Last week, we were privileged to host the June SFAdPub meetup in our San Francisco office.  The SFAdPub meetups are an opportunity for the San Francisco ad tech community—advertisers and publishers alike—to connect and discuss the latest in technology and industry trends.  This month’s meetup was of particular import to us not only because it gave us a chance to show off our San Francisco digs but also because it gave us an opportunity to discuss responsive web design and the need for true cross-platform advertising campaigns. 

Cross-device advertising is becoming a necessity in the marketing landscape, but actually achieving integration across media is challenging and complex.  Simply having a mobile presence, a display presence, an in-stream presence is not enough.  Rather, advertisers need to build campaigns that are truly integrated across media.  In other words, ads need to have a sense of brand continuity—the same brand vernacular, if you will—regardless of the device on which it appears.  At the same time, however, ads need to be tailored to match each device’s unique user experience—what makes for a good experience on your desktop does not necessarily make for a good experience on your iPhone.  Accordingly, advertisers need meaningful scalability—not just quantity but quality. It’s a difficult needle to thread, but it’s what’s required to create real and lasting connections with the consumer in a multi-screen world. 

In addition to this meaningful scalability, digital ads need to be responsive—both to the consumer and to the world at large.  Advertisers are already cognizant of this fact.  It’s why, for example, we’re seeing a growing interest in dynamic creative technologies—technologies that allow ads to automatically and instantaneously update themselves to match the consumer’s preferences or attributes.  It’s also why we saw an advertiser like P&G develop its Tide Newsdesk campaign, a campaign that centered on rapid-response messaging.  The ad development cycle of the last 50 years is out of sync with today’s 140-character universe.   

The challenge, of course, is putting everything together—meaningful scalability plus speed and responsiveness, all while maintaining a great consumer experience.  Speed, scalability and experience—it’s today’s great challenge and one that we are glad to be tackling headlong.

Reporting Upgrade

As a part of our ongoing commitment to providing you with the best possible products, we will be performing standard maintenance to the Spongecell reporting platform. The process will begin on Saturday, May 25, at 4:00 pm (ET) and is expected to take approximately 2 hours. During this time, the Spongecell platform will be unavailable.

Incoming data may be delayed from Saturday, May 25, at 3:00 am (ET), until the process has been completed. No data will be lost during this time, and ads will continue to serve normally.

At the end of the day, our first priority is you, our clients, and the updates we are making this weekend, like everything we do, are meant to make your ads more engaging, your campaigns more effective and your lives easier.

Introducing the New Look of Spongecell

I wanted to take a moment to introduce you to the new look of Spongecell.  At Spongecell, we’re firm believers in innovation. It’s what’s guided us in our quest to build smarter, faster and more engaging online ads these last five years.  And now, after what was a record-breaking 2012 and at the start of what will be a momentous 2013, we want to bring that same spirit of innovation to our brand.

When we entered the online advertising market five years ago, our mission was simple: Build smarter ads. Faster. At the time, interactive ads took weeks to build; we knew we could do it in hours.  Interactive ads required expensive “rich media” inventory to run; we knew we could build ads that could run anywhere.  We knew we could build technology that wouldn’t just power better interactive ads, it would start a revolution in the online advertising industry—cumbersome interactive ads could be made a thing of the past.  Our logo, a power button, encapsulated this vision and embodied that young company, raring to go.

Today, our core mission is still to give advertisers and their agencies interactive ad solutions that are easy to implement, easy to scale and highly effective, but like the industry we serve, our business has expanded and our horizons have broadened.  Today, we want to leverage our dynamic creative technology to create ads that can automatically and instantaneously tailor their content to match the individual consumer.  With offices across the United States and Europe and ad units that are compatible with all international inventory, we want to give advertisers the tools to scale their campaigns across the continents.  We want to bring the same speed and ease of use that we brought to display to new platforms and new devices.  And our new logo—this dynamic sphere, a globe that seems to be in perpetual motion—and our new look reflect these new objectives.

It’s fitting that this refresh comes as we embark on 2013.  2013 will be a big year for Spongecell.  We will be launching new products, new tools and new formats all with the goal of making it easier for advertisers to create and deliver engaging and effective online ads.  Our new look is an exciting prelude to the new things we have in store.  I encourage you to check it out, to see what we have in store and to watch for big things to come.

