Today we’re excited to announce Firemeld for Chrome, available now to all Admeld clients.

When we launched Firemeld in 2009, it was the first of its kind: A web browser plugin specifically designed for publisher ad ops. We built it to save our clients’ valuable time by making it easy to get the facts about any ad--and even remove unwanted ads--without leaving their websites. Since then, we’ve continued to move Firemeld forward by adding deeper insights into how each ad is auctioned, the advertiser behind it, and more.

Firemeld for Chrome continues this tradition by merging it with the speed and efficiency of Google’s state-of-the-art browser. We’ve also given the Firemeld interface a cleaner look that we think you’ll appreciate.
With Firemeld for Chrome you can instantly:

• Inspect, edit or turn off an unwanted ad tags
• Block by advertiser or category
• Send screenshots with full ad details to your team or Admeld support
• Access key information such as latency, pricing, fill rate

To learn more about Firemeld for Chrome, visit this page or contact your Admeld account team.

On March 22nd, Admeld will host its third annual Partner Forum. As in years past, the day will feature thought-provoking conversations with top publishing and advertising executives, including Jim Bankoff, Chairman & CEO, SB Nation, Brock Berry, VP AdTaxi Networks at Digital First Media, Megan Pagliuca, General Manager & Vice President of Display Media at Merkle, John Miller, Chairman & CEO, Digital Officer, News Corporation, Zach Rogers, SVP Revenue Operations at CBS, Drew Schutte, Executive Vice President, Chief Integration Officer, Conde’ Nast, James Smith, CRO, Flixster, Jeremy Steinberg, SVP Digital Sales, FOX News, and Mimi Wotring, SVP Strategic Development & Operations, QuadrantONE.

In addition, we’re pleased to announce that Neal Mohan, Google’s VP for Display Advertising, will keynote the event. Neal will speak to the Google display vision, our mission to simplify the way publishers manage their inventory, and a glimpse into the future for both Admeld and DoubleClick.

There’s a lot for publishers to think about in 2012: from cross-channel strategies, to the evolution of private exchanges, to how marketers, agencies, and other buyers are evolving. As always, our goal with the event is to create an intimate environment in which our clients and partners can learn from one another about how to move their businesses forward.

Space at this year’s event will be extremely limited. To see the complete agenda or to request an invitation, visit the 2012 Admeld Partner Forum site.

On January 3, 2012 Forrester Research released an independent report, “The Forrester Wave™: Sell-Side Platforms Q1 2012,” and we’re pleased that they’ve ranked Admeld as a leader.

Download the report here.

The Forrester report states that Admeld is one of two vendors that lead the pack because of our highly granular controls for publishers, our proven ability to support a diverse array of sales opportunities, the breadth of our current offering, and our early innovation around features like private exchanges, variable price floor controls, and advertiser-level bid reporting.

It's successes like this that helped lead to our acquisition by Google in 2011. Our teams are hard at work combining the strengths of Admeld and the DoubleClick Ad Exchange to bring publishers the best end-to-end sell side solution.

We couldn’t have gotten here without the support of our publisher partners, so thanks for continuing to put your trust in our team.

Update  Dec 6, 2011 - Our acquisition by Google has now closed.

Today the U.S. Department of Justice cleared Admeld's acquisition by Google. We're extremely happy about this decision, and our plan is to close the deal within the next few days.  Thanks to the many friends, clients and partners who've helped us reach this point.

As I said when we announced the deal in June, Google is buying Admeld because they believe in our mission to serve premium publishers with the highest level of technology and expertise. Though our mailing address may change―our mission won't. In fact, over time everything you like about working with us will get even better. 

In the coming weeks and months, our products and Google's will largely remain separate, but we'll begin to talk about opportunities for integration and simplification. As Google said today in a blog post, publishers are the lifeblood of the Internet, and it's highly problematic that they have to grapple with such complexity in managing their ad inventory.

Helping publishers overcome this challenge is what gets us up in the morning, and we're excited to be working with Google to do it.

September is a big month for the display space in the UK and Europe, and there are a handful of industry events that should be on every executive’s radar. If you'll be attending one of them, be sure to reach out to us at Admeld so we can connect with you there. 

Yesterday NBCUniversal announced the addition of an Admeld-powered private exchange to their Universal Audience Platform. The launch will allow NBCUniversal’s advertiser clients to have greater access to inventory across the company’s many premium brands including bravotv.com, nbc.com, oxygen.com, syfy.com, usanetwork.com and more.

