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AdTech Star Nanigans Scoops Up Facebook's Retargeted Ads Director Antonio Garcia-Martinez
Facebook’s just lost some critical business talent. Today, ads product director Gokul Rajaram was poached by Square, and now Facebook Exchange director Antonio Garcia-Martinez, who left in April, has signed on with one of Facebook’s top ad partners, Nanigans. Garcia-Martinez could help Nanigans keep adapting to Facebook’s ever-changing ad platform.
Founded in 2010, Nanigans has become a powerhouse in the social advertising world. It began with a focus on helping game developers determine the ROI of their marketing spend by showing how far users brought in through ads got into a game. With time it expanded into more traditional brand advertising on Facebook.
What’s really differentiated Nanigans, though, is its ability to keep up with the breakneck pace of the evolution of Facebook’s ads products. It quickly integrated Facebook’s Custom Audiences system, which lets advertisers reach a set of people they already have the email addresses or phone numbers for. It also built out real-time bidding demand side platform retargeting technology so it could serve Facebook Exchange (FBX) ads, which are targeted based on cookies showing where else someone has browsed on the web.
That’s how it ended up working with Antonio. Years ago he sold his Y Combinator adtech startup, AdGrok, to Twitter but jumped ship to join Facebook. There he built FBX and directed the product from its inception.
From his privileged vantage point, Garcia-Martinez could assess all of Facebook’s Preferred Marketing Developers, and when he left, he knew he had a hunch about who he wanted to work with. “Nanigans is the real deal. They were on top of all the innovative products Facebook was building. It’s the one company that does both sides well — traditional Facebook ads and retargeting. Basically, I thought they were the best PMD partner that Facebook has.”
Those two sides combine to give Nanigans some advantages, Antonio explains. “From a purely sales perspective, an advertiser like Fab.com has a pretty big social budget and they do FB ads, but want to do retargeting, as well. They can have their entire Facebook buy through one company.
“There’s also interesting things you could imagine in social and real-time bidding,” Antonio tells me, referring to the fact that right now Facebook advertisers can’t combine its traditional biographical targeting with cookie-based retargeting. I expect to make that combination available eventually if it can figure out the privacy implications. “If Facebook goes in that direction, straddling that divide could be interesting,” Antonio says with a hint that he knows more than he’s letting on.
Don’t expect him to give Nanigans any unfair help, though. “I’m still completely held to my confidentiality restrictions, of course. Frankly, Facebook’s product roadmap changes so quickly that anything I know would date so quickly I don’t think there are beans I could spill.”
DigitalOcean Wants To Challenge Amazon, Linode And Co. With Better Prices, Marketing And Focus On Simplicity
DigitalOcean is quickly becoming a household name in the web-hosting world. For $5 a month, the company lets you rent a basic virtual private server (or “droplets,” as the company calls them) with 512MB of RAM and a 20GB of SSD-powered hard disk space in one of its three locations (two in the U.S. and one in Amsterdam). The company, as its co-founder and CEO Ben Uretsky told me, believes that its focus on simplicity, speed and keeping prices low will allow it to effectively challenge the incumbents in this space.
Things are clearly working out well so far. Over the last few months, DigitalOcean has become one of the fastest-growing cloud providers in the U.S. and has now launched mor than 225,000 servers for its customers (and because it uses KVM and SSDs, it typically launches these in under 55 seconds). According to Netcraft, DigitalOcean had grown from being home to just under 140 IP addresses in December 2012 to 7,134 this June.
TechStars
Uretsky told me that getting to this point was a bit of a struggle, though. The company eventually made it into the summer 2012 TechStars program in Denver, thanks to recommendations from Slicehost founder Jason Seats and other mentors. But at the beginning, there was “very little love” for a startup that wanted to disrupt the hosting space. Uretsky and his co-founders previously worked in the dedicated server space for 15 years and already had plenty of experience in managing servers and building hosting-related companies. Uretsky, however, says he still wanted to subject himself and the team to the pressure of joining an accelerator program and to build a large network of mentors — something he didn’t do with his first company.
