Ad Tech Review
On this week’s episode of The MadTech Podcast, ExchangeWire’s Rachel Smith & Lindsay Rowntree are joined by Ruben Schreurs, CEO, Digital Decisions, to discuss the latest news in ad tech and martech including diving into LUMA’s Q2 2019 Market Report.Keep Reading
Ad Exchanger: What’s On Tap For Dynamic Yield After The McDonald’s Acquisition
McDonald’s is starting to throw a few ideas on the grill after spending around $300 million to acquire personalization and decision logic tech startup Dynamic Yield in March.Keep Reading
Don’t Stop Me Now
See the VideoContent TV: Entrepreneurship, Technology & Start Ups at LUMA’s DMS Conference
WatchMojo Founder, Ashkan Karbasfrooshan attended LUMA’s Digital Media Summit in New York City, New York. The series consists of published interviews with Peter Horan, Robert Norman, Farhad Massoudi, Jim VandeHei, Sean Alford, Ed Laczynski, John Durham, Peyman Nilforoush, Jack Myers, Bernard Gershon, and Pam Horan.Keep Reading
Beet.TV: Identity Tech Will Figure In Media M&A
The online advertising world is now navigating a set of seemingly contradictory trends. On the one hand, technology which pieces together the various parts of audience’s online identity is becoming important. Yet, on the other, regulation is now limiting some of the excesses of ad targeting. The digital marketing world’s arch deal-maker says that adds up to a “double-edged sword”.Keep Reading
Business Insider: Accenture Interactive Exec Says It’s ‘Time to Put The Checkbook Away’
Last month, Accenture Interactive snapped up independent creative agency Droga5 in its biggest acquisition to date, following similar moves it has made in recent years to become a stronger competitor to ad agencies. But that acquisition spree is over for now as the company turns its attention to organizing its employees around the world, said Nikki Mendonça, global president of Accenture Interactive Operations at LUMA’s Digital Media Summit.Keep Reading
Business Insider: ‘S4 is too small, too narrow, and too yesterday’
Last month, French ad holding giant Publicis announced that it was shelling out $4.4 billion to acquire Alliance Data’s Epsilon marketing unit to bolster its data capabilities and expand its digital business in North America. That move makes the company more relevant to its clients, Rishad Tobaccowala, Publicis’ chief growth officer, said, speaking to former GroupM executive Rob Norman at the LUMA’s Digital Media Summit on Tuesday in New York City.Keep Reading
AdExchanger: McDonald’s Looks To Emulate Amazon; Is S4 ‘Too Yesterday’?
AdExchanger recaps fireside chat at Publicis Groupe’s Rishad Tobaccowala at LUMA’s Digital Media Summit.Keep Reading
Westwood One and LeadsRx Debut First-Ever Direct-To-Consumer Media Attribution and Awareness Report
In Westwood One and LeadsRx first-ever direct-to-consumer media attribution and awareness report, a historical account of direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands effect on digital media & radio and the projection of their future are accessed with insights from digital industry leaders.Keep Reading
AdExchanger: Black Eyes Aside, Ad Tech Actually Had A Decent Q1
Q1 2019 in a nutshell: Ad tech isn’t doing as poorly as you’d think (all things considered), TV and data are colliding, DTC is sizzling, private equity is still gung-ho on M&A, and so are the marketing clouds. It’s not a bad report card, despite a general sense of caution and trepidation about macro factors in the economy, said Terry Kawaja, CEO and Founder of investment bank LUMA Partners.Keep Reading
AdExchanger: Why IBM Is Leaving The Marketing Cloud Business
IBM is bowing out of MarTech and offloading its marketing cloud assets – for the second time. Competition from the other scaled marketing players was fierce and Big Blue’s heart hasn’t been in it for a while. LUMA Partner’s Terence Kawaja weighs in on IBM’s exit from the MarTech space.Keep Reading
The Drum: DTC Brands Are Shunning Digital For TV And Real-World Events
In much of the marketing industry, what is old always becomes new again – usually with a different name or new buzzword. The current direct-to-consumer (DTC) craze is no exception. Just look at the DTC Brand LUMAscape created by LUMA, a US investment bank focused on digital media and marketing.Keep Reading
AdExchanger: DTC Adoption Will Help Make TV A Performance Medium
To maintain incremental growth, today’s direct-to-consumer (DTC) darlings are looking to expand beyond the digital sandbox where they grew up. After years of slathering on the search and Facebook ads, DTC brands are approaching a saturation point in these channels.Keep Reading
Master of the Scape
See the VideoAdExchanger: Three Investment Trends To Watch In 2019
AdExchanger’s highlights key trends from LUMA’s Brian Andersen’s presentation from the 2019 Industry Preview conference in NYC.Keep Reading
Beet.TV: Charting The Rise Of Direct-to-Consumer Brands with LUMA’s Kawaja
Having categorized more than 400 marketers in the direct-to-consumer space, LUMA Partners knows what has helped to make many of them successful. Trying to imitate them within the confines of traditional marketing isn’t easy, so some legacy companies are acquiring them for both their market share and contemporary culture, according to Founder & CEO Terry Kawaja.Keep Reading
Beet.TV: Beet is Toasted in Vegas by the Greats: Irwin Gotlieb, Dave Morgan, Terry Kawaja, Randall Rothenberg and Kirk McDonald
Beet.TV turns 13 and digital elites including LUMA’s Terry Kawaja highlight their journalistic achievements in the digital space.Keep Reading
AdAge: Brand Playbook: Learn the ABCs to DTC
Many of the hot brands in retail today didn’t exist a decade ago. But now, backed by big-time venture capital, new direct-to-consumer players are making enough waves in the retail landscape that heritage players are forced to pay attention. Larger brands caught dueling for consumer dollars might do well to adopt some of the marketing strategies that startup brands have deployed from infancy. Check out LUMA’s Terry Kawaja in AdAge’s latest article.Keep Reading
AdExchanger: MarTech Is Booming, PE Is Hungry And ‘There’s Blood In The Water’ For Ad Tech
LUMA’s VP Conor McKenna gives the good, the bad, and the ugly on the future of Ad Tech plus the upward boom of MarTech deals and how PE companies are getting in on the action.Keep Reading
Do You See Strategics Buy?
See the VideoAdAge: 10 Biggest Stories of 2018
With 2018 in the rearview mirror, a few of the year’s main events still appear larger than life. AdAge highlights 10 stories that will continue to reverberate through the media and marketing industries well into 2019 and beyond.Keep Reading
AdExchanger: TV: The Biggest Opportunity For DTC Brands’ Continued Growth
“On TV And Video” is an AdExchanger column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video. Today’s column is written by Terence Kawaja, CEO & Founder at LUMA. Allbirds. Warby Parker. Brandless. Peloton. Dollar Shave Club. Over the past several years, an explosion of relatively young startups has garnered significant market share from major brands, some of which had built up their brand equity over decades. These direct-to-consumer brands – alternatively referred to as D2C or DTC – have done just what the name implies: cut out the middle man to go directly to the consumer.Keep Reading
Warc: Can legacy brands compete with direct-to-consumer rivals?
