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Crunch Network
Making contrarian bets in adtech
It has become fashionable of late to see adtech as a dirty word in the world of technology investment. Many investors struggle to see the upside of backing businesses involved with the seemingly murky world of advertisement technology. Combined with the lower exit multiples seen over recent months, it is understandable that adtech businesses are feeling the squeeze when trying to raise… Read More
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Google is bringing new ad types to AMP, including those annoying flying carpet ads
AMP, which is essentially Google’s answer to Facebook’s fast-loading Instant Pages, first launched on Google’s mobile search results pages but it’s now being integrated into a wider number of products. As AMP reaches a wider audience, publishers are obviously also interested in being able to sell a wider range of ad types on these pages, too. The AMP format… Read More
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Conversable chatbot will offer allergy info along with a side of Wingstop wings
Conversable, a conversational commerce startup seeking to bolster relationships between brands and consumers, is announcing a partnership today with Wingstop. Users will be able to order food, inquire about potential food allergens, and look for nearby locations from within apps like Facebook Messenger and Twitter. Instead of putting APIs in front of developers, Conversable wants to power… Read More
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Commerce at Twitter is not dead
The reports of commerce’s death at Twitter have been greatly exaggerated, according to a tweetstorm by Nathan Hubbard, Twitter’s head of commerce. Last month BuzzFeed reported that Jack Dorsey had put Buy Buttons, product pages and other commerce efforts on the “back-burner,” and the commerce team was shifted into other divisions. But now Hubbard writes: “commerce… Read More
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Social Nature raises $1M to promote natural products with influencer marketing
We write about a lot of influencer marketing companies at TechCrunch, but Social Nature has a unique focus — natural products. The company is announcing it has raised $1 million in seed funding from investors, including Shopify co-founder Scott Lake, the Pereira/Wharton family, the founders of Pomme Natural Markets and Simon Whitfield (the Olympic triathlete) and Brenda Irwin of… Read More
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Tubular Labs raises $10 million to measure online videos across social platforms
Just how popular was that video of the mom laughing in her Chewbacca mask? And how did that video stack up against the mermaid pillow one that went viral in January? Are videos published by Last Week Tonight watched more or shared more than videos published by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert? Mountain View, Calif.-based Tubular Labs Inc. is using big data analytics to figure out such… Read More
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Why gaze tracking startup Cogisen is eyeing the Internet of Things
How will you interact with the Internet of Things in your smart home of the future? Perhaps by looking your connected air conditioning unit in the lens from the comfort of your sofa and fanning your face with your hand to tell it to crank up its cooling jets. Read More
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The best Meeker 2016 Internet Trends slides and what they mean
This is the gospel according to Mary Meeker, a living legend amongst venture capitalists. Instead of just blindly clicking through her 200+ page 2016 Internet Trends report, here we’ve picked the most important graphs and stats, and explained what they actually mean for people who work in tech. You can also read the full report here. Read More
Latest Crunch Report
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Instagram officially announces its new business tools
Instagram this morning officially announced the launch of its tools for business users, including new business profiles, analytics and the ability to turn Instagram posts into ads directly from the Instagram app itself. The launch comes following a series of leaks and reports of the tools’ imminent launch, and largely confirms details we already knew — like how the profiles would… Read More
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Vista Equity Partners buys marketing automation giant Marketo for $1.8B in cash
Marketo, the marketing software giant that went public in 2013, is being taken private again: PE firm Vista Equity Partners has acquired the company for $1.79 billion in an all-cash deal. The news ends weeks of speculation in which people guessed that Marketo would be snapped up potentially by strategics like Microsoft (who is a big partner of Marketo) or SAP. In the end, it’s a PE… Read More
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Facebook set to foster popularity of branded content
Branded content was already becoming more attractive to many marketers and publishers trying to navigate the shoals of the online media ecosystem. Now, thanks to Facebook, it’s set to really take off. I think this sector will grow quickly, and in some interesting new directions. Read More
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Facebook starts selling offsite ads targeting non-users too
Facebook’s advertising network is already a colossal business — it helped the social network bring in $5.38 billion in revenue during its most recent quarter alone — but it is about to take a step towards become the internet’s advertising exchange after announcing that it will start showing ads to non-users across the web. Read More
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Meet the latest cohort of Acceleprise startups, and the apps they built to make work easier
Acceleprise, a San Francisco-based accelerator for enterprise tech and software-as-a-service startups, held a Demo Day for its third cohort of companies today. The accelerator invests $50,000 into each startup admitted to its program via convertible note financing, taking approximately a 5 percent stake under a $1 million cap. It admits 8-12 companies per cohort, and invests out of a $3.5… Read More
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U.K. carrier Three says it will start trialling ad blocking next month with a 24-hour opt-in test
Back in February, U.K. mobile carrier Three said it would start to offer on its network opt-in ad blocking technology from Shine, potentially reaching 30 million customers in its network. Now the company is getting down to details: It will start to trial ad blocking in June in the U.K., with a 24-hour test for opted-in customers, the company said today. “We believe the current… Read More
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New MoPub report aims to help publishers navigate the ad network landscape
Mobile publishers need to work with at least a few different ad networks — that’s kind of the whole point of ad exchanges like Twitter-owned MoPub. Today the company is releasing a report that should give publishers a little more context when deciding which networks to work with. For starters, the report says that 53 percent of MoPub publishers work with between two and five… Read More
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Europe eyes new rules for online platforms
The European Union’s executive body has today set out a series of proposals for new rules that would apply to a broad range of online platforms, from the likes of YouTube to Google to eBay, as part of ongoing efforts to boost competitiveness in the region under its Digital Single Market Strategy. Read More
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Google makes big changes to its ad products
Google’s AdWords is getting a makeover. The search giant announced today that they have made several updates to make its advertising tools more suitable for mobile. With an emphasis on location-related mobile searches, a category that Google says is growing 50 percent faster than other searches, the company is introducing new local search ads across Google.com and Google Maps. If a… Read More
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Instagram’s code hints at option to pay to boost posts
We’ve known for some time that Instagram will soon be introducing business profiles, analytics and features intended to improve the ad-buying experience on the Facebook-owned photo-sharing network. Now, a number of other undocumented, non-public features have been uncovered, following a decompiling of the latest Instagram application, including one that hints that Instagram plans to offer… Read More
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