The team was very strategic about jumping into this space and did lots of competitive analysis before it launched. Uretsky believes that every company, at heart, is a marketing company, so the team is clearly focused on honing its message. One thing DigitalOcean realized is that getting started with platforms like Amazon Web Services or Azure is very complicated, even for experienced developers.
Because of this, the team decided to focus strongly on keeping things simple, and a quick look at the DigitalOcean dashboard already tells you that they are taking this approach very seriously. Everything is laid out with lots of whitespace, and spinning up a new server — or taking is offline — is a matter of two clicks. The developers that DigitalOcean is targeting (right now that’s mostly individual developers’ startup teams) want flexibility and on-demand resources.
Today, DigitalOcean is already profitable, Uretsky says. Quite a few pundits have wondered whether the company’s low-cost model is sustainable, but Uretsky notes that its scale is now allowing the company to negotiate bulk deals on hardware and bandwidth that keeps its costs down. It’s also operating at a pretty healthy margin that scales across its pricing plans.
Coming Soon: More Data Centers, Focus On Features
Looking ahead, DigitalOcean is planning to launch a data center in Brazil, followed by a location in Asia (either Singapore or Hong Kong) and then India. The company also just hired 28 new employees to allow it to move from just sustaining its quick growth to launching new features. The first of these new features (which is already in beta), is support for quickly launching pre-configured servers with basic LAMP setups and similar use cases.
Boombot Rex Makes Good On Kickstarter Promises With Durable, Siri-Friendly Bluetooth Speaker
Sometimes I refer to Kickstarter as the “land of broken dreams,” especially when I’m looking through my backer history and noting how few projects actually delivered, and how disappointing were most of the ones that did. The Boombot Rex does not fall into either of those categories, thanks to an experienced team that sent me a review unit of the shipping product a couple of weeks ago.
- 6 hours battery, 1 hour charging time
- 85mm x 80mm x 54mm
- 3.5mm aux input
- Bluetooth
- MSRP: $119.99
- Product info page
The Boombot Rex has a design that isn’t quite like any other Bluetooth speaker out there, with a pretty much hexagonal shape that can be easily palmed, only a little bit larger than a hockey puck. It’s extremely portable, and that’s sort of the point: The Rex has a clip built into the back, and it’s meant to be the speaker you reach for when you set out on an adventure, thanks to weather resistance and a general hardiness that comes in handy while hiking, camping, biking, fighting pirates or whatever else.
The surface of the Rex is coated in a matte, rubberized ABS plastic housing, which is both durable and pleasant to touch, and there are a number of colorways to choose from. We got the “Savage Green” edition, given TC’s penchant for green things, and while the vibrant colors make it look a little like a child’s toy, the feel of the speaker suggests tremendous durability, as it’s completely solid and there’s no errant rattling or anything else going on. The clip is perfect for securing it to some board shorts, and there are flaps to keep mud, dirt and water out of the speaker’s three ports.
The Rex has a built-in speakerphone, and the noise cancelling tech used make it good for that purpose. It can also call up Siri with a long-press of the center button (between volume up and down) on the top of the speaker, and in my testing the iOS virtual assistant was as effective as when used from the phone itself. It’s perfect for a device meant to help you enjoy music and also stay connected while you’re doing activities where earbuds or headphones would hamper you.
It works really well. I can’t believe the sound that comes out of this diminutive speaker. It’s not on par with something like the Big Jambox, but it’s very capable with its dual drivers, especially considering its other advantages, even when biking through a forest on a fairly fast wooded path. And its durability works, too. I used it in light rain, and fell off my bike a few times with it on, and the Rex didn’t skip a beat, which is more than I can say for my shins.
Battery life is about what Boombot advertises for the Rex. It isn’t anywhere near the longest in the category, but it does the job, especially for active outings. As a set-and-forget option for camping trips, I’d have appreciated a lot more reach, maybe say double the time the Rex puts out.
Speakerphone functions work great on this unit as mentioned, though, and the Siri integration is actually really handy for quickly checking stuff like the weather forecast or for making calls without ever having to take your phone out of your pocket, which can really come in handy if you’re caught in the rain or, I dunno, sliding down the side of a mountain.
