Our thought leaders have been quoted in and have been interviewed for numerous, well respected industry publications.
Is ad tech’s hot streak on the public market sustainable? No, and that’s not a bad thing. After four quarters of spiking valuations and an IPO runway so crowded that one ad tech company opted to postpone its IPO until next year, the market is starting to stabilize. LUMA Director Conor McKenna explores the key factors affecting the market. Click the button to read the article and download LUMA’s Q3 2021 Market Report for the full analysis.Keep Reading
There’s been an explosion in advertising and marketing tech deals this year, according to new data, a sign of life for a sector that not long ago was looking ready to crumble with the deprecation of third-party tracking cookies. Why it matters: A collision of recent events — including the surge in e-commerce, gaming and streaming during the pandemic, a massive recovery in advertising, and the race to replace cookies — has made ad and marketing tech firms more palatable to public shareholders and more intriguing to private investors. Click the link to read the full article.Keep Reading
The industry, once shunned by investors, has regained its mojo, fueled in part by a rise in digital ad spending. “This sector has been out of favor for so long and largely has been ignored,” said LUMA’s Founder & CEO, Terry Kawaja. But a recent surge of public and private investment in the category indicates there has been a change in tune, he said. Click the link to read the full article.Keep Reading
2021 has tremendous potential for exponential M&A activity based on 8 elements affecting the public market and digital media, marketing & technology industries. Terry projects these elements will lead to “the mother of all M&A booms.” 8 Elements Affecting M&A Activity: Economic Recovery Digital Acceleration Changing Floorplates Triopoly Headwinds Private Equity Appetite Corporate Restructuring Buyer Currency Public Company Competition Click the link to read the full article.Keep Reading
After years of debate, Apple Inc. and Google are making separate moves to effectively kill the software marketers use to track your online activity and tailor ads specifically for you. The moves are upending the way companies have reached audiences and made money from ads since the earliest days of the internet. Review the article noting LUMA’s Terence Kawaja own personal twist on Apple’s ATT system.Keep Reading
Late last year, with the end of the pandemic hopefully in sight, LUMA was beginning to see investor confidence return. If anything, that cautious optimism was understated, as this Spring, LUMA saw the best quarter in deals that it had ever seen. This week on The Big Story, we welcome back Conor McKenna, LUMA Director (not VP, as we misstated in the podcast), to talk about the wild influx of early 2021 deal-making that saw seven transactions of more than $1 billion. Click the button to listen to the conversation.Keep Reading
Seven ad tech companies made transactions valued at over $1 billion in the first quarter of 2021 – double the amount that’s happened in the past few years combined. “We’ve got a perfect storm here of different forces lining up, which created such a strong quarter,” said Conor McKenna, LUMA Partners Director. The ad tech investment banking firm LUMA tallied up recent deals in its Q1 2021 Market Report last week. To check out Conor McKenna’s full interview on the market in the article, click the button.Keep Reading
Known as SPACs, these shell companies allow businesses to sell shares to the public with different disclosure than usual. What could go wrong? SPAC stands for special purpose acquisition company, the biggest thing in financial markets of the moment. Hundreds of these publicly traded shell companies are being created by everyone from KKR, the leveraged-buyout firm, to Alex Rodriguez, the baseball player turned entrepreneur. Just on Tuesday, the football player Colin Kaepernick filed for his own $250 million SPAC. These vehicles have only one purpose: to find a private company and buy it, usually within two years.Keep Reading
Ad Tech is back in vogue with the investment community and, more importantly, buyers, as the once unpopular sector is one of a handful that have benefited from the Covid-19 pandemic. Speaking at Adweek’s Outlook 2021: The Year Ahead in Marketing and Media event Wednesday, Terence Kawaja, CEO of investment bank LUMA Partners, told virtual attendees that after a dip in M&A activity in early 2020, the ad-tech, mar-tech and digital content sector saw a 20% annual increase in deals with 96 such purchases in Q4. Click the link to read the full article.Keep Reading
Here’s 2020 in a nutshell from the investment banker’s point of view: “Turmoil caused acceleration and unexpected change, and it was a breeding ground for opportunity,” says Conor McKenna, a VP at LUMA Partners. After stalling to near zero during the first three months of the pandemic, conversations and negotiations started to pick up again in the third quarter of 2020, bearing fruit in what became a busy back half for strategic M&A, according to LUMA’s 2020 Full Year Market Report. Click the button to review the article.Keep Reading