Legacy brands may struggle to compete with direct-to-consumer rivals unless they consider making acquisitions in this space, according to Terry Kawaja, CEO & Founder of LUMA Partners, a New York-based investment bank.Keep Reading
Marketing Week: The Threat of Direct-To-Consumer Disruption is Seriously Overblown
The number of direct-to-consumer brands is ballooning, as are predictions of the traditional FMCG sector’s demise, yet people underestimate the resilience and capability of the established giants.Keep Reading
Direct-to-Consumer Brand Success Offers Lessons for All Marketers
Direct-to-Consumer Brand Success Offers Lessons for All Marketers November 1, 2018 by Terry Kawaja, Founder and CEO, LUMA Partners A week ago I delivered my keynote presentation to an overflow ballroom at the Association of National Advertisers’ (ANA) Masters of Marketing conference in Orlando, Florida. My provocative title, Fire Your CMO: Marketing’s Future Will Not Resemble Its Past, was designed to drive tune in (check the box) and get marketers thinking hard (another check) by examining the Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) phenomenon that is sweeping marketing.Keep Reading
I Dreamed a Dream
See the VideoAdAge: One of the Biggest Changes in Marketing LUMA’s Kawaja on Direct-to-Consumer Trend
LUMA CEO Terry Kawaja gave one of the most provocative talks at the Associate of National Advertisers’ annual “Masters of Marketing” conference. He sits down with AdAge to break down why he’s bullish on the direct-to-consumer trend.Keep Reading
AdAge: Fire Your CMO? This Year’s ANA Meeting Was Full of Heat
The presentation led by investment banker Terry Kawaja of LUMA proved to be one of the more popular sessions at the Association of National Advertisers annual “Masters of Marketing” conference, which drew an estimated 3,000 people to the Rosen Shingle Creek resort in Orlando resort.Keep Reading
AdAge: P&G’s Pritchard At The ANA Confab on How To Combat The Direct-To-Consumer Threat
LUMA CEO Terence Kawaja, whose LUMAscapes showing the vast jumble of marketing-tech players have been staples at marketing conferences for years, unveiled his latest creation at the ANA Masters of Marketing Conference in Orlando on Thursday. The D2C LUMAscape shows direct-to-consumer startups that have been eating away at big established behemoths like Procter & Gamble Co.Keep Reading
MediaVillage: LUMA Partners CEO Terry Kawaja to Speak at the Video Everywhere Summit
DPAA President and CEO Barry Frey caught up with LUMA CEO Terry Kawaja for a quick look at LUMA and what Terry will be addressing at the Video Everywhere Summit on October 30.Keep Reading
Campaign US: Here’s Why Traditional Advertisers Should Fire Their CMO
LUMA CEO & Founder Terry Kawaja urged marketers to look at the success models of direct-to-consumer brands at the ANA 2018 Masters of Marketing: Direct Growth conference.Keep Reading
MediaPost: New LUMAscapes To Come: Q&A with LUMA’s Terry Kawaja
LUMA CEO Terry Kawaja sits down with the Association of National Advertisers’ Group EVP Bill Duggan for a one-on-one interview on LUMA, the new LUMAscapes, and Terry’s speaking engagement at the ANA Masters of Marketing Conference set for October 24, 2018.Keep Reading
Business Insider: TV Executives Are Vowing to Work Together — But Buyers Are Getting Impatient
It was the week that the TV industry sounded the alarms. Work together. Change who you are. Or die at the hands of FANG. Prominent media M&A banker Terry Kawaja, CEO of LUMA Partners, gathered 80-plus TV and digital executives at a dinner aimed at tackling some of TV’s thorniest issues in light of the growing FANG power.Keep Reading
Beet.TV: After “Summer of Data,“ Ad-Tech M&A is Far From Over: Kawaja
Don’t call it a comeback but, after coming through a period in which a slowdown was capped by new regulation, ad-tech consolidation may be back in-play. So says Terry Kawaja, the M&A advisor who has had a hand in many of the biggest media and advertising tech deals of the last decade. Despite fears that GDPR and an American equivalent could nix many modern ad-tech practices, Kawaja notes that the lights are still on and deals are still being done – in precisely the area thought to be under threat.Keep Reading
AdExchanger: The 2018 Summer of Data
LUMA presents “The 2018 Summer of Data” featured in AdExchanger’s “Data-Driven Thinking” series.Keep Reading
Beet.TV: LUMA’s Kawaja: Less Interruptive Ads Are Central To Relevance
While there are tactical ways to make advertising more relevant, Terry Kawaja believes there’s a bigger concept at play: relegating interruptive advertising to the past. The CEO & Founder of LUMA will be one of some 250 industry leaders attending The Relevance Conference hosted by AT&T in Santa Barbara on Sept. 24-26. On the opening day he will join Otter Media’s Tony Goncalvez and others on a panel titled Putting A Price On Content that will explore the “happy medium” between paid subscription models and ad-supported media.Keep Reading
Adweek: How Long Can The Trade Desk Ride Its Current Wave of Success
The ad-tech sector has taken it on the chin over the last couple years, with the ever-growing dominance of Facebook and Google, early-stage investors impatient for an exit and increased public scrutiny over the use of personal data for ad targeting.Keep Reading
New York Times: Google-Facebook Dominance Hurts Ad Tech Firms, Speeding Consolidation
Online advertising companies have struggled for several years as Google and Facebook solidified their grip on digital dollars, slowing revenue for the others. Now, many ad tech companies and their investors are throwing up their hands.Keep Reading
ZEDO: The Match.com for Ad Tech
AdExchanger’s podcast last week had an interview with LUMA Partners’ founder Terry Kawaja. You probably know a little about him because of his famously crowded LUMAscape slide, which features all the old-time ad tech companies that got a piece of the action between advertiser and publisher in the media buying business. You may notice that many of the companies on that slide are gone. And their demise has probably enriched Kawaja, who seems preternaturally able to spot trends.Keep Reading
AdExchanger: Podcast – Terry Kawaja’s World View
AdExchanger Talks is a podcast focused on data-driven marketing. This week’s podcast guest LUMA Partners CEO Terry Kawaja talks about LUMA’s approach and shares his current view on the market.Keep Reading
Cheddar: Media Merger Frenzy: What Will be AT&T’s Next Move?
