Twitter Is About To Officially Launch Retargeted Ads

Twitter is ready to roll out retargeted ads fueled by browser cookies, sources confirm. Twitter could make the announcement as soon as tomorrow, expanding retargeted ads beyond the “experimental” phase that started in July. The secret sauce of Twitter’s retargeting is the use of your account as a cross-device identity layer, allowing it to target ads on mobile based on where you’ve been on the web. Some details of the announcement are hazy. It’s said to be somewhat of a “soft launch” in that all advertisers might not be immediately eligible to buy the ads, and they might not show up to all users. Retargeted Promoted Tweet ads will almost surely become available for purchase, though it’s unclear if Promoted Accounts will, too. I haven’t heard whether Twitter will be expanding email address retargeting either. Twitter declined to comment on this story. Cookie retargeted ads could make sure the ads you see on Twitter are for things you actually want. For example, if I visited the pricing webpage for a Financial Times subscription, it could later retarget me with this promoted tweet, which I’m likely to click as I was already considering buying a subscription. At first, Twitter will likely continue working with advertisers directly as it did in the small retargeting alpha program this summer. But eventually it may recruit help from retargeting specialists called demand-side platforms that could sell its ads and handle a real-time bidding process. Adtech startups it might tap include TellApart, AdRoll, and Triggit. These are some of the partners Facebook worked with when launching its retargeted ad exchange, FBX, in June 2012. But Twitter is charging into something Facebook has been tiptoeing around. Twitter’s bringing retargeting to mobile. No Cookies, No Problem Twitter’s users are on mobile. Seventy percent of its ad revenue already comes from the small screens, and it likely follows that a majority of engagement is on mobile, too. That means to really move the needle and boost revenues past the $169 million it made in Q3 2013, the new advertising product has to work on mobile. And historically, retargeting hasn’t worked on mobile. That’s because phones and tablets don’t save a trail of breadcrumbs about what sites you’ve visited the way laptops and desktops do. Typically, retargeting happens like this. You visit a website, say a travel booking site, and look at a page for buying a flight to Hawaii. You chicken out at the last minute, don’t buy, and navigate away, but the site has dropped a cookie for that Hawaii flight page on your browser. Then, when you visit other sites or social networks that run retargeted ads, they detect that cookie, and the travel site can show you an ad saying “It’s cold in SF. Wouldn’t a vacation to Hawaii be nice?” to try to get you to pull the trigger and buy the flight it knows you were already interested in. But without cookies on mobile, you can’t retarget there… …unless you can tie the identity of a mobile user to what they do on the computer. And Twitter can. It’s one of the few hugely popular services that individuals access from multiple types of devices. Our sources say that creating this unified identity layer for advertising is the key to Twitter’s ability to display retargeted ads on mobile. Essentially, when you log into your account on your full-size computer, Twitter will analyze the cookies in your browser to see where you’ve been on the non-mobile web. Then, when you log in to that same account on mobile, it can still use your web cookies to hit you with retargeted ads. As Zach Coelius, CEO of retargeted ads startup Triggit tells me, “Twitter is in a unique position because people log in on both the web and phone. That’s a really big deal because mobile phones don’t have the ability to set cookies so you can’t do retargeting. [Twitter's method] gives it a huge advantage, enabling them to provide relevant targeted ads on mobile phones.” Relevant ads lead to clicks that lead to revenue for Twitter. That “relevance” can also be perceived as “creepiness” to some privacy enthusiasts. When I talked to Gokul Rajaram last year when he was the head of Facebook ads, he said Facebook wanted to be sure it could handle the privacy of retargeting right before expanding the program to mobile or combining it with Facebook’s standard biographical targeting capabilities. Facebook only recently began allowing retargeted ads on mobile, and only through a “custom audiences” targeting program separate from FBX. Lucky for Twitter, most of what people do on it is public, so it doesn’t spark the same privacy concerns as Facebook. Twitter also offers an opt-out of retargeting under Promoted Content on its Security And Privacy settings page. Plus it honors Do Not Track for users that enable it in their browsers. In fact, Twitter’s handling of advertising privacy has been praised by the EFF. Tweeters With Intent Retargeting is a major stepping stone in Twitter’s quest to become an advertising powerhouse and validate the $23.8 billion valuation proposed by its $43.69 share price. It acquired mobile ad network MoPub for $350 million in September. It’s also recently opened up keyword targeting so advertisers can reach people who’ve tweeted certain words. Between keyword targeting and cookie retargeting, Twitter is breaking out of the demand generation and into the lucrative demand fulfillment part of the advertising funnel where Google’s search ad business lives. Advertisers are willing to pay top dollar if you can deliver them someone ready to buy their product. And there’s no better sign of someone’s intent to buy than having recently visited a site and almost made the purchase already. Cookies could be very tasty for Twitter.