Terence Kawaja, Founder & CEO, LUMA Partners Investment Banking, on their new SPAC LUMAscape which maps over 250 SPACs by sector and status. Hosted by Carol Massar. Click the button to listen to the interview.Keep Reading
It was a difficult year for dealmakers to describe. Early on, the pandemic made the notion of corporate takeovers seem, for a few months, like something from a lost era. But then came a burst of activity like few had ever seen before, even as the health crisis raged. Amid the twists and turns, the single biggest thing on merger advisers’ minds can be summed up in four letters: SPAC. To view the SPAC LUMAscape, click here. Click the button to read the article.Keep Reading
The DSP Beeswax, founded in 2014 by ad tech gadfly Ari Paparo, is off the market. Comcast’s video ad tech company FreeWheel said Thursday it will acquire the “bidder-as-a-service” for undisclosed terms. “Many companies in ad tech have structured the sales of their technology as SaaS, although it’s often not bought that way – but in Beeswax’s case, their technology is bought and sold on a SaaS business model, and that makes a big difference,” said Terry Kawaja, founder and CEO of LUMA Partners, which advised on the deal. Click the button to read the article.Keep Reading
Comcast’s ad-tech division FreeWheel is to acquire Beeswax, a buy-side startup headed by influential programmatic personality Ari Paparo. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, and the transaction is expected to close in January 2021 pending regulatory approval. It comes at a time when mergers and acquisitions in the ad-tech sector are starting to ramp up after the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic caused a hiatus in dealmaking activity. Click the button to read the article.Keep Reading
Experian has purchased Tapad from international telco Telenor in a deal valued at $280 million as the credit rating company furthers its investment in identity resolution services. Terence Kawaja, CEO of investment bank Luma Partners, helped broker the deal between Experian, Tapad and Telenor, and said the $80 million reduction in sale price between 2016 and now is indicative of how privacy legislation, such as the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, has altered earlier business plans in the space. Click the button to read the article.Keep Reading
Norwegian telco Telenor sold cross-device company Tapad to Experian in a transaction advised by LUMA Partners. Experian is acquiring 100% of Tapad for a cash consideration of roughly $280 million. Although Telenor made some use of its Tapad assets over the years, including using Tapad’s tech to drive sales and customer acquisition for Telenor’s own products, Telenor primarily operated as a stand-alone data business. So, what does Experian get out of the deal? Click the button to read the article.Keep Reading
After a rocky few years, adtech stocks are soaring once again. The adtech rally flies somewhat in the face of trends at the beginning of the pandemic, when many advertisers hit pause on spending before spending started recovering around May. Moreover, with tough competition with Google and Facebook for digital ad dollars and a string of high-profile casualties in the space, investors had long turned their back on the adtech sector. To be sure, much of the resurgence in adtech stocks has little to do with the sector itself and more with the wider macroeconomic environment, experts say.Keep Reading
The uncertainty about the final outcome of the race for the White House is a temporary situation. But the condition that resulted in delayed and confused results may have a more lasting impact on what advertising, media, marketing and technology businesses face over the next four years.Keep Reading
LUMA Partners behind more than $300 billion of digital media and marketing transactions during the past two decades. CEO Terence Kawaja in a fireside chat with Megaphone’s Brendan Monaghan on Podcast Movement panel states that podcasting is one of the media he is most bullish about in the coming years. Click the button to read the article.Keep Reading
Adweek spoke with several analysts in the space to gauge if the recent reports indicate a repeat of past investment crash-and-burn bubbles, or whether the industry is entering a new period of substantive value and growth. Check out the article as LUMA’s Terence Kawaja shares his viewpoints on the motivation behind the IPO activity and how investors are analyzing the value of the companies.Keep Reading
After a harsh first half of the year – Q2 was particularly gloomy – the M&A market is starting to rebound. Deal activity was up in the third quarter with particular momentum in gaming and digital audio, although ad tech and mar tech made a respectable showing, according to a Q3 market report from investment bank LUMA Partners released last week. Click the button to review the article.Keep Reading
Digital media and marketing-focused investment bank LUMA Partners has released its Market Report for Q3 of 2020. Covering the performances of both public and private markets, the report recorded a slight improvement from the troubling results of Q2. For the LUMA’s Q3 2020 Market Report , click here Click the button to read the article.Keep Reading