Cheddar’s Peter Gorenstein speaks with LUMA Partners CEO Terence Kawaja at the Cannes lIONS Festival about the media M&A landscape, and what he thinks might be AT&T’s next move.Keep Reading
The Drum: AT&T Reportedly in Talks to Buy AppNexus
Just a week after its $85bn Time Warner takeover was rubber-stamped, US telco AT&T is reportedly in talks to purchase adtech outfit AppNexus, in a move that would better enable it to take on the likes of Facebook and Google.Keep Reading
The Drum: Experts Tip a Flood of More M&A Activity After AT&T and Time Warner Deal
Terence Kawaja, chief executive at investment bank LUMA Partners, believes an immediate impact will include US telecoms provider Comcast (which also owns NBCUniversal) tabling an offer for 21st Century Fox, to rival that of the existing proposal by Disney, with others to follow.Keep Reading
AdExchanger: AT&T-Time Warner Merger Will Jumpstart Positive Deal Momentum
Mazel tov, it’s a merger. On Tuesday, Judge Richard Leon gave his blessing to AT&T’s $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner. The judgment capped five weeks of testimony, six weeks of deliberation and a fair amount of nail-biting in executive suites from Dallas to New York City. The deal sets a precedent that can be leveraged by other companies, said LUMA Partners founder and CEO Terry Kawaja.Keep Reading
Beet.TV: Kawaja Fears Knee-Jerk Politicians Will Turn Back Clock on Ad Targeting
There can barely have been a moment in time so filled with anxiety over digital advertising techniques as 2018. In the last few years since the advent of “programmatic”, many ad buyers have become used to using customer data from a variety of sources to piece together profiles that can target audiences through networks, wherever they may be.Keep Reading
The Drum: What Sir Martin Sorrell Thinks He’ll do Post WPP
Speaking at the 2018 Digital Media Summit, in New York City, Sorrell spoke on stage with LUMA Partners chief executive Terence Kawaja about his thoughts on the current media landscape, including where the biggest opportunities lie, with the former WPP chief describing the period since his WPP exit as “a fresh start”.Keep Reading
City A.M: Sir Martin Sorrell Sheds Light on How He Plans to ‘Start Again’ After WPP
Last week, Sorrell publicly stated that he would be “starting again” after he left the company, leading many to speculate about the potential of a new enterprise for the adman. Speaking to LUMA Partners chief executive Terence Kawaja at the 2018 Digital Media Summit in New York yesterday, Sorrell gave some clarity on what he would do with what he described as his “fresh start.” CityA.M.Keep Reading
CNBC: What Former WPP Chief Sir Martin Sorrell Plans to do Next
Sir Martin Sorrell has hinted at what he will do next after leaving advertising group WPP following allegations of personal misconduct. Speaking to LUMA Partners Chief Executive Terence Kawaja at the company’s Digital Media Summit in New York on Tuesday, Sorrell implied he would set up a new agency.Keep Reading
AdExchanger: Overheard at LUMA: Relevant Pubs Will Win, Everyone Else Will Fail
Publishers like to pretend that consumers can’t live without content – but if 95% of media brands disappeared tomorrow, no one would care, said Rafat Ali, CEO and founder of travel publisher Skift, at LUMA’s Digital Media Summit in New York City on Tuesday.Keep Reading
WSJ: Sir Martin Sorrell Weighs in on Need for More Media Consolidation
Sir Martin Sorrell, the former chief executive of advertising giant WPP Plc, described himself as a “realist” regarding the challenges facing traditional media and advertising companies and emphasized the need for scale during an interview at an ad-industry event. On stage with LUMA Partners CEO Terence Kawaja at the company’s Digital Media Summit in New York on Tuesday, Mr. Sorrell continued to point to the growing advertising and programming strength of Amazon.com Inc. and its potential to challenge television companies as well as the advertising duopoly of Google and Facebook Inc.Keep Reading
RampUp Minneapolis: 2018 Recap: Content, Context, and Chicken Wings
Insight 1: Facebook and Google represent 90% of the growth in digital marketing. This means that for every “new” dollar that enters the system, Facebook and Amazon effectively receive 90 cents, according to Conor McKenna, VP of banking at LUMA Partners and our opening keynote speaker.Keep Reading
NBC News: ESPN’s Much-Anticipated Streaming Service is Finally Here
ESPN’s first attempt to cut out the cable guy and bring sports programming directly to consumers launched on Thursday. Its new streaming video product, ESPN+, comes wrapped inside a re-launched ESPN app and costs $4.99 a month.Keep Reading
Adweek: The Ad Tech Industry’s Looming Shakeout Could Finally Happen
Every couple of years, marketing observers play a parlor game called “The Ad Tech Shakeout Cometh,” in which they pontificate about the impending decimation of the ad-tech industry.Keep Reading
AdExchanger: M&A Deal Values Are Up In 2018 As Cash-On-Hand and E-Commerce Values Soar
Despite broad concerns about the viability of online media and advertising, M&A in the sector is heating up thanks to the growth of ecommerce and commerce-based media solutions, like Apple’s purchase of digital subscription service Next Issue Media for an undisclosed amount.Keep Reading
AdAge: Identity is Maintaining the Conversation, Not Just Winning the Conversion
A new category has appeared in the LUMAscape, the marketing technology taxonomy defined by investment bank LUMA Partners. It’s called “identity,” and it’s much more than just branding or semantics: It’s a fundamental shift in the way marketers approach their customers — the foundation for all brand engagements.Keep Reading
AdExchanger: MarTech Preps as GDPR Looms
For mar tech companies, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) preparation starts by acknowledging that they handle personal data.Keep Reading
AdExchanger: What Is This Thing We Call A CDP?
As Luma Partners’ Brian Andersen pointed out in his Industry Preview closing keynote this year, CDP vs. DMP is “not an or … it’s an and.” They do different things.Keep Reading
Andrew Keen: How To Fix The Future
In 50 secs LUMA CEO Terence Kawaja solves the problem. How To Fix The Future interview w/ Andrew Keen.Keep Reading
Tribune Content Agency: 3 Digital Marketing Trends for 2018 (and How to Take Advantage of Them)
Simply put, these are your recommended action items for taking advantage of the biggest movements sweeping the digital marketing landscape in 2018. Good luck!Keep Reading
AdExchanger: PwC: Media And Telco ‘Megadeals’ Dominated M&A Deal Value Last Year
LUMA’s founder and CEO, Terry Kawaja, billed 2017 as a period for “healthy clean-up” in the media and marketing space, as a number of public ad tech firms trading at low valuations were acquired or taken private.Keep Reading
Beet.TV: GDRP Will Accelerate People-Based Marketing
Will new data protection legislation coming May 25 prove apocalyptic or just a bump in the road? With less than 100 days to go to the European Commission’s new General Data Protection Regulation, the US advertising sector seems split on the issue.Keep Reading
The Drum: What Will Drive M&A in the Ad Tech and MarTech Sector in 2018?