This represents another validation of our belief that private exchanges are a natural evolution of how premium publishers will sell their uncommitted inventory, and the importance of technology and client service in empowering publishers to forge stronger partnerships with advertisers. Publishers have a huge variety of choices about how to manage their inventory, whether through private exchanges or through other options, so we're proud to be supporting NBCUniversal in these efforts.

In addition to NBCU's announcement, you can read more about their plans in an interview with Peter Naylor, their EVP of Digital Media Sales, on AdExchanger.

I’m happy to say that over the weekend our company entered into an agreement to be acquired by Google. Read Google's post here.

This is an exciting moment for Admeld, not only because it speaks to the quality of our platform, team, and the results we produce for our clients, but also because it underscores Google’s dedication to helping publishers get the most out of the display ad landscape.

What’s driving this relationship is a shared belief that managing display advertising is still far too complicated for publishers, and together Admeld and Google can help address some of the underlying inefficiencies. Though we have no specific integration plans yet, we imagine our combined offerings can help publishers make more informed, efficient, and profitable decisions across all tiers of their inventory.

To a large degree, these are the same inefficiencies that drove Ben Barokas and Brian Adams to found Admeld in late 2007. As former publishers, Ben and Brian knew first-hand the pains of manual ad network optimization, and they envisioned a platform that could automate those processes while helping publishers maximize their revenue.

When I joined Admeld as CEO about 13 months later, the company had dozens of clients, most of whom reported at least a 100% increase in their revenues from ad networks. What’s more, the team had learned that technology, while the foundation of Admeld, wasn’t the full solution. In truth, publishers didn’t want just another platform. They wanted a partner who understood their business and could help them use technology to navigate this increasingly complex space. This mix of expertise and technology still resonates with publishers today, and it will always be the cornerstone of Admeld’s approach.

Over the last two years in particular, display advertising has undergone more innovation than in the previous ten years combined. RTB, data management, private exchanges: the space has come a long way, but despite all the progress, it still has a long way to go. Our goal, together with Google, is to continue to move display advertising forward and ensure that publishers stay on the cutting edge.

Lastly, while the transaction undergoes regulatory review, our two companies will remain independent in the marketplace. We will keep you posted as the process moves forward. In the meantime, to the many friends, clients and partners who have helped us reach this point, thank you for your confidence and trust. Our goal is to continue to serve you, and in this new phase, we’ll be able to do it better than ever. 

In July of 1999 I began leading my first online advertising services team. I distinctly remember that first week: troubleshooting what seemed like an endless series of issues, all of which threatened my publishers’ brands. It was challenging, but relatively straightforward because the ecosystem was relatively simple.

Over the next few years, the proliferation of buyers - ad networks, exchanges and others - made it extremely difficult to answer simple questions about each ad: what was it’s source, who bought it, what did they pay? And by the time I met Brian Adams, Admeld’s CTO, in 2008, life was even more complex.

In my first meeting with Brian, he mentioned this tool he was working on that would change the way publishers viewed and managed brand protection, and a few months later, Firemeld was released. Firemeld was the first tool of its kind in our industry, and we designed it not only to answer all the above questions for our publishers, but to help our internal teams to monitor the health of every one of our clients’ sites.

Today, Firemeld continues to evolve. With the growing industry focus on RTB, today we are upgrading it with a set of real time tools. Firemeld 3.0 gives publishers transparency into the RTB auctions behind each ad, including the bids, the floor price, and the advertisers’ name.  Stay tuned as we continue to move this tool forward.
 

It gives me great pleasure to say that Nicole Pruess has joined the Admeld team as Director of Platform Partnerships for EMEA. Nicole, who is based in Admeld’s London office, is charged with helping European publishers make sense of the quickly evolving technology landscape, and developing deep and fruitful relationships with our buying and data partners.

I had my first opportunity to work with Nicole in ‘99, shortly after joining DoubleClick. Nicole was working with Mail.com at the time, and as a vocal, passionate ad ops professional, she helped us mold our offerings early on, ensuring we were developing the services that met the needs of the industry’s premium publishers.

Between those early days of online advertising and now, Nicole has worked at MTV where as Director of Ad Operations, she oversaw post-sale implementation of advertising campaigns for 12 premium branded sites, followed by 5 years at DoubleClick/Google, where as a consultant and product specialist, she helped to roll out the DART Network Builder, along with other DoubleClick products and tools to the EMEA client base.  Most recently, she headed up International Product Management for Adify.

For publishers to stay ahead, we think it takes a combination of great technology and services delivered by empowered, passionate, and savvy individuals like Nicole. We’re thrilled to welcome her on board.