TransUnion, the country’s third-largest credit reporting agency, is buying data company Tru Optik in a deal understood to be worth north of $100 million. Investment bank Luma Partners helped broker the deal. Founder and CEO Terence Kawaja told Adweek that M&A discussion in the space is about to experience a surge after a hiatus caused by the economic impact of the pandemic. Click the button to view the article.Keep Reading
Havas Media North America’s Executive Vice-President told Campaign that their US Marketplace covers most of the media on LUMA’s Black LUMAscape. Click the button to view the article. For the Black LUMAscape, click here.Keep Reading
Having built essential industry investment/deal guides called “LUMAscapes,” visual presentations of interrelated businesses in the media, marketing and adtech industries, investment bank LUMA Partners has introduced the Black LUMAscape, a diagram and directory that charts scores of Black-owned and founded businesses. We spoke with LUMA founder and CEO Terry Kawaja about the new effort and his hopes that it drives more investment to these businesses. Click the button to watch the interview. To view the Black LUMAscape, click here.Keep Reading
Apple may have delayed a big change to the way advertisers can get user data from iOS devices – but the change will still be profound for advertisers. More than that, however, the change could have a destructive effect on sections of the overall economy, right when many businesses are suffering from the effects of COVID-19. That is the assessment of a seasoned digital media deal-maker and trends-watcher. Beet.TV interviews LUMA Partners’ CEO Terence Kawaja on his assessment of Apple’s planned change to IDFA (Identity For Advertisers), which will be made opt-in only on the user end.Keep Reading
The release of the Black LUMAscape is an attentive response that aims to: Support the cause for equal access, visibility, and innovation from the Black community Enable and promote targeted economic benefit and Align with LUMA’s voice in the market Click the button to view the article. For the Black LUMAscape, click here.Keep Reading
CEO Terence Kawaja was spurred to action following nationwide unrest and BLM protests. Going on the reasoning that one useful way of helping the Black community is by supporting Black-owned businesses, Kawaja decided to create a new Lumascape to identify those very firms. The result is the aptly named Black LUMAscape, which debuts today. Click the button to read the full article.Keep Reading
Investment bank LUMA Partners LLC has made Black-owned media, marketing and technology companies the focus of the latest installment in its LUMAscape series of charts, which investors and others use as industry references, amid a broad push for racial justice. Terence Kawaja, a founder of LUMA and its chief executive, said the company drew up the “Black LUMAscape” to raise awareness of Black-owned companies in industries that have been criticized for their lack of diversity. The new chart includes technology firm StackShare, The Weather Channel and direct-to-consumer beauty company Pat McGrath Labs. Click the button to read the full article.Keep Reading
European ad tech companies raised a collective $403 million in capital across 53 financings between January and June this year, according to data analyzed for Digiday from investment bank LUMA Partners. LUMA Partners CEO Terence Kawaja noted that most deal discussions around the globe had been put on hold over the past 100 or so days amid coronavirus related lockdowns, though dialog began picking up again in mid-June. Click the button to read the full article.Keep Reading
According to the traditional playbook, these brands, known as DTCs, should struggle to carve out anything more than a niche business with their limited budgets. A decade ago, the notion that there would soon be a tidal wave of DTCs grabbing meaningful marketshare, raising huge amounts of venture capital and even going public—well, it would have sounded not only unlikely, but absurd. Epsilon highlights LUMA CEO Terence Kawaja’s “Fire Your CMO: Marketing’s Future Will Not Resemble Its Past” presentation on how DTCs have taken an approach pioneered by software companies and applied it to more traditional goods and services.Keep Reading
Despite online audiences and engagement spiking amid global stay-at-home orders, the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic has not spared the digital ad market. The pandemic has laid waste to bottom lines and upped the pressure for companies to bulk up or bow out. Yet despite it all, some players are still finding ways to thrive. Click the button to review Terence Kawaja, Founder and CEO of noted investment bank LUMA Partners, thoughts on how AdTech will fare amid this environment.Keep Reading
The advertising industry and civil rights organizations have teamed to ratchet up pressure on the social media giant, but the company is holding firm. Click the button to check out Terence Kawaja’s position on the situation in the full article from NBC News.Keep Reading