Terrence Kawaja, co-founder and chief executive of investment bank Luma Partners, points to his outfit’s recent market report which demonstrates that the total number of M&A deals in the US digital media sector between 2016 and 2017 rose from 236 to 252.Keep Reading
Beet.TV: Luma Partners’ Terry Kawaja: With Convergent TV, Scale ‘Is Now On A Whole New Level’
When Terry Kawaja takes in the proceedings at CES, he’s not focused on the “flashy consumer-facing stuff that we see on the show floor.” To the Founder and CEO of investment banking firm Luma Partners, it’s all about sub-trends.Keep Reading
AdExchanger: JEGI and LUMA: MarTech Spends Big While AdTech Cleans Up
2017 was a busy year of M&A for the digital media and marketing sector, according to reports released by investment banks JEGI and LUMA Partners this week. But the big story, according to LUMA, was in ad tech, where increasing consolidation led to “healthy clean-up activity,” said Founder and CEO Terry Kawaja.Keep Reading
The Drum: Engagement is More Important Than Viewability for Effective Ads
Rather than trying to make the change from generic metrics such as clicks and views to measuring true efficiency in one giant leap, there is a mid-step the industry can take along the path to effectiveness and it involves paying more attention to engagement.Keep Reading
AdExchanger: M&A 2017 – The Year Of Simplifying And Strengthening
The ad tech industry also saw what Luma Partners CEO and founder Terence Kawaja called the Great Ad Tech Cleanup, wherein he predicted no public ad tech company will have an I/O model by Q1 2018.Keep Reading
AdExchanger: Luma Partners’ Brian Andersen Lays Out Ad Tech’s M&A Potential In 2018
2018 will see the same amount of deal activity as 2017 as the field of potential buyers expands, predicts Luma Partners’ Brian Andersen.Keep Reading
BNN: How Walt Disney is Playing Offense
Terence Kawaja, founder and CEO of LUMA Partners, joins BNN to discuss Disney’s deal with 21st Century Fox.Keep Reading
Business Insider: The Media Industry has Suddenly Become a ‘Game of Thrones’-Like Battle for Power
If you spend any time on Twitter and follow any media industry people, you’ll often come away dizzy and fairly certain that every media company is buying everyone. It started a year ago when AT&T announced it had reached an agreement to buy Time Warner. Things really turned upside down when 21st Century Fox — just three years after trying to buy Time Warner — signaled it wanted to sell some assets to Disney. Then on Thursday, it was reported that Comcast may buy some of Fox. Or Verizon may.Keep Reading
AdExchanger: Ray Of Light For Big-Box Retail; Storm Clouds For VC-Backed Media
It’s been a long time since industry analysts expressed optimism about the fate of big-box retailers, but a ray of light just crept in. Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Home Depot each topped earnings estimates and demonstrated strong year-over-year growth.Keep Reading
AdExchanger: The Great Ad Tech Cleanup
Featured column written by Terence Kawaja Following the acquisitions of Rocket Fuel, MaxPoint Interactive and YuMe and the divestiture of Tremor Video’s demand-side business, there will be no public ad tech companies with an I/O media model by the first quarter of next year, except for Criteo, which is its own category. It’s the end of an era, but let’s walk down memory lane to understand how the Great Ad Tech Cleanup came to be.Keep Reading
Marketwired: ad:tech New York 2017 Honors Diverse List of Four Top Executives for Collective Industry Impact
ad:tech New York 2017, the original industry authority for marketing and media technology practitioners and digitally savvy brand marketers, announced the recipients of the 2017 ad:tech Industry Achievement Award: Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO, Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB); Terence Kawaja, Founder and CEO, LUMA; Pam Horan, Co-Founder, Horan MediaTech Advisors; and Heidi Browning, Chief Marketing Officer and Executive Vice President, National Hockey League.Keep Reading
Business Wire: New Study Identifies Key Role Identity Resolution Plays in Cross-Media Measurement
2017 State of People-Based Measurement Study Pinpoints Person-Level Data as Key to Understanding the Omnichannel Consumer Journey.Business WireKeep Reading
AdExchanger: IAB Seeks to Ease Apple’s Cookie Crunch; PE Mergers Are Coming on Strong
The digital media investment banking firm Luma Partners released its quarterly report documenting M&A trends across the marketing technology and media landscape.AdExchangerKeep Reading
Beet.TV: Amazon Rivals Can Compete Using Intelligence
Amazon’s footprint is becoming ubiquitous, it scale seemingly unassailable and its data-driven consumer intelligence advantage gargantuan but, for other online retailers, all is not lost, according to one marketing industry expert.Keep Reading
Digiday: ‘It’s the Gut of Ad Tech’: Inside the Rise of dmexco
Once a well-kept secret among German media and ad tech executives, Dmexco has evolved into a sprawling monster of a trade show, the tentpole, global event in the digital marketing calendar.Keep Reading
Digiday: ‘I Wanted to Organize This Mess’: An Oral History of the LUMAscape
Whether they’re listening to a panel, chatting in the hallways or sitting in an airplane on their way to Cologne, Germany, Dmexco attendees will be bombarded by the Lumascape this week. The Lumascape is a series of charts that organize the madness of ad tech by grouping together similar companies on a single page. But before the charts from investment bank Luma Partners racked up more than 6 million views on the company’s website and spawned endless debate about fragmentation in the ad industry, it was merely a Powerpoint presentation given at an industry event.Keep Reading
Stamford Advocate: Content Wars – The Battle for Your TV
The content landscape is undergoing massive changes. Terence Kawaja, Founder and CEO of LUMA Partners, explains the state of television and how big tech companies are taking on traditional cable players.Keep Reading
AdExchanger: LUMA’s Brian Andersen Predicts M&A Hotspots in the Measurement Space
Digital offers more precise measurement than most channels, which has helped move the industry from an art to a science, according to Brian Andersen of LUMA Partners.Keep Reading
Digiday: The Duopoly Won’t Kill (All) Ad Tech
If you’ve been to a digital media event, you’ve seen the LUMAscape, showing the vast number of programmatic advertising firms that dot the industry. Some see innovations; others see a mess. LUMA founder Terry Kawaja sees opportunity.Keep Reading
The Drum: What Marketers Must Consider When Planning and Executing Programmatic Campaigns
Growth in programmatic spend represents a seismic shift in contemporary media practice, with only 13% of display ad sales sold using such technology in 2012, compared to 70% in 2016. Investment advisor outfit LUMA Partners has performed arguably an unrivaled performance in mapping the space (see above for an example of its agenda-setting LUMAscape) but even this is puzzling upon first sight, especially for marketers tasked with a multitude of other responsibilities, besides digital media buying.Keep Reading