Ben Kartzman, CEO

2013 Will Be About Real-Time Creative

Spongecell CEO, Ben Kartzman, tells Adotas.com that 2013 will be all about Real-Time Creative.  ”We’ve seen great advances in RTB technology,” says Kartzman. “Now, it’s creative’s turn. Real-time creative is going mainstream; it’ll be a giant leap forward — finally, right message, right consumer.” Read more at Adotas. 

Spongecell Named #27 on the Inc. 500, Our Second Consecutive Year on the List

Being named to Inc.’s list of the 500 fastest-growing companies for the second straight year is an honor—a testament to the hard work of our team, the loyalty of our customers, and the strength of our products and services. 

It’s also a moment for reflection.  

The Inc. award recognizes all the achievements we’ve made and the challenges we’ve overcome since 2008.  On a macro level, that year was filled with many uncertainties, culminating in the market crash in October.   On a micro level, it was equally difficult—our company faced a tough fundraising environment, and our initial business model had failed to gain market traction.  We were forced to make some difficult choices back then, the most important of which was the decision to pivot toward the burgeoning interactive display market, where we saw that we could help clients harness the power of display to more effectively and more efficiently engage with their customers.  That decision is why we’re here today.

With all that behind us, it’s also a moment to look forward. 

Here’s to a future filled with the same kind of hard work and great products that have helped our clients achieve their goals and have helped us build a great company.  

iMedia – 4 ways to breathe new life into your display ads

Ben recently skipped out on the cold NYC winter to head down to Florida for the iMedia Summit where he spoke with iMedia’s Video Director, Bethany Simpson, about how to rejuvenate boring display ads.

See original article and video here.

Stop wasting your valuable ad space with these rejuvenating tips, and avoid the worst thing to put in your banners.

Ben Kartzman, CEO of Spongecell, tells iMedia’s Bethany Simpson his top tips for breathing new life into display ads. He also answers the question: what are the best and worst things he’s seen in a display ad?

Big News! Spongecell Completes Series B Financing

Spongecell is kicking off the new year with big news. We’re pleased to announce that Safeguard Scientifics, Inc. has led our Series B financing with an investment of $10 million.

“In order to support our growth within this fast-moving marketplace, we looked for a partner that offered us more than just capital―we found that in Safeguard,” said our CEO Ben Kartzman. “A combination of Safeguard’s advisory board, syndication partners and expertise in successfully scaling businesses across a diverse spectrum of industries make them the ideal partner.”

After popping a bottle of champagne, we got back to doing what we do best—engaging consumers with our interactive ad technology. Stay tuned for new Spongecell products, including pre-roll video and dynamic ads, as we put these funds to work!

Read more about this in the following articles:

Xconomy

Advertisement Journal

The Wall Street Journal’s AllThingsD

Vator News

Carnegie Mellon Spotlights Spongecell’s Ben Kartzman

Ben Kartzman has certainly been busy since graduating from Carnegie Mellon in 2000.  Beginning as one of the most decorated goalkeepers in men’s soccer program history, Kartzman spent his next six years working for C-bridge Internet Solutions, Bridgeline Software and Accenture before developing Spongecell in January 2006. Now, just a few years in, Spongecell has been identified as one of the top 100 fastest growing companies in the country according to Inc. Magazine.

Read More

Brain Against The Machine

How is technology affecting the role of humans in online advertising?Display ads are getting smarter.  Both humans and machines are driving that confluence.

Read More

PR Gurus’ Top Tips For Pitching and Storytelling In The Digital World

If you’re looking for some good tips on how to get the most our of your PR, check out this blog post Wendy Marx, featuring some tips by:

Ben Kartzman - @Spongecell

Co-founder and CEO, Spongecell

Don’t always feel the need to “sell” your company to advertisers.  It’s enough to be a resource for smart reporters on industry topics or breaking news.

Maximize the reach of your article. Tweet, retweet, post to your blog, share on Facebook. The more you link, the higher it will result in searches and the more exposure you will gain.

See all the tips by other industry insiders