An active lifestyle is an oft-used marketing strategy, for electronics in particular. But the Rex actually is a good device for people who regularly expose themselves to the elements, it isn’t just posturing as one. And even if your desire to live a little more extreme is more aspirational than anything else, the Rex is a solid option in a portable Bluetooth speaker in any circumstances, that at least offers you the option of getting out of the office once in a while.
Ex-Groupon CEO Andrew Mason's Album Of Motivational Music Is Coming Out Next Week
We already told you that Andrew Mason, the Groupon founder who was ousted from the CEO role there earlier this year, was dead serious when he said last month that he was planning to release a motivational album about career success called “Hardly Workin‘” (Mason is known pretty well for his sense of humor, so many people thought he had to be joking about his foray into music.)
Well, for those of us who have been very curious to hear Mason dropping workplace knowledge in musical format, the wait is almost over.
In a post on his personal blog today, Mason (who recently moved from Chicago to San Francisco) said that Hardly Workin‘ will be released next week through the usual channels (“iTunes, Spotify, etc.”) on Tuesday, July 2nd — “just in time for American audiences to incorporate into Fourth of July festivities.”
He also revealed the album’s cover art, which is embedded in this post, as well as the seven-song track listing:
1. Look No Further
2. The Way to Work
3. My Door is Always Open
4. Risin’ Above the Pack
5. K.I.S.S.
6. Stretch
7. It’s Up to Us
As a recap, Mason has characterized the idea behind Hardly Workin’ as follows:
“I managed over 12,000 people at Groupon, most under the age of 25. One thing that surprised me was that many would arrive at orientation with minimal understanding of basic business wisdom. …I came to realize that there was a real need to present business wisdom in a format that is more accessible to the younger generation.
It was with this in mind that I spent a week in LA earlier this month recording Hardly Workin’, a seven song album of motivational business music targeted at people newly entering the workforce. These songs will help young people understand some of the ideas that I’ve found to be a key part of becoming a productive and effective employee.”
The whole situation is so unique that a lot of people probably won’t quite believe it till they see (and hear) it. But I’ve heard on good authority that the album is indeed real, and the songs are pretty good — “really interesting” is one characterization I’ve heard. The rest of us will find out for ourselves in just a few days.
Ranker, “The World's Ranking Platform,” Raises $2M From Lowercase And Others
Ranker, a startup that asks users to “vote on the best and worst of everything,” is announcing that it has raised $2 million in new funding.
If you visit the Ranker site, you’ll basically be overwhelmed with crowdsourced lists, like this list of the funniest movies of all-time (I agree with the top choice, but The Hangover at No. 2??? Madness!) and this one highlighting the best sulfate-free shampoos (I’m not even sure what that means).
Users can vote on each item in the list, follow a list, add items, and create lists of their own. Other sites, like the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, can use Ranker’s technology for their own polls.
That might not sound like a hugely innovative idea, but founder and CEO Clark Benson said there’s more going on “under the hood.” Basically, Ranker is using all the data that it has gathered to build an “opinion graph” that can show how different opinions are related to each other. For example: “People who like X also like Y, and think Z is expensive.” (The company says it’s also using data from Freebase and Factual to help build this graph.) Benson’s long-term goal is to figure out how the graph can be used by other companies, so that Ranker can build a data business to supplement the money that it’s already making from advertising and affiliate links.
Plus, the site’s already quite popular, with nearly 8 million visitors and more than 78 million pageviews in the past month. Lists can be addictive and entertaining, and Ranker argues that the crowdsourced recommendations are actually more useful and reliable than any one person’s opinion.
As for the funding, it came from new investors Lowercase Capital (founded by Chris Sacca), BullPen Ventures, and Data Collective, as well as previous backers Draper Associates, Rincon Venture Partners, Siemer Ventures, TenOneTen, Tech Coast Angels and Pasadena Angels. Ranker has now raised $5.1 million.
Oh, and I don’t want to say that TechCrunch should definitely be ranked more highly among the best tech blogs, but, well, here’s the list. Do what you think is right.
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