Relay Commerce

Permutive Boosts European Team to Enhance Publisher Revenue

Permutive, an audience platform that helps publishers grow data-driven revenues, announced three strategic hires in Europe to support its mission of growing direct-sold revenue and monetizing 100% of audiences amid ongoing privacy and consumer-choice changes. Julien Mentasti joined as Sales Director for Southern Europe, bringing a decade of experience from SAP, Oracle, and Salesforce to tailor responses to regional publisher challenges. Alexandre Canu became Go-to-Market Strategist for France, leveraging more than 25 years in digital marketing to define Permutive’s France strategy and strengthen partnerships between premium publishers and advertisers. Laurence Portron joined as Technical Solutions Engineer for the French market, bringing full-stack engineering experience from Relay to support customers. Permutive’s co-founder and CEO Joe Root commented that the hires will maximize publisher revenue and cement Permutive’s leadership across Europe, underscoring the company’s focus on expanding its regional team to address privacy-driven monetization and direct-sold opportunities.

Ad Tech in Cannes; Rubicon's Mobile Landmark - ExchangeWire.com

At Cannes Lions, the ad tech sector highlighted its growing role alongside the festival's creative focus. Rubicon Project announced a mobile milestone, revealing that mobile media buys account for 20% of its revenues, with a 13,000% growth in the last two years and an expectation that mobile revenue will surpass $200 million in 2015. The company also appointed Steve Wing as VP for mobile and marketplace to lead its mobile strategy. Jelli disclosed a $21 million Series B funding round, bringing total funding to $37.6 million, with investors including Relay Ventures, Intel Capital, First Round Capital, iHeartMedia and Universal Music Group. JICWEBS published best-practice guidelines to tackle online ad fraud and will issue a seal for compliant companies, signaling governance progress in the industry. Overall, the roundup underscores monetization and governance activity in ad tech during the Cannes week.

Kik Messenger Bets GIFs Are The Future Of Mobile Advertising

Kik, the mobile messenger with about 185 million users, announced it had acquired GIF messaging firm Relay for an undisclosed sum and closed a $38.3 million Series C funding round to invest in new product development and to expand its engineering and business-development teams. Relay’s technology and its GIF Messenger product will be folded into Kik, and Relay’s founding team will join Kik’s core messaging group and relocate to Ontario. Kik has already experimented with advertising via Promoted Chats and indicated it plans to build more ad products, potentially including promoted GIFs. Partners mentioned include Adaptly, AERO, Funny or Die, Vice, Seventeen, and Skullcandy. The acquisition signals Kik’s monetization trajectory through GIF-based formats, leveraging GIFs’ small size and looping video as a potential mobile advertising format. The article also references WeChat as a comparable example of a commerce-enabled messaging ecosystem.