Business Insider: M&A King Terry Kawaja Talks About Snapchat and the Value of Tech Deals in Europe
Business Insider caught up with Terry at the Cannes Lions in the South of France where he told us what he sees in the future of media and tech. We talked about Snapchat, Sprinklr, the upcoming Appnexus IPO, and whether it’s a good idea for cable companies like Verizon to buy media companies like Yahoo and AOL.Keep Reading
Beet.TV: AI Will Be Huge, But Hidden
Who would ever have thought that the world’s biggest festival for celebrating creativity in marketing would have ended up discussing artificial intelligence, blockchain, and cognitive technologies?Keep Reading
Digiday: Ad Tech’s Biggest Winner and Losers in 2016
Venture capital for ad tech slowed down, while mergers and acquisitions rose. And as fake news became one of the hottest topics in the media industry, it became more apparent than ever that some ad tech companies profited from proliferating fake news while others banked on preventing ads from reaching fake-news sites.Keep Reading
Digiday: Battle of the Ad Tech Yachts
The ad tech flotilla has become a fixture of Cannes — and the growing presence of ad tech. Ad tech impresario and content marketing master Terry Kawaja hustled to the marina to gin up a handy ad tech map based on his (in)famous LUMAscape industry charts.Keep Reading
Digiday: Cannes Briefing – The Battle of The Ad Tech Yachts
Ad tech impresario and content marketing master Terry Kawaja hustled to the marina to gin up a handy ad tech map based on his (in)famous LUMAscape industry charts.- Digiday Go To Article HereKeep Reading
Page Six: Super Yachts Take Over Cannes Lions
The line-up of gleaming party yachts is a fixture of Cannes Lions — and is a sure sign of who wants to make the bigger splash and spend the most money.Keep Reading
WSJ: With Facebook and Google Walled Off, China’s Digital Ad ‘Triopoly’ Thrives
China is home to some of the world’s largest digital-ad players, mostly because they have a stranglehold on the world’s second-biggest market, where their Western rivals are pretty much absent.Keep Reading
The Drum: LUMA CEO Says Outlook For Digital Advertising Ecosystem Remains Optimistic
Speaking about his outfit’s latest quarterly report, one of the foremost advisors in M&A for the adtech sector Terry Kawaja, chief executive of LUMA Partners, speaks to The Drum about his assessment of the likely outcomes in the mid-to-long term future.Keep Reading
Forbes: The Meeker Report Is Not The Only Game In Town For Marketers
While the Meeker report takes a broad look at Internet trends, the LUMA report is more specialized and focused on digital media.Keep Reading
Beet.TV: Kawaja’s Three Reasons For Digital Media Optimism
In this video interview, LUMA Partners founder and CEO Terence Kawaja spoke with Beet.TV at LUMA’s own Digital Media Summit, where he delivered a State Of Digital Media address he said puts “the case for optimism”.Keep Reading
MediaVillage: AdTech is an Interesting Place to Be
Is our new targeted content platform AdTechVillage already a tear-down? Recent media stories are already calling for the demise of adtech: The AdTech Forest is Falling, Online Advertising is Corrupt at Its Core, Brands Need to Fire AdTech. I believe all this discussion about the fate of adtech actually makes it one of the most fascinating topics to watch.Keep Reading
The Drum: LUMA Partners’ Terry Kawaja: ‘Verticalized media is here to stay’
Speaking about his outfit’s latest quarterly report, one of the foremost advisors in M&A for the adtech sector Terry Kawaja, chief executive of LUMA Partners, speaks to The Drum about his assessment of the likely outcomes in the mid-to-long term future.Keep Reading
AdExchanger: Quarterly M&A Reports: Digital Media Companies Capitalize On Growing Exit Opportunities
LUMA Partners clocked 13 ad tech deals this quarter with 11 acquisitions valued at more than $100 million, a pace similar to its M&A category results for every quarter over the past year.Keep Reading
Oracle Data Cloud: Navigating the MarTech ecosystem with Terence Kawaja, Founder & CEO, LUMA Partners
LUMA Partners clocked 13 ad tech deals this quarter with 11 acquisitions valued at more than $100 million, a pace similar to its M&A category results for every quarter over the past year. Oracle Data CloudKeep Reading
AdExchanger: The Next Debate: The Convergence Of MarTech And Sales Tech
“There have been numerous articles published about the convergence of ad tech and mar tech, and whether it’s happening or not.Keep Reading
The Drum: What Investors and Strategic Buyers Look For In Adtech and Martech
Private equity firms and business interests from the Far East are increasingly taking a stake in the combined adtech and martech space, according to Results International, which also finds that martech is growing in popularity with acquirers.Keep Reading
AdExchanger: LUMA On Omnichannel: It’s Really Starting To Come Together
Brian Andersen, a partner at LUMA, will read the tea leaves on marketing clouds and omnichannel marketing at Industry Preview on January 18 in New York City.Keep Reading
AdExchanger: M&A 2016: Buyers Cross Boundaries As Ad Tech Grows Up (A Little)
Despite predictions that winter is coming to ad tech, deal activity for the ad tech, mar tech and digital media sectors was tentatively healthy in 2016, according to reports released this week by investment banks LUMA Partners, JEGI and Petsky Prunier.Keep Reading
Business Insider: Investment Bank Presentation Breaks Down the Complicated Digital Ad Industry In 2016
After demystifying the multi-billion digital marketing industry in a presentation last year, the investment bank LUMA Partners has just released its annual State of Digital Marketing presentation.Keep Reading
Rhythm One: Decoding the LUMAscape to Pick a Programmatic Winner
One thing is clear about the current ad tech landscape: there are a lot of players. The LUMAscape does a great job of illustrating this fact.Keep Reading
WSJ: LUMA’s CEO Says Ad Tech Scene is Crowded and Strained
For companies in the crowded online advertising sector it’s been a bumpy ride in the past few years.Keep Reading
CNBC: AT&T-Time Warner Deal ‘Deja Vu All Over Again’
Discussing the AT&T-Time Warner merger with Terry Kawaja, LUMA Partners CEO and Founder, and Peter Kafka, Recode Senior Editor.Keep Reading
Multichannel: VR 20/20: Unknowns Abound in Virtual and Augmented Reality Market
Like any emerging market, timing is everything for venture capitalists. Being too late is a missed opportunity, and being too early is a good way to flush funds down the drain.Keep Reading
The Drum: What investors and strategic buyers look for in adtech and martech
LUMA Partners released its latest report analyzing M&A and investment highlights in the marketing automation sector.Keep Reading
AdExchanger: LUMA & JEGI: Ad Tech Companies Shouldn’t Bet On A Chinese Buyout
Are the Chinese buyers that have been feasting on Western ad tech companies just starting on their appetizers?Keep Reading
Business Insider: Facebook Shifting Focus of Its Tech Platform
Facebook has shifted Atlas, the ad tech platform it acquired from Microsoft in 2013, out of its ad tech group and into its measurement division.Keep Reading
LinkedIn: Waiting for Godot: Are MarTech & AdTech Converging?
