LUMA’s Kawaja Optimistic On 2024 & 2025 Ad-Tech Outlook

The digital ecosystem is bracing for a potential bonanza in 2025, according to Terence Kawaja, founder and CEO of LUMA Partners. It may have been a bumpy couple of years – but the industry’s leading deal-maker says the economy is back. In this video interview with Beet.TV in advance of POSSIBLE 2024 in Miami April […]

 
 

Media M&A Deals Face Key Hurdles in 2023: LUMA’s Terence Kawaja

MARCO ISLAND, Fla. – The Federal Reserve’s steps to combat inflation by raising borrowing costs had wide-ranging effects on asset values, including everything from stocks to cryptocurrencies. Falling valuations last year dampened mergers and acquisition activity for a variety industries including telecom, media and technology. Bankers are hoping to see more signs of recovery going […]

 
 

Apple’s IDFA Change Will Destroy Chunks Of Economy: LUMA’s Kawaja

Apple may have delayed a big change to the way advertisers can get user data from iOS devices – but the change will still be profound for advertisers. More than that, however, the change could have a destructive effect on sections of the overall economy, right when many businesses are suffering from the effects of […]

 
 

GDPR Will Accelerate People-Based Marketing: LUMA’s Kawaja

Will new data protection legislation coming May 25 prove apocalyptic or just a bump in the road? With less than 100 days to go to the European Commission’s new General Data Protection Regulation, the US advertising sector seems split on the issue. On the one hand, expert ad-tech deal-maker LUMA Partners CEO Terence Kawaja says GDPR […]

 
 

Kawaja: Amazon Rivals Can Compete Using Intelligence

COLOGNE — Amazon’s footprint is becoming ubiquitous, it scale seemingly unassailable and its data-driven consumer intelligence advantage gargantuan. But, for other online retailers, all is not lost, according to one marketing industry expert. LUMA Partners CEO Terence Kawaja says ad-tech firm Criteo’s acquisition of HookLogic last year offers hope that the long tail of rival […]

 
 

Kawaja’s Three Reasons For Digital Media Optimism

With fears of an advertising duopoly, concerns about shady agency practices, a downturn in VC funding and mounting anger at programmatic opacity, there are plenty of reasons to be bearish about the digital advertising ecosystem right now. But one of the leading thinkers and M&A advisers in the space doesn’t want you to forget the sector’s positive […]

 
 

The Challenges In The Road To Targeted TV Ads

The hot discussion in the crossover of television and advertising technology is about household-level TV ad targeting. So-called “addressable” TV is slowly becoming a reality in some markets, promising markets internet-style specific targeting. But what humps are still in the road to an addressable future? In a panel on the topic, these executives discussed the topic… […]

 
 

News Corp’s Unruly Buy Is First Big Native Deal: Kawaja

News Corp is continuing its interest in buying in technology platforms to help it to its journalism and ad sales, following its acquisition of Storyful by buying the video marketing platform Unruly Media. What does the deal mean? Media banker and adviser Terence Kawaja, whose company LUMA Partners advised Unruly in the transaction, gave three talking points to […]

 
 

AdTech’s Torrid M&A Pace Powered by New Buyers, LUMA’s Kawaja

Through January to October 2014, the total value of ad tech deals totalled $3.8 billion, according to a report from investment bank Coady Diemar Partners at the time. And things are about to get bigger. Terence Kawaja, founder and CEO of media M&A advisory LUMA Partners, says his firm is advising on several deals, due to be announced this year, […]

 
 

Addressable TV Advertising is Changing the “Lumascape,” Banker Kawaja

CANNES – As addressable TV advertising emerges, so are a number of companies including Visible World (recently bought by Comcast), Clypd, Simulmedia and others.  For the new medium to succeed, one essential will be companies that focus on yield management around addressable TV, says investment banker Terence Kawaja. Kawaja is CEO of LUMA partners, a boutique […]

 
 

‘Under Siege’: Kawaja On How Mad Men Are Fighting Back

CANNES — It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world if you’re an ad agency exec right now. On the one hand, you have a palette of unlimited possibility at your fingertips – on the other hand, so does everybody else. Renowned media and technology M&A advisor and banker Terence Kawaja of Luma Partners is releasing […]

 
 

“Convergent TV” Will Take Front Stage at Cannes Lions, Banker Kawaja

The transformation of television and the emergence  “convergent TV,” will take front stage at the Cannes Lions Festival next month, predicts Terence Kawaja, co-founder and CEO of LUMA Partners, a prominent investment bank in the media and adtech sectors. The discussion of addressable TV, and the emerging opportunities for advertisers to deliver targeted advertising to individual cable and satellite […]

 
 

AOL’s Tim Armstrong to Keynote LUMA Partners’ Annual Digital Media CEO Fest

As CEO’s of leading adtech companies along with institutional and strategic investors gather for  LUMA Partners’ annual one-day conference in Manhattan next week, there will surely be talk on and off the stage about the the acquisition of AOL by Verizon.   Leading off the conference will be a keynote address by AOL CEO and Chairman Tim […]

 
 

AdTech Banker Kawaja: Video Ad Platforms Need To Differentiate

If you are tired of trying to distinguish one “end-to-end, full-service video targeting and decisioning” vendor from another, imagine how people from outside the digital video industry must feel. LUMA partners CEO Terence Kawaja says 2015 will see ongoing video tech momentum after the “inflection year” of 2014: “We’ve just seen 28 transactions across the video Lumascape, […]

 
 

Investment Banker Terence Kawaja: M&A in Digital Space to Quicken with Strategic Investors

COLOGNE –  The pace of M&A in the adtech sector will heat up in the months ahead with the entrance of big, new strategic investors, says Terence Kawaja, CEO and Founder of the New York-based boutique LUMA Partners. We interviewed him last week at the DMEXCO show where he delivered a speech on the state […]

 
 

Simulmedia’s Morgan: TV Is The Real Ad Superhighway

CANNES, France — The coming evolution in which TV ad sales will be conducted using online practices will finally enable the real vision of digital media for brands, says Simulmedia CEO Dave Morgan. “A lot of the (advertising) approaches that worked in the digital world over the last 20 years are finally ready for application […]

 
 

Nielsen Product President Hasker: We are Moving “Well Beyond the GRP”

CANNES, France — Nielsen global product leadership president Steve Hasker has put up a spirited defense of his media audience research provider and one of its core measurement tools. “A lot of people will talk about the GRP (Gross Rating Point) being dead,” he tells  moderator Terence Kawaja at this Beet.TV leadership summit. “We have never argued […]

 
 

Luma’s Kawaja: Fragmentation Happens, So Get Used To It.

AT SEA  OFF THE COAST OF FRANCE — When Terence Kawaja first introduced the Lumascape, the visual map illustrating an alarming array of ad tech companies, he backed up the image with a call for a simpler world. But that simplification isn’t going to happen, the media finance expert now concedes. “Fragmentation is here to stay […]

 
 

Kawaja: TV Buyers Must Be Slow-Rolled To Programmatic

If the digital advertising people getting high on “programmatic” trading are to access the $70 billion US TV ad market this way, they had better develop some empathy first, says one of the industry’s leading media finance advisors. Luma Partners CEO Terence Kawaja says TV ad trading, historically reliant on broad demographic targeting, and digital […]

 
 

Kawaja: No Bubble In ‘Sciencification’ Of Advertising

LOS ANGELES — The digital marketing technology landscape may be expanding, but it isn’t about to go pop, says one of digital media’s most noted banker-advisers. “We’ve seen a change from media intermediation being an art to more of a science,” Luma Partners‘ Terence Kawaja tells Beet.TV. “You hear about the word ‘programmatic’… bringing software […]