I’d like to compare the ad industry to gnats. The kind that bite the back of an elephant. The elephant in this case is a metaphor for Facebook. And as annoying as those gnats might seem to the elephant — if it can feel them at all — it’s unlikely to change its direction. Here’s why.Keep Reading
The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the volatility of the typical revenue model in ad tech, whereby companies are largely reliant on taking a percentage of media spend and is accelerating the push for more stable modes of income. Terry Kawaja, CEO of LUMA Partners, explains that it’s up to a brand or agency’s procurement team to buy a SaaS offering, and that can be difficult when budgets are planned against a percentage of media, not around technology solutions. Oftentimes, such teams calculate the associated costs as a percent of media.Keep Reading
Terry Kawaja, CEO and Founder of LUMA Partners, on how the pandemic will change how we consume media and its effect on trends and advertising spending. Click the button to listen to the discussion.Keep Reading
Lawyer, stand-up comedian, and an investment banker?! LUMA’s Terence Kawaja talks about how content marketing skills, storytelling, and comedy led to his success as an investment banker in Superpowers Podcast with Bill Wise and Chris Cunningham. Watch Terry’s Comedy in Business presentation on how you can use comedy (or your own unique unusual skills) to enhance your branding and marketing skills.Keep Reading
Dealmaking has been rife in the media and ad sectors in recent years as the market consolidated around fewer, more powerful players. But as the coronavirus hit, many companies have pulled the brakes on their acquisition plans. Find out LUMA’s viewpoint on the Coronavirus’ impact on M&A activity in Digiday’s article in the link below.Keep Reading
It was a chilly Q1 for ad tech deal-making, and you can expect more of the same in the second quarter. But you can’t blame it all on COVID-19 – at least not entirely. The ongoing health crisis is only accelerating trends that were already rolling, said Terry Kawaja, CEO and founder of investment bank LUMA Partners, which released its Q1 2020 market report on Tuesday. Click the button below to check out the full article.Keep Reading
“Everyone either contributes data, utilizes data or applies data in a cooperative fashion.” and LiveRamp’s partnerships-driven business helps the industry to function says LUMA’s Terry Kawaja as he sits down with Beet.TV’s Jon Watts at LiveRamp’s RampUp Summit. Click the button below to check out the full interview with Beet.TV.Keep Reading
The gap between the haves and the have nots in ad tech has never been starker: There is the high-flying company like The Trade Desk with a market capitalization of more than $13 billion. And at the other end is a laundry list of bankruptcies, firesales and companies going out of business altogether. And as the market consolidates, a set of opportunist buyers — the vulture capitalists — are ready to pounce on the remains.Keep Reading
Terence Kawaja, CEO of LUMA Partners talks about the early days of the CTV streaming competition with Bloomberg’s Lisa Abramowicz and Paul Sweeney.Keep Reading
After a relatively quiet 2018, last year was a pretty boisterous party for mar-tech mergers and acquisitions. Driven by legacy television players, like AT&T, eager to get ahead of the fast-emerging connected TV sector and midmarket players pooling their fortunes, LUMA Partners Q4 2019 Market Report found, the number of media and mar-tech deals jumped to 351 in 2019, up from 258 the previous year. Click the button below to check out Adweek’s latest article and access LUMA’s Q4 2019 Market Report here.Keep Reading
2019 started slow for ad tech M&A, but merger activity gained steam and the fourth quarter was one of the most active in recent memory. The number of scaled deals worth $100 million or more across Ad Tech, MarTech and digital media grew nearly 20% over 2018 levels. And to what does Ad Tech owe this great bounty? LUMA’s VP Conor McKenna highlights Ad Tech surprising growth in 2019 and what lies ahead for 2020. Click the button below to check out the AdExchange article.Keep Reading
LUMA CEO Terence Kawaja’s latest tweet throws down the “election” gauntlet for CES attendees to choose between speakers Mediaocean’s CEO Bill Wise and the White House’s Advisor to the President Ivanka Trump. Both speakers are scheduled to appear on separate stages same time. Click the button below to check out AdAge’s take on the post.Keep Reading
As 2019—and the decade—draw to a close, the media industry has witnessed a host of closures, fire sales and a rapidly accelerating number of mergers in ad tech. Many have dubbed this as the end of the golden era of ad tech, or the ad network, and the beginning of a more Darwinist era where only the strongest in the sector will survive. Click the button to check out Adweek article.Keep Reading