Ahead of Christmas, ZowPow Launches Plush Toy Controllers That Interact With Mobile Games

Like moths to a flame, kids gravitate toward iPad and iPhone games. But for parents that want their children to still be exposed to real-world toys, a new startup called ZowPow is offering a way that they can do both. The company makes plush toys that can control gameplay. One of their very first toys is a tiny plane that can control up-and-down movement for a paired game called “Tiny Plane,” which is published by EA’s Chillingo. The game controller they built has built-in sensors and accelerometers that can tell which direction the plane is facing, so that the plane in the game mimics its movement through Bluetooth LE (see the video below). The two-person startup, which was just accepted for Y Combinator’s upcoming batch, is launching with two partner companies. The other is Get Set Games, a fairly well-known smaller studio that’s behind Mega Jump and Mega Run. The franchise’s protagonist Redford is getting his very own plush toy controller that costs $29.99. The startup is selling both of their toys through their online store. This is just an initial start. Co-founder Jennifer Lu, who came from a business development background at Andreessen Horowitz-backed game developer TinyCo, says the startup plans to sign up many more titles from third-party developers. They don’t plan to focus on building their own intellectual property in-house, and instead would rather partner with developers that already have their own unique characters and audiences. There’s a revenue share with the original developer for each toy they sell. ZowPow’s platform supports iOS devices that are the iPhone 4S or later, the iPad 3 or later, then the iPad Mini and the iPod Touch 5. They can also connect to TVs if the iOS device owner has an HDMI adapter or AirPlay.

AmEx Now Allows You To Apply Your Reward Points To Everyday Purchases Via Your Mobile Phone

AmEx has made a fairly significant improvement to its points redemption system, via the financial institution’s mobile app. So all those points that AmEx users rack up when swiping their card or making online purchases, can now actually be automatically used right after the transaction for a designated purchase. Here’s how it works. AmEx Card members accumulate membership rewards points with transactions. The program allows card members to earn one point for every dollar charged on enrolled American Express cards. These points, which have no expiration date, are redeemable in a number of categories. In the past, members were able to redeem points for purchases from brands online via AmEx’s redemption hub or for travel (airfare, hotels and more). But the general consumer behavior was to redeem big purchases, not everyday expenses like food or other transactions. Previously, members could check their account balances, make payments, browse rewards options, and load special offers to their cards from their phones. With this recent addition, card holders can redeem points for any purchase, from gas and groceries to clothing and manicures, on their phones. Card members have to download or upgrade their existing iOS or Android AmEx app, and sign in with their online username. Whenever they make a purchase with their card, they can open the mobile app and select Use Points for that particular charge once it hits their AmEx statement. A credit in the amount of the charge is applied to the card holder’s account so the merchant is left out of the equation completely. As David Yoo, AmEx’s SVP Mobile Products and Services, explains, the company is seeing that more and more card holders are making purchases through mobile devices, and are reliant on these devices. So it made sense for AmEx to develop a way where consumers could redeem points in the offline and online worlds. There are a few caveats to the new feature. You can’t use the points towards any card membership fees. AmEx is currently testing out push notifications, so that when you spend at a restaurant, you would see an alert on your phone to remind you that you could redeem points for the charge. Yoo says the company is only implementing push notifications for restaurants at the moment but this feature could be extended more broadly in the next few months (and users could turn this feature off as well, he adds). For me personally, I rarely use my AmEx points unless I am booking travel. But it’s a lot easier to be reminded to use your points when your phone is on hand, and you can simply click from wherever you are to redeem points. This isn’t the first new technology iteration added to the membership rewards points system — the company also partnered recently with VeriFone to allow card members to use points to pay for cabs. This new update is simply another way that AmEx is attempting to encourage and incentivize users to use their payments system and credit card over others. And the key to accomplishing that goal is to use the mobile phone as a touch point, and to extend rewards into the offline world.

Second Screen TV Startup Wywy Raises $7M For International Growth

Wywy, a German company promising to help monetize TV activity on mobile devices, is announcing that it has raised $7 million in Series B funding. According to the wywy website, the company’s history goes back to 2001, with video and audio detection technology, but it only launched its second screen products last year. Those products include multi-screen ad synchronization, so that mobile and tablet users see online advertising that corresponds to the commercial they’re seeing on TV; real-time TV campaign tracking; and content sync technology for second screen apps. The company also offers an app of its own, but it sounds like that’s just meant to showcase wywy’s technology for potential customers. The new funding follows a $3.1 million Series A last year and comes from existing investors Cipio Partners. Wywy says it currently supports 200 channels in five countries, and one of the big goals is to expand in Europe and the United States. “Today, using a Second Screen device in parallel to watching TV has become the norm,” said Cipio managing partner Werner Dreesbach in the funding release. “It is clear that TV advertisers require new approaches to ensure the effectiveness of their campaigns. wywy’s huge success with media agencies and TV advertisers in Germany made the decision to internationalize easy.”