“We recently revisited the premise that advertising and marketing technologies are converging.Keep Reading
Introducing the “Foundational” LUMAscapes
For years, LUMA has mapped the intermediaries of the Digital Media and Marketing ecosystem. These maps have always included Marketers, Agencies and Publishers, albeit in an aggregated way.Keep Reading
The Meta LUMAscape
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Madison Avenue Radio: What is a LUMAscape? And Why it is so Influential Today
Terry Kawaja sits down with Michael Kassan to talk about the industry-encompassing LUMAscapes, charts that plot all the intermediators between advertisers and publishers in the marketplace.Keep Reading
WSJ: Why Venture Capitalists Are Betting on Marketing Tech Over Ad Tech
The distinction between the two sectors is increasingly blurring, but investors say a predictable revenue model is key.Keep Reading
The Drum: Terry Kawaja, CEO of LUMA Partners, On The Power of First Party Data
With the first generation of public ad tech outfits facing growing pressure to provide ever-increasing ROI, investors are becoming savvy to the issues that were formerly the sole concern of the elite in the ad tech sector.Keep Reading
Business Insider: Why Chinese firms keep paying big bucks for ad-tech companies
Another day, another Chinese group splashing out on ad tech.Keep Reading
SGN Has Agreed to Acquire TinyCo
On Tuesday, July 5th, SGN announced the acquisition of TinyCo, the mobile gaming pioneer behind hit titles including Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff and Marvel Avengers Academy. Suli Ali, TinyCo’s founder & CEO and his 125-person team will help SGN expand into builder and simulation games and strengthen its position as a mobile gaming entertainment franchise, with TinyCo’s demonstrated ability to launch successful games incorporating IP from the world’s biggest brands.Keep Reading
The Drum: Cannes gets its very own Carpool Karaoke as LUMA Partners CEO Terence Kawaja puts himself in the driver’s seat
Adland’s very own Terence Kawaja has taken over Corden’s duties as chief crooner for a very special Cannes Lions-themed edition of the viral Late Late Show segment.Keep Reading
The Drum: LUMA Partners CEO Terry Kawaja: ‘Chinese companies you never heard of will be the next big acquirers in ad tech’
It’s Cannes Lions this week, and even the most cursory of glances up and down La Croisette will tell you that ad tech companies are now a big factor in the equation at this ‘Festival of Creativity’.Keep Reading
LUMA’s Digital Media Summit 2016
LUMA’s 8th Digital Media Summit was a huge success and that’s thanks to the 500 industry decision makers, including over 300 CEOs, 100 investors and 100 strategic buyers that participated.Keep Reading
The Marketing Cloud War Heats Up
It has been a big week for MarTech M&A. Yesterday it was announced that Vista Equity Partners is acquiring Marketo for $1.8B. Today, Salesforce announced it is acquiring Demandware for $2.7B.Keep Reading
Medium: Winter May be Here but Spring is Coming…
If you’re interested in separating the signal from the noise in the digital media echo-chamber then LUMA Partners’ recent 2016 State of Digital Media report is a great place to start.Keep Reading
Beet.TV: Ad Threats & Consolidation In Kawaja’s ‘House Of Cards’
The threats are mounting. With challenges like viewability, fraud and ad blocking rising, the online ad industry could risk falling, just as Rome’s empire did before it.Keep Reading
Business Insider: This Investment Bank Presentation is a Crash Course on Everything You Need to Know About Digital Media in 2016
The investment bank LUMA Partners, the company known for its LUMAscape summaries, has a new presentation on the state of digital media that helpfully explains the biggest trends in the digital media industry in an easy-to-understand way.Keep Reading
CNBC: New Twists in Redstone Saga
Recode’s editor in chief Dan Frommer and LUMA Partners CEO Terry Kawaja weigh in on the latest battle between Viacom and CBS.Keep Reading
Introducing the Knowledge LUMAscape
Digital media and marketing is a complex, dynamic and often convoluted space. Understanding the ecosystem is essential for all constituents from marketers to agencies, publishers, tech intermediaries and investors.Keep Reading
Verto Analytics: 3 Reasons Mergers and Acquisitions are Booming in the Digital Media & Mobile Ecosystems
Last year was a good year for mergers and acquisitions (M&A). That’s according to the Q1 2016 Marketing Report released by LUMA Partners, a strategic advisory and boutique investment bank. LUMA also follows and maps the growth of various digital sectors — from mobile, to gaming, to martech.Keep Reading
LUMA Partners App for iPad by Xtopoly, Inc.
The LUMA Partners App provides access to digital media industry landscapes (“LUMAscapes”) across Display, Mobile, Video, Social, Search, Gaming, and Marketing Technology.Keep Reading
Beet.TV: Judgement Day For Ad-Tech?
It’s not entirely gloomy. One of the sector’s seasoned watchers and deal advisors, LUMA Partners CEO Terence Kawaja, describes the segment’s situation as “a tale of two cities”.Keep Reading
The Economist: Invisible Ads, Phantom Readers
Worries about fraud and fragmentation may prompt a shake-out in the crowded online-ad industry.Keep Reading
Media Post: Only 40% of Digital Buys Going to Working Media
Study Finds Only 40% of Digital Buys Going to Working Media.Keep Reading
Mediatel Newsline- Diversification is the Fuel for Digital Advertising Success
Diversification is the fuel for digital advertising success.Keep Reading
Ad Exchanger: LUMA Partner Brian Andersen: Finding The Hot Spots In A Cooling Market
2015 wasn’t the best time for an ad tech company to tap the public markets. And 2016 seems like it will be equally uncertain – one need only look at the strange ongoing saga of AppNexus to see that. But it’s an overstatement to say that all ad tech companies are in trouble, according to Brian Andersen of LUMA Partners. He will speak Wednesday at AdExchanger’s Industry Preview conference about the ad tech-mar tech convergence and examine what the future holds.Keep Reading
Business Insider: Complicated Digital Marketing Industry for Normal People
This investment-bank presentation helps explain the complicated digital marketing industry for normal people.Keep Reading
Medium: Why People Love the LUMAscape
It ocurred to me in that moment that a LUMAscape has been shown or referenced in greater than half of the many presentations and sessions on adtech that I’ve seen.I immediately began reflecting on why. Before I expound on why, let’s start with what.Keep Reading
Advertising Age: Digital Advertising Gets Bloody
If you need an indication that an industry is facing an existential crisis, you won’t do much better than one of digital advertising’s most familiar luminaries turning to gore to make a point.Keep Reading
Fortune: How Ziff Davis Survived the Death of Print
“They’re the sort of boring, block-and-tackling kind of guys that are not paying a lot [for acquisitions], but then turning them into hugely profitable businesses that are growing,” says Terence Kawaja, CEO of LUMA Partners.Keep Reading
The Wall Street Journal: Digital Media M&A Keeps Up the Pace
There were 76 significant digital media M&A transactions during the third quarter of the year, up slightly from 75 during the second quarter, according to data collated by digital-media focused boutique investment firm LUMA Partners.Keep Reading
Advertising Age: Back to ‘Mad Men’ — What the Future Holds for Ad Agencies
“Much has changed in the agency world since then, and that change is accelerating with the growing presence of data and software in the mix.Keep Reading
Digiday: The Race to the Single Platform Has Begun
Earlier this year, Terrence Kawaja, well-known investment banker and ad tech divinator, rattled many nerves when he predicted an imminent wave of consolidations and failures in the ad tech sector. Of the roughly 2,000 companies involved in advertising technology, he estimated that no more than 150 will live to see a successful liquidity event.Keep Reading
Business Insider: Everything You Need to Know About the State of TV Right Now
If you want to get a handle on what’s happening with TV and the state of the digital video market, investment bank LUMA Partners’ CEO Terence Kawaja delivered another of his epic presentations at VidCon last month on exactly that.Keep Reading
The Mobile Majority: Ad Tech Consolidation – What Comes after the LUMAscape?
