ExchangeWire rounds up some of the biggest stories in the European digital advertising space. In this week’s edition: January funding round for Coull; EU scrutinises big data; Publicis launches fund for startups; Google AMP is one month away; and new head of programmatic for Teads.  

Coull attracts new funding

The new year starts for Coull with new multimillion dollar investment and the launch of their third-generation video ad exchange.

The ad tech platform has just announced additional investment, amounting to USD$6.3m. According to Coull, the funding comes from current investors, as well as new shareholders, and is earmarked for continued development of their service.

"We’re innovators in the video ad space, having already developed unique pre-bid viewability tech, unique non-linear ad formats, and now our third-generation video ad exchange that provides transparent trading and enriches every ad request with data-driven tech”, comments Irfon Watkins, founder and CEO.

With their third-generation ad exchange, Coull are hoping to address the big issues of the last year, namely fraud, viewability and brand safety, by validating inventory against corresponding metrics.

EU has Big Data in its sights

Does the wealth of knowledge derived from big data give large internet companies a competitive advantage? The EU seems to think so, and the European regulatory authorities are keeping big data providers in their sights for future investigation.

European competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, was speaking at the Munich Digital Life Design conference last week and told attendees that the EU is aware of potential competitive imbalance caused by large internet companies that are able to amass personal data. While no formal investigations have been launched by the authorities so far, this could change in the future, Vestager said.

“If just a few companies control the data, you need to satisfy customers and cut costs, that could give them the power to drive their rivals out of the market”, the competition commissioner said, and added: “If a company’s use of data is so bad for competition that it outweighs the benefits, we may have to step in to restore a level playing field.”

In her speech, Vestager questioned why access to big data seems to be controlled, preventing competitors from gaining equally good information, and cited two merger cases, which the commission had looked at in this respect, Google's acquisition of DoubleClick, and Facebook's purchase of WhatsApp. However, in both cases, the authorities found no reason for concern.

Vestager’s speech hints that the EU could target big data as an anti-trust issue in the future – which would impact the big players in digital advertising significantly.

Publicis wants to fund digital startups

Publicis has a heart for startups. The advertising group is establishing a fund with the intention of financing and mentoring digital enterprises. "The idea is to help young entrepreneurs achieve their goals. Not just through investment, but also by putting Groupe resources at their disposal for a year", Publicis CEO Maurice Lévy, explains.

€10m (£765k) have been earmarked for the fund, which will be handed out to 90 young entrepreneurs and startups in chunks between €10,000-€500,000 each. Projects will be short-listed by regional juries after deadline for submissions ends in February 2016, and finalised by a global jury later on.

While Publicis is putting its name on the fund, the French advertising group is hoping to raise money from other media companies to bump up the pot.

The establishing of the fund marks the group’s 90th anniversary.

Google ramps up AMP, while publishers are doubtful

With the impending release of Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) looming ahead, Google have added AMP error reports to its Google Search console, while publishers are getting ready for the programme.

So far, 38 publishers (among them The New York Times, BBC, Time, and The Guardian) are on board, with others undoubtedly preparing for the open-source initiative behind closed doors.

However, according to Digiday, publishers are questioning the level of control they will have with regard to monetisation. Not only does AMP not support all ad formats, but cutting ad download times by up to 85%, AMP optimised ads could be favoured over more elaborate ads – and put these on the back foot.

It remains to be seen if the improved site speed will have the desired effect and keep mobile users engaged and less ready to switch off.

Teads appoints new Head of Programmatic

With programmatic a major growth area of Teads’ business that has seen an increase of 300% year-on-year, the native video advertising platform bags Ex-AOL head of programmatic & video, Jonathan Nash, to lead their programmatic efforts.

The appointment of Nash is a reflection of Teads’ efforts to move towards mobile and programmatic video.

Building on his previous experience at AOL, Nash will be responsible for driving Teads’ programmatic business and strengthening relationships with key players in the market.

In his new position as head of programmatic, UK and International, Nash will work alongside Todd Tran, SVP programmatic & mobile.