It’s been a busy week for ad tech, with no short supply of major announcements, quite fitting given that it was Advertising Week Europe, where programmatic trading, was described as “the prettiest girl at the ball” by its organisers. ExchangeWire will bring you its take on what went on.

ExchangeWire rounds up some of the biggest stories in the European digital advertising space.

1 – Tesco Gets In On Ad Tech With Sociomantic
Sociomantic announced this week that it has sold to Tesco-owned Dunnhumby has acquired (for a rumoured $200m), which would make it one of the biggest ad tech M&A deals in European history.

ExchangeWire reported on the transaction, noting how the purchase is a major landmark that signals the rise of the data-driven bidder.

Fuelled by Tesco ClubCard data, Dunnhumby is likely to use Sociomantic’s retargeting and media-bidding technology to carve out a slice of the ever-growing automated media spend.

2 – ExchangeWire debuts At Ad Week Europe
With programmatic media trading, and automation taking top billing at this year’s event (amid a host of celebrity sideshows); the initial agenda looked promising, but as usual the C-level execs paid little more than lip service to the trend during its panel sessions.

https://www.exchangewire.com/blog/2014/04/03/a-message-to-adweek-europe-why-programmatic-is-eating-your-advertising-business-alive/

Few of those marketers dirtied their hands with the nitty-gritty of online media trading, leaving ExchangeWire to conclude that technology and data still isn’t as sexy as Idris Elba (a.k.a. ‘Stringer Bell’) speaking evocatively about his passion for music. (It really isn’t).

ExchangeWire took this opportunity to address the wider advertising sector just what to brace itself for in an article by ExchangeWire CEO Ciaran O’Kane that was published in the conference show daily, and also here on ExchangeWire.com.

3 – Rubicon Project Floats And Investors React
Rubicon Project announced it was to float on the US stock market issuing 6.8 million shares at an initial price of $15 to the public, and the price later climbing to over $20.04 on the first day of trading.

This price hike means investors finally get ad tech, according to Frank Addante, as in the early days after the float Rubicon seems to be faring a lot better than pure play ad networks such as Tremor and YuMe. Rather its success is more like Criteo and Rocketfuel.

The question now is can Rubicon Project remain on the publisher side or will they have to go the way of AppNexus and Google – and build that end-to-end proposition?

Other ad tech players will be watching this closely as they also consider IPOs for this year. Rumours abound that Turn will go public in the second quarter of this year, closely followed by a raft of DSP players.

On the topic of funding, this week also saw GrapeShots announce it has raised even more funding with its coffers being swelled by $3.3m. The new resources will fuel Grapeshot's product push into DMP Analytics.

The company claims Grapeshot Keywords is the most used app on the AppNexus RTB platform and is used by over 180 trading desks and agency outfits across Turn, MediaMath as well as AppNexus.

The lead, new investor is U.K.-based Albion Ventures, whose partner Robert Whitby-Smith joins the Grapeshot Board of Directors. Existing investors IQ Capital and current Grapeshot Chairman Tim Schoonmaker are also supporting the new round.

The lead, new investor is U.K.-based Albion Ventures, whose partner Robert Whitby-Smith joins the Grapeshot Board of Directors. Existing investors IQ Capital and current Grapeshot Chairman Tim Schoonmaker are also supporting the new round.

In a similar vein indicating fresh prospects for the European ad tech scene, Somo also took this week that it has received $5.5m in follow-on funding from MMC Ventures.

Headed-up by digital industry veteran Nick Hynes, Somo has ridden the mobile wave since setting up a little over four years ago, the outfit (which boasts a host of recogniseable names on its staff including Carl Uminski, Ross Sleight and Maani Safa) has pivoted from the classical media agency role to include other services including design and build, with an interest in wearble tech.

4 – Moves, Moves, Moves With Yahoo, XAd, MediaMath, SHFT.com
A host of significant industry tech appointments happened this week, with Yahoo announcing its new UK country managing director Jason Talley as it aims to roll out its rebranded ad stack.

Talley joins from Base 79, and will take over from the second quarter of the year. A key task he will face is exciting marketers about the Yahoo Ad Exchange, and how it can achieve the efficiencies it’s promising. However, after going through three UK heads in a year, his key job will be to provide some stability will be his first responsibility.

Programmatic technology firm MediaMath has appointed Dave Reed as managing director for EMEA. Reed, who has been at the company for six years, moves from his SVP strategic solutions role in the US to take up the London position, represents another case of US ad tech firms favouring to implant an existing known entity to head up operations here, over placing their faith in homegrown talent.

Separate to that marketing cloud company SHIFT this week unveiled digital industry veteran Kate Burns as its UK managing director, as it aims to ramp up its presence here.

Burns joins after a brief spell at cross-device targeting company Drawbridge, but prior to that made her name as the no.1 Google employee outside of the US, and then later went on to join AOL, with an interim stint at DailyMotion.

Similarly, Mediaocean has announced Sarah Lawson Johnston to the newly created role of managing director for Europe as it aims to expand into the European market.

Elsewhere, ex iAd Europe, and Microsoft mobile head Theo Theodoru, has joined as UK employee no.1 of mobile retargeting company Xad as its UK general manager to lead its charge in Europe.