Observe the infamous mobile LUMAscape. There’s currently no better visualization of this piecemeal solution today – a solution still fraught with failure.Keep Reading
The Wall Street Journal: Digital Media M&A Accelerated in First Half of 2015
Meanwhile, data from LUMA Partners, a strategic advisory firm focused on digital media, tells a similar story for the U.S.Keep Reading
Wall Street Journal: In Cannes, the Ad Tech Flotilla Is at Full Steam
Firms in the hyper-competitive advertising technology marketplace face challenges as they attempt to overhaul the way ads are bought and sold. You wouldn’t guess that judging by the scene on the French Riviera this week.Keep Reading
CNBC: Investors Will Be ‘Mindful’ of FitBit Valuation
LUMA Partners CEO Terry Kawaja explains why investors will be mindful of FitBit’s valuation ahead of its IPO.Keep Reading
Business Insider: The Future of Digital Media
Investment banker Terence Kawaja, founder and CEO of LUMA Partners, the company famed for its LUMAscapes, has a new, epic presentation on the state of digital media. It takes a specific focus on digital media and marketing.Keep Reading
Chiefmartech: A Candid Fireside Chat with 4 Heavyweights in Martech Money
The closing session at our last MarTech Conference in San Francisco was an all-star fireside chat, “Follow the Martech Money: VCs, IPOs, and M&A”, with three leading venture capitalists and one of the most influential investment bankers in the marketing tech space, Brian Andersen ChiefmartechKeep Reading
AOL: AOL’s Tim Armstrong to Keynote LUMA Partners’ Annual AdTech CEO Fest
As CEO’s of leading adtech companies along with institutional and strategic investors gather for LUMA Partners’ annual one-day conference in Manhattan next week, there will surely be talk on and off the stage about the the acquisition of AOL by Verizon. Leading off the conference will be a keynote address by AOL CEO and Chairman Tim Armstrong.Keep Reading
Business Insider: The Ad Tech Sector: Looks an Awful Lot Like a Bubble That Just Popped
As the now-well-known LUMAscape from LUMA Partners denotes, the ad tech sector is dense, complicated, and poorly understood (even by people who work in the industry): Agency trading desks, ad servers, verification companies, data management platforms, exchanges, demand-side platforms, supply-side-platforms, the list goes on. And that size and complexity not necessarily a sign of health.Keep Reading
A Walk Across the LUMAscape
More than $15 billion of ad spend will be transacted through programmatic channels this year, and that budget will flow through a famously fragmented set of technology systems. But what specifically are the steps behind a programmatic transaction? How does a single ad move across the LUMAscape? In this post, we will break down the 5 key steps of every programmatic impression.Keep Reading
LUMA Expands the Partnership
It is with great pleasure that I announce a major expansion of the LUMA partnership. Joining LUMA Partners in our West Coast offices are Mark Greenbaum (second from left) and Dick Filippini (far left); two very experienced bankers from GCA Savvian.Keep Reading
The Wall Street Journal: Outside Voices: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Digital Advertising
Outside Voices: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Digital Advertising The Wall Street JournalKeep Reading
Digiday: Why ad tech is: A) too complicated; and B) going to get more complicated
There are over 2,500 companies on the many advertising- and marketing-tech industry landscape slides produced by investment bank LUMA Partners, from display to search to video to native. Yet LUMA’s own analysis is that little more than one in 20 will likely exit for more than $75 million.Keep Reading
Ad Exchanger: Industry Preview 2015: Are Enterprise Stacks Shying Away From Media Execution?
Industry Preview 2015: Are Enterprise Stacks Shying Away From Media Execution?Keep Reading
Beet.TV: AdTech Banker Kawaja: Video Ad Platforms Need To Differentiate
LUMA partners CEO Terence Kawaja says 2015 will see ongoing video tech momentum after the “inflection year” of 2014.Keep Reading
Beet.Tv: AdTech Banker Kawaja: Video Ad Platforms Need to Differentiate
If you are tired of trying to distinguish one “end-to-end, full-service video targeting and decisioning” vendor from another, imagine how people from outside the digital video industry must feel.Keep Reading
Beet.Tv: “TAM” is the Huge Upside for AdTech, Beyond Digital Media
While advertising-supported digital media is quickly growing, there are much larger opportunities for adtech companies. This exists in the total addressable market (TAM). This includes e-commerce, retail, e-payments, marketing automation and SAS, says Terence Kawaja, CEO and co-founder of the boutique investment bank LUMA Partners, in this interview with Beet.TV.Keep Reading
Fourth Source: A New Model in Digital Advertising is Helping Brands Avoid the LUMAscape Headache
The LUMAscape (see below) was created as a means to help people understand who does what in display advertising. However, when I look at it, it just gives me a headache! The digital advertising marketplace is a confusing myriad of players with potentially overlapping and conflicting roles, each jostling for a slice of the pie and adding another layer of complexity. But why has it ended up being this way?Keep Reading
Business Insider: An Investment Banker Made This Music Video Documenting the Lavish Parties of the Cannes Advertising Festival
Investment banker Terence Kawaja is a big-time player in the advertising technology field. His advisory firm, LUMA Partners, has worked to help companies like Google and Yahoo make multimillion-dollar acquisitions, and his industry knowledge makes him one of the tech world’s most respected minds. He is also, it seems, something of a goof.Keep Reading
Business Insider: The Future Of TV
An Investment Banker Made This Epic Presentation On The Future Of TV. Business InsiderKeep Reading
MediaPost: Fear and Greed and You
The founder and CEO of LUMA Partners LLC neatly separated all the major players into two sets, and for about a half an hour Kawaja explained how they’re different, how they’re the same and how ultimately they will work with each other.Keep Reading
Huffington Post: Mega Media Mergers Point to the “Converged TV World of our Future,” Banker Terence Kawaja
The recent flurry of media M&A activities, including the AT&T DirectTV deal, means that the big players are “lining up their assets” in advance of the inevitable convergence of TV and digital video, says Terence Kawaja, head of LUMA Partners, a boutique New York investment bank specializing in digital media, in this interview with Beet.TV.Keep Reading
Beet.Tv: Kawaja- TV Buyers Must Be Slow-Rolled to Programmatic
If the digital advertising people getting high on “programmatic” trading are to access the $70 billion US TV ad market this way, they had better develop some empathy first, says one of the industry’s leading media finance advisors. LUMA Partners CEO Terence Kawaja says TV ad trading, historically reliant on broad demographic targeting, and digital trading, typically using laser-like scientific targeting, are “in two very different places”. So digital executives trying to unlock TV using programmatic mechanisms must treat TV buyers “in a manner that they’re used to”.Keep Reading
Forbes: The Future of T.V.: Digital, Traditional and Something in Between
Kevin Spacey, most recently better known as Frank Underwood, everyone’s favorite political operator, gives us a rousing speech on the convergence of platforms and forms of entertainment. iPad versus the big screen — who cares, he says. Audiences care about stories. And it’s all content.Keep Reading
Color by Numbers: A Valuation Framework for the Ad Tech Sector
This past summer, trade press commentary focused on the impending doom of the Ad Tech space, pointing to the industry’s fragmentation and noting the underperformance of recent IPOs: Millennial Media (MM), Tremor Video (TRMR) and YuMe (YUME). The tides quickly shifted in the fall when Rocket Fuel (FUEL) went public and finished up nearly 100% on its first day of trading. The following month, Criteo (CRTO) also had a successful IPO and, along with Rocket Fuel, trades at higher multiples than the first batch of deals with a market cap well north of a billion dollars.Keep Reading
Rocket Fuel and the Revitalization of Ad Tech
It’s amazing what a couple of months can do. In July, the Ad Tech sector was reeling from its third underwhelming IPO of the year.Keep Reading
Battelle Media: Why the Banner Ad is Heroic and Adtech is our Greatest Technology Artifact
Every good story needs a hero. Back when I wrote The Search, that hero was Google – the book wasn’t about Google alone, but Google’s narrative worked to drive the entire story.Keep Reading
WSJ: Why Does it Take So Many Companies to Produce One Digital Ad?