In a conversation that ranges from the upcoming streaming wars to the ongoing direct-to-consumer trend to a look ahead at next month’s CES, Terence Kawaja gives a general sense of the state of things from his vantage point of an investment banker obsessed with digital media and marketing. Oh, he is also, pretty funny. For an investment banker.Keep Reading
Terence Kawaja, CEO of LUMA Partners talks about growing digital and streaming competition with Bloomberg’s Lisa Abramowicz and Paul Sweeney.Keep Reading
Last year, Direct to Consumer (D2C) brands stole the show, most notably in Terry Kawaja’s presentation, ‘Fire your CMO‘ presentation. This year, as first-time sponsors, we were surprised that D2C brands were largely absent from both the stage and the conference floor. Click the button to read the full article.Keep Reading
When Terry Kawaja, founder of investment bank LUMA Partners, stood on stage at the Association of National Advertisers’ annual Masters of Marketing conference last year and told a packed crowd that they should fire their CMOs, a challenge was set. Click the button below to review the full article.Keep Reading
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
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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 recaps fireside chat at Publicis Groupe’s Rishad Tobaccowala at LUMA’s Digital Media Summit.Keep Reading
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
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
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
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
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
AdExchanger’s highlights key trends from LUMA’s Brian Andersen’s presentation from the 2019 Industry Preview conference in NYC.Keep Reading
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 turns 13 and digital elites including LUMA’s Terry Kawaja highlight their journalistic achievements in the digital space.Keep Reading
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
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
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
“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
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
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
LUMA presents “The 2018 Summer of Data” featured in AdExchanger’s “Data-Driven Thinking” series.Keep Reading
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
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
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
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 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’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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
For mar tech companies, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) preparation starts by acknowledging that they handle personal data.Keep Reading
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
In 50 secs LUMA CEO Terence Kawaja solves the problem. How To Fix The Future interview w/ Andrew Keen.Keep Reading
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Terence Kawaja, founder and CEO of LUMA Partners, joins BNN to discuss Disney’s deal with 21st Century Fox.Keep Reading
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
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
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
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
2017 State of People-Based Measurement Study Pinpoints Person-Level Data as Key to Understanding the Omnichannel Consumer Journey.Business WireKeep Reading
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
While the Meeker report takes a broad look at Internet trends, the LUMA report is more specialized and focused on digital media.Keep Reading
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
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
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
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
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
“There have been numerous articles published about the convergence of ad tech and mar tech, and whether it’s happening or not.Keep Reading
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
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
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
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
For companies in the crowded online advertising sector it’s been a bumpy ride in the past few years.Keep Reading
Discussing the AT&T-Time Warner merger with Terry Kawaja, LUMA Partners CEO and Founder, and Peter Kafka, Recode Senior Editor.Keep Reading
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
LUMA Partners released its latest report analyzing M&A and investment highlights in the marketing automation sector.Keep Reading
Are the Chinese buyers that have been feasting on Western ad tech companies just starting on their appetizers?Keep Reading
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
“We recently revisited the premise that advertising and marketing technologies are converging.Keep Reading
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
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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
