Verizon isn’t the only carrier that wants to ramp up in ad tech to complement (and offset) its legacy business. Today, Norway-based Telenor announced that it has acquired Tapad, a New York-based cross-device retargeting startup co-founded by two Norwegians, Are Traasdahl and Dag Liodden, for $360 million “on a debt and cash-free basis.” The price covers 95% of the… Read More
Possession wins trophies or, in this case, ad dollars. That’s why Snapchat stepped up its game late last year by quietly partnering with Stats.com. Now TechCrunch has learned that Snapchat has rolled new Live Score geofilters at every NBA arena and some other matches. They let anyone attending overlay real-time updated score graphics atop their photos and videos. Just last week, Live… Read More
Microsoft announced its Q2 2016 results yesterday, reporting strong performance for its cloud business and leading to a stock bump in the wake of the news. Its Surface tablet hardware business also performed well. However it’s an entirely different story for the unloved phone-making business — that albatross around Satya Nadella’s neck… Read More
Americans spent more time using smartphone and tablet applications in 2014 than they did mobile and desktop web combined. With nearly four billion smartphones projected to be in use by 2020, the platform shift to mobile is well underway. Read More
Apple has acquired education-technology startup LearnSprout, Bloomberg reported a bit ago and we have just confirmed. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. LearnSprout is a three-year-old, San Francisco-based software startup whose online data insights help K-12 educators track students’ performances. The company had raised $4.7 million from investors across two rounds, including… Read More
Slidejoy, a startup that rewards users for putting news and advertising on their Android lockscreens, has unveiled a more comprehensive newsreading experience. Co-founder Sanghoon Kwak led the development of the new Trends feature, and he said that previously, if you were reading news on Slidejoy, you saw one article at a time, and they came from about a dozen publishers. Slidejoy Trends, on… Read More
Both Bank Of America and Wells Fargo are working on integrating Apple Pay into their ATMs, according to a source familiar with the teams on the projects. Engineers at both companies have been placed on multi-month assignments to build the Apple Pay options. I’ve confirmed the identity of at least one engineer who publicly lists themselves as a Bank Of America employee. Wells… Read More