JetBlue Has Used About 40 Firms to Get Its Message Out.WSJKeep Reading
Advertising Age: Ad-Tech Companies Struggle to Sell Themselves to Wall Street
Ad-Tech Companies Struggle to Sell Themselves to Wall Street.Keep Reading
Advertising Age: Ad Tech Companies Struggle to Sell Themselves to Wall Street
Newly Public Firms Take a Pounding in the Market as Investors Try to Suss Out What Differentiates Them.Keep Reading
Introducing the Marketing Technology LUMAscape
According to Gartner, by 2015 the technology budget of CMOs will likely exceed that of CIOs. There is no question that marketing has become more data-driven and technology-driven than in the past. “Analytics,” “algorithms,” “optimization” – terms that in the past were typically relegated to the cubicles of specialized marketing analysts – are now part of the daily conversation in the CMO suite. Much has been written about audience targeting, programmatic buying, real-time bidding, data management, etc., showcasing impressive advances made in advertising over the past few years.Keep Reading
TechCrunch: Why Your Marketing Campaign Sucks
Creating awareness for your brand and products is one of the lifebloods of technology startups yet in a world where so many companies are being created it becomes difficult to rise above the noise.Keep Reading
Adweek: IAB Unveils Own Ad Tech Org Chart
LUMA Partners founder and CEO Terence Kawaja has long been the grand organizer of the ad tech market. His LUMAscapes have become the most recognizable and easily refereneable maps of who’s involved in the buying and selling of ad inventory, be it display, search, social, video, mobile, etc.Keep Reading
W&V: Big Data Prevents Consolidation in the Digital Advertising Market
Terence Kawaja, CEO of Luma Partners, is convinced that the digital advertising market is expanding through new start-ups.Keep Reading
AdExchanger: LUMA’s Terry Kawaja Says Ad Tech Consolidation- Including ‘Fails’ – Is Here. And It’s Good.
Terence Kawaja, founder and CEO at LUMA Partners, has surveyed the past few week’s notable deals — demand side platforms MediaMath’s acquisition of Akamai’s Advertising Decision Solutions (ADS) unit (which his firm helped broker); exchange platform AppNexus’ $75 million venture capital funding; and the shuttering of adBrite’s exchange business.Keep Reading
Harvard Log Blog: When Consumers Become Media for Themselves
I was talking recently with Edi Immonen of Glome about the idea behind it: turning users into publishers. He used the word “media,” but I’m going with “publishers” for now, because that’s the word used in this graphic (one of many like it — all amazing and excellent) from LUMA partners.Keep Reading
Gigaom: Second-Screen Hopefuls Hard-pressed to Disrupt Hollywood ‘Cabal’
You can’t move these days for new research indicating the rise of of “second-screeners” — those of us who watch television while using a handheld device. But, as upstart operators scurry around trying to exploit that fact with variants of social or interactive TV add-ons, what is the real business opportunity here?Keep Reading
Adweek: Ad Wreck
VC-backed ad tech firms have arguably inflicted one big mess on digital advertising.Keep Reading
The Makegood: Terence Kawaja on LUMA Partners’ Unique Investment Banking Approach
Terence Kawaja is Founder and CEO of LUMA Partners, a strategic advisory firm focused at the intersection of media and technology. Terence is a seasoned investment banker with more than 20 years of experience and has advised on over $250 billion of transactions.Keep Reading
Forbes: Did the Bubble in Facebook Ad Startups Just Pop?
For much of this year, hundreds of little and not-so-little startups that help businesses run advertisements on Facebook have been playing the M&A game, buying rivals or related companies, getting acquired by bigger firms, or both.Keep Reading
Business Insider: A Super Detailed Graphic Laying Out All the Biggest Tech Acquirers
Here’s the latest chart from investment bankers Luma Partners.Keep Reading
WSJ: Chart This: 160 “Strategic Buyers” of Tech Companies
In the technology world, big companies that buy smaller ones often will map out dozens of potential acquisition targets. Why shouldn’t the start-ups and their investors be able to size up the potential buyers? Now they can.Keep Reading
AdExchanger: The Golden Age of Advertising
Ad tech is over. The landscape is overcrowded, venture capitalists have moved on, and real action is elsewhere in tech.Keep Reading
Forbes: Marketers, Get Ready: ‘All Advertising Soon Will Be Digital’
The constant battle between TV viewers who want to watch their favorite shows when and where they want broadcast and cable networks that want to maintain their lucrative linear-TV business model is just the tip of a digital media iceberg. Fact is, people want to view all kinds of content, whether it’s TV shows, movies, games, or blogs and magazine stories, wherever they want.Keep Reading
MediaPost: Fighting the LUMA Chart: Criteo’s Greg Coleman Lets the Numbers Do the Talking
The biggest challenge an ad solutions provider faces in a pitch session these days in that damnable “Luma Chart,” says Criteo President Greg Coleman. The former sales exec from Huffington Post, Yahoo and AOL now heads the international retargeting company and says that he knows his audience of marketers have heard it all before. “I say thanks for your time, and then I will ask them to promise me they won’t listen to anything I am about to tell them.Keep Reading
WSJ: Ad-Tech Companies Seize Rivals as Winners
The advertising-technology field is shaking out, as failed start-ups merge with more-successful peers, non-advertising companies snap up industry players, and venture capitalists show less interest in new investments.WSJKeep Reading
Gigaom: The Backstory on the Most Frequently Cited Chart in Digital Media
When Terence Kawaja started working on a map of the digital advertising universe in 2009, it was never meant to see the light of day.Keep Reading
Gigaom: Does Digital Advertising Need its Own Operation System?
If you’ve ever seen that oft-passed-around LUMAscapes slide on the display advertising landscape, you know it’s a crowded and fragmented industry. And that slide only includes a fraction of the companies operating in digital media today.Keep Reading
iMedia Connection: How to Simplify the Display Landscape
According to eMarketer, spending on display is set to outpace paid search by 2015 — that’s just three years from now. That’s exciting, but it’s also concerning. Right now, the display media industry is experiencing a tremendous consolidation, happening through both acquisition and organic evolution of established companies. But the reality is that the display media industry remains complex and fractured. That complexity may mean that display won’t reach such predicted heights.Keep Reading
Digiday: Ad Tech’s Me-Too Problem
Looking at investment banker Terry Kawaja’s famous landscape slide of advertising technology leaves many shaking their heads. Who are all these companies? What value to they provide that the dozens of other logos do not? The sensible reaction is to decry the “complexity” of advertising technology. (Digiday certainly has.) And yet, according to Kawaja himself, there’s a larger, if related problem: duplication.Keep Reading