Apple Finally Signs Long-Awaited Deal To Sell iPhones On China Mobile’s Network

China Mobile has finally signed a deal to offer Apple iPhones on its network, an agreement that took years to reach, reports the Wall Street Journal. China Mobile is the world’s largest mobile carrier, with more than 700 million subscribers, and is the last of China’s three major carriers to offer the iPhone. We have emailed Apple and China Mobile for more information. The reported deal comes after two months of signs that the rollout of iPhone’s on China Mobiles network is imminent. The launch date is expected to coincide with the Dec. 18 China Mobile conference in Guangzhou, when the carrier is supposed to reveal more information about its new 4G LTE network. In September, the WSJ reported that Apple is preparing to ship the iPhone 5S and 5C to China Mobile and earlier this week, China Mobile began quietly taking pre-orders for both models on a website owned by one of its subsidiaries. China’s top three carriers recently received licenses from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology to start operating 4G networks. In September, reports emerged that Apple’s newest iPhone models will be compatible with China Mobile’s network. The completion of its 4G network was an important sticking point for China Mobile to agree to start selling iPhones. One of the major roadblocks was that China Mobile operates on a different 3G standard that was developed in part by the Chinese government, and Apple said that the carrier’s proprietary network as too unreliable. China Mobile, on the other hand, did not want to agree to Apple’s sales volume guarantees. China is currently Apple’s third biggest market and CEO Tim Cook has said he anticipates it will eventually become the company’s largest. But over the past year, Apple has quickly lost market share there to Android handsets from Samsung and domestic handset makers, as its revenue also slowed down in the U.S. But deal with China Mobile may give it a boost. Research firm Trefis says the deal with the carrier may result in the sale of an additional 20 million iPhones in 2014, a 17% increase from the year before.

Former Battery Ventures Partner Brian O’Malley Joins Accel’s Early Stage Team

Accel Partners has announced that Brian O’Malley will join the venture capital firm as a partner on its early stage team. O’Malley was formerly a general partner at Battery Ventures, where he led its seed and early stage practices. Other recent hires include the addition of Hilary Mason as Accel’s new data scientist in residence, Kobie Fuller as a principal and several new associates. In 2013, Accel saw $5 billion in exits among its portfolio companies. Acquisitions include payments gateway Braintree, which was sold to eBay for $800 million; the sale of a 51% by Finnish gaming company SuperCell to Softbank for $1.53 billion, representing a $3 billion valuation; and the acquisition of MoPub by Twitter for a reported $350 million. Foreign exchange and payments provider OzForex had its IPO on the Australian Securities Exchange in October, while enterprise data company Nimble Storage is currently preparing its first public offering. O’Malley joined Battery Ventures in 2004. His investments in e-commerce, online marketplaces and Internet apps included companies like Bazaarvoice (which went public on Nasdaq in February 2012), Insitu (acquired by Boeing in 2008), HotelTonight, Skullcandy and Viddy. Before joining Battery, O’Malley was director of West Coast technical sales at Bowstreet.

Pinterest’s Engineering Lead Jon Jenkins Leaves To Launch His Own Startup

Jon Jenkins, who joined Pinterest a year ago as its head of engineering, is leaving the company in what he describes on Quora as a “bittersweet” decision. Jenkins says wants to launch his own company, a wish he had even before he joined Pinterest. A representative from Pinterest told us that the company is now looking for Jenkins’ successor. “Long before I made the decision to move to the Bay Area I had the spark of an idea brewing in the back of my mind,” Jenkins wrote. “Since being immersed in the startup rich environment of San Francisco that spark has grown into a flame and now is the time for me to see if I can turn that idea into a real business. In the coming months, I’ll be developing the concept and talking with investors about how to build an entirely new business. I’m really excited for what lies ahead for both Pinterest and myself!” Jenkins also said that during his year at Pinterest, the company’s engineering team has more than tripled in size. New features launched include place pins, a localized Japanese site, its first API for partners and new versions of its Android and iOS apps. In a statement, Pinterest said “We’d like to thank JJ for his contribution to Pinterest and wish him all the best on his next project. We feel fortunate to have leaders within engineering who are ready to step up and run the organization while we recruit for a permanent head of engineering.” Before joining Pinterest, Jenkins served as Amazon’s engineering lead for eight years and led the team responsible for the Silk browser on the Kindle Fire. He was also director of development tools, director of platform analysis and director of website platform. Jenkins’ hire was a sign that Pinterest, which has three non-technical co-founders, was starting to get serious about the technical challenges of building up its site’s infrastructure.