The distinction between the two sectors is increasingly blurring, but investors say a predictable revenue model is key.Keep Reading
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
Another day, another Chinese group splashing out on ad tech.Keep Reading
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
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
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
The LUMA Partners App provides access to digital media industry landscapes (“LUMAscapes”) across Display, Mobile, Video, Social, Search, Gaming, and Marketing Technology.Keep Reading
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
Worries about fraud and fragmentation may prompt a shake-out in the crowded online-ad industry.Keep Reading
Study Finds Only 40% of Digital Buys Going to Working Media.Keep Reading
Diversification is the fuel for digital advertising success.Keep Reading
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
This investment-bank presentation helps explain the complicated digital marketing industry for normal people.Keep Reading
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
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
“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
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
“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
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
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
Observe the infamous mobile LUMAscape. There’s currently no better visualization of this piecemeal solution today – a solution still fraught with failure.Keep Reading
Meanwhile, data from LUMA Partners, a strategic advisory firm focused on digital media, tells a similar story for the U.S.Keep Reading
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
LUMA Partners CEO Terry Kawaja explains why investors will be mindful of FitBit’s valuation ahead of its IPO.Keep Reading
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
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
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
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
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
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
Outside Voices: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Digital Advertising The Wall Street JournalKeep Reading
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
Industry Preview 2015: Are Enterprise Stacks Shying Away From Media Execution?Keep Reading
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
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
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
An Investment Banker Made This Epic Presentation On The Future Of TV. Business InsiderKeep Reading
AT SEA OFF THE COAST OF FRANCE — When Terence Kawaja first introduced the Lumascape, the visual map illustrating an alarming array of ad tech companies, he backed up the image with a call for a simpler world. But that simplification isn’t going to happen, the media finance expert now concedes. “Fragmentation is here to stay – fragmentation happens,” Luma’s CEO and co-founder tells Beet.TV. “There is so much proliferation of companies … cheap venture financing … I’ve stopped calling for consolidation; it will actually never happen. “There’s been some consolidation … but there’s more companies every year.Keep Reading
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
JetBlue Has Used About 40 Firms to Get Its Message Out.WSJKeep Reading
Ad-Tech Companies Struggle to Sell Themselves to Wall Street.Keep Reading
Newly Public Firms Take a Pounding in the Market as Investors Try to Suss Out What Differentiates Them.Keep Reading
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
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
Terence Kawaja, CEO of Luma Partners, is convinced that the digital advertising market is expanding through new start-ups.Keep Reading
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. And he sees the clear formation of the ad tech industry consolidation that industry participants and observers believed was coming two years ago.Keep Reading
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
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
VC-backed ad tech firms have arguably inflicted one big mess on digital advertising.Keep Reading
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
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
Here’s the latest chart from investment bankers Luma Partners.Keep Reading
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
Ad tech is over. The landscape is overcrowded, venture capitalists have moved on, and real action is elsewhere in tech.Keep Reading
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
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
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
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
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
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
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