ExchangeWire rounds up some of the biggest stories in the European digital advertising space, including the unveiling of the ATS London agenda, Rocket Fuel's turbulent week, the latest public spat in ad tech between TubeMogul and Turn, as well as programmatic advertising's contribution to AOL's continued rise. 

Curtain raised on ATS London agenda 

ExchangeWire’s flagship event ATS London is now only a month away, and the agenda for this year’s event now live, detailing how conference speakers will debate the contemporary issues facing the ad tech sector, plus just where the industry is going over the next 12-18 months.

This year’s event will be the fifth ATS London, and due to popular demand has had to relocate to Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank, and as always remains a strictly NO PAY-TO-PLAY event to ensure vested commercial interests do not get in the way of debate in what has become known as the industry’s leading programmatic trading event.

Scott Brinker, Chiefmartec.com, will open the day’s proceedings with a keynote that will essentially set the tone for the day; the collision of advertising technology & marketing technology. Essentially the day will discuss just how mar-tech and ad tech are increasingly converging, plus what are the implications (both good and bad).

On that theme panelists from enterprise marketing firms Adobe, Oracle and SalesForce (arguably some of the most disruptive players in the market) will debate their roles in the industry, and just how their emergence will affect ad tech players.

To develop this theme further, the ATS London stage will also see delegates from some of the industry’s leading creative shops (for the first time) debate how they are using data as a means of informing their output.

This year ATS London attendees will also be lucky enough to hear keynote addresses from both Brian O’Kelley, AppNexus, CEO, and Dr Boris Mouzykantskii, IPONWEB, Founder, chief scientist & CEO (two men who could lay legitimate claim to being the ‘Godfathers of ad tech’) on the changing mechanics of the ad tech world.

These themes and more (including how to build statistical IDs, the multi-ad ecosystem, click-fraud, programmatic video to name a few) will be explored in unparalleled detail throughout the day’s proceedings (click here for a full run down).

ATS London tickets are still available but selling out fast, those interested in attending the industry’s leading programmatic media trading event can purchase tickets here.

Rocket Fuel profits and purchase tempered by profit warning 

It’s been a busy and contrasting week for Rocket Fuel with news of its purchase of DMP [X+1] for an estimated $230m, accompanied by reports of ‘record revenues’, tempered by it lowering its earnings outlook, plus its stock price crashing sharply.

The turbulent week was kicked off by the comparatively good news of the agreement to purchase [X+1] in a cash and stock transaction, with an enterprise value of approximately $230m.

George John, Rocket Fuel, chairman and CEO, said: “The addition of [x+1] will allow Rocket Fuel to expand its portfolio of solutions to a larger addressable market.

“The powerful combination of [x+1]’s marketing and data management platform (DMP) with our leading artificial intelligence (AI) and Big Data driven optimisation technology, opens the door for new, innovative opportunities to improve marketing ROI for our customers.”

This was followed by its reporting of a positive second quarter with “ record financial results for the second quarter” with 70% revenue growth (which hit $92.6m), and 80% gross profit growth over the second quarter of last year.

John added: “We are launching new and expanded solutions at a rapid pace, including Mission Control, our AI-driven digital marketing hub with expanded self-service tools for digital campaign management; Audience Guarantee, giving brand advertisers the targeted audience impact they need to improve their reach across video and display; and Rocket Fuel Dynamic Personalised Ads, enabling advertisers to programmatically create a nearly unlimited number of ad variations.”

However, from here things started to turn sour for the ad tech firm which subsequently revealed that it was to lower its earnings expectations for 2014, with revenue estimates for the year falling to $385m to $405m; this is compares to prior revenue guidance of $420m to $435m.

This has been prompted by advertisers raising concern over the quality of ad inventory sold via the ad tech firm (which earlier this year was embroiled in a scandal over a recent Mercedes-Benz campaign that was played out in the pages of both mainstream and trade press).

Essentially Rocket Fuel’s week serves as an example of the travails of ad tech firms that elect to go public, as its share price took a thrashing in after hours trading with its stock price dropping by over 25%.

‘Fight, fight, fight!’ – Turn and TubeMogul spar over ‘fact sheet’ claims

It’s been a year for high-profile spats in ad tech and this week provided market watchers with the latest episode featuring TubeMogul taking issue with a number of claims made in a “fact sheet” published by Turn. In a bare-knuckle riposte to Turn’s initial claims (which singled-out TubeMogul for derision), the recently listed company went as far as to brand their detractors as ‘liars’.

Just about every company in ad tech claims to be ‘the biggest…’, ‘the leading…’, ‘the premier…’, in their promotional material, to the point where most journalists just glaze over when reading said claims. But what is rare is when they single out others for criticism.

But Turn did just this with a recent promotional post entitled: “One platform to smoke them all”, which kicked off with “Turn has reach TubeMogul can’t even touch”, in a three-paragraph diatribe against the rival video firm.

Accusations in the piece included:  TubeMogul being incentivised to direct budget to its own inventory and not to the inventory that represents the highest ROI for you, and that it takes 71 cents in very dollar spent with the company, among more.

Clearly, the gloves were off, and TubeMogul’s reaction was blunt: “While we welcome a little friendly competition, there is just one problem with Turn's claims: they are lies.”

The response contains a blow-by-blow retort to each of Turn’s claims, which reads: “We ordinarily wouldn't respond - we'd rather out-execute competitors than verbally spar with them. But given that many of our brand and agency clients were confused by claims like ‘TubeMogul customers get less freedom,’ we felt it necessary to set the record straight.

Click here for the full response.

AOL heralds programmatic boom

AOL hailed its programmatic offering as significant cornerstone in its increasingly positive financial outlook as it reported its six consecutive quarter of growth with revenues of $607m, representing a 12% year-on-year increase, plus a 20% increase in earnings from advertising.

The giant also used the financial filing to report a 60% growth in third-party platform revenue driven by growth in the sale of premium formats across its programmatic platform. Third-party platform revenue grew approximately 20% excluding Adap.tv.

Tim Armstrong,  AOL, CEO, said: “AOL's future as a scaled media technology company continues to get stronger.”

In its subsequent investor relations call be added: "Programmatic ads grew at over 100% year-over-year, and we're growing faster than the programmatic field overall.

"Programmatic [ad revenue] has grown from 5% to 34% of our business in a year, which is part of a large industry shift and the biggest shift in the business in the past twenty years.”

Rubicon Project names new UK & Ireland head 

Rubicon Project has named James Brown as its general manager for its UK and Ireland operations, as it seeks to expand its operations across Europe.

Brown, who was formally the general manager for digital advertising at Telegraph media group, will direct all U.K. and Irish operations and will report to Oliver Whitten, Rubicon Project, SVP Europe.

The U.K. is a crucial market for Rubicon Project, where we have strong market share and work with very innovative buyers and sellers – many of which James Brown has long-standing relationships with.  He has exceptional commercial acumen combined with outstanding leadership skills and a progressive approach, all of which make him a good cultural fit for our business